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IndyCar
INDYCAR: High Mileage Concerns For Engine Manufacturers
The recent spate of IndyCar engine failures have come with the 1850-mile rebuild threshold in sight, leading to high anxiety for Chevy, Honda and Lotus.
Justin Wilson's engine failure at Milwaukee was one of the more recent high mileage blowups. (Photo: LAT)
After a steady stream of blowups during pre-season, Chevy, Honda and Lotus, IndyCar’s three engine manufacturers, have certainly gotten a better hold on reliability with their turbocharged 2.2-liter V6 powerplants, but the one issue that continues to rear its head involves engines passing the 1500-mile barrier.
Many engines have reached their mileage limit without any issues, while others—often from the same batch—have proved to be ticking time bombs. While all three manufacturers have been on the receiving end of these premature detonations, Honda has been at the center of the three most recent—and most public—explosions when Justin Wilson (Milwaukee) and the duo of Dario Franchitti and Alex Tagliani (Iowa) suffered dramatic failures with engines that were due to be rebuilt after both races.
Each failure has delivered a valuable lesson that has been incorporated into the next wave of rebuilds by the manufacturers, but during a learning year for the engine providers, there are still plenty of questions and concerns that emerge once the rebuild window starts to approach.
“Well, it's part and parcel, isn’t it?” said Ilmor Racing Director Wayne Bennett, whose firm builds Chevy’s IndyCar powerplant. “Obviously, we hadn’t planned for any of these failures... And the goal, we thought we were good to go as far as reliability was concerned. But, yeah, we've suffered issues that you just can't find on a dyno or a tandem. That's probably what Honda is experiencing as well. A lot of the time, you can only find serious engine issues on the track. And it's always going to happen in high mileage as well, isn’t it? It’s just Murphy’s Law.”
Bennett also clarified that some engine failures make it hard to pinpoint the root cause of what went wrong.
“A lot of the time the damage is so severe that you don't really know what was the cause,” he said. “You say, was this the chicken or the egg? And it’s really hard. Just be clear, these things they rev so hard, they’re quite powerful engines and they do enormous amounts of damage. They eat the thing alive.”
Ilmor has been fortunate of late with its engine reliability, but heads into this weekend’s race at Toronto with two entries above the 1500-mile limit that will hopefully complete the weekend—and their usage cycle—without incident.
Team Penske’s Will Power hit his mileage limit before the race at Iowa and had a fresh unit installed for the 250-mile event, while race winner Ryan Hunter-Reay actually reached the limit on his way to victory.
“We mileaged out on Friday with Power after the qualifying race,” Bennett continued. “So that was quite fortuitous for us because we didn’t go into the race with a high mileage engine with Will. But Ryan had actually mileaged out during the race. That was pretty cool. Not only is it a high mileage engine, it was also double race winner on that one. I mean, we we’re excited…but we were holding our breath for the last 20 laps, sure. Because you just don't know, do you?”
Honda was the first manufacturer to successfully reach the 1850-mile limit with one of its engines, and has added plenty more to that roster, but as Honda Performance Development Technical Director Roger Griffiths shares, going that far without problems involves a roll of the dice.
And if a problem is detected, there’s nothing in the rules to allow fixes without incurring penalties for teams using the affected engines, just as Ilmor and Chevy chose to do at Long Beach when it called for engine changes for all of its 11 entries.
“We've got nine engines over the 1850-mile mark at the track, but it is challenging,” said Griffiths. “The problem is if you identify you have a problem within an engine design or batch of components, there is no mechanism that allows to pull engines back out of the field, update the parts, and turn them back into the field without taking a penalty, which is hard to deal with. And with the exception which they refer to as a ‘minor repair’, if you had a problem with, I don’t know, a batch pistons or a batch of rods or whatever it might be, there's no way you can address the problem without everyone taking the hit. You just end up taking a penalty. It's pretty hard to explain to the owners and the drivers and maybe even the fans to get them to understand…”
John Judd Jr., whose family-run Engine Developments Limited business produces Lotus’ IndyCar engine, says his firm has done its best to meet the 1850-mile rebuild limit, but the pursuit of that accomplishment (which it is still striving to achieve) has been a costly one. With the rules calling for each engine lease to provide a total of five engines, wouldn’t it be easier for the series to lower the rebuild threshold until the manufacturers get a handle on high-mileage reliability?
“That’s a good question,” said Judd. “I think the 1850 mileage limit was always very ambitious in the first year of a brand-new engine formula. We've had our hard times as well as the manufactures have. And the engine mileage target is tied into the five engines the teams have to use and the engine budget. If you lower the engine mileage target then it means you’ve got more rebuilds, and it’s going to cost the manufacturers more. But then I guess the cost of having an engine failure can be very expensive so it could be weighed against that.
“I would think by the end of the year, certainly by the beginning of next year, we’ll have a much better handle on the engine reliability, so I'm not sure right now it’s a good time to change the mileage limits.”
