Indy Pro Series: 2005 Indy Freedom 100

I’d known Taylor Fletcher, owner/driver of the Bullet Team Indy Pro Series (IPS) effort through former Indycar friends and co-workers. They’d always mentioned him as an extremely good guy, if not always scraping together his last few dollars to go racing. On an amateur racing level, saving loose change in a jar to go racing is nothing new; saving money to do Pro Racing by this method always leaves a lot to be desired.

With so many different hands and levels of skill running across the car in the one-off races he’d done since 2003, Taylor presented me with a car that was closer to a jalopy than an Indycar. A cracked gearbox, and engine oil filter that revealed portions of the oil pressure tension spring it tried to digest, numerous stripped or missing bolts, a dead battery, fuel that had been sitting in the tank for 9 months, and about 4 dozen other items on a “to do” list were documented for correction prior to running.

For the one day official test, running was meant to be held from 9am-12pm, and 1pm-5pm. With the massive list of deficiencies to overcome, and only one day prior to the test to accomplish all the preparation necessary, the car wasn’t finished until 3:15pm on the test day.

Set apart from a distinguished amateur career, Taylor had never run faster than 178mph at Indy and had never placed higher than 12th in any of the six IPS races he’d contested. In reality, Taylor was known amongst the Indy caring circles as a darned nice guy, but not someone to be overly concerned about on the track. It was my job to turn his team around and change that.

When we did make it out to pitlane, the fastest car had run a time of 47.3 seconds, or roughly 190mph. Because Taylor hadn’t driven for almost 9 months, and knowing how deadly and unforgiving Indy can be, I setup Taylor’s car to have A LOT of downforce to start. Impressive speed was of little interest for me to begin with; Taylor needed to drive a car that was easy and comfortable while reacquainting himself with an IPS car at Indy.

As I began to peel downforce off the car, and with Taylor’s newfound confidence, I sent him out to mimic the other cars and look for a respectable lap speed in a tow—the entire race would be a drafting battle, so this was our next logical step in testing.

Taylor’s 48.2 second lap, albeit produced with a mighty tow from Marco Andretti, was the fastest lap Taylor had ever done. Throughout our abbreviated test, he hadn’t blocked anybody, caused an accident, had anything fall off the car, or caused the least bit of embarrassment for anyone.

To Roger Bailey and Butch Meyer, the two main IPS officials, this seemed to be a minor miracle; they congratulated me repeatedly back in our garages as if I’d won a prize or something. Maybe earning the long missing respect for Taylor and his oft beleaguered IPS effort was indeed something to be prized.

With a positive and productive pre-event test behind us I spent the three weeks between the test and the start of the Freedom 100 reviewing the data from the car, and picked a few improvements to start with for opening practice. Our car was running flat out at the test, but we still needed to find 5+ mph. With the rules severely limiting aerodynamic changes, speed would have to be found by reducing downforce in any way possible, and by reducing friction between the tires and track.

The event started off with a bit of acrimony when our first practice session was cut short with preparation-related woes—we only had two modest practice sessions prior to Qualifying to make the most of the car, and these problems really hurt. While Indy is spread over three weeks, the Indy Pro Series event is compressed into two days. Not much time for delay or issues. With the first session a near-wash, it left the second practice as the only real opportunity to get Taylor up to speed.

Since qualifying is an exercise in testing the limits of a car, the session prior to qualifying is about simulating qualifying, and giving a driver an inkling of what to expect at the limit. We were forced to spend our second practice session working on what we should have been doing in the first session. Outright speed couldn’t be embraced, so we spent the session working on race setup.

Taylor managed to qualify 14th of 18 cars entered, and the general mood was not cheery back in our garage. It was a perfect opportunity for me to have the team dig into the car, and do a complete inspection of everything once again to prevent the issues of first practice to crop up in the race.

From his 14th starting place, I worked with Taylor to drive a solid and consistent race. Between Qualifying and the Race, I’d found some damper improvements and worked with his on board weight-jacker to improve the car. It resulted in a 0.4 second leap that catapulted him from 14th up into the main pack of cars fighting for a top finish.

At the conclusion of the Freedom 100, Taylor had moved up to 9th, his best-ever finishing position and having set his fastest-ever lap. As a team, everyone was proud to have salvaged a solid result from a tenuous start to the event. It’s amazing what a positive result and a new turn of speed can do for one’s demeanor!

It had been four years since I’d been to Indy, and the first time I’d been at Indy running anything other than an Indycar. The IPS series was very fun, and while I didn’t get the chance to bring the top 6 finish I’d wanted from this underdog effort, I seemed to be stopped by a number of friends and associates in the Indy/IPS world that recognized the minor miracle of helping Taylor to a top-ten finish.

My perfectionist’s mentality will always leave me trying to deal with the constraints of a small budget, small crew, or compromised effort, yet despite my high expectations for the 2005 Indy Pro Series Freedom 100, it was a welcome reward to have made a lot of out of very little, and to have gained recognition from my fellow competitors for my efforts.