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IndyCar
INDYCAR: Chevy, Honda Test 2012 Dallara At Auto Club Speedway
Chevrolet and Honda take their 2012 Dallaras to Auto Club Speedway's two-mile oval in search of speed and information with the new IndyCar package.
Ryan Briscoe joined Chevrolet's 2012 testing program at ACS on Tuesday, posting laps that weren't far from Sam Hornish's 2003 pole speed of 226.7 mph. (IndyCar Series/Steve Shunck)
The latest round of track testing by Chevrolet and Honda began on Tuesday as IndyCar’s most active engine manufacturers took to the two-mile Auto Club Speedway oval.
With Team Penske’s Ryan Briscoe getting his first taste of the Chevrolet-powered Dallara chassis, and with Target Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon sampling the Dallara-Honda for the first time on an oval, the Aussie and Kiwi came away with decidedly different opinions after completing the first of a two-day test.
“To be honest, I thought the program ran pretty well today,” said Briscoe. “For my first feeling with the car, it ran well, we got a balance which felt pretty good and we ran speeds which were pretty close to what we would expect to run with the old car. And we haven’t even found the limit.”
For Dixon, who recently tested Honda’s DW12 at the Mid-Ohio road course, it was his turn to experience all of the handling problems his teammate Dario Franchitti encountered at Indy.
"The learning curve with this car is much steeper on the ovals than on the road courses,” he told SPEED’s Robin Miller.
“It was pretty decent right out of the box the first time I drove it on a road course but today, well, it's been a long process. We're scratching our heads about what the car needs and right now we're way out of the box. It's frustrating but at the same time kind of interesting because we have to re-learn the car. But a couple of key areas need work. We've got a ways to go and it's a bit of a pig at the moment."
Previous oval tests with Franchitti, Tony Kanaan and Dan Wheldon drew complaints of a severely loose car entering the corner, followed by the DW12 then heading for the wall on corner exit.
The gentle turns at the ACS oval are nothing like the sharp angles drivers deal with at Indy, but Dixon says despite the less demanding corners on the southern California oval, the same handling problems appeared.
"Yeah, it's evil on entry, not sure about what to say in the middle [of the corner] and then it pushes like crazy. It's just nasty getting in; an ill feeling, and I had two or three big moments today. With most cars you can anticipate what's coming, but with this car, you're not sure what to expect. We were far from trimmed out, [but] had to put most of the downforce back in. But the way it is now it's not going to be easy-flat, I can promise you that."
PHOTOS: Click Here or on the image below to view INDYCAR: Dallara DW12 IndyCar Test At ACS
Farther down pit lane, Briscoe says the Chevy camp found their DW12 to be far more stable and predictable.
“After following the Indy tests where speeds were down from what people were expecting, things were pleasantly surprising today. Better than expected based on what we’d heard. It’s not all that bad, but [Auto Club Speedway] is the only place I’ve driven it. It’s not difficult to find a good balance on a big two-mile oval. I don’t know what setups they ran on the Ganassi car; maybe it’s a setup thing, but my car didn’t feel that evil today. It had a bit of push off [of the corners], but it was curable.”
For all of the differences reported by the two pilots, and with what appears to be differing philosophies on engineering the DW12, Briscoe and Dixon still managed to lap at similar speeds, running between 215-220 mph on a day that was graced with calm skies.
With the well-documented problems facing the DW12, some arrived at the track expecting to work through an articulated action plan on behalf of INDYCAR.
The majority of those plans to address the DW12’s rear weight bias, as teams learned, would be held for the next round of manufacturer testing, which allowed Briscoe and Dixon to dive into testing 2012 tires for Firestone and trying different levels of downforce.
“The main thing we did today other than tire testing was trying downforce changes—adding downforce, taking it away, adding drag to make the car more difficult to drive—and running through the downforce sweeps to get a better feel for the car,” Briscoe explained.
“We’re certainly not done; we’ll do more [Wednesday] but I’d say we learned a lot already. I don’t think we’ve gotten to the ideal place with the car yet, like you’d want to go out and qualify, which is promising. There’s definitely still more to get out of the car.”
Of the data the two test teams generated for INDYCAR, Briscoe and Dixon helped to generate info on possible downforce and drag levels for the series to consider using at the other ovals they'll visit.
