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Los Angeles Times
25-05-2025
- Automotive
- Los Angeles Times
An inside look at the control center behind Honda's IndyCar racing effort
At the top of a hill in a sprawling Santa Clarita industrial park in the shadow of Magic Mountain's roller coasters, a significant chapter in the history of motorsports was written. But the story isn't finished yet. From the outside, the building is nothing special. Behind its walls, however, Honda Racing Corporation has designed, tested and built the engines that have won 14 of the last 21 IndyCar championships and all five IndyCar races this season. In Sunday's Indianapolis 500, a race Honda has won 15 times since 2004, four of the top six starters will have Honda engines, including two-time winner Takuma Sato, who qualified second. It's a level of dominance unmatched in IndyCar history — in a series Honda probably helped save. Amid the open-wheel civil war between Championship Auto Racing Teams and the Indy Racing League, Honda was prepared to walk away. Robert Clarke, who started Honda Performance Development (before it was renamed HRC in 2024) and made it a cutting-edge research and development facility, convinced American Honda president Koichi Amemiya to supply engines to IRL teams in 2003 after Honda left CART in 2002. 'It just was not Honda's image of what a race car should be. That's why Honda initially didn't want to be involved,' Clarke said. 'In my discussion with the president it was 'OK, we developed all these skills and know-how. Are we just going to give that up and just walk away?' That's crazy. 'We invested literally billions of dollars. And we've seen the success.' Chevrolet and Toyota eventually did quit, leaving Honda as the only IndyCar engine manufacturer for six seasons. Amemiya then doubled down, funding Honda's move to its 123,000-square-foot home while expanding its workforce to 250 from an original staff of fewer than 10. Honda hasn't looked in the rearview mirror since. Clarke, 75, left Honda in 2008 though he's still something of an executive emeritus, one who wears the brand on his sleeve and often refers to the company with the collective pronoun 'we.' He was 10 when his father took him to his first race to watch a friend run in an amateur open-wheel event. When young Robert was invited into the garage and allowed to work on the car 'I was hooked,' he said. 'My bedroom walls were covered with pictures of Formula One cars and all kinds of racing.' He took the long road to Honda racing, though, studying architecture and art/industrial design in college, then teaching for five years at Notre Dame. His first job at Honda was in the motorcycle accessory and product planning departments but when the company announced it was going to enter open-wheel racing, Clarke volunteered and he was soon tasked with building the program from the ground up. That was in 1993. By the time Clarke left Honda 15 years later, the company's place as a major force in IndyCar racing was secure and Honda's two-story hilltop headquarters became his legacy. The focus of work in the building now is mainly on supporting Honda teams in IndyCar and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. As such, it has become a one-stop shop for racing teams, housing comprehensive engine research and development operations; prototype and production parts manufacturing; engine preparation and rebuilding; a material analysis facilities; more than a half-dozen engine dynamometer test cells; a machine shop; electronics lab; parts center; multiple conference rooms; and administrative offices. Next year it will provide support for Honda's effort to supply Formula One engines to Aston Martin. Mostly the building is a maze of quiet office space where engineers sketch out their designs on computer screens, well-lit assembly bays where mechanics assemble the prototypes, and the noisy high-tech dyno rooms where those prototypes are tested. Every stage of a racing engine, from conception and construction to being shipped to the track, is managed at the facility. 'We develop the technology quickly,' said David Salters, the British-born engineer who heads HRC. 'We try them. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't work and you try again. The point of having a racing facility inside your company is you can be agile. You can try stuff. You can train the people. 'The people are the most important thing of all this.' The whole process is more NASA than NASCAR in that there's not a speck of grease or oil on the bright, white vinyl flooring and everybody's hands are clean. 'This is a world-class facility. It needs to be clinical and professional in the processes and systems we have here,' said Salters, who was head of engine development for the Ferrari F1 team and held a similar position at Mercedes-Benz before joining Honda a decade ago. 