Cole Pearn cut his teeth in NASCAR’s top level, helping guide Martin Truex Jr. to 24 wins over five seasons and the 2017 Cup title.
After stepping away from the sport full-time at the end of 2019, though, he opted for a unique one-off opportunity to join Ed Carpenter Racing and engineer Conor Daly for the Indy 500 in 2020 – which was moved from May 24 to Aug. 23 in a race behind closed doors due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Yeah, it was totally out of the blue for me,” Pearn told Motorsport.com.
“You know, not something I had really planned to be doing, but 2020 was a weird year for everybody. So, might as well just have gone with it. I was still more freshly removed from racing at that point in time, so it seemed a little bit easier to go back and get that experience.
“I really just did it because my old engineer, Pete Craik, worked there and said they were in a jam, so it seemed to make sense. That’s my main reason I did it.”
Even though a stock car and an Indy car are complete opposites from a design standpoint, Pearn found the engineering aspect similar.
Conor Daly, Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet
Photo by: Barry Cantrell / Motorsport Images
“You’re still to achieve the same thing,” Pearn said. “It was interesting. I was quite nervous about it, but the load path is the same. The corner banking, corner geometry is the same whether you’re in a stock car or you’re in an Indy car. The way that that the thing loads and what you’re trying to achieve was very similar.
“Once I kind of saw that, I was just like, ‘Oh, this is actually not really that more complicated as what I was worried about.’”
There was promise in Pearn’s initiation to the IndyCar Series, setting up a Chevrolet-powered entry for Daly that appeared strong in the buildup by landing in the top 10 four times in the full field practice sessions, including second on Fast Friday when the boost is turned up.
It was a different story the rest of the way, though, as Daly qualified 18th and then was left finishing 29th after spinning out of Turn 4 and nearly saving it being hit by Oliver Askew on lap 92.
Although Pearn adapted well with the transition, it is unlikely a return will happen anytime soon as he keeps busy operating Golden Alpine Holidays, a lodging chain in British Columbia, Canada.
“If I didn’t have anything else going on in my life and I was sitting around with my thumb on my butt, maybe then it would be cool…
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