Tatiana Calderón is ready to open another exciting chapter in her racing career as she gets set for her NTT IndyCar Series race debut with AJ Foyt Racing this weekend.
The talented Colombian will be at the wheel of the ROKiT-sponsored No. 11 Dallara-Chevrolet on Sunday when the hotly anticipated 2022 IndyCar season begins with a gruelling 100-lap race around the Streets of St. Petersburg in Florida.
Tatiana will be part of a 26-car field stacked with talent, including Formula 1 converts Romain Grosjean and Marcus Ericsson, legends of the sport like six-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon and four-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves, and some of her past rivals from the European single-seater racing ladder, including reigning champion Alex Palou.
Joining the championship as part of her 12-race road and street course programme for AJ Foyt Racing perhaps represents the toughest challenge yet in Tatiana’s career, all the more so as her experience of her 700bhp Dallara-Chevrolet mount has been limited to only three days: one at Mid-Ohio last July and two more this month at Sebring.
St. Petersburg’s 1.8-mile, 14-turn street course, which has its start/finish straight on an airport runway, is also renowned for being tricky to master, with the tight sequence of corners from Turns 4 through 8 in particular offering absolutely no margin for error.
But it’s a challenge Tatiana is well and truly relishing as she seeks to put everything she has learned from racing in Formula 2, Super Formula in Japan and the FIA World Endurance Championship to good use on the biggest single-seater stage in North America.
Tatiana Calderón: “I can’t wait to make my IndyCar debut and begin an exciting new chapter in my career in America. I want to take the chance to thank AJ Foyt Racing and ROKiT for their support; the way everyone has welcomed me into the series has been fantastic. We’ve only done three days of testing so far, so there are still many things to learn, and it will be a huge challenge to learn the St. Petersburg track and experience the soft-compound Firestone for the first time this weekend. Our focus during pre-season testing was more race-like conditions, practising pitstops and understanding the tyre degradation and how the car behaves with high fuel, so this weekend will set our starting point, from where we aim to consistently improve during the season.”
TIME SCHEDULE
(All times GMT -5 and subject to change)
Friday February 25
Practice 1 – 15:40
Saturday February 26
Practice 2 – 09:00
Qualifying – 12:30
Sunday February 27
Warm-up – 08:45
Race (100 laps) – 12:30