In his first Indianapolis 500, spotter and Thomas Dale graduate Jesse Vaughan posted a quality performance along with his driver, James Henchcliffe. The Andretti racing team and driver placed seventh in the historic race.
“It was unreal. The first day I was nervous before we got on track, but once ‘Hinch’ got out there it was business as usual,” Vaughan said. “He was really easy to work with, and the Andretti guys were very accommodating. It was odd being on that huge property with no fans, but it was still the 500.”
“I learned a lot and after every day we met with James and went over notes, and he was happy with the way I was doing things, so that’s a positive,” Vaughan continued. “The race itself was insane at the start, the pre-race stuff was intense, the fly over, all of it.”
While the experience was an excellent one for Vaughan, he took it as an opportunity to pay tribute to a friend, Brad Campbell, who passed away in July.
“He was supposed to be there, so I used his headset in his memory. The car he was going to spot for actually won the race, so the emotions of everything caught up with me afterwards,” Vaughan explained.
During the race, Henchcliffe was as high as fourth place, but a stall, out on a pit stop hurt his position. Once that was resolved, he had fallen to 17th place, but battled back, switching between sixth and seventh place.
“We were quick, but just couldn’t get a good run on the guys in front,” said Vaughan. “If we had one more restart, we might have been able to get up to third or fourth, but Takuma Sato and Scott Dixon were the best cars all day.”
Sato won the 33-car race and Dixon finished in second.
