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IndyCar
INDYCAR: Engine Manufacturers Racing To Homologation Deadline
Throughout February, Chevrolet, Honda and Lotus will use a variety of engine specs as they search for the perfect blend of power, performance and reliability.
External and internal engine components are currently being tested and evaluated in the final few weeks before IndyCar's manufacturers must declare their final build specs. (Photo: Marshall Pruett)
By the time the first race of the IZOD IndyCar Series gets under way on March 25th, all three of the series’ engine manufacturers will have powerplants built to the same specification for their respective teams.
But during the busy testing period taking place through February 24th—the deadline for Chevrolet, Honda and Lotus to submit those final specifications to the series—teams will be using a wide variety of engine configurations as they search for the perfect combination of power, performance and reliability.
INDYCAR, the sanctioning body for the IndyCar Series, put in place a set of rules for the engine manufacturers to work from that allows certain areas of design freedom while, in an effort to keep costs within reason, many aspects of the new-for-2012 engines are not open for interpretation or development.
What has resulted is an approach by IndyCar’s engine manufacturers that has seen multiple development streams taking place at once—in the dyno room and at the race track—to find just what they’re looking for before their 2012 engine specs are locked into place.
By spreading the development workload across as many cars as possible, answers to which parts and pieces will make the grade can be found sooner, allowing those final bits to be cast or machined in advance of the deadline.
The three cars under the Team Penske tent at Sebring earlier this week, for example, likely featured three Chevrolet engines with different internals, just as the four Hondas in the Ganassi camp surely carried unique components for the engineers at Honda Performance Development to assess, while Lotus, which has only just begun its test program, has relied on a single engine to conduct its track testing.
The race to the homologation deadline, as Ilmor Engineering President Paul Ray told SPEED.com, has more to do with managing dozens of production timelines than pushing the envelope by trying a catalog of trick new parts right before the cutoff date.
“The homologation date is 30 days before the first race,” said Ray, whose firm produces Chevrolet’s 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6. “You have to work backwards from there to determine when you need to start manufacturing things. If you’re developing camshaft profiles, that can obviously have quite an impact on engine performance and it can also have an impact on durability, and as we all know, it has to last 2000 miles [between rebuilds].
“It takes a long time to make a camshaft; it can take 10 weeks. So we not only need to test a new cam, but also to durability test it to make sure that the cam profile will allow the valve springs, the valves and the valve seats to last the 2000 miles it has to live through. Then we have to make a decision to get moving on the manufacturing of those cams, so literally, you’re trying incredibly hard to tie up all of these timing elements well before the deadline.”
The need to mass produce engine components is the biggest contributing factor to the lengthy manufacturing process for numerous components.
“And you don’t have to make just one camshaft for production,” Ray continued. “You have to make 45 kit’s worth (180 camshafts total for Chevrolet’s four-cam engines) so you’ve got to make hard decisions along the way. The homologation spec, for the most part, has already been decided, although we haven’t declared it yet because we’re still working on a few details. But the timeline involved for many of the parts in question have, frankly, dictated that spec, to a large degree.”
With specific engines rules defining the development process, Ray highlighted the most common components the manufacturers have been testing and tuning ahead of the homologation deadline.
But during the busy testing period taking place through February 24th—the deadline for Chevrolet, Honda and Lotus to submit those final specifications to the series—teams will be using a wide variety of engine configurations as they search for the perfect combination of power, performance and reliability.
INDYCAR, the sanctioning body for the IndyCar Series, put in place a set of rules for the engine manufacturers to work from that allows certain areas of design freedom while, in an effort to keep costs within reason, many aspects of the new-for-2012 engines are not open for interpretation or development.
What has resulted is an approach by IndyCar’s engine manufacturers that has seen multiple development streams taking place at once—in the dyno room and at the race track—to find just what they’re looking for before their 2012 engine specs are locked into place.
By spreading the development workload across as many cars as possible, answers to which parts and pieces will make the grade can be found sooner, allowing those final bits to be cast or machined in advance of the deadline.
The three cars under the Team Penske tent at Sebring earlier this week, for example, likely featured three Chevrolet engines with different internals, just as the four Hondas in the Ganassi camp surely carried unique components for the engineers at Honda Performance Development to assess, while Lotus, which has only just begun its test program, has relied on a single engine to conduct its track testing.
The race to the homologation deadline, as Ilmor Engineering President Paul Ray told SPEED.com, has more to do with managing dozens of production timelines than pushing the envelope by trying a catalog of trick new parts right before the cutoff date.
“The homologation date is 30 days before the first race,” said Ray, whose firm produces Chevrolet’s 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6. “You have to work backwards from there to determine when you need to start manufacturing things. If you’re developing camshaft profiles, that can obviously have quite an impact on engine performance and it can also have an impact on durability, and as we all know, it has to last 2000 miles [between rebuilds].
“It takes a long time to make a camshaft; it can take 10 weeks. So we not only need to test a new cam, but also to durability test it to make sure that the cam profile will allow the valve springs, the valves and the valve seats to last the 2000 miles it has to live through. Then we have to make a decision to get moving on the manufacturing of those cams, so literally, you’re trying incredibly hard to tie up all of these timing elements well before the deadline.”
The need to mass produce engine components is the biggest contributing factor to the lengthy manufacturing process for numerous components.
“And you don’t have to make just one camshaft for production,” Ray continued. “You have to make 45 kit’s worth (180 camshafts total for Chevrolet’s four-cam engines) so you’ve got to make hard decisions along the way. The homologation spec, for the most part, has already been decided, although we haven’t declared it yet because we’re still working on a few details. But the timeline involved for many of the parts in question have, frankly, dictated that spec, to a large degree.”
With specific engines rules defining the development process, Ray highlighted the most common components the manufacturers have been testing and tuning ahead of the homologation deadline.
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