After finishing 13th or worse in the 14 starts she made last year, Simona de Silvestro made the move to KV Racing Technologies for 2013 in hopes of better results. With one race under her belt, she is off to a good start after finishing sixth in St. Petersburg.

De Silvestro ran within the top five most of the race, falling back to sixth in the final laps as the handling went away after going with the red tires while most of the drivers around her went with the blacks.

“It was just a big relief that we started off the weekend really strong, qualified up front and pretty much raced up front the whole race,” she said. “So it was really good. I think it was a big confidence boost for me and the team.

“I think now we can clean up a few things to be even better.”

In speaking of the tires, she said she lost the tires at the end, saying it was more set-up related rather than compound related.

In making the team switch, beyond the results on track so far, one of the benefits that she is already seeing this season is having Tony Kanaan as a teammate.

“He has a lot of experience. I feel like we have a good friendly competition going on in the team,” she said. “I think we really push each other every session. I think the team gets better that way. I think that’s going to make us pretty strong the whole season.”

One of the other things with the switch was from Honda engines to Chevrolet engines.

“It’s definitely great to be with Team Chevy,” she said. “As soon as I signed with KV, they embraced me with open arms. It’s been going really well. I think the engine is awesome. It’s been really fast. It showed it the whole weekend. In the lead, there was always a Chevy engine.”

She added that she has enjoyed the relationship so far, in seeing that they are always trying different things each week and the communication is pretty open across the board.

The next race will another test to see whether she can keep things going strong, or whether she will fall off and the run at St. Pete will be considered a fluke. In three starts at Barber Motorsports Park, she has finished 21st, ninth and 20th.

“We had a pretty good test there,” she said. “I think the race in St. Pete was really competitive. Everybody was racing really hard. I think we’re going to see the same thing at Barber.

“Last year I thought it was a pretty exciting race, quite a bit of passing, which we didn’t see in the past. Hopefully it’s going to be the same this year and it’s going to be pretty action-packed hopefully.”

Beyond that, there is the challenge of the ovals later on this season, which she admits is her weak link.

“I’ve done one test only with KV Racing so far, Texas, and it went pretty well,” she commented. “I think with Tony’s experience I’m going to be able to follow his lead a little bit on that and try to improve on that.

“I think that’s going to be the key for me this season on the ovals.”

With the success, that does put her in the spotlight and a role model for other young girls out there who want to get into racing.

“Well, I think the biggest thing for any kid, if you dream about something, I think if you put the effort behind it, you be able to achieve your dream,” she said. “I’ve been really lucky that people saw that I wanted to become a racecar driver at a young age. A lot of people saw that and they helped me throughout my career. I think the biggest thing is not to give up and to really focus 100 percent behind their goal, and their dreams should become reality.”