Mark Blundell: "IndyCar and Formula One are quite different, I mean visually the cars look quite similar. The environment is very different, I think that's many the biggest differential is the environment. Formula One is pretty commercialized, a lot of pressure. You don't get that in IndyCar, although it's just as professional it's not quite as commercialized and not quite as pressured environment. It doesn't have that pressure cooker feeling; F1 is very intense. On the other end of the scale, the racing in IndyCar is more competitive, it's much more competitive over a big spectrum, that's nice, makes for good races. I think the IndyCar races over the past few weekends have been really good to watch. I only watched the Montreal Grand Prix, just last week, I think it speaks for itself. Adjusting for me, it's been good, the season didn't kick-off too well. The skirmish with the wall in Rio, that wasn't on the order list for me in the beginning of the year. In general, I'm enjoying it."

SpeedCenter: "How do the drivers in IndyCar differ from Formula One?"

Mark Blundell: "Ability level in IndyCar is as high as what it is in Formula One. The problem is that F1 is only dedicated to four teams and if you're not in those teams, then, forget it. As a driver, you aren't going to get anybody looking at you because you don't have the equipment underneath you. The same does apply to IndyCar, I mean there's different teams out there with different performance levels but again it's wider scale. It could be that you may having something which didn't exactly go right throughout the weekend but then you still have a chance to do good in the race. There's bigger potential for you to be a high performance driver, the equipment level is a little bit less equipment led. You've got more potential to show what you can do with an IndyCar."

SpeedCenter: "How about the personality of the drivers?"

Mark Blundell: "That's really great if you are at the back and you've got some potential to get to the front. If you are at the front and you get the yellow then that sucks because you've just done a hell of a lot of work to get out there. It's the same for everybody, you've got to take an average over the courses. Some you win, some you lose."

SpeedCenter: "Do you think all the drivers feel the same?"

Mark Blundell: "They probably don't, probably some of them don't agree with it. But, in the end it does makes for interesting races, ultimately you've got to look at these situations and say it's an entertaining show. It's going to hit everybody once. That's racing."

SpeedCenter: "How were you able to adjust to oval racing?"

Mark Blundell: "Yeah, that's a good one. Mansell was probably the first major guy to come over here and start to do Indy Racing. When he came back to the UK he said, "oh, you won't believe ovals, they're incredible, probably the most difficult form of racing you can do. It's heavy stuff." Everyone said, "nah, Nigel says a lot of stuff. So we'll disregard that." Everyone used to watch on TV and you think, "Well, it looks easy, you just round and round." I had a big shock when I first went, it's the toughest form of racing I have ever done. It's so intense, and a continuous track, the problem with ovals is that if the car is working fine, it's a great day out. If the car is a bag of **, then you are in trouble and there's no recovery. European mentality is well, if there is a problem, carry it and you're going to drive around it, but you can't do that on an oval. You have to get out of there, if there's a problem, pull it in the pits and correct it. That's one hurdle you have to get over. The other hurdle is the differential in the speeds, when you try to pick out problems in the car at 220, 230 at Michigan. That's a different sort of speed scale than we are used to. Even in F1 the cornering speeds are a lot lower, so that's a new discipline. The other one is becoming used to left-foot breaking. I'm not a left-foot breaker by nature, European style is right-foot breaking. If you left-foot break on an oval that's the only way you can drive, if you right-foot break, forget it, you are going to end up in the wall. There is quite a lot of areas you have to go through and learn, at first I didn't like it, but now it's growing on me. It's getting there but it's a still a little bit unnatural."

SpeedCenter: "Is setting up a car harder on an oval than it is on a road track?"

Mark Blundell: "Pretty different. Actually, media in Europe is a really big intense sort of group of people. In some respects, the media is a little bit more insensitive, there is a lot more bullshit. That makes the stories, that sells the papers, which is all very well but at the end of it all to try and get through to the factory stuff is pretty difficult. I prefer to see a lot of factory media stuff, things you can draw from rather than the hyped up, I'm not really into that. Sometimes it serves a purpose, sometimes you may want to have something like that floating around. It's helped a lot of drivers over the years, a certain story starts to circulate and before they know it, it's got them in a good position."

SpeedCenter: "How have you enjoyed being a part of the PacWest team considering they are fairly new to Indy Car?"

Mark Blundell: "It's an interesting circuit, it's a little bit more European style because it's a road course. This is my personal feeling, it lacks a bit of rhythm, you get into a little bit of a swing and then it cuts you dead again. It's like restart, we've got a couple of circuits like that back home. Even Silverstone used to be a great circuit and you get a rhythm going it was really flowing, and now they've chopped it about and it's got a bit of stop/start. As a driver you get a bit frustrated because you feel you get something going and then you have to start that lap again."

SpeedCenter: "In another interview we did, Paul Page said that it does add a passing opportunity if there is a hard braking zone."

Mark Blundell: "I think you are going to have a lot of difficulties overtaking someone here, it's a one lane circuit, it's not that wide. Braking zones are only down the pit straight and there's probably one other place down the back straight coming off and it's not really long enough to get a tow or something. It's not that great a circuit for overtaking. It should make for good racing, it will keep everyone packed up close."

SpeedCenter: "It's interesting that a lot of the people who write into SpeedCenter are Europeans and they are really curious about Indy Cars, there seems to be a lack of coverage since F1 is so dominant."

Mark Blundell: "America is such a vast place, we are here in the state of Oregon and it's a whole new ball game. It never gets that big broad-base, the education factor isn't the same since it's never on a daily basis. You'll get USAToday covering stuff but it's not intense enough. Europe is such a small dense area, in terms of everyone's linked in quite well. Formula One coverage in Europe is heavy, you've got the Italians, they've got sporting papers dedicated to that every day. Even in the UK, F1 has big coverage."

SpeedCenter: "Do you feel a sense of nationalism with competing against other countries?"

Mark Blundell: "I don't know whether there's anything there, the problem you've got here is your competing against so many other big sports. Baseball, American Football, Basketball, and Hockey. In Europe we don't have such a big problem, you've got Football in the UK, but still F1 is big. With the MSN thing we are trying to work a little bit in UK just to try and educate people about Indy Car. That's something we have to try to push across Europe. In fact we have just taken a show car to UK, they've given me a car there and we're going to start do so some tours after the season, try and educate people on what it's all about."

SpeedCenter: "Thank you for your time and good luck this weekend."