Justin Wilson

For the second time in four years, a talented British driver's death will overshadow the end of the IndyCar season, and tonight the racing world is heartbroken after losing a gentle giant in Justin Wilson.

I don't have to tell you what a great guy Wilson was or expound on his talented on the track.  What I will say, though, is that his spirit and passion for this sport certainly impressed me, and that should never be overlooked.  So often we hear stories about drivers who lose their racing seats and disappear, or they get told they're too old for a team to take a chance on them.  Or in this case, maybe they're told that they're too tall.

Justin Wilson experienced all of these things and more throughout his racing career, but he just kept fighting.  You don't have enough money to get into F1?  He sold shares of himself to raise money long before crowdfunding really became a thing.  Your racing series is coming to an end and joining with IndyCar?  He immediately made the switch from ChampCar and dove straight into Indy, undeterred in his desire to race.  You lose your seat?  He switched teams, aided by his amiable personality and undeniable talent.

Perhaps in this last fact we can get a great appreciation for the person he was.  His reputation as a driver and a human being preceded him, certainly helping him network and continue to pursue a full-time drive.  And teams took note, knowing full well that he was a consistent, fast, intelligent and personable driver suitable for any team.

With every threat to his career, Wilson found a way to keep going.  Just this year he faced the proposition of a 2015 without IndyCar, but Michael Andretti felt comfortable enough with Wilson's reliability that he provided another car for a partial schedule until more sponsorship could be found.  Wilson delivered on this opportunity just weeks ago with a second-place finish at Mid-Ohio.

But Justin wasn't always smiling.  Put him in a race car, whether it's in Formula 1, IndyCar or Le Mans, and suddenly he was all business.  His intensity shone through his helmet, and it wasn't hard to tell how much he wanted to win—something he did seven times over the course of his American open wheel career.

When he got out of the car, though, the smile would return, the intensity would subside, and he would go back to being generous, tall, soft-spoken Justin, ever the British gentleman to his fans.

We can go on for as long as we want about his character, but the sad fact is, there's a wife and two little daughters grieving tonight.  There's a brother pouring out his soul and admiration for his best friend on Twitter with one heartbreaking tweet after another.  And there's a worldwide racing family mourning and wondering what to do.  After all, we're less than five days away from the first practice session for the final race of the year.

When Dan Wheldon was killed four years ago, at least it was already the final race of the year.  We had an entire offseason to collect ourselves, to be sad and to come together as a confused and distraught family.  But as so often happens in this sometimes cruel and complicated sport, it must go on, and seven days after the accident we'll be back at a circuit to decide the title.  I'm not really sure which is better for healing, honestly, but I'm glad we haven't had enough of these instances for me to decide.

One thing I do know is that the pain and loss will serve a purpose, whether or not we know it yet.  We race every week in IndyCar with the safety measures developed in part by Wheldon in a car bearing his initials.  The Brazilian contingent and many others will tell you that growing up, they wanted emulate the racing exploits of their hero, Ayrton Senna, whose presence can still be felt at tracks around the world after his 1994 death prompted a worldwide revolution in racing safety.  Many race with carbon fiber reinforcement in their helmets after Felipe Massa's near-fatal injury at the Hungarian Formula 1 Grand Prix in 2009.  The list goes on.

Many often criticize racing for only reacting after these incidents occur, but I'm not ready to go into that debate just yet, whether it be about oval racing or closed cockpits.  We can discuss that later, after we've mourned, after we've paid due respects.   It deserves a conversation, no doubt, but now is not the time.  Now is the time to be sad for Justin's family and to send our prayers for his daughters.

This week, let's come together just like we did after Dan, knowing that we were lucky to be able to watch Justin do what he loved.  Know that his loss is being felt around the globe tonight as the news has trended worldwide on Twitter for a few hours now, aided by the thousands of tributes and messages of sympathy from drivers and fans alike.  Know that the racing world will never forget this gentle giant from Sheffield.

"The brave and the fearless accept the risks of what they do because for them Life is Challenge," Steve Matchett said tonight.  "Their great courage teaches us to be strong."

Godspeed, Justin.

