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Can somebody stop him?

10.10.2015 - José Pedro Lamy is well known for complementing his speed with out of the box race strategies but not even he was expecting to rule all Indy's ovals.
After a not so great season in NASCAR Lamy decided to try out the biggest series after F1 despite his incredibly tough competitors. We managed to talk with the Portuguese star and here's how it went:

Interviewer: Hi, this is the first time we've been able to congratulate you for your recent performances in Indy. Were you expecting this success?

JPL: Why thanks! In a way I was expecting a bit more, but I can't say I was ever expecting to beat records.
When I signed in I was aware that I'd be racing with great names such as Novikov, Rui Martins and Rychly. There are others fast drivers such as Rubiejo and Essertal although not on the same league as the other three. However my manager - Blazefp - assured me that at least one of them would fall behind because of how different these cars are from the other formulas... He was wrong.


(Lamy's world record on the Texas Motor Speedway qualification)

Interviewer: Well I definitely understand Blazefp's reasoning, his previous driver didn't do too well on Indy despite his success on other series.

JPL: Yeah it seems Pires didn't have nearly enough mental capability to cope with this car. Doesn't make him a worse driver anyway, many drivers just don't go along with some cars.
The Indy cars are unstable alright but nothing my competitors couldn't handle. And so following Blazefp's advice I went the first 3 races with minimum risks and because of that I wasn't fast enough for the car to have decent downforce which led to a DNF right on the second race as well as under-performance on the three races. This costed me a lot of points.
Then I adjusted my risks and everything is going reasonably well again.


(Lamy's Indy Car designed by Boczy)

Interviewer: Yeah well and adjusted you did, you've become just as fast as Rui and Rychly but there's one particular type of tracks that you seem to raise the bar and beat even the previous champion Novikov. You've done it already twice. Of course I'm talking about ovals, where does all that extra speed comes from?

JPL: Hehe well to be fair I did just left NASCAR which is almost 100% ovals so experience is definitely on my side. There are certain skills that are more relevant for ovals and I most definitely improved them all last season in NASCAR. There're also some tweaks my engineers perform on the car's setup that help a lot and since these are very long races the strategy plays a much bigger role.


Interviewer: Interesting though you have to admit you were a bit lucky on the last race, Rychly seemed determined on getting that first place.

JPL: He was too fast. Our tire aggressiveness was very close but somehow with 10 more Liters on the tank he managed to be almost half a second faster than me. I noticed right from the start that he was risking a lot which often proves to be a fatal mistake in ovals. You might not even be making many mistakes but we're racing at full speed 10cm away from the wall, all it takes is one wrong move, you hit the wall and ruin the car which was exactly what happened.


(Peter Rychly with a much faster lap than Lamy featuring the 7 final positions)

Interviewer: Do you believe yourself to be unstoppable in ovals now?

JPL: Haha No not at all! One SC at the wrong time and all the hard work of a race can be reduced to just a few points. It's all about making the strategy work for the most probable situations but it may still not work. There are 4 more ovals I honestly doubt they'll all go as well as the past 2.


Interviewer: What are your predictions for the Indy championship?

JPL: Novikov will probably keep leading the championship. Then it'll be a fight between me and Rychly with Rui close by.


(Current Indy series standings)



Interviewer: What about F1? Have you thought about racing there as well?

JPL: If I've thought? I've been dreaming with that since I started racing mate!
I've contacted some teams this season, there's some interest on their part but with the new engines coming out neither they or I want to make any bold moves.
You can expect me there on season 17 though, I have at least 2 parties interested and both should be performance-wise pretty close by then. I'm open to more offers though

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And so it ends this interview with José Pedro Lamy, hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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