Yahoo Autos Robert Wickens Has Seen Kevin Magnussen's IndyCar Chance Before
Four years prior to ex-Formula 1 star Kevin Magnussen receiving the call, it was the relatively unknown Robert Wickens who was asked to make his NTT IndyCar Series debut at the last moment for the team known today as Arrow McLaren SP. In the months to come, the one-day outing from the Canadian in the No. 7 Honda would change the trajectory of his life.
Both drivers—the Dane this weekend and Wickens in 2017—were summoned to the lush Road America road course in Wisconsin, drafted in to fill a gap in the team’s full-time plans. For Magnussen, it is an opportunity to fill in for the injured Swede Felix Rosenqvist, who continues to heal after a frightening stuck-throttle crash just days ago on Detroit’s Belle Isle; for Wickens, it was an international travel snag for Russia’s Mikhail Aleshin.
Wickens came to mind for the team as an experiment, a promising driver to try as the program pondered its future plans. Having done a half day of running in friend and countryman James Hinchcliffe’s No. 5 Honda earlier in the year as part of car swap promotion, Wickens had a slight advantage over Magnussen, who will be learning the car for the first time when official practice begins.
“It doesn't happen as often once you make it to the professional level, but in your junior categories, it wasn't that uncommon for me to get a call from [Red Bull racing boss] Helmut Marko to tell me what I was racing that weekend,” Wickens told Road & Track. “So getting that late call to jump in a car that you've never driven before, wasn't actually that foreign to me. And I'm sure a lot of drivers say the same thing. And all you can do is just try to make the best of the situation.
“But speaking from my experience, yeah, I got a call Thursday night, asking if I was even in North America, to drive on Friday. Luckily, I jumped on the first flight we could get, which was also the last one on Thursday into Chicago from Toronto, and it was a long night. I think I got into the hotel near Road America at probably 2:30 in the morning and was at the 7am track call for a seat fitting and to get the helmet and radio and everything put together to get ready for free practice at like 10am. It was pretty crazy. But then it was just a lot of fun.”
Undaunted, Wickens was busy during the practice session where he turned 11 laps around the 4.0-mile circuit. He’d place 20th of the 21 drivers in attendance, 2.3 seconds adrift from the fastest lap turned by Alexander Rossi. In Friday’s second session, it was more of the same as his 17 laps produced a best that was good enough for 20th, albeit with a marked improvement in lap time, down to 1.8s shy of Josef Newgarden’s leading time.
“I had done a few laps in an Indy car at Sebring in the marketing ride swap that James and I did, so I was a little bit climatized to my surroundings in the cockpit, but then obviously driving in Road America is a pretty awesome opportunity in any car,” he said. “And the last time I drove in, there was seven years prior in Champ Car Atlantics so jumping up doing it in IndyCar was a really cool and fun experience because it's a serious place in a serious car.”
It was one rushed day, two sessions, and all of 24 laps for Wickens in the No. 7 Honda before Aleshin overcame his travel issues and arrived at the track late on Friday. Wickens’ role as a substitute driver was over quickly, but he did pique the team’s interest with his obvious talent and immense technical feedback.
They’d hire him to drive in 2018, and as a rookie, Wickens rewarded AMSP’s faith by earning pole at his first race, finishing second on his first oval, and being a definite championship threat until the dreadful crash at Pocono left the inspiring Ontario native with spinal injuries that continue to derail his driving career.
And while he works towards recovering as much mobility as possible through physical therapy, and explores a return to racing using hand controls, Wickens keeps busy with AMSP where his vast knowledge is put to use as a coach and mentor to its IndyCar drivers.
So four years after he went through the super-sub routine for Aleshin, Wickens gets to apply his experience from that day to the inbound Magnussen, who will drive the same No. 7 entry, now Chevrolet-powered, and with AMSP’s young championship leader Pato O’Ward in the No. 5 Chevy.
“If you think about the Indy car that I drove in 2017, it is very different to today’s car with the aeroscreen and bodywork that Kevin will be driving in 2021, but I think there's some comparables,” he said.
“I know Kevin recently tested in Road America in a Cadillac DPi, so that’s going to be valuable. I'd imagine a lot of the braking reference points are not going to be that far away from what it is in an Indy car. So he'll obviously have to figure out brake pressures and kind of techniques to how to extract a lap time from the car, but he's extremely good, so I have a feeling he's gonna learn very quickly.
“And having Pato next door to him as a teammate is probably one of the best references you can have an IndyCar in 2021. And, luckily, we have that Friday practice, so we can have a night's sleep and think about everything before going into qualifying on Saturday. He’s gonna be thrown in at the deep end, but I definitely think he's up to the task and it's gonna be it's gonna be a lot of fun working with another new driver.”
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