A Maxwell isn't a Maxwell when it's just an engine and frame on wheels

After a long time away from both this blog and The Garage, I'm happy to report that I'm back on track with both.  So much has changed in my life in the past few months (mostly for the better), but it hasn't been until recently that I've gotten back to work on the Maxwell and my other projects.

The left side back moulding on the old body.

Skipping all the non–car-related stuff, excitingly, the Maxwell is much closer to having a body again.

As you may recall, when I last left this blog in dormancy, I had been working on transferring the moulding pieces from the rusted hunk of the original lower body onto the new pieces of sheet metal that I fabricated.  The moulding surrounds the bottom of the door area to the front seats (since the 1910 Q3 didn't have physical doors up there), and they're separate metal pieces that flare out at the top and halfway act as supports for the front seat (and a visual coupler from the vertical angles of the extreme front of the body with the concave back half).

My issues were twofold in making the transplant:  First, the mouldings were secured to the old body with difficult-to-remove rivet-like pieces that were very flush with the body (I would later have to grind these down with a Dremel from the inside).  Second, I didn't have a very effective way of hooking them onto the new body since I wouldn't be using the existing horizontal holes.

These are some of the rivets (seen from the back) on the
right side of the front seat crosspiece.

Instead, I had experimented with using the countless vertical holes that dotted the pieces.  I drilled through the new body before placing nails through the holes from below.  After clamping and adjusting, I soldered around them before cutting off the excess and then smoothing the whole thing.  This proved fairly solid, especially when I applied solder into other gaps, but solder doesn't always hold, especially during vibrations.

So I finally bit the bullet and bought a hand rivet gun, hoping to use it to secure both the mouldings and the crosspieces for the front seat support.

The spirit had moved me after inspecting the old body, noting the seven rivets on each side of the crosspieces and seeing that the outer heads had been smoothed over with some sort of filler 105 years ago.  This would still preserve my goal of fixing the car without cutting corners and welding, and it would avert the crisis of overpowering the metal by burning right through it while attempting a weld.

Right back moulding now free.

I initially bought both 1/4"-long rivets and 1/8", but for the moulding, 1/8" is the perfect thickness.   (The diameter was 3/16", by the way.)  This may prove to be too thick for the crosspieces, but maybe I'll put a second piece of metal on top of the joint to increase the pressure.

The rest of the process has been very smooth, though.  The driver's side (which is right on the Maxwell) is completely done and smoothed, and I've presently affixed the front piece on the passenger side.  I've managed to free the last piece, and hopefully tomorrow I'll get that measured and riveted.

The whole endeavor has been somewhat tedious, but it's extremely exciting to see the pieces of this metallic jigsaw puzzle fall into place.  With the actual moulding in hand, though, I can figure out how far the lowest point of the cutout stays straight (which is easy to bend).  That allows me to hang the piece on the metal, making sure the top flare is perfectly even with the top of the body.

Right lower body ready to be cut to shape.

From there, I can pencil around the bottom of the piece, roughly noting where the spine of the metal bend needs to occur.  Then I come out about half an inch (to allow for the lip), and I'll bend a few inches at a time, shaping and finessing the angle with a ball-peen hammer.  I then check the fit and hammer down any high points until the tops are level, and then I can mark the holes for the rivets.

After the piece is secured, then I use a Dremel to smooth down the rivet heads.  A little bit of filler and primer completes the look of a perfectly smooth piece, and it now looks like the part has always been attached.

Cut and bent, holes drilled, ready for the moulding.

I must say, I absolutely loved seeing the driver's side panel sitting on the car.  For the first time since I set the old body on it long ago just for looks, the old girl seems like an actual automobile both in form and function.  It's been a century since smooth, sturdy pieces of metal separated the inside from the outside, helping to create the car's identity, differentiating it from every other pair of frame rails out there.  For when you take a step back and see the car as a whole instead of the individual parts, a Maxwell isn't a Maxwell when it's just an engine and frame on wheels.

Instead it's just another anonymous vehicle borne in the era of horseless carriages, when the wheels numbered four and the a round steering apparatus had replaced a tiller.  It was part of an ever-standardizing design that had the driver sitting on the right (to see the edge of the dirt roads) with pedals for movement and braking dancing at his feet.

