Hull watched as his drivers battled for the win, but in a dual of strategies, it was Franchitti that came out on top. (LAT)
At Homestead on the same day, we had the rare opportunity to win a Rolex Championship and an IndyCar Championship. Alternative strategy with fast cars turned out to be beneficial for both.
First, our TELMEX guys gave it their all with a great alternative strategy with Memo Rojas getting the car through the first phase which allowed Scott Pruett to eventually fight for the race win and take second in the championship. Even though they were fast, they didn’t follow the herd into the pits early in the race, and that set the stage for their climb forward with a very fast car past the masses, and just six points behind in the championship standings.
In terms of the IndyCar group – I don’t know how you rationally explain total exhilaration with massive disappointment on the same day within the same team!
If we had a two-seater IndyCar for Scott and Dario, maybe the stress levels would have been lower. But there’s one thing that can’t be denied: As one, they have elevated us to a higher performance level.
Dixon and Briscoe waged a gladiator’s race that set a pace without yellows that may not happen again on an oval, while Dario maintained a quick pace while on an alternative fuel strategy that through his three stops, gained him twelve additional on-track laps. That’s incredible. The fuel numbers were that he was at least three-tenths of a mile per gallon better per lap for two hundred laps. It was textbook.
If you divide the lap total by three stops and work backwards to the fuel number, bingo!
When Dixon and Briscoe bolted at the beginning and Dario’s car needed to wait for the first stop for a bit of front wing, the thing started to unfold. Right there the die was cast. By lap one hundred, the two strategies were set – no turning back.
Scott and Ryan needed some yellow, and Dario needed green running. More importantly, DF maintained a pace that kept him on the lead lap. The bottom line is that with green flag running, three stops beats four with the time lost in the pit lane, even if that last stop is just for a splash of fuel!
The average number of yellow flag laps at Homestead until this year had been twenty-five – we looked at each other and said: “Never say never?” That is what we said going into Motegi, and late into the night after the race. Despite the historical data on a race, you can never count on it playing out the same way, and that’s what Homestead did – it certainly broke from tradition.
Looking inside how the strategy unfolded on the timing stand and the track, we talk about the history of the race but we also talk about what could happen and what we would do as an alternative strategy. Dario fell back on track, but he still had enough speed to stay close to the leaders. And his guys on the #10 car’s stand were looking at it thinking, Well, we probably won't get a full green flag run before a yellow comes out, but let's still trim the fuel back so we can go longer or put less fuel in the car when we come into pits and be close to them coming out if it's yellow. And we'll tune the car on the first stop.
Well, they went four laps further than Briscoe and Dixon in the first segment. Right there, four laps further…that’s a ton of miles. That's six miles further. So in the first segment of the race they were already looking at that saying, Hmmn, it looks like it might be a green race, if it stays that way there’s potential we could do three stops here instead of four, because everybody was planning on four, maybe even five stops. The problem is once you've committed to a strategy like that, those guys could probably turn it up but Briscoe and Dixon can't dial it back. They had already lost six miles on the racetrack they were not going to find.
They were committed to a race that they figured would sooner or later produce yellows, which would make up the difference and allow them the same amount of stops as Dario, being on the same lap, which I think is a good assumption. That's the background on it. It worked out for those guys just great…
What Dario did behind the wheel to match the fuel strategy plan was equally impressive. The team starts by looking at the data that's coming across to them and listening to him on the radio about what he's capable of doing for speeds. And then they look at the speed per lap and they match that up to the fuel position. Let's say a lap average of 203 miles-an-hour, you could run that in a non-rich fuel position and not sacrifice speed on the racetrack and gain mileage. Dixon and Briscoe were going maybe 5 miles-an-hour faster than Dario was going at the time. In order to do that they had to run the fuel in a rich position. But that was the speed they were able to run so they were matching the fuel position to the speed they were able to travel.
