Sausalito’s JR Hildebrand came to the open test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in late April looking for an opportunity to make a difference. While it appeared that no seats were available for him to run in the Indy 500 himself, he walked the pit lane talking to teams about being a reserve driver just in case.

The veteran of a dozen Indy 500s, with a best finish of second as a rookie in 2011, also planted seeds for driver consultant roles that might emerge.

One sprouted, and it was a perfect fit. Hildebrand would join Arrow McLaren’s four-car Indy 500 team, eventually teamed with Indy rookie Nolan Siegel in the No. NTT Data 6 car. JR will sit alongside the No. 6 race engineer Kate Gundlach up on the pit box behind their stall on pit lane for Sunday’s 500.

But it could’ve been a much higher profile duty for Hildebrand with McLaren.

“The initial call was originally I was assigned to the No. 17 program,” Hildebrand said. That would have him helping NASCAR superstar Kyle Larson execute his May double, doing the Indy 500 and then flying to start the Coke 600 later that afternoon. ”They decided that they were going to stick Tony (Kanaan) on the 17. That left them with an experience gap in helping the 6 car so I plugged in there.”

As practice at Indy unfolded, Hildebrand, who now calls Boulder, Colo. home, served in a floating role among all four cars, including the No. 5 car for Pato O’Ward, the No. 7 for Christian Lundgaard, and Larson.

“My attitude is to kind of get in and get my hands dirty wherever I can make a difference. I’m trying to bring my experience, seeing a lot of different programs, situations as a driver working with a lot of different engineers,” Hildebrand said. “You know, bring that perspective to them as they work their way through the month of May.”

Although Siegel drove the last 10 races of 2024 for McLaren, he’s still a rookie at Indy. He was the one driver bumped out of last year’s 500. Siegel bounced back from missing Indy in the best possible way. Only a couple weeks later he shared the winning car with three other drivers at the 24 Hours of Le Mans for United Autosports in the LMP2 class. He was just 19 at the time.

Hildebrand is actually working with the racing prodigy for the second time. As an instructor and driver coach for the SimRaceway racing school at Sonoma Raceway, Hildebrand was among those who helped Siegel move from racing karts to single-seater formula cars.

JR followed Siegel’s progress up the open-wheel ranks, the ladder system intended to provide the path to Indy. And when the connection was confirmed, Hildebrand was able to elaborate on his experience in the most tangible way possible.

“It was the first time that I ever did a track walk at Indy,” Hildebrand said of his methodical tour of the 2.5-mile oval with Siegel. “From Day 1 it felt like, ‘Let’s just start from scratch, make sure that we’re paying attention to the same things.’ We’re prioritizing the right things as a group, and to build what I call a high quality feedback loop between driver and engineer.”

One way that Hildebrand could add to the McLaren effort overall was to do some homework in this phase. The former Redwood High student who earned what became a deferred scholarship to MIT, took full advantage of downtime during practice sessions to watch in-car video of other drivers. He noted where in the lap their gloved hands worked with their handling tools on the steering wheel and the paddles for hybrid use behind it.

The first three days of practice were done at race-level turbo boost, then on Fast Friday all drivers got the additional boost available for qualifying, Siegel methodically got himself into that 230-mph ballpark.

“He has been awesome at taking feedback, also pushing back on stuff. He has his own opinion. I’m here to be open to how he’s feeling about the car,” JR continued. “At no point was it contentious. We just try stuff, walk through stuff, look at the data, look at what the other guys are doing. From that perspective, I think it’s been a very efficient process.”

On Saturday’s run that determined his grid spot among the 33 cars eligible, Siegel eventually got to his comfort zone in dealing with driving on the knife’s edge. But had those revelations come earlier when track temperatures were far lower, just 1 mph more speed over 10 miles would’ve meant seven spots on the grid.

Last Monday was Siegel’s breakthrough as an Indy 500 racer. He ticked off all the boxes of what a rookie needs to experience in practice so that when it’s all real on race day. Familiarity means more mental bandwidth to optimize every tiny decision. From lap 1 to lap 200, there’ll be a lot more learning, a lot more fine tuning in his approach, when it’s time to pass or defend, or time to pit from 220 mph.

It was a trial by fire.

“It’s ‘OK, we’ve got to rip the Band-Aid off here.’ We’d been a little conservative with race running earlier in the week to build up to it,” Hildebrand said. “Considering where we’re going to be starting, this is what it’s going to be. The sooner he gets a feel for what the car is going to be like, the more time he’ll be able to think about it, sleep on it, have a representative feel.”

They got there. Siegel finished the final practice session on Friday, “Carb Day,” in 23rd, three spots ahead of Larson and six ahead of rookie pole-sitter Robert Schwartzman.

“He ran some full stints to get a feel for what the car is like on fresh tires and full fuel, what it’s going to feel like when the tires are smoked and the thing’s light,” Hildebrand said. ”I definitely felt good as a group for what we were accomplishing. He was calm and collected, giving good feedback all day, managing those different situations like he’d been there before. That — plus a fast race car — bodes well for race day.”

Although Siegel qualified 26th, he’ll start 24th after the Team Penske Chevies of two-time defending race winner Josef Newgarden and Will Power were demoted to the tail of the field after post-tech infractions.

Nolan is in good company on the eighth row. Next to him in the middle is Kyle Kirkwood, who is second in NTT IndyCar points behind Alex Palou. At the far left will be Helio Castroneves, who is gunning for his record-breaking fifth Indy 500 win.