The completed right side with the incomplete left, behind.

But aside from the giveaway "Maxwell" written in script across the radiator, the car does not assume its true identity until the shapely body sits behind the firewall.  The cutouts at the front, the relatively novel doors on the rear, the space for three people in the backseat that gives the Q3 its number, all of it combined makes a Maxwell a Maxwell.  The brass filigree is merely a boast, confirming a growing status that the little car from Tarrytown—which would later become a Chrysler—was an eager player in the automobile market.

But instead of factory workers bolting everything into place, I'm doing it myself, alone in The Garage.  And instead of the work signalling an emergence into the working world, today it signifies an emergence back into the light, back onto a road that differs greatly from the last one this little car saw 80 years ago.

This was my realm. This was my sport.

It's been three months since I last wrote on this blog, but certainly not for lack of want.  If I had the time to devote to writing my thoughts and experiences, I would, but instead medical school has consumed my life even more so than last year.  And I didn't think that would be possible.

What started inauspiciously enough soon turned into the most relentless semester I have ever had in any form of schooling, and to complicate that, countless out-of-school things have been seriously affecting me as well.  Unfortunately there hasn't been a ton of good in my life lately, but I can't despair too much since I'm still alive and my family is also alive and healthy, too (the latter being rather pertinent in the last couple of months).

Still, the combination of school and life has made my existence pretty exhausting and lonely.  And as one thing builds upon another, I find myself spiraling downward into getting busier and busier, getting more and more determined to dig myself out of the hole of a setback that I'm in.  With that determination, though, comes worry.  For the first time in my life I find myself unable to get the worries of school out of my head.

I went to a football game on Saturday, yet all I could think about was school.  When I hang out with others (which doesn't happen terribly often given my schedule), my mind rarely wanders away from school for very long at all.  It's been awful and not something I can see myself shaking until this semester is over.  I hate it, and I hate that med school doesn't allow me the time to deal with things, so I just have to keep going, which really sucks.  But this blog post isn't supposed to be a complain-fest of sad stories and worried parlance.

One of the few bright spots in the past few months, as foolish as it may sound, has been racing.  I've mentioned before that it's one of the only things I have allowed myself to enjoy in school, and as problems and concerns have mounted this season, and as I've whittled more and more things away from my life, F1 has remained.

Nowhere was this more evident than the epic trip we took to Austin last weekend for my birthday to go to the US Grand Prix.  The journey and our stay in the Lone Star State was incredible, and so many times it seemed that the stars aligned for us to make for an even better, more unbelievable weekend.

We got tons of free stuff; we met wonderful people from all over the world; we stood next to Niki Lauda, Damon Hill and Johnny Herbert; we were personally shown an actual helmet worn by Ayrton Senna the year we were born (1988); I met one of my Twitter followers for the first time after he had been working on a vintage racecar; we got interviewed by the track entertainment personnel and were broadcast on the big screens in front of 113,000 people; we got to invade the track and made friends with some members of the Lotus F1 team (who gave us some brilliant team hats); and so much more.  I couldn't believe it.

I also couldn't believe that for over two days, I almost never thought of med school.  Heck, when we were at the track, it never crossed my mind.  Only in passing after we left the track each day did it ever enter my mind, and it was wonderful.  I felt like a person again.  I felt like an actual human being who could have passions and had a hobby to which I could devote time.  For once people were asking ME questions, and I was the only one who could answer them.  This was my realm.  This was my sport.

Looking back, I'm amazed at the transformation in me as I got nearer to Formula 1 last weekend.  Even on the way back, in the middle of the night several hours into our 14-hour drive, I was feeling so tired.  I was around 110 miles into my first or second stint, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to go much longer before switching with my friend.  While he slept in the backseat, the only other person awake in the car started asking me about F1.  We talked about "Rush", we talked about Bernie and his legacy, we discussed the recent history of some of the sport's luminaries, and we speculated on the future of Grand Prix racing.  In no time at all, I had taken us over 220 miles and was feeling rather refreshed.  For the first time in recent memory I could speak about something with confidence and excellent recall, and there wasn't a question I couldn't answer.