'It's like an operating theater. We're basically dealing with engines or electrical systems, which are like jewelry. They cannot tolerate dirt or anything like that. Everything has to be spotless and clean and well-organized. This is aerospace.' And when the engines don't work, they're brought back to HRC and the engineering process is repeated in reverse in search of flaws. As for why they're doing all that in a sleepy bedroom community better known for its paved bike paths and rustic hiking trails than for its motorsports history, that's easy: Location, location, location. Clarke originally expected to recruit engineers from Indianapolis and Charlotte, N.C., the heartland of American racing, while Honda insisted on keeping its operations near its corporate offices in Torrance. Clarke feared dropping people from the Midwest and South into L.A.'s traffic-clogged sprawl would be such a culture shock, he'd lose his best engineers. So he chose Santa Clarita, which was isolated enough to not feel like L.A., but close enough to Torrance to be accessible. And the building came with an 'Only in L.A.' feature: It shares a driveway with the studio where the popular TV series 'NCIS' is filmed. 'Every so often a helicopter will land in the car park and we're all told we can't go outside in case we get swept away,' Salters said with a chuckle. 'There was some 'Star Trek' thing where they decided our foyer could be useful. So for a few weeks we had a movie set in our foyer; we rented it out. 'You've got to look at business opportunities.' It's early on a chilly Saturday in March and HRC's headquarters is mostly empty save for one corner on the building's second floor where nearly a dozen people, some wearing headphones, have gathered behind computer screens facing six giant TV monitors. A continent away, in central Florida, more than 50 cars are lined up for the 12 hours of Sebring. Each driver with a Honda engine has an engineer monitoring their car's performance. Before the pandemic, engineers would travel and work with race teams on site. But for the last four years the engineers have been working mostly at HRC, monitoring in-car telemetry that provides real-time information about everything from engine status and tire pressure to suspension behavior. 'Data is king,' said Adi Susilo, one of the HRC engineers. 'Humans make mistakes. Data rarely does.' F1 teams have monitored telemetry remotely for years, but it didn't become common in IndyCar racing until 2023. Now it's a vital part of every major racing series, including NASCAR. Engineers work out of what looks like a college classroom, only quieter. When the sound of a disembodied voice does cackle out of a headphone, it sounds like NASA Mission Control, the tone flat and unemotional, the conversation short and to the point. 'It's better for solving problems,' said Susilo about working away from the track. 'If there's a problem, you just walk downstairs and talk to the guy who built the engine.' That won't be the case Sunday. For the Indy 500, Susilo said it's all hands on deck, so most of Honda's race-day engineers are in Indianapolis where the telemetry will be broadcast to their work stations in trailers at the track. 'A few of the IndyCar races are run that way,' he said, 'but the 500 is almost always run that way just because everyone's out here for the event. We're also testing a new, hopefully more robust, telemetry streaming as it's much harder to make sure we get 15 car's worth of data.' At first, the idea of having engineers looming electronically over the timing stand was a hard sell. Trusting someone with clean fingernails watching the race on monitors thousands of miles away wasn't easy for some crew chiefs. 'What happens for people like me is that you have to erase the old-school way of thinking,' said Mike Hull, a former mechanic and driver who is now the managing director for Chip Ganassi Racing and chief strategist for driver Scott Dixon, a six-time IndyCar champion. 'You're electronically shoulder to shoulder with them. 'If you don't listen to what somebody has to say, it stifles free thinking. Free thinking sends you down a path that you may not have originally been on, but makes you stronger at what you're doing.' Dixon, the 2008 Indy 500 champion who will start Sunday's race in the second row, agrees. Which is he why he's made several trips to HRC to personally thank the engineers who design his engines and those who help direct his races. 'You always feel like there's a big group behind you,' he said. 'You just don't get to see all them in one place but you know the machine is there, working pretty hard.' One drawback, Dixon said, is you have to be careful what you say on the radio during races because you never know who's listening. 'Twenty people at home, just on the team side, will be listening just on that one car,' he said. 'So the communication is very wide open. You definitely have to watch your Ps and Qs.' Two years later race teams have grown so comfortable with people looking over their shoulders, the engineers have become as much a part of the team as the cars. So when a nearby wildfire forced the evacuation of the building, Honda rented rooms at a nearby hotel, set up their TVs, computer monitors and a coffee machine in a conference room and worked from there. 'We're pretty blind without it. The race teams are pretty competitive,' Susilo said. 'They feel that instinct still does work. But it's more data-driven.' Given the investment, the pressure can be intense. 'Every two weeks we want to have the latest development. We want to have made progress,' Salters said. 