A jubilant Roger Penske celebrates after Gil de
Ferran scored Penske’s 100th IndyCar victory at the 2000 Bosch Spark Plug Grand
Prix at Nazareth, PA. (The Tomaso Collection)
As Bravo Marshal, well Done!
Yeah I know, I know! It’s just over four months
now since Gil de Ferran unexpectedly died at age 56. Which although I scribbled
briefly about His untimely departure, I simply didn’t have any space to “Back-time”
this particular story into Ye rotation. Especially since I’d already scheduled
some 25, Uhm 26, Err 27 No Fenders posts in order to keep thy Blog’, as my late
Awntie’ Harriet called it Alive.
Nope, No Young Frankenstein
“It’s Alive” Jokes Here!
Thus, if you haven’t listened to any of
Marshall Pruett’s six part interview with some of Gil de Ferran Friends tribute
Podcasts. Or if you want to learn more about what made De Ferran such a great
person, or the man behind the racing helmet. Then I highly recommend that you
visit the Marshall Pruett Podcast website and search for the following episode.
MP1478 Remembering Gil de Ferran 1 with Scott
Dixon
MP1477 Remembering Gil de Ferran 2 with Zak
Brown
MP1476 Remembering Gil de Ferran 3 with Simon
Pagenaud
MP1475 Remembering Gil de Ferran 4 with Tom
German
MP1474 Remembering Gil de Ferran 5 with Justin
Bell
MP1473 Remembering Gil de Ferran 6 with Dario
franchitti
As they’re All great interviews highlighting
Gil’s attributes as a person Off-track, i.e.; Family-man, Husband, Father, Team
Owner and Oh Yeah, Championship winning race car driver!
Most weigh in around 30mins with the exception
of Simon Pagenaud’s, who easily went for some 80mins with Symone’ just getting “Warmed
Up!” As it was great hearing Pagenaud’s voice again! The first time since His
Horrible accident at Mid-Ohio.
Although symone’s memories make me realize just
how much I’ve missed over the years, even when perusing motor racing stories
daily!
As Simon tells two great stories about His reverence
for the great Ayrton Senna. For which somehow I never knew that Pagenaud, who
back then was my second favourite IndyCar driver! Did a tribute Senna helmet commemorating
the 20th Anniversary of Senna’s death in 2014.
With Simon debuting said tribute helmet with
His three Brazilian “brothers”, i.e.; Gil de Ferran, Tony Kanaan and Helio
Castroneves. While the second Senna story relates to the naming of their first
son’s name…
Guessing that the only name of the six
interviews that will be somewhat foreign to most, including myself is Tom
German’s name. Who was Gil’s Championship winning race engineer at Penske.
Including setting that amazing All-time closed course lap record of 241.428mph.
Which like Marshall says during one of the
interviews, that’s an average of 241.428mph, meaning Gil was going faster some
of the time, and slower in the corners, whilst averaging 240mph!
As I love German’s telling about De Ferran
saying you’re a young guy, how are you gonna handle the pressure when the Pole
is on the line? To which German was able to say, I’d do like last year when
Scott Pruett won the Pole and you were second…
As All six issues have made me cry at some
point during their interviews. As I think it was early in episode one, that
made me realize I hadn’t been effected this hard by the death of a driver since
the passing of my Numero Uno IndyCar Driver, the late Justin Wilson!
You can also find the podcast links to All six
episodes in Marshall’s three page Racer article on remembering Gil below.
https://racer.com/2024/01/06/gil-de-ferran-as-his-friends-remember-him/