Over the course of the weekend I ended up driving over 1,100 miles, and I was beyond exhausted.  But it was worth it.  For one weekend I felt alive again, so strikingly refreshed that I could breathe in the sport's nuances and feel them in my blood.  I was no longer lonely, for once being completely surrounded by people who shared a common love with me that every other day of the year draws confused looks and erroneous comparisons.  It was one of the most memorable birthdays I've ever had.

Fast-forward one week later, though, and the teams are celebrating tonight in Sao Paulo, Brazil, capping off a long season whose twists and turns reach back to a warm March day in Australia.  They bid adieu to V8 engines, another year of Red Bull/Sebastian Vettel domination, Ross Brawn at Mercedes, and one of my favorite drivers.  Mark Webber's surprisingly emotional end to his Formula 1 career went by far too quickly, although he tried to prolong it as best he could.  But that's a whole other blog post.

Tonight I'm wondering what the next few months will be like for me, and it saddens me to know that something that was such a big part of what little life I had left is going to be absent for a third of a year.  I would be lying if I said that worries of the coming finals for med school aren't creeping into my head tonight as a result, but I'll live.  I always have.  The end of seasons always make me a little sad, but with everything else that has gone on this year, it's difficult not to take that loss a little harder.  Still, I can reflect on a brilliant season, and I can look forward to the changes that will hopefully shake up the sport for the better.  While I remain skeptical on some of them, others I think will only do good things for Formula 1.  Only time will tell.

So tonight I join hundreds of millions of F1 fans around the world to say goodbye to the 2013 season, hoping that my life next March will be accommodating enough to let it back into my everyday enjoyment.  But for two and a half more hours tonight it's still race day, and earlier this morning a Grand Prix was run in front of some of the most storied and passionate F1 fans in the world.  Life was good.  Let the offseason begin tomorrow.

I could enjoy many an afternoon in this wonderful place

It's been a busy last couple of weeks working on this car, so I'm happy to report that the little Maxwell is closer than it's ever been to starting.

When we last spoke, I had just rebuilt the oil pump and reattached it to a freshly-lubed engine.  The firewall was off the car for the first time in my life, as was the cowl.  Best of all, I had done a ton of research online and through talking with a couple of fellow Maxwell owners, thus filling in a spreadsheet I have created to address the lingering questions I have about the car.  At some point I'll plug all that information in here.

Anyway, the car has been cooperating relatively well after that steering mechanism quagmire.  I found plenty of bolts to match the ones missing from the top plates on the gearbox and crank case, and I've now smoothed and primed the entire engine.  This required special engine primer (that can withstand heat up to 500F) and the taping off of the bare areas on the crank case.  What's left is now a wonderfully homogeneous engine color (for the first time in at least half a century), and it's started to show me how brilliant the power plant will look when it's painted.

From the right side, cylinders 3 and 4 are primed.

Speaking of which, that's another thing I learned.  Contrary to the paint that currently adorns the T-heads, the color of the Maxwell Q3 engine was black.  This means the primer caps and the spark plug caps will stand out even more when they're re-brassed.  This also means choosing the spark plug wires themselves will be even more important---a decision with which I'm still wrestling as I type.  As of tonight, I'm between the classic "oak" lacquered finish with black and red dual tracers or the yellow with black and red tracers.

The hoses also need to be correct, and I feel like I shouldn't order the spark plug wires until I know what color the hoses will be (heaven forbid their colors clash).  My father believes some of the brass cars had black or even red hoses, but he's not sure; thus, I will have to investigate further.

Once I get the type of hoses and color of plug wires down, I'll measure out the lengths needed to get to the cylinders, plus a couple of other wires to go back and forth between the mag and the coil, the battery and the coil switch, and the coil and the coil switch.

On one of the engine mounts, I found original blue paint and
some red that apparently adorned the car after a re-spray.

Thankfully any modern 6-volt coil or battery one can buy today is much better than the kinds that were available in 1910, so then the issue is disguising them to look period.  Supposedly an empty can of Metamucil is the exact size of the old coil, so the modern coil can be hidden inside of it and mounted on the bracket (I just need to figure out where the bracket mounts).  The battery sits directly under the front passenger seat, I'd say.

