Hey everyone! Over the past week, I was able to complete the Firestone Indy Lights Spring training test at Sebring International Raceway. I am going to fill you guys in on my few days at the test, my experience with Juncos Racing AND seeing the IZOD IndyCar Series’ new DW12 in action for the first time.

The test with Juncos Racing all came together pretty late, typical Peter Dempsey style, winging it through somehow. I was very fortunate to be given the chance to test with the team. I have had a great relationship with them since 2009, when we just came up short of winning the Star Mazda Championship. Alongside my racing over the past few seasons I have worked with them as a Driver Instructor, Data Analyst and also as an engineer in Star Mazda. When owner Ricardo Juncos had the chance to put me in the Firestone Indy Lights car for the test he jumped at the opportunity and made it happen.

I left for Sebring on Monday night—we had a lot of work to do, as I hadn't even sat in the car yet. All my race gear was still with Andretti Autosport from a test we did out at Firebird in January, and this also included one important piece—my race seat!!

Luckily for us Andretti was coming to the test with the surprise announcement that they were testing with Sebastian Saavedra in an AA/AFS car. There is nothing better than a little competition!

Tuesday morning brought an early start as we had to go the JR Florida based shop to load up the trailer. It was a 5am start! We got to the shop by 6am after a quick stop for breakfast. The guys got everything loaded and we hit the road for Sebring. I would normally travel in the truck but this time I traveled with my Engineer so that we could really go through our test plan. We both had a lot of ideas about what we wanted to try! Of course, I can’t go into too much detail…

When we arrived, my first priority was to go and watch the IZOD IndyCar Series on track. It was great to watch them at different corners and see the different driving styles!

Watching them down at Turn 7, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Simon Pagenaud and Will Power really looked the most consistent and smoothest! It turned out that they were among the fastest apart from Helio Castroneves who was certainly finding the limits. It was really awesome to watch all the IZOD IndyCar Series guys the day before we tested. The DW12s sounded great and certainly looked the part in all their new paint schemes!

We had a late evening at the track sorting out my seat and pedals but we finished up around 8pm. Everything was in place with both cars ready to go! I headed out for dinner with the boss, Ricky Juncos and my teammate J.V. (Joao Victor) Horto. We hit a little Mexican place not too far from the hotel. We had a nice dinner apart from some dodgy black bean soup I ordered (for some reason) and then headed back to the hotel.

Up we got at about 7am and left for the track, as the green light was at 9am. We arrived in our rental car, and as we drove across the track we couldn’t help ourselves by turning left to go for a few hot laps in the rental car! Ricardo did a few laps using some strange lines then I jumped in to show him what I would run. We were probably both wrong but it was a fun few laps! It’s a little strange, after all my years in the USA, the Sebring short course was one track I had never run before. Thankfully I had raced the Star Mazda on the full course twice, so I had a fair idea of the track.

Before the session went green we had to debrief in the truck about the plan for the day with the #86 and #87—me being in the #87. It was the first time for the car to hit the track since its winter rebuild, and also since put into the Juncos Racing/Ireland green white and orange colors! The morning involved your normal install checks and short runs so that the Juncos crew could keep a close eye on everything. We had some small issues in the morning, the driver broke 2nd gear, which is not something I have ever done before, and I had a small spin at one turn! We also had a throttle problem which the guys fixed. During the morning we ran a low amount of laps (22) compared with the others nearly hitting 70. We made some setup changes over lunch which really improved the car. The best time I ran in the am was a 58.4, and shortly after lunch we got right down to a 57.4. J.V. Horto was also improving every lap and was only 0.2 off my pace.

We made some more changes and I went down to the Andretti timing stand to take a look at the split times. I was able to figure out the areas to work on. By the day’s end we had put on new tires and got down to a 57.1 and JV a 57.4. This was a huge improvement from the morning, I was confident we could have ran a 56.8 but unfortunately the gear cable broke during my new tire run after about 6 laps. We called it a day at that point and we were all very satisfied with the gains we had made over the course of the day, especially considering our morning issues and my first day in the Juncos car. Gustavo Yacaman was fastest with a 56.49—even though it’s closer to a 56.5, race car drivers always will say 56.4!! We still have a huge list of stuff we didn’t get through and I know they can certainly fight for wins in 2012! I just hope I get the opportunity to be part of it.

I would like to thank everyone on the team for the test and I really hope to be back in the car for round 1 at St.Pete, but for now it’s back to work and trying to find some money to go racing!!

See you all soon,
Peter Dempsey (Part time race car driver when funding is possible)