“We’ve got to figure out the aero formula we’re going to use for a lot of these tracks we’re going to,” said Dixon. “We tried a lot of different aero pieces and configurations; some tracks will need different things than others. We probably changed a differential of 400 pounds of downforce throughout the day and we didn’t even get to any tire testing.”
The Chevrolet team, as Briscoe shares, completed a similar downforce/drag level program of its own on Tuesday.
With Team Penske’s Ryan Briscoe getting his first taste of the Chevrolet-powered Dallara chassis, and with Target Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon sampling the Dallara-Honda for the first time on an oval, the Aussie and Kiwi came away with decidedly different opinions after completing the first of a two-day test.
“To be honest, I thought the program ran pretty well today,” said Briscoe. “For my first feeling with the car, it ran well, we got a balance which felt pretty good and we ran speeds which were pretty close to what we would expect to run with the old car. And we haven’t even found the limit.”
For Dixon, who recently tested Honda’s DW12 at the Mid-Ohio road course, it was his turn to experience all of the handling problems his teammate Dario Franchitti encountered at Indy.
"The learning curve with this car is much steeper on the ovals than on the road courses,” he told SPEED’s Robin Miller.
“It was pretty decent right out of the box the first time I drove it on a road course but today, well, it's been a long process. We're scratching our heads about what the car needs and right now we're way out of the box. It's frustrating but at the same time kind of interesting because we have to re-learn the car. But a couple of key areas need work. We've got a ways to go and it's a bit of a pig at the moment."
Previous oval tests with Franchitti, Tony Kanaan and Dan Wheldon drew complaints of a severely loose car entering the corner, followed by the DW12 then heading for the wall on corner exit.
The gentle turns at the ACS oval are nothing like the sharp angles drivers deal with at Indy, but Dixon says despite the less demanding corners on the southern California oval, the same handling problems appeared.
"Yeah, it's evil on entry, not sure about what to say in the middle [of the corner] and then it pushes like crazy. It's just nasty getting in; an ill feeling, and I had two or three big moments today. With most cars you can anticipate what's coming, but with this car, you're not sure what to expect. We were far from trimmed out, [but] had to put most of the downforce back in. But the way it is now it's not going to be easy-flat, I can promise you that."
PHOTOS: Click Here or on the image below to view INDYCAR: Dallara DW12 IndyCar Test At ACS
Farther down pit lane, Briscoe says the Chevy camp found their DW12 to be far more stable and predictable.
“After following the Indy tests where speeds were down from what people were expecting, things were pleasantly surprising today. Better than expected based on what we’d heard. It’s not all that bad, but [Auto Club Speedway] is the only place I’ve driven it. It’s not difficult to find a good balance on a big two-mile oval. I don’t know what setups they ran on the Ganassi car; maybe it’s a setup thing, but my car didn’t feel that evil today. It had a bit of push off [of the corners], but it was curable.”
For all of the differences reported by the two pilots, and with what appears to be differing philosophies on engineering the DW12, Briscoe and Dixon still managed to lap at similar speeds, running between 215-220 mph on a day that was graced with calm skies.
With the well-documented problems facing the DW12, some arrived at the track expecting to work through an articulated action plan on behalf of INDYCAR.
The majority of those plans to address the DW12’s rear weight bias, as teams learned, would be held for the next round of manufacturer testing, which allowed Briscoe and Dixon to dive into testing 2012 tires for Firestone and trying different levels of downforce.
“The main thing we did today other than tire testing was trying downforce changes—adding downforce, taking it away, adding drag to make the car more difficult to drive—and running through the downforce sweeps to get a better feel for the car,” Briscoe explained.
“We’re certainly not done; we’ll do more [Wednesday] but I’d say we learned a lot already. I don’t think we’ve gotten to the ideal place with the car yet, like you’d want to go out and qualify, which is promising. There’s definitely still more to get out of the car.”
Of the data the two test teams generated for INDYCAR, Briscoe and Dixon helped to generate info on possible downforce and drag levels for the series to consider using at the other ovals they'll visit.
“We’ve got to figure out the aero formula we’re going to use for a lot of these tracks we’re going to,” said Dixon. “We tried a lot of different aero pieces and configurations; some tracks will need different things than others. We probably changed a differential of 400 pounds of downforce throughout the day and we didn’t even get to any tire testing.”
The Chevrolet team, as Briscoe shares, completed a similar downforce/drag level program of its own on Tuesday.
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