A major issue I have is the absence of a Splitdorf coil switch.  This was the 1910 version of an ignition in a modern car.  One would keep the switch in the "Off" position until it was ready to start, then the switch would be moved to the "Battery" position.  Once the car was cranked and running, the switch would be moved to "Magneto" since the mag is powerful enough to keep the spark going, whereas it's not strong enough to start the car.

I have a strong suspicion I can fashion a coil switch that would work, but I'm not sure how to do that (and it would probably take a bit more electrical knowledge than what I currently have).  Ideally I want to get the correct Splitdorf one, but I know that's a slim chance.  In its stead I just want to get one that looks correct or is of a similar vintage.

Speaking of fashioning things, I talked to the head of the Maxwell Registry, Vern Campbell, and he's sending me pictures of his 1910 Q2's oil tank.  Mine is missing, but I believe it's something I'll be able to make at some point (or have it made).  It's a little rectangular tank that sits on the engine side of the firewall.  Rectangular at the top, the bottom comes to a point where a shutoff valve sends oil to the pump and then to the drip gauge on the dash.  It's painted black, and on the other side of the firewall, a brass and glass sight gauge shows the driver and passengers the oil level in the tank (the capacity of which is just two quarts).

While I can make the tank, the brass sight gauge will be a bit more tricky.  It wouldn't be impossible for me to make this, though, but it wouldn't be easy.  We'll see.

I also spoke to the only other person in the world (who I can successfully contact) who has a 1910 Q3 like mine.  Howard is a jovial man who was working in his garage when I called him.  He doesn't seem to do email, so he's going to take some pictures of his car for me and send them by mail.  I asked for him to take some pictures of the rear body/doors, and I think some of the engine, too.  Either way, anything he sends will provide a wealth of information that I currently don't have.  I never would have imagined seeing pictures of a car exactly like mine someday, so that will be thrilling.

Both heads and side panel painted, this time from the left side.

I finished making some new linkages for the brakes and clutch, and now those are on the car.  I continued smoothing and priming the frame, and I also WD-40'ed the heck out of the tube that runs across the frame to move the internal and external brakes.  I asked Campbell how he got his loosened up, and he chuckled, noting that was literally the only part of his car that he did not disassemble during restoration.  He did what I have done by spraying it and moving it around, and that loosened up the brakes.

Sadly, talking to Howard, it appears I'm missing the interior brake shoes to the car.  I thought I just had that diamond-shaped parking brake, but he tells me there should be a second set of shoes inside the drum (almost mimicking disc brakes).  I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

Here's a busy shot from the rear of the car with the newer body sitting to the left.

Today was also an interesting story.  Yesterday I had taken the existing body off the car (the new steel lower body that someone had started to make on the rear) and made measurements for the front part of the lower body.  Despite the rear end flaring outward, which would have been extremely difficult to make, the front half is straight and vertical, with the transition taking place where the body is its thinnest---in the three inches under the rear door frame.  This leads me to believe that I can make that front half, since we have some rusted remains of the original at the back of The Garage.

I scribbled down some drawings with measurements galore, and in the end I was convinced I could fabricate a body.  My father, who has dealt with metal for the better part of 40 years, figured that the original bodies used on Maxwells were around 20-gauge steel, but the newer one that sat on the back of our car was 18-gauge.  For strength's sake, I decided to go with 18-gauge for my lower body.

Armed with my drawings, my father and I headed out to the local scrapyard this afternoon for what he intended to be a reconnaissance mission.  The heaps of rusted treasures that greeted us were enough to pique my interest to the point that I could enjoy many an afternoon in this wonderful place.  It also tells me that we're going to need the truck to get this stuff home.

When we found that they had suitable metal, most likely from coil ends, the gentleman offered to cut it to size for us with a plasma torch.  I figured this would be much quicker than the Dremel tool I planned to use, so we agreed, but we needed to go home and get Black Beauty first.

