PALMETTO, Fla. – Among the impressive statistics for open-wheel powerhouse Carlin, one stands out above the rest: the team’s Indy Lights squad has graduated three drivers into the Verizon IndyCar Series over the past three years.
Trevor Carlin’s eponymous team is now set to take that very same step, making the announcement recently that it will enter the 2018 Verizon IndyCar Series with Indy Lights graduates Max Chilton and Charlie Kimball. Carlin joins Juncos Racing as MRTI teams capitalizing on their experience and championship success as they take that final step up the open-wheel ladder.
“Being on the Mazda Road to Indy has opened up new horizons for us,” says Carlin. “It’s made us a truly global team. The Mazda Road to Indy doesn’t just apply to drivers; what teams like ours and Juncos are hoping to show is that it applies to teams as well. To be able to roll a couple of cars out onto the grid at the first IndyCar race of the year in St. Pete, as well as onto the Indy Lights grid, is a feather in our cap and for the Mazda Road to Indy. Without them, we wouldn’t be doing this.”
Originally formed in 1996 by Carlin and Martin Stone, the “Blue Army” has competed in Porsche Supercup, Nissan World Series, Formula BMW UK, World Series by Renault, F3 Euro Series, British F3, FIA European F3 Championship, FIA Formula E, GP3 Series and GP2 Series – all with race-winning success. In 2009, the team became part of the Capsicum Motorsport Group, headed up by Grahame Chilton. In 2018, Carlin will compete in a staggering seven open-wheel racing series: five in Europe plus Indy Lights and the Verizon IndyCar Series.
“It’s a bit like an orchestra,” says Carlin, “and I’m the conductor.”
The list of past Carlin drivers reads like a Who’s Who in motorsports, including Will Power, Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo, Takuma Sato, Josef Newgarden, Kevin Magnussen and, of course, recent Indy Lights graduates Max Chilton, 2016 series champ Ed Jones and 2017 Freedom 100 winner Matheus Leist.
After winning both the team and driver GP3 championships in 2014, Carlin realized he had one major geographical area to conquer, so he tapped GP2 team manager Colin Hale to head up an operation in the United States.
“We’d done everything in single-seaters in Europe apart from Formula One and we wanted a new challenge. Colin set up the GP2 team in 2011 and won the championship in 2014, and he went to the States and did it again, building a team from scratch and winning the championship. Now he has the even bigger challenge of setting up an IndyCar team.
“I’d always been a huge fan of IndyCar and doing Indy Lights was the first step toward doing IndyCar, though this has come together perhaps even more quickly than we expected. But we had a lot of help in the beginning from Chris Dyson; it wouldn’t have happened without him. He helped us get the first car and let us use his workshop in the beginning. We would have liked to stay with him there, but we had enough English staff who craved sunshine so we headed down to Florida.”
Following a conversation at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Carlin signed 2013 European F3 Open champ Ed Jones, who, says Carlin, “had always wanted to come to America.” The team also brought onboard Formula One refugee Max Chilton to test the car. It was a decision that would change all three of their lives.
“When you need a test driver, you want someone who is unbiased and professional,” Carlin explains. “Max is a very good test driver and he can get the car into a good place. That helped Ed massively, giving him a direction as he was very inexperienced at the time. Between Max and Geoff Fickling, his race engineer, they really brought Ed along and he benefited greatly from their input. But even I was surprised by our start.”
The Carlin team’s “start” in the Indy Lights series announced its arrival in style as Jones posted two pole positions and three victories in the first three races. It obviously ranks as the season highlight, along with Jones’ third-place finish in the driver standings, but for Carlin, the team’s performance in that most American of racing circuits – the oval – stands out equally.
“I have to say, I was a bit surprised. We were just hoping not to embarrass ourselves at the start. It was a bit of a whirlwind, winning on tracks we’ve never been on before, but we did a decent job. It was a highlight of the year to go to St. Pete, being on the pace, being smart and presentable, like we’d been there a long time. I was immensely proud of how everyone carried themselves. We only had three months to get everything sorted but we were ready. We definitely don’t do things by halves.
“But none of us had ever done an oval before, and that’s where Geoff Fickling’s expertise really came into play,” continues Carlin. “He gave us a very good starting point and we took it to a pretty high level. We have won four of the seven ovals we’ve competed on – and one of those losses was pretty close. It’s madness, really, that our strongest discipline in the States has been the ovals.”
Source :speedsport.com
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