It has been a hot sunny afternoon in south Florida. Fortunately the Indy cars get to do qualifying for race start position tonight under race time conditions since the XM Satellite Radio Indy 300 is a night race tomorrow. Jeff Simmons has a new helmet this year which I think is pretty cool looking.

This afternoon I caught up to Jeff at the Rahal-Letterman hospitality area and interviewed him to get his thoughts on running a race that Paul Dana didn’t get to run last year. As you may recall it was just a year ago that Paul Dana was killed in practice prior to this race when it was run on Sunday. I had conducted the last media interview with Paul the evening before. So for some of us, Jeff included, this is an emotional race. As you’ll hear him say, he’s got to put that behind him and focus on racing.

You can listen to my interview with Jeff here (4 min MP3): homestead-07-simmons.mp3