(If you don't remember, my mother has been wanting a vintage truck for years, merely for the purpose of "hauling stuff."  My father found a monstrous 1979 Ford pickup in a nearby town for a few hundred dollars, so we got it.  The truck, which has a massive engine, a lift kit and mudding tires, is affectionately called Black Beauty, due to its eggshell black finish [which included a green tailgate, a Lariat door on a non-Lariat truck and diamond plate running boards].)

After a few cranks, the old truck roared to life, presumably burning a gallon of gas in the process.  Lumbering and rocking its way down the road, we made it back to the scrap yard 15 minutes later.  Despite my father's concerns that she may not start when we went to leave, we headed back into the building to get the metal.

Here's the fellow using the plasma torch to cut the new panels.

The gentleman who would go on to help us stood by a large saw, cutting some angle irons for another man who was making some targets for a shooting range.  We talked about the Maxwell, and he relayed the fantastic story of the "Field of Dreams" in Pierce, Nebraska, where loads of new Chevrolets were left in a field in the 1960s.

While we conversed, the man helping him came back into the room.

"Is that your Ford out there?" he asked us.

"The black one?  Yes, that's ours."

"Nice truck!  Is that a '70 or a '71?  Those custom taillights were only made for those years."

"It's a 1979, but it's a patchwork of several trucks," I laughed.

He went on to tell us how his brother had a truck just like that years ago, and how it was a wonderful machine.  Black Beauty had an admirer.

The gentleman cut our panels to my specifications, and in the end we had spent just $20 for sheet metal that I intend to turn into a Maxwell body.  Despite the fact that I've never done sheet metal work, this one should be interesting.

And here's the finished product.  I can't wait to start fabricating!

My interview with American GP3 driver Conor Daly: Barcelona, Force India and Hares!

American Conor Daly has been working his way up the racing ladder steadily for the past few years, but many more Americans took notice when the 20 year-old won the second of two GP3 races in Barcelona earlier this season.  Following that with a straight-line test for the Force India F1 team before heading to Monaco, Daly’s first full year in GP3 has proved to be a busy one, but I caught up with Conor for a candid interview about this whirlwind of a year shortly before the Monaco round of the GP3 championship.

Daly, the son of former CART and Formula 1 racer Derek Daly, is a former World Karting Association champion and multiple winner in Skip Barber and Formula Ford.  Originally entering the Road to Indy, which aims to aid racers in ascending to the IndyCar series, Daly won the Star Mazda Championship in record-setting fashion in 2010 (nine poles and seven wins) before moving on to Indy Lights the following year with Sam Schmidt Motorsports.  After capturing victory in Long Beach, Daly competed in GP3 with Carlin Motorsports (splitting his season between Europe and the United States).

But throughout all of these accomplishments, Daly has perhaps garnered the most attention in just four races in GP3.  Currently fifth in the championship standings with 23 points, Daly won the Barcelona sprint race on the opening weekend of the GP3 season, but it wasn’t easy.

What many people didn’t realize was that Daly had already been offered a spot testing the Force India before the opening weekend of the GP3 season---something he called “a nice little incentive” for those first two races.  However, that didn’t make things simpler for him in the feature race.

After a great qualifying, Daly dropped several spots at the start, from which he was never able to recover.

“I saw the pole sitter, [António Félix] da Costa jump and I released the brake just slightly which made me pull in the clutch paddle so when the lights actually went out I was slipping the clutch way too much,” Daly said.  As a result the car stayed relatively stationary before creeping away slowly.  Despite the disastrous start, the clutch had only been slipping for a total of 2.4 seconds.  “It was definitely my fault, and it was sad because I was in a good position to try and win but unfortunately I wasn't able to do so,” he lamented.

Over the course of the race a difficult battle with Marussia Manor Racing’s Tio Ellinas developed until a late safety car bunched the field together.  In the ensuing sprint to the end, Daly’s main focus was finishing the race in one piece and setting himself up for the sprint race, which would invert the top eight finishers from the feature.  He would go on to finish P6, which meant he would start P3 on the inverted grid for the sprint finale.