'Every two weeks you have a deadline and the deadline does not move. It's not like they're going to say 'OK, we'll just delay the race a week.' The flag drops, you've got to be ready. 'It's sort of an engineering sport isn't it? It's like a true sport; the best team will win.' If the IndyCar-Honda marriage has mostly been good for both sides, it has recently hit a rocky patch. Honda's supply contract with IndyCar ends next year and the company hasn't hid its distaste over the cheating scandals that have recently tarnished the series. Last week Team Penske drivers Josef Newgarden, the two-time defending Indy 500 champion, and Will Power were forced to the back of the field for the start of Sunday's race after illegally modified parts were found on their cars. Team Penske, which uses Chevrolet engines, was also caught cheating at the beginning of the 2024 season. On Wednesday, the team fired three of its top racing executives. IndyCar, which is owned by Roger Penske (also the owner of Team Penske) said it is exploring the creation of an independent governing body absent of Penske employees. That may not be enough to restore trust in the series. Honda, which supplies engines to 13 full-season IndyCar entries and three Indy 500-only cars, has declined to comment on the rules violations, but confirmed its continued participation in the series beyond 2026 may depend on Penske's ability to separate himself from policing the series he owns and also competes in. Honda said in a written statement Thursday that it has many concerns, among them 'the relatively high overall cost to participate as an engine supplier' and 'the potential (perceived or real) conflict of interest which may exist' with Penske's ownership of the racing series, three of the cars competing in the series and his 'significant stake' in Ilmor Engineering, which designs and manufactures engines for Chevrolet, Honda's biggest competitor. 'Honda continues to have ongoing negotiations with IndyCar's management and technical teams regarding our future as an engine supplier for the series,' said Chuck Chayefsky, manager of Honda & Acura Motorsports. Whatever road Honda takes with IndyCar, it's unlikely to change most of the day-to-day work at HRC, which is heavily involved with IMSA and will soon be working on F1 power-unit development. So while the cars may change, the racing will never stop. 'Thirty years ago our sole purpose in life was to look after racing in North America for Honda and Acura,' Salters said before last week's events in Indianapolis. 'Last year we changed that. We're now part of a global racing organization. That's another opportunity for associates here.' 'The automotive world, it's pivoting,' he continued. 'We are trying some new stuff. We'll see how it goes.' One chapter has been written. But the story isn't finished.
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
From NASCAR intern to international architect, Rodrigo Sanchez ushers Cup Series race into Mexico City
Ingenuity has long been a trademark of Rodrigo Sanchez's career in motorsports. After all, the marketing, media and PR whiz long ago put his stamp on Formula 1's annual grand prix in Mexico, elevating the fan experience with a festival atmosphere that draws on the country's colorful culture. So it's of little surprise that Sánchez's entry into the behind-the-curtain side of the motorsports industry arrived courtesy of that same spirit of innovation. Advertisement 'I basically made a fake copy of a hot pass. We used to use hot passes back in the day, and I used PowerPoint and I sort of replicated it,' Sanchez says now, confessing to his youthful indiscretion. 'I think I still have it. Honestly, I don't even know how that worked. It was terrible.' It worked well enough that a teenager equipped with Microsoft Office software, an old official-looking lanyard and a laminator made his way deep into the paddock for the Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) Gran Premio de Mexico in 2002. His goal wasn't to meet childhood hero Adrián Fernández, though he went far enough to see his green-on-red Tecate and Quaker State-sponsored Champ Car up close. Instead, Sanchez was there to make connections, to explore how his passion for racing might become his calling. MEXICO CITY: Buy tickets In a roundabout way, it worked. Sanchez says his makeshift credential drew the attention of Billy Kamphausen, one of CART's earliest hires and its longtime VP of logistics, who stopped him. 'Where did that come from?' Sanchez recalls Kamphausen saying. Perhaps it was the text that read 'Worker Pass' that gave it away, or that his name wasn't exactly centered on the paper. Advertisement Sanchez tried to explain that his uncle, who had a history of working as a medical liaison for Mexico City races, had given him the pass, but later confessed that he was there to pursue a career in motorsports. Kamphausen brought him to his at-track office and replaced his slapdash pass with a real one, telling him: 'Well, you're a minor, I cannot properly hire you,' Sanchez recalled, 'but if you come back tomorrow, for sure, we can use some extra hands.' The work was entry-level — delivering equipment, transporting pop-off valves and other go-fer tasks — but that November weekend made an impression on CART's staff, who appreciated Sanchez's energetic approach. It led to more volunteer opportunities and a chance to travel with a major motorsports circuit for the first time. 