The series mandated the maximum number of five engines per lease and the minimum number of miles between rebuilds to keep manufacturers from spending outrageous sums on special qualifying or race engines, and attached 10-spot grid penalties if more than five engines are used per season or an engine change takes place prior to the 1850-mile mark.
Many engines have reached their mileage limit without any issues, while others—often from the same batch—have proved to be ticking time bombs. While all three manufacturers have been on the receiving end of these premature detonations, Honda has been at the center of the three most recent—and most public—explosions when Justin Wilson (Milwaukee) and the duo of Dario Franchitti and Alex Tagliani (Iowa) suffered dramatic failures with engines that were due to be rebuilt after both races.
Each failure has delivered a valuable lesson that has been incorporated into the next wave of rebuilds by the manufacturers, but during a learning year for the engine providers, there are still plenty of questions and concerns that emerge once the rebuild window starts to approach.
“Well, it's part and parcel, isn’t it?” said Ilmor Racing Director Wayne Bennett, whose firm builds Chevy’s IndyCar powerplant. “Obviously, we hadn’t planned for any of these failures... And the goal, we thought we were good to go as far as reliability was concerned. But, yeah, we've suffered issues that you just can't find on a dyno or a tandem. That's probably what Honda is experiencing as well. A lot of the time, you can only find serious engine issues on the track. And it's always going to happen in high mileage as well, isn’t it? It’s just Murphy’s Law.”
Bennett also clarified that some engine failures make it hard to pinpoint the root cause of what went wrong.
“A lot of the time the damage is so severe that you don't really know what was the cause,” he said. “You say, was this the chicken or the egg? And it’s really hard. Just be clear, these things they rev so hard, they’re quite powerful engines and they do enormous amounts of damage. They eat the thing alive.”
Ilmor has been fortunate of late with its engine reliability, but heads into this weekend’s race at Toronto with two entries above the 1500-mile limit that will hopefully complete the weekend—and their usage cycle—without incident.
Team Penske’s Will Power hit his mileage limit before the race at Iowa and had a fresh unit installed for the 250-mile event, while race winner Ryan Hunter-Reay actually reached the limit on his way to victory.
“We mileaged out on Friday with Power after the qualifying race,” Bennett continued. “So that was quite fortuitous for us because we didn’t go into the race with a high mileage engine with Will. But Ryan had actually mileaged out during the race. That was pretty cool. Not only is it a high mileage engine, it was also double race winner on that one. I mean, we we’re excited…but we were holding our breath for the last 20 laps, sure. Because you just don't know, do you?”
Honda was the first manufacturer to successfully reach the 1850-mile limit with one of its engines, and has added plenty more to that roster, but as Honda Performance Development Technical Director Roger Griffiths shares, going that far without problems involves a roll of the dice.
And if a problem is detected, there’s nothing in the rules to allow fixes without incurring penalties for teams using the affected engines, just as Ilmor and Chevy chose to do at Long Beach when it called for engine changes for all of its 11 entries.
“We've got nine engines over the 1850-mile mark at the track, but it is challenging,” said Griffiths. “The problem is if you identify you have a problem within an engine design or batch of components, there is no mechanism that allows to pull engines back out of the field, update the parts, and turn them back into the field without taking a penalty, which is hard to deal with. And with the exception which they refer to as a ‘minor repair’, if you had a problem with, I don’t know, a batch pistons or a batch of rods or whatever it might be, there's no way you can address the problem without everyone taking the hit. You just end up taking a penalty. It's pretty hard to explain to the owners and the drivers and maybe even the fans to get them to understand…”
John Judd Jr., whose family-run Engine Developments Limited business produces Lotus’ IndyCar engine, says his firm has done its best to meet the 1850-mile rebuild limit, but the pursuit of that accomplishment (which it is still striving to achieve) has been a costly one. With the rules calling for each engine lease to provide a total of five engines, wouldn’t it be easier for the series to lower the rebuild threshold until the manufacturers get a handle on high-mileage reliability?
“That’s a good question,” said Judd. “I think the 1850 mileage limit was always very ambitious in the first year of a brand-new engine formula. We've had our hard times as well as the manufactures have. And the engine mileage target is tied into the five engines the teams have to use and the engine budget. If you lower the engine mileage target then it means you’ve got more rebuilds, and it’s going to cost the manufacturers more. But then I guess the cost of having an engine failure can be very expensive so it could be weighed against that.
“I would think by the end of the year, certainly by the beginning of next year, we’ll have a much better handle on the engine reliability, so I'm not sure right now it’s a good time to change the mileage limits.”
The series mandated the maximum number of five engines per lease and the minimum number of miles between rebuilds to keep manufacturers from spending outrageous sums on special qualifying or race engines, and attached 10-spot grid penalties if more than five engines are used per season or an engine change takes place prior to the 1850-mile mark.
INDYCAR BRAZIL
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