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Autosportradio.com guests for Tuesday August 15th…

donkay

       

     
Danielle Shepherd, current assistant engineer for Verizon IndyCar Series racewinner Charlie Kimball at Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR), graduated from the College of Wooster with a degree in math and physics in 2014. Shepherd grew up watching INDYAR with her family and she attended her first race near her home in Cleveland at the age of five.
 
It wasn’t until her junior year at the College of Wooster that she started thinking seriously about pursuing a career in motorsports. After expressing her aspirations to work in motorsports, a professor urged her to contact another professor at Davidson College who was working on a project for NASCAR. The College of Wooster provided funding for Shepherd to accept a six week summer internship with the Davidson College team. After graduating from the College of Wooster, she accepted a position as an R&D specialist at a company that made liquid crystal writing tablets and spent most of her free time sending resumes to race teams for engineering positions. After ten months of searching for a foot in the door in the world of INDYCAR racing, Steve Moore from KV Racing offered Shepherd a position as a DAG where she worked for the 2015 and 2016 Verizon IndyCar Series seasons. In December of 2016, she was hired as an assistant engineer on the 83 car at CGR, where she is still working currently. 
 
                                                                   

 

                                                                                   

 

                                                                       

 
Darren Manning’s journey is a familiar one: He came to America after a successful run up the European racing ladder, spent seven years as an Indy car driver with the likes of A.J. Foyt and Chip Ganassi, and with more than 20 years of racing behind him, finally decided to hang up his helmet in 2010.
Like many racing drivers who step away from the sport, Manning’s ability to resist its allure lasted for a short period, and after a career spent as a driver-for-hire, the 39-year-old Englishman told RACER he’s working to make a comeback in another familiar capacity: As an owner/driver.
“My IndyCar career was tailing off – I did a couple of races after driving for A.J. Foyt, but nothing was really coming to fruition to stay in the series and I didn’t really have any other businesses outside of being a professional driver,” said Manning, who also served as a test driver for the Honda F1 team.
Among other things that Darren is doing to stay in racing is he built IAdvantage Racing which is a race simulator training facility, is a full time driver coach. 
 
 
See you Tuesday evening at McGilvery’s Speedway…