'I think from there,' he says, 'I sort of just knew that's what I wanted to do.' Rodrigo Sanchez and an on-track Día de Los Muertos celebration in Mexico City Twenty-plus years later, Rodrigo Sanchez has delivered on the aspirations of his youth as the Chief Marketing Officer of the Formula 1 Mexico City Grand Prix and NASCAR Mexico Weekend. Along with OCESA, the leading live entertainment company in Mexico and Colombia, Sanchez will help bring the NASCAR Cup Series to Mexico City for the first time June 13-15. It's the latest in a series of monumental milestones for the 40-year-old, who was once part of the NASCAR internship program before taking on crucial roles to bring racing to Austin, Texas at Circuit of The Americas and ushering in a revival of Formula 1 events in Mexico. Advertisement Sanchez's garage access is legit now, but he still keeps his homemade pass as a totem to the hustle. 'That shows the passion that he had, what it really took for him to get where he is,' says Adrián Fernández, a Mexico City native who drove to 11 wins across CART and IndyCar competition in his career and also made 10 Xfinity Series starts with Hendrick Motorsports and JR Motorsports. 'Like I always tell him, I give Rodrigo a lot of advice through my experience and everything, and basically, he just did exactly what I did myself, too. You just take it to another level.' Fernández would know, having once stowed away on a truck, crossing the border from England to the Netherlands without money or a visa to further his racing dream. 'I mean, he was just trying to do the same, just keep trying to get by, get into the races and try to get the opportunity to be close to the racing world,' Fernández said. 'And obviously, when you have such a passion, I always tell my kids, you will always succeed. If you have that much passion for something, you eventually will succeed if you have the discipline, the love of what you do, and the willingness to sacrifice, you will get there. And that's something that he definitely did.' * * * Sanchez's sister was a student at the University of Texas-Austin when she spotted a career-minded pamphlet. The brochure was a notice for NASCAR's internship program, and she urged Rodrigo to apply. Advertisement 'A lot of names rise to the top, and his did,' says NASCAR VP Brandon Thompson, who headed up the internship initiative, then in its infancy. Back then, the vetting process for potential candidates was not quite as robust, but even on an Excel file that put college majors, GPAs and other vital information into columns, Sanchez says he knew his experience and still-developing skills made a difference. So did his references. Track promoters in Mexico reached the upper floors of the Daytona Beach offices to tout Sanchez's proficiency, and those raves found an audience in NASCAR executives Jim France and Mike Helton. France prompted Thompson to consider Sanchez's application for the summer job, one that would help to establish his trajectory into the motorsports orbit. 'I mean, to be honest, I owe my career to NASCAR,' Sanchez said. 'That's where really, things started getting serious outside of volunteering work and just jobs freelancing here and there.' It was a crossroads moment, but one that Sanchez had been building toward for much of his early life. His uncle, Juan Manuel Sanchez, was an anesthesiologist who routinely worked on the medical safety response team for Formula 1's events in Mexico. 'He was basically the doctor that started the race in the medical car, behind the grid, so I got exposed to Formula 1 since I was a couple years old,' Rodrigo said. 'I have many stories of him bringing us over to the race track, and have pictures with some of the guys from that era, and I think that sort of kick-started my love for racing, because I was just so exposed to it for a number of years. So I think that's sort of where it started.' A young Rodrigo Sanchez and his uncle, Juan Manuel Sanchez In 2002, the same year that he finagled access to the CART garage, Sanchez acted on his natural instinct to get behind the wheel, competing in a go-kart event in Mexico City. The pursuit of a driving career was met with some resistance from his family. 'In my house, they were very traditional in terms of, no, you go to school and once you finish college, you'll figure it out,' Sanchez says, 'and unfortunately that doesn't work in motorsports, so I had to start finding my way through things on my own.' Advertisement As CART morphed into Champ Car, which would a few years later merge with IndyCar, Sanchez's involvement in racing promotions was briefly in limbo. He sought sponsorship for a potential ride in the USF2000 series and its Road to Indy ladder program, juggling his school workload with a side gig as a brisket cutter at a Rudy's Bar-B-Q in Austin. The NASCAR internship rekindled those aspirations. Sanchez was flown in to Charlotte, attended the Coca-Cola 600, and made connections during his tenure that would supercharge his marketing thirst. RELATED: All about NASCAR Mexico | Cup Series schedule 'Credit Rodrigo for his work ethic, his knack for it, but his talent, right? So, not just knack — talent. All of those things have to come together,' Thompson says. 