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Indy 500 dark horse Tomas Scheckter talks with Indy Racing Revolution

Tomas Scheckter stacks up as a dark horse for the win in the 92nd running of the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race. While his Luczo Dragon Racing team no longer has the support of Team Penske, they’ve still managed to do well this month at the Brickyard. Last weekend, they put their man into the top 11 qualifiers, despite some dicey time on the bubble.

Can Scheckter pull off the upset and defeat the Penske/Ganassi/AGR triumvirate? That’s yet to be determined, but I bet he’ll have a say in the outcome. I talked with the driver of the No. 12 Symantec machine earlier today about his chances, his new team, and whether he still hates a certain fast food mini-burger.

Special thanks to Kirk Reynolds of Luczo Dragon Racing PR and Tomas’ PR man Scott Walters for their help. Finally, thanks to Scheckter himself for taking the time out of his busy schedule to do this. You all rock.

Well, first off Tomas, how’s it looking at the track? Are we gonna see some cars today?

“I don’t know. We’ve seen Team Penske leave and Ganassi leave, and I think we’re not to go out too. That’s gonna be our day.”

Cool. Well, obviously, you guys qualified in the top 11, so I assume that you guys are now working toward a race set-up. How far are you guys on that and do you feel you’re on the right track?

“I think from our qualifying car, we’ll make changes. We have a big check list to do, because before qualifying, we battled with a lot of rain. I think our car’s not that far off. Qualifying was a little disappointing. I think we could’ve done better, and I’m happy to be in the top 11, but I don’t think we were outside that; before qualifying, we were third.

“We lost something, but our race pace should be competitive. It’s just about getting out there and doing laps, so if we have one dry day during these next few days, we should be there.”

Let’s go back to Saturday for a moment. What was the factor in you and your team throwing out the first run to do another and what was going through your mind when you found out that the second run was slower?

“It wasn’t a good feeling. You’re thinking to yourself so much that you’re gonna knock yourself out of the top 11 and I’d be sitting now unqualified and having to do qualifying stuff. [On my second run], I really went up on the weight jacker and allowed it to have the least amount of steering, go loose, but when I went into Turn 3, I got sideways on the second lap, and after seeing what Ryan Hunter-Reay had just did, he destroyed his car and went too much. So, I came back a little bit and I knew I had to be at a 223.3. I’d done a [223.6], a [223.5], a [223.4]…so on my first lap, I knew that I had to try to be as consistent as I could…”

How did it feel being on the bubble that day?

“It’s tough. Qualifying is the most stressful day. The first day of qualifying is — Let’s say if you don’t have a shot for pole, but getting in the top 11 is tough. And every year I seem to be in the same place in qualifying. It was a long day to come out of it in the top 11…We couldn’t take too much risk either, because we don’t have a spare car. You run the car so close on the edge, and if you make a mistake, that can be your Indy 500 that goes with it.”

Let’s disregard your position in the top 11 for a moment. I’ve been reading that there’s been more detractors about the Indy qualifying format. I know Oriol Servia and Davey Hamilton didn’t say very nice things about it. What do you think of the format?

“I don’t know and I don’t really think I’m in a position to comment on it. I mean, I know the rules going in and I have to maximize them in order to be in the right position. Would I have been happy to be out of the top 11? No. But that’s exciting to make a run going for the pole and the top 11. It’s more of a prestigious thing.

“Not only that, the rest can qualify a little bit later and toward the end of the day, if the weather was good, the top three or four could re-enter and then, three or four more that thought they could get into the Top 11 and the ones in [places] 11, 10 or nine would be ready to go too…It should add a lot of excitement, but it is what it is.”

Your team is young, but it’s come a long way in a short time. Your team also has a lot of experience.

“We have [team manager] John Cummiskey, [chief mechanic] Simon Morley and we have another John here — I don’t remember his last name, but he’s won a couple of [Indy 500s]. There’s a lot of experience, but we need more time…We have enough of a gap to need to do more homework. It takes time to be as good, but to beat as many good teams as we have in quals, I’ve got to be happy. If we want to compete against those teams, we have a lot of work to do. I think I’ve got the right guys to do it, but it will take some time.”

At Kansas, you mentioned the possibility of more races this season besides that race, Indy and Sonoma. Has anything happened on that front since then?