More jump starts saw penalties befall those in front of him, and the sprint race quickly became a one-man show with Daly pulling away.  He later revealed that in the final few laps he had to keep himself from thinking too much about what would happen if he won.  Instead he made himself concentrate more.

“The car was so good that I was able to focus on hitting my marks and just finishing out the race,” he said.  “I had to manage the tires towards the end and was able to finish with a good gap behind me so I was quite happy.”

 One of the best moments of the weekend for American fans was seeing Daly holding the American flag as he celebrated in parc ferme after the race.  Where did the flag come from, though?

 “I made sure to have my Dad bring the American flag from home because I knew I would get to use it at some point this year, I just didn't honestly think it would be this soon!  I was so thrilled to hear the American national anthem.   It was a very emotional moment and I can't really describe the feeling I had.  I was relieved because I knew that I was starting to prove myself in Europe.  I was extremely happy but it’s just the beginning and I can't wait to get to the next race in Monaco!”

For the rest of the weekend the young American was approached by numerous luminaries of the GP3, GP2 and F1 worlds.  At one point he was even congratulated by Ferrari F1 team principal Stefano Domenicali---the importance of which was not lost on the Indiana native.

“It is always nice to know people are watching,” Daly smiled.  “I don't want to get too caught up in it, though, because it’s a long season and I just want to focus on keeping the good finishes coming and scoring points to be there for the championship at the end.”

I have to ask, then, are any future deals coming out of some of those important conversations?

Daly laughed.  “Not that I know of at the moment!”

Fast forward to the Force India test a few days later. This was Conor’s first taste of a Formula 1 car.  Obviously he had grown up hearing about the machines, but the jump between GP3 and F1 technology had to be a great one.

 “They are indeed massively different cars.  The F1 car was absolutely incredible.  I was pretty much living every childhood dream I ever had!  There are just so many different settings on the steering wheel and it is a far more technically advanced race car than anything else in the world,” he explained.

But the coolest thing, if he had to choose something?

“Ultimately, though, the coolest thing had to be the sound under hard acceleration; just absolutely beautiful.”

Since the test was a straight-line test---one of the few types of testing that has been allowed by the FIA over the past few years---Daly had plenty of opportunities to accelerate and decelerate, sometimes being told to accelerate as hard as he possibly could (which he described as being “the best part” of the session).  There was a brief moment, however, when he got to test out the handling as well.

Somewhere around 150 mph a hare ran out onto the Cotswold Airport runway where Daly was testing (located in Gloucestershire, England).  Although it wasn’t as much of a near-miss as some would like to think, Daly said he ‘did have to make his way around [the hare] as it sprinted away.’

Surprisingly, having worked with the Lotus GP3 team and now Vijay Mallya’s F1 team, Daly says that the two squads are extremely different, but only because the Lotus GP3 team is really ART GP.

“It's funny because everyone thinks because we have the same name that we are heavily affiliated with the Lotus F1 team but really we aren't,” he explained.  “Lotus GP is really ART GP which has been one of the best teams in the world competing in junior formula car racing.  Fortunately, though, the [ART GP] team has aligned themselves with the Lotus F1 team which gives us the cool color scheme and a great historic name.”

 Even so, Daly says with a chuckle that he is yet to meet anyone from the Lotus F1 team.

From there Conor was going to be heading to Monaco---somewhere he had never raced but had always dreamed about experiencing.

“I have been looking forward to this race since it was announced on our schedule.  I love street courses,” he said.  “I have raced on many street courses in America, and I've thoroughly enjoyed every single one.  Now I get to race on what is arguably the best street course in the world!”

Citing the 27 cars that will be taking part in the race, Daly noted that he may need a little luck when it comes to avoiding the inevitable traffic jams, but through simulator work and studying the track, he felt very comfortable leading up to the race.  He even mentioned that he was most looking forward to “pushing the limit in qualifying and using every inch of the track to try and get the pole.”

So, with one victory in the first two races, Daly would head to the French Riviera to the legendary and dangerous streets of Monte Carlo, where few could have predicted the outcomes of that weekend’s races.  We’ll catch up with Conor and get his thoughts on Monaco and the following round of the GP3 championship (Valencia, Spain) next time.