'I also think it does shine a light as well on the experience that he was able to gain through his internship, and all that credit goes to the hosts that we've had in the program over the years. Being a part of the program myself, one of the things I remember about the program was how hands-on it was. I got to experience just how hands-on it was, but I think when you see the success that Rodrigo has had, and again, the fact that his talent has been able to carry him forward, you see that talent is honed.' Advertisement The internship led to a placement with JMI Sports and its sweeping, worldwide reach into a variety of motorsports disciplines. 'That was possible because of NASCAR,' Sanchez says now, noting that what he'd learned from the sponsorship side of the industry had spurred him into a marketing and commercial direction for the agency that hired him. Sanchez's connection to the stock-car world never really left, and it's getting a full-circle repeat with NASCAR's visit to Mexico City now less than two months away. That synergy isn't lost on Sanchez, the one-time intern who now has an active hand in shaping a historic motorsports event. 'What it reminded me was just how important it is to plant those seeds, and how a program like the NASCAR Next internship program, how those the fruits — to kind of keep with that analogy — may not bear themselves for years to come,' Thompson said. '… Obviously, he's gone on to do wonderful things.' A young Rodrigo Sanchez at the go-kart track * * * Rodrigo Sanchez guesstimates he was 'Employee No. 5' at the Circuit of The Americas. He was brought in early as the marketing manager for what would eventually become a world-class motorsports facility and a staple on the Grand Prix schedule. Advertisement In those earliest days until construction began on New Year's Eve in 2010, there wasn't much to market. 'We would go to the piece of land in Austin where the track was being built, and it was just a bunch of bushes and pigs,' Sanchez recalls, 'and at that point, they were like, 'We're building a Formula 1 track here,' and a lot of people were like, 'Yeah, you guys are crazy.' But we kept on pushing.' Those 1,500 acres just southeast of Austin's downtown are nearly unrecognizable today. The path to get there required diligence and collaboration with city leaders and the community, all while navigating the uncertainty of the project's fits and starts. 'There were days that we didn't know if we were going to have a job the next day,' Sanchez says. 'We really went through a lot, and when the race started in November of 2012, I remember from the grid, we ran out to the service road and went up into the main grandstand, and when we actually saw the cars start, we were all crying. We couldn't believe it, what we had accomplished.' Rodrigo Sanchez on track on the main straight at Circuit of The Americas The work to build the Texas capital city into a motorsports destination established Sanchez as both a hometown prodigy and a rising star in the racing promotions biz. His ties to the Formula 1 world, one of his first loves, grew stronger. Advertisement When the opportunity arose to revive the Mexican Grand Prix, an event that had been dormant since Nigel Mansell's win there in 1992, Sanchez jumped. 'If you see first how he grew up in the racing world, and how his involvement with the Austin Grand Prix and the track when he was working there and all that, he was always very smart on learning, and he was smart of knowing how to promote, learning how the real promotion of an event really worked,' Fernández says. 'Obviously, with his Latin side, when he went to Mexico, obviously all that experience applied to the Mexican way of thinking. It basically was a super, super-successful combination.' In many respects, the blueprint for luring F1 back to the Mexican capital was similar to the start-from-scratch business model for bringing the COTA venue to life. The key difference was that his immersion in the motorsports realm was unique in his new role; the Mexico City staff that surrounded him were all relative newbies. That inexperience turned out to be a blessing. Instead of working with a team fueled by preconceived or dated notions of how a global-scale sporting event should look, Sanchez says he felt empowered to shape the race weekend in his own creative view — all from the ground up. Advertisement 'When I came, there was nothing but an idea,' Sanchez said. 'So really just working to make that idea a reality and just go through all the stuff you need to go through, I think that's one of the most rewarding aspects of what I do, because when you see this on TV or live at the event, and there's 300,000 fans just going nuts at something that was written on a napkin one day and you sort of made it into a reality, I would say that's the most gratifying aspect of it.' Local flavor was a driving force behind Sanchez's vision. Though the Formula 1 circuit crisscrosses the world to a variety of international locales, he said going to the race track could sometimes be a rinse-and-repeat experience with little time for sightseeing. The answer was to bring the local culture to the track, instead of making visiting fans venture off in search of it. Sanchez introduced Día de Los Muertos promotions to seasonal events, added mariachi bands and homegrown-style professional wrestling in prominent trackside locations, and welcomed food stands that celebrated the country's culinary heritage. 