WHY CHILTON IS STILL HAPPY TO RACE THE 500
Max Chilton made a brave choice in 2019 to stand down from oval racing, because he just didn’t feel comfortable on those tracks, but he made an exception for the Indy 500. It’s not so much the ovals themselves he’s avoiding as the race formats.
“We get a lot of practice,” he says of the Indy 500. “This year that’s heavily cut, but we still get three or four days of running, and even that’s 20 times what you get at Pocono. You’re in a settled position, and everyone treats the race with a lot of respect. Everyone wants to finish, and the first 150 laps you’re just making sure you’re still in the race. Pocono is just carnage from the beginning. I just didn’t enjoy that [and other ovals]. You’ve got to enjoy doing something, and if you do it multiple times and still don’t enjoy it, it’s time to stop.
“The nice thing this year is that because there won’t be a Bump Day [with only 33 entries this year, everyone has qualified], instead of focusing on trimming the car out, taking off the downforce and hoping for the best, we’ll be able to concentrate on the race.”
Chilton was part of the great Carlin Bump Day Calamity of 2019, both he and Pato O’ward, along with Carlin-affiliated Fernando Alonso, failing to qualify: “We didn’t feel comfortable last year, and when we did feel comfortable, we didn’t have the terminal velocity.” But he’s happy that Conor Daly put his Carlin #59 machine on pole last time out at Iowa Speedway. “We’ve definitely got a stable platform,” he says. Apart from work on the gearbox and paint lacquering (to reduce air friction), “we’ve worked heavily on the dampers over the winter, and that’s helped with the road-course races. We’ve just got to get it working on ovals.”
And it’s all a learning experience for Carlin, with many of the staff – including Chilton’s engineer Matt Greasley – coming from the team’s European background. “We’ve got engineers who never did Indycar, we’re all new to it,” he points out. “It’s been very much a learning phase, but when all of you learn together that’s when you can come up with good results.”