St. Petersburg, FL (93.7 The Fan) - The 2019 NTT IndyCar Season begins this weekend with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg and Ed Carpenter Racing's Spencer Pigot is ready for the green flag to drop.
Pigot was second fastest overall in the No. 21 Autogeek Chevrolet turning a fast lap of 1:00.9812 (106.262 mph) during the afternoon practice session on Friday. Pigot's time was just .0843-seconds behind Andretti Autosport's Ryan Hunter-Reay, who turned a 1:00.8969 (106.409 mph). Pigot says it was a good start to the weekend after a long off-season.
"Everyone is itching to get back into the car and get racing," said Pigot. "We've been doing some testing over the past few months, but nothing really compares to going into turn one for the first time each season."
St. Petersburg is a homecoming race for Pigot, an Orlando Florida native. Pigot began his IndyCar career at St. Pete in 2016 after winning the 2015 Indy Lights Series title. Pigot says it's the perfect place to open the season.
"It's a race I'm really looking forward to," said Pigot. "I grew up in Florida so lots of family and friends come out to support me at St. Pete. It's hard to think of a better venue to kick off the season down there by the water and hopefully a sunny weekend in Florida."
Athletes have to strike a balance every event between work and family and Pigot says racing is no different and appreciates the support.
"It's uplifting," said Pigot. "It's nice to have so many people cheering for me in the stands and coming by the trailers. Once I get in the car it doesn't matter where I'm racing of who's in the stands, there's so much to focus and concentrate on that all of that kind of goes out of your head and you just worry about the job at hand."
Pigot says the temporary street courses present a unique challenge for driver and crews as teams can't test there and the track is made up of multiple types of surfaces.
"When you go to a street course, within that one lap and that one track, you have several different types of pavement," said Pigot. "At St. Pete there's a big, wide runway to start the lap and then other parts of the lap it's super-tight, twisty, its shaded, it's very bumpy so there's many things throughout the lap that you have to kind of adapt to and build your car around."
Street course's make up only a portion of the types of tracks on the IndyCar circuit and that is what differentiates the open-wheel series from others.
"I think it's one of the things about IndyCar racing that's exciting for, not only the fans but, the drivers," said Pigot. "We go to so many different types of tracks and one weekend we could be racing on the City streets, the next weekend a 4-mile road course or a 2.5-mile superspeedway or a 7/8ths of a mile oval so you get so many different things throughout the season the you can excel on and so many different chances so it's very unique and something that I really enjoy."
Pigot's 2018 season was his first full-time season in the No. 21 Autogeek Chevrolet after spending 2016 and 2017 as the team's road and street course driver.
"We're going into this season with a full year under out belts, going back to all of the tracks again with different data and different knowledge that we didn't have previously so that is encouraging," said Pigot. "It's always nice to have more experience. Experience is very valuable in racing and having more of it is never a bad thing."
2018 saw Pigot earn career-best qualifying and finishing positions on each type of track that the NTT IndyCar Series competes: street circuits, road courses and ovals. Pigot earned a berth in the Fast Nine Shootout for the Indianapolis 500 pole position where he qualified sixth. Pigot also earned his three career-best finishes, including a second place at Iowa Speedway.
Now Pigot and ECR want to take that next step, challenging for pole positions and wins.
"We've put a lot of work in over the off-season to try to improve where we needed to improve," said Pigot. "Hopefully it all comes together the way we think it will. It's one thing to have those feelings in testing and see those improvements, but when you get to the first race that's when you see what everyone has and what everyone is capable of. I think all of the experience and data that we collected last year has been put to good use over the winter and I know everyone at Ed Carpenter Racing is really excited and really confident going into this year."
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