Wickens has tested and raced the fastest of open-wheel cars and competed at the highest level in the silhouette DTM sports car series. Trading a rear-engine, rear-wheel-drive IndyCar, or a front-engine, rear-wheel-drive DTM machine for a front-engine, front-wheel-drive turbocharged Hyundai TCR car has called for a thorough recalibration of his sensory inputs.

Learning to deal with torque-steer and other FWD tendencies has been made more challenging as a result of his driving needs as Wickens is controlling the Elantra N’s throttle and brake through mechanisms attached to the steering wheel. Summoning immense strength, force, and control to brake and accelerate with his feet is not a realistic expectation during Michelin Pilot Challenge races that can last up to four hours, so on top of learning his car’s unique handling traits, Wickens is figuring out how to make a high-speed vehicle dance with his fingertips.

“There’s only certain scenarios where you notice that it’s front-wheel drive, but it’s so well balanced, that it really just handles like a nice race car,” he says. “It does what you want it to do. Obviously, things happen a little slower than what I remember when I was in IndyCar and some other categories, but it’s still a race car and you have to treat it like one.

“You have to be very positive with all of your inputs. It’s not one of these lazy cars that people may expect a TCR car to be. I would say the biggest change for me is the hand controls — tenfold over driving a car with front-wheel drive. If you get a little bit of wheelspin off of a corner, you find that you’re getting understeer instead of oversteer. Apart from that, you wouldn’t really know the difference.”

Along with hand control technique, Wickens has had to adapt his style to the dynamics of his new Hyundai Elantra N TCR, but says it “really just handles like a nice race car.” Jake Galstad/Motorsport Images

Wickens credits his wife Karli and a popular online racing platform for helping with shortening his experience gap with hand controls ahead of his TCE debut during Friday’s BMW M Endurance Challenge At Daytona event.

“In terms of using my hands to control the vehicle, I would say it’s about 99-percent second nature that I’m not thinking with my feet anymore,” he relates. “Honestly, the biggest tool for that was iRacing. The fact that I had a simulator in my house is what allowed me to really make hand controls second nature. The iRacing gave me not only the ability to compete again, which was an incredible experience at the beginning of 2020, but to keep honing my craft and to make to learn kind of the throttle sensitivity I needed through using my hand.

“And not only that, but to try some different hand control options to see what I liked what I didn’t like. It was really an amazing tool for me. There’s that saying about it taking 10,000 hours of doing something and you’ll become a professional at it, and yep, Karli can attest I probably spent twice that amount on iRacing figuring out how to race with hand controls.

“I’ve even changed something on our Hyundai last weekend; we moved the throttle from a ring to a lever — like a hydraulic clutch lever — so that I can use my fingers more on that while keeping more of my whole hand gripped onto the steering wheel. We’re still learning.”

A byproduct of training to race with nothing other than his upper body has come with newfound muscle strength attuned to manipulating the No. 33 Hyundai with the claws and pistons attached to his torso. Shake Wickens’ hand at your own peril.

1.14.22 pic.twitter.com/yuhARCzkpG

— Robert Wickens (@robertwickens) January 13, 2022

“My training’s obviously changed quite a bit since the accident, since I was discharged from hospital, and in the last two to three months, we switched the focus from more of a lower extremity strengthening program to core and more grip strength,” he explains. “Thankfully, the grip strength comes naturally now with the wheelchair, just because of what I’m doing for transportation everywhere I need to go.

“But we’ve been making sure we spend quite a bit of time bulking up, just making sure I had the strength. Then the last three, four weeks, we were really focusing on conditioning to make sure that I will be able to last for hours, whatever the team requires from me in these races. If the team wants me to do a double stint, I wanted to make sure that I would be strong enough to do that. And time will tell, but I’m pretty confident and I’m definitely up for the challenge.”

At 1:35 p.m. ET on Friday, a full 1258 days since his last professional motor race, Wickens, the hunter-killer, will be unleashed. Don’t feel bad if it takes a few races for him to rediscover the form that made Wickens such a lethal opponent to face.

“I have never been shy to some good, aggressive racing, but it’s been a minute since I’ve raced, I’m not gonna lie,” he says. “But then again, I’m racing on a nightly basis, virtually. I feel like the nature of racecraft, although it’s been virtual, I haven’t really lost that, and I’ve been able to keep that fairly sharp.

“If I have to go wheel to wheel with someone in my Hyundai, I will. But one thing that I do know from endurance racing is it’s a long, long, old race, and there’s a time and a place to be aggressive. I’m going to take it one step at a time. Pit stop sequences will be critical like they are in every category. Driver changes are something that we’ve been working on. I feel like I’m getting pretty good at it but it’s something where I’ve been used to getting into the car 15 minutes prior, casually getting everything in line and taking 10 minutes to get strapped in. You know, that life’s over in multi-driver racing, and I need to learn this quick expediency of getting in and getting out of there with driver changes.”

Wickens has a wealth of talent and experience to draw on with the mult-car BHA Hyundai team. Image courtesy of Bryan Herta Autosport

Wickens has BHA stablemate Michael Johnson — a winner in TCR who is paralyzed below the waist and uses hand controls to drive his No. 54 Hyundai — as someone to pattern the ingress and egress process after.

“Every driver has their own little tricks, even able-bodied people, and you watch someone getting into the car, they’ll all do it slightly differently,” Wickens says. “You know, I’m quite a bit longer legged than Michael, so we tried doing exactly what he did, and my feet keep getting stuck on things, so we’re trying new techniques. Every time I get into the car, even if it’s practice, I’m trying to figure out how I can position my body to get in and out more efficiently and more consistently. It’s just gonna take some time to figure out, but I know by the time we go racing, that’s not going to be a problem.”

As if continuing to work with the AMSP IndyCar team and adding a full calendar of IMSA racing with BHA wasn’t enough of a commitment, Robert and Karli Wickens are close to welcoming their first child into the world. Considering all of the suffering he went through since 2018, the man deserves all the personal and professional joy he can handle.

“Well, the first thing is the pregnancy is the best news that I’ve had coming in 2022,” he admits. “It’s been incredible. We had to do IVF, and it takes some time to get all the pieces together in order to do that. We definitely didn’t plan to put everything happening at the same time, but you know, some things in life just can’t schedule. It’s gonna be one heck of a year, but I think we’re up for the challenge.”