“I’m not sure. You know, I keep hearing different things…We’ll see how Indy turns out, and if the sponsors are happy, then with a good result here, the sky’s the limit. But I leave that to [team co-owners] Jay [Penske] and Steve [Luczo]. They’ve delivered on every promise they made to me and hopefully, I can have a long-term relationship with them.”

So you are hoping to stay on with Luczo Dragon if they go full-time?

“There’s a lot of things about having more races, having a full season, and there’s talks about deals on the table. Everything’s very positive and it all looks good, but I’ll certainly be happy as soon as we get more stuff done.”

After leaving Vision Racing, how did you maintain your edge in the offseason to prepare for when a team could call — in this case, when Luczo Dragon called?

“I obviously work out every day. In fact, I’m actually in my gym clothes right now. I would go out and train all the time, and I was doing go-karts as well. Every dry day during the first of the year, I was in one. I did a race as well, just to get the feeling again and the adrenaline, just qualifying and getting the mind back into what it feels like and everything. That’s mainly what I did and when I got back in [at Kansas], I was flat out on the second lap. It felt like I had been in the car the day before.”

Did you think at any point that your IndyCar career could be over or did you know that you’d be back in a ride?

“Yeah, I knew. To be honest, it was common knowledge that I was halfway to Andretti Green Racing during the offseason. There were meetings the whole time and we exchanged a lot of paperwork. Basically, it was just down to number of flights and number of appearance days. To be offered to drive for such a great team, even though it didn’t work out due to sponsorship issues, I knew that I had done a good enough job. And I’ve shown that once again with a team that’s been put together; right off the bat, we qualified fourth at Kansas and were running in second [during the race]. So, I hope to have a long future in IndyCars.”

Have you noticed similarities and differences between the other teams you’ve been with and Luczo Dragon? The way things are run? Team philosophy, culture, things like that?

“I mean, you walk into the Ganassi shop and it’s a huge place. They have all the offices around you and they’re looking down at the shop. It’s put you in awe. Whereas, our shop now — I don’t want to sound degrading — it’s about the size of my living room! But that makes it about the quality of people that are doing stuff.

“Jay wants to spend money on the right things and not spend it on the wrong things. He wants to invest money properly…We’ve done a great job with it, and we’re thinking about expanding to bigger shop space. But every team’s different. You have owners that push you, you have owners that can hold you back…Every place has been a little bit different.”

What will it take for you and your team to beat the Big Three — Team Penske, Ganassi and AGR? That would be a big feat in today’s IndyCar Series.

“Indy is a very special place in how you go out to race. It’s not all about speed, although I think people know that I can drive the car quick. A lot of it is about survival. When we can survive and get in a position to win the race, that’s when I need to go to another level. I suppose if you have the opportunity to win the race, that’s what it’ll take: the best pitstops these guys put together, me being good mentally and physically in the car, and lots of luck as well. If you can have all of that, then yeah, we can have a shot at winning.”

Do you see other drivers outside the Big Three teams taking this thing? Vitor Meira? Your old teammate Ed Carpenter? One of the newcomers?

“Yeah, definitely. These Champ Car guys are rookies, but they are and have been worldwide, experienced drivers with teams that have won titles. Some of them have driven oval races, if not 500s…You know, there’s a danger everywhere, and the racing is, if someone doesn’t get it at the right time, or gets a cut tire, or the yellow goes your way, then the guy with the best strategy has the lead in race with 10 to go. There are numerous things you have to be scared of, and if you concentrate on your own car, and do your own things right, I guess that will put you in the mix at the end.”

Tomas, thank you so much for taking the time out to talk with me today. This’ll be my last question, and I just want to show that I’m not always all business with this. I don’t know if this will annoy you, but have you learned to like White Castle hamburgers?

“(Laughs) No, I haven’t.”

Come on! It’s been four years, man, I’ve seen the Panther tape!

“From what I hear, the trick is to get really drunk and then try to eat them.”

Well, if not White Castle, do you like a specific fast food burger? McDonald’s? Burger King? Wendy’s?

“I try to stay away from that. My dad [former Formula One world champion Jody Scheckter] is an organic farmer in England. He’d kill me. But, I will say, a McDonald’s Big Mac every now and then doesn’t kill anybody.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 5:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.