Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing – 21st Season
Pre-Race Notes – MICHEL JOURDAIN JR
Round 5 of 16 in the 2012 IZOD IndyCar Series
DATE: Rookie Orientation/Refresher – May 10; Opening Day — May 12; Pole Day – May 19;
Race Day – May 27
QUALIFYING BROADCAST: May 19 from 11 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. ET and 4:30-6:30 p.m. and on May 20 from 12:00-6:30
p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network and www.indycar.com (timing & scoring)
RACE BROADCAST: Live on Sunday, May 27 at 11:00 a.m. ET on ABC
RADIO BROADCAST: The race will air on IMS Radio Network, XM channel 94 & Sirius channel 212
TRACK LAYOUT: 2.5-mile oval
RACE LENGTH: 200 laps / 500 miles
2011 WINNER: Dan Wheldon
2011 POLESITTER: Alex Tagliani (2:38.2613 average; 227.472 mph avg.)
JOURDAIN JR’S HIGHEST
OVAL START: 2nd at the
JOURDAIN JR’S HIGHEST
OVAL FINISH: 1st at the
JOURDAIN JR AT INDY: Competed in the 1996 race where he started eighth and finished 13th
RLL’S TOP START/
FINISH AT INDY: Won the 2004 race from pole with Buddy Rice
NEWS & NOTES:
1 POLE & 1 WIN AT
The 2012 entry will mark the 15th year for the team in the event. Prior to 2012, the team prepared a total of 26 entries for drivers such as
The team’s highest start and finish in the event came in 2004 when Buddy Rice won from pole. In addition, the team has earned a total of four podiums (2nd – Meira 2005; 3rd – Rahal 1994, 1995). The team was in contention to win the race as recent as 2011 when Bertrand Baguette led laps 139-140 and laps 189-197 of the 200 lap race. Had a caution come our before Baguette was forced to pit for a splash of fuel, he might have been the victor. The race ultimately ended under caution when JR Hildebrand crashed on the front straight while in the lead on the final lap.
MICHEL AT
Office Depot / RLL Racing driver Jourdain Jr., 35, will attempt to qualify for his second
WHAT IS THE ROOKIE ORIENTATION PROGRAM (ROP) & “REFRESHER?”
Jourdain will participate in ROP from a “refresher” standpoint on Thursday, May 10 since he hasn’t driven an open wheel car since 2004. The IndyCar Series describes the process as follows: In addition to Car control, placement and a consistent driving pattern, the rookie orientation Test shall consist of three phases, totaling 40 laps: Phase One 10 laps, Phase Two 15 laps and Phase Three 15 laps. The laps do not have to be consecutive. The phases and corresponding speeds will be determined based on Track/weather conditions. Rookie Drivers must successfully complete a minimum of two of the three phases to be eligible to participate in practice when the facility opens for practice. No rookie Driver will be eligible for a qualifications attempt prior to completing the final phase.
Michel answers a few questions on the upcoming 96th running of the
HAVE YOU FULLY REALIZED THAT YOU WILL COMPETE IN THE INDY 500?
“Not really; just a little bit but not 100 percent. It’s hard for me to really get the feeling that I will be driving at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway again on Thursday.”
MICHEL ON WORDS THAT DESCRIBE INDY 500 AND HIS FIRST MEMORY OF THE RACE
“Tradition. Speed. Champions. I remember Josele Garza leading 13 laps in 1981. I remember it perfectly! I was in bed watching the race with my dad and I remember him telling me ‘That’s Josele Garza leading the Indy 500.’ I remember it perfectly and I was four years old.”
MICHEL ON PREPARATION FOR HIS RETURN TO INDY CAR RACING – PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY
“The last three years I have been training very hard because I have been doing triathlons and things like that. Now I have added some exercises for driving. Mentally I am just trying to approach it as if I was a rookie. I am trying to be very patient and not hurry anything up.”
MICHEL ON PRE-“REFRESHER” PREPARATION
“I just want to go step-by-step as if I was a rookie. I will try to not think of anything that happened in the past and take it easy to just get the first laps out of the way. For me every time I drove a car for the first time, or on a track for the first time, being able to go to bed the first night and ‘sleep on it’ made a big difference because I was able to think through all that had happened and come back the next day and apply what I had learned.”
BRUNO COUPRIE ON INDY 500 AND WORKING WITH MICHEL
“I am definitely excited to do the Indy 500 again after the results we got last year with Oriol Servia,” said Couprie. “There is a lot of potential at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, the team I have joined this year, and it should be an exciting month. It is really exciting to work with Michel. I have gotten to know him since
“The focus is to get Michel back in the saddle to build confidence. If we can do that and have a trouble-free month of May I think the results will naturally come so we shouldn’t try to chase a result hard. We should just focus on doing a nice job together and everything should happen automatically.”
RACE ENGINEER GERRY
Gerry Hughes, Takuma Sato’s race engineer for 2012, will oversee Michel’s refresher test on Thursday. He explains the team’s approach to the test day.
“It has been a while since Michel has been in an open-wheel race car but, speaking to him and looking at his biography in terms of his race experience, he is a vastly experienced race car driver and certainly has done a number of oval races in a number of different formulas so I feel that tomorrow our plan of attack is for him to build up his confidence in getting into the DW12, an all new car,” said Hughes. “He has got a little bit of time that he is going to require in the car to get up to speed and build up his confidence. Ideally we would like to go through all three phases and successfully complete those in the allotted time that we have for tomorrow during the ROP test event. Safety is of paramount importance and comes first but we will build up the drivers confidence and successfully go through Phases 1, 2 and 3 in a methodical, efficient and safe manner.”
MICHEL ON RLL’S HISTORY AT THE INDY 500
”I had a lot of mixed feelings when Buddy Rice won the race in 2004. I was very happy for the team because I knew everybody on the team because I was with the team the two years before but I had mixed feelings because I had a chance to be with the team. It was tough because I knew I would have had a chance, not in that car, but as his teammate with the same equipment. But I was happy for all of the guys because I knew how good the team was.”
MICHEL ON WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO WIN THE INDY 500
“It would mean everything to me. I grew up watching more Indy car racing that Formula One. Many people in the world think of Formula One when they think of open wheel racing but for me, because of Josele (Garza) and because of the races my father and uncle Bernard did, I was focused on Indy car racing much more than F1. I remember standing in the race car when my father drove in the
MICHEL ON DRIVERS WHOSE PERFORMANCE HE ADMIRES AT INDY SPECIFICALLY
“It is amazing that Mario Andretti only won the race one time and Michael (Andretti) never won it. I was always a big fan of little Al so I was very happy when he won the race. I remember, of course, when my uncle (Bernard) raced in 1989 and I came to Indy in 1989. It was my birthday present to come. My birthday was in September but I got the present in advance. There are so many memories from watching the Indy 500.”
MICHEL ON THE REACTION BY FRIENDS AND FANS ABOUT HIS PARTICIPATION IN THE INDY 500
“The reaction has been fantastic! It was amazing, much, much bigger than I expected. After the announcement in
MICHEL ON FAMILY AND SPONSORS COMING TO THE INDY 500 TO SUPPORT HIM
“Between my family and sponsors, the total is going to be around 70 or 80 people coming from
-RLL-