At the end of the season, James Hinchcliffe made the decision to switch from Andretti Autosport for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports for the upcoming season. During IndyCar Media Day, Hinchcliffe said it’s been a “really great transition”, happening without any issues. It also has him excited as he reunites Allen McDonald, whom he worked with Andretti Autosport.
“Very experienced engineer. Been around a long time. That’s been a natural transition there,” Hinchcliffe commented. “A lot of mechanics I worked with either directly or indirectly when I was driving for Sam in Lights. It’s been easy to get into the culture there.”
Hinchcliffe added that he likes the culture of the shop, as it feels “cozy” with being only a two-car effort versus the four-car team spread at Andretti.
The deal came together via Sam Schmidt and Ric Peterson pursuing Hinchcliffe at the end of last year.
“They’ve always done a really good job,” Hinchcliffe commented. “They’re a relatively young team in this sport when you compare against Penske and Ganassi. The success they’ve had in that short period was very impressive from the outside. Now getting to see how it works from the inside, I certainly understand why.”
The team has grown throughout the past couple of years, seeing success last year with Simon Pagenaud as he won three races and finished fifth in points.
“I feel that pressure as well because they have been successful,” Hinchcliffe added. “It’s up to me to kind of keep that going. But the testing we’ve had so far has been very good. We’re learning a lot about each other.  There’s some differences in setup and things like that that I had to get used to, some things that I brought with me that suit more my style. It’s all an evolution and I think we’re getting there.   There’s no reason to think that we can’t be just as competitive if not more so.”
The team has been testing since the announcement, trying to get everything ironed out in regards to communication before the first event of the year. That first event was originally supposed to be next weekend with a trip to Brazil, but that has been since cancelled. While Hinchcliffe admits that it’s not positive news, he says it’s great “logically” speaking for the teams.
“To have to run the old body kits down there, rush back, prepping new bodywork, body fits, going into a pretty extensive test schedule in a pretty short period of time, everybody was dreading coming home from Brazil,” the Oakville, Ontario driver commented. “Everybody was ready to go to Brazil, but scared about what would happen when we got back. This has given us an opportunity to be thorough in the preparation to tackle this project. It’s going to be hard for teams that haven’t done the aero development to have four or five days with the kits.”
Hinchcliffe will be joined by James Jakes this year at SPM, as announced at media day. Knowing whom he will have alongside him is something that he says is huge as it allows you put to put the right people in place to push the team forward. He added that there’s a bonus in having that second car due to the development that you can do across the two cars, versus only a single car.
“We have the drivers sorted, a guy with experience, that’s fast,” Hinchcliffe commented. “We worked together well at the test we did last week. We like similar things in the car. That’s huge. Infinitely valuable. We’re at a disadvantage to the three and four car teams.  Having that sorted now, knowing it’s a solid guy, that makes me sleep better at night.”
