Blog
Silicon Valley Nation: Five epic road trips
Brian Fuller
12/21/2012 4:01 PM EST
Speed freaks
Somehow (perhaps because my day job was driving a car around the country) I got pulled back into a world I hadn't covered since the early 1980s, automotive racing. Rhonda Stratton and her team at Littelfuse had come up with this idea to put engineers from all over America together with racing engineers on the Indycar circuit. They sponsored KV Racing's team for the season, so the opportunity to get clutches of engineers to races around the country was perfect. We got to tag along.
A little weary from 10 months of driving around the country, I nevertheless took Memorial Day weekend to travel to Indianapolis (where I landed my first reporting job in the 1980s) for the Indianapolis 500. It was back home again in Indiana in many ways, and what a blast that was. My colleague Sylvie Barak and I spent two pre-race days track-ratting around with KV Racing's engineers and a group of truly wonderful engineers (Bernie, Bill, Dinh, et al, I'm looking at you!).
Come race day, driver Tony Kanaan of KV Racing played possum for most of the race, until the end, when he battled for the lead, only to end up second in an exciting, crash-marred, yellow-flag end to the day.
We walked away with some wonderful memories and great stories:
In the fall, we got a chance to ride along with Mario Andretti at Sonoma (dizzying doesn't begin to describe it), and interview another racing legend, Arie Luyendyk. We finished out the season in 106-degree Fontana, Calif., where we got more amazing insights into the engineering challenges team's race at the racing edge.
Related racing stories:
-- Whether F1 or IndyCar, clever engineering is key
--Five lessons from race teams
--Dream engineering job?
--The racer's edge
--Limiting innovation
--Innovation in racing helmets
--Engineering mischief and a legendary racing shocker
-- To driver Arie Luyendyk, it's about engineering and racer's edge
--Littelfuse Speed2Design project
Next: The Oracle of Ohio
Somehow (perhaps because my day job was driving a car around the country) I got pulled back into a world I hadn't covered since the early 1980s, automotive racing. Rhonda Stratton and her team at Littelfuse had come up with this idea to put engineers from all over America together with racing engineers on the Indycar circuit. They sponsored KV Racing's team for the season, so the opportunity to get clutches of engineers to races around the country was perfect. We got to tag along.
A little weary from 10 months of driving around the country, I nevertheless took Memorial Day weekend to travel to Indianapolis (where I landed my first reporting job in the 1980s) for the Indianapolis 500. It was back home again in Indiana in many ways, and what a blast that was. My colleague Sylvie Barak and I spent two pre-race days track-ratting around with KV Racing's engineers and a group of truly wonderful engineers (Bernie, Bill, Dinh, et al, I'm looking at you!).
Come race day, driver Tony Kanaan of KV Racing played possum for most of the race, until the end, when he battled for the lead, only to end up second in an exciting, crash-marred, yellow-flag end to the day.
We walked away with some wonderful memories and great stories:
In the fall, we got a chance to ride along with Mario Andretti at Sonoma (dizzying doesn't begin to describe it), and interview another racing legend, Arie Luyendyk. We finished out the season in 106-degree Fontana, Calif., where we got more amazing insights into the engineering challenges team's race at the racing edge.
Related racing stories:
-- Whether F1 or IndyCar, clever engineering is key
--Five lessons from race teams
--Dream engineering job?
--The racer's edge
--Limiting innovation
--Innovation in racing helmets
--Engineering mischief and a legendary racing shocker
-- To driver Arie Luyendyk, it's about engineering and racer's edge
--Littelfuse Speed2Design project
Next: The Oracle of Ohio
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