'Even if they didn't have time to just go visit the city, I wanted to bring a little bit of the colors, the flavors and the atmosphere of the city into the garage area, and that's really how it all started,' Sanchez says. 'Just bringing whether it was Lucha Libre wrestling into the middle of the garage and all the food stands. That's obviously something I'm looking to do for NASCAR and just seeing what the reaction is with another motorsports championship. … But if they can take just a little bit of good from Mexico back home, I think that's mission accomplished.' Advertisement Fernández has watched the growth of the Mexican Grand Prix in his home country with vested interest. The rest of the F1 world took notice as well; the event won the circuit's Race Promoters' Trophy five years running from 2015-19. Rodrigo Sanchez and colleagues at the FIA Prize Giving celebration in 2019 'It's not just the event in terms of the drivers, the cars. I mean, it's the whole thing,' Fernández says, drawing a comparison with IndyCar's Long Beach Grand Prix. 'It's the whole fiesta weekend, right? It's a celebration.' In another one of those full-circle moments that have seemed to follow Sanchez's life, his relationship with Fernández has grown. The homespun driver whom Sanchez once rooted for growing up is now one of his closest friends. Advertisement 'For me, he's like one of my kids. He's part of the family,' Fernández says. 'He's very close with my kids, and he's spent most Christmas and New Year's, a lot of them, he spends with us. We have had a very, very good relationship now for a few years, so he has become very close to the whole family. So really, he's not just a friend. I consider him almost like a part of my family.' Beyond friendship, Fernández has become part confidante and a trusted advisor. 'I speak with him, I would say, at least once a week if I am ever in trouble or if I ever need a bit of guidance, or if I ever need anything, that's the first person I call,' Sanchez says. 'It's obviously someone I really care for, but he's such a strong figure in terms of what he achieved with his career and with motorsport, and with obviously a similar background to mine, where you know you just have to move on to another country and learn new things and adapt to new things and just start climbing the ladder. For me, he's such a strong figure in that aspect, in his work ethic and just the way he does things. 'Absolutely, I think it's one of the incredible stories that I've been able to live throughout my career. That guy I used to see on television, and as I said, your childhood hero, now is one of my closest friends, like family.' Rodrigo Sanchez with childhood hero Adrián Fernández and one of his classic racers The next time Sanchez comes calling, his latest promotional challenge may be top of mind. NASCAR's first Cup Series race in Mexico comes 20 years after the Xfinity Series started a four-season run at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez circuit. The logistics of bringing the premier NASCAR Cup Series operations to another country are a wide-scope production, and the planning for the fiesta weekend that Fernández mentions reaches a similarly grand scale. Advertisement That tall task might seem daunting, but it hasn't dimmed any of the anticipation. 'I have known Rodrigo for a while now, and all I can tell you is that we are very lucky to have him,' says Trackhouse Racing's Daniel Suárez, NASCAR's first Cup Series winner from Mexico. 'This event that is going to happen in Mexico, without Rodrigo it wouldn't be the same. He's a very, very talented guy. He knows his stuff extremely, extremely well. He's a huge motorsports fan, so it's just a perfect combination. When you have somebody talented in what he does, in marketing and putting events together, and then it happens that he loves motorsports? I mean, what else can you ask for? And then, obviously he speaks the language extremely well, and he understands the Mexican market better than anyone I know. So I think we're very lucky to have him, and he's going to make sure that this event is a success, not just for a couple of years but for a very long time.' MORE: First look: Suárez's Mexico paint scheme When that goal is realized come June, Sanchez says he plans to take a cue from his experience at the Circuit of The Americas' inaugural race weekend, finding a vantage point among the crowd for the green flag. This time, his credential will officially get him there. Advertisement 'Definitely. That's something I normally do, just right after the opening ceremony, the national anthem, just run to whatever grandstand you can and just enjoy the moment,' Sanchez says. 'Because that's, I think, what really makes it special. That's where you just really see what you were able to do.'
