INDYCAR: Phoenix Test Update, Wednesday

IndyCar

INDYCAR: Phoenix Test Update, Wednesday

Panther Racing's JR Hildebrand leads the two-car test of Chevrolet-powered teams at the revised Phoenix on Wednesday.

Marshall Pruett | Posted February 22, 2012

JR Hildebrand, left, and Panther Racing engineer David Cripps, right, had a positive and productive day at Phoenix, which the team shared with Andretti Autosport's Marco Andretti. (Photo: LAT)

JR Hildebrand returned to the track where he auditioned for a job with Panther Racing a little over a year ago, and wasted little time in setting the pace around the newly re-paved and reconfigured 1.0-mile oval.

The 24-year-old turned 115 laps on Wednesday, and except for a faulty sensor that needed replacing on his 2.2-liter, twin-turbo V6 Chevrolet powerplant, spent much of the 80-degree day working on chassis setup.

“It was neat to come back in something a little bit different,” said Hildebrand, referring to driving his new Dallara DW12, rather than the old-generation Dallara IR07 he used in December of 2010.

“It’s a different track now—hard to compare apples to apples from when I was here last, but I really like it. I would have to say I was pleasantly surprised with the new Dallara, too. We were running the full-on road course downforce package, which INDYCAR has done for years on the short ovals, so there’s some aero things to be accounted for here on a short oval that you don’t have on the 1.5-mile ovals, but overall, I found the car to be pretty responsive to changes. We also trimmed the car out to gain some lap time, which worked well. All in all, we felt like we had a pretty solid day.”

Like most teams that have tested so far this week, Hildebrand ran on the updated a-arms supplied by Dallara and reported that the car felt stable beneath him.

“We slowly moved through our program; since we don’t race here, we just looked at it as a day to learn about the new car to learn things that can be universally applied elsewhere. By the end of the day, we felt we had accomplished that in a couple of areas and the car was a pleasure to drive.”

Hildebrand spent most of his time at Phoenix running alone, despite initial plans for him and Marco Andretti, who was completing his second test day at the track, to try running together in the afternoon.

“We loosely discussed running together, but we both had different down periods working through our own programs and didn’t end up on track with each other,” said Hildebrand.

Official lap times were not released, but Hildebrand was described as being “comfortably in the 20-second bracket” by one experienced observer. Hildebrand was also confirmed as setting the fastest lap of the day.

Andretti, who ran in the 21-second range on Tuesday, turned 163 laps on Wednesday and was unavailable for comment.

David Cripps, Hildebrand’s engineer, also got his first look at the renovated Phoenix facility, and had plenty of good things to say about the modernized facility.

“The old Phoenix had a lot of character; it was old and a bit worn, you could say, but it had character,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was going to feel about the changes they’ve made—opening the dogleg, making the two lanes of banking—but I’m genuinely impressed. And the town has filled in around the track. When we last raced here, it was out on its own, but now people are right on its doorstep. I think Indy cars would be positively received here again.”

Cripps also shed some light on the high-downforce package Panther used at Phoenix that teams will race with at Milwaukee and Iowa.

“In some areas, it was fairly straightforward,” he said. “Fortunately, we were able to apply some of what we’d learned during the Chevy test program at other ovals, and we were also able to use some of the new Dallara modifications, so that certainly helped the car’s balance. The car responded very well. For a day of good hard running on a one-mile oval, I’d say the package worked very, very well from an engineering perspective.”

Marshall Pruett is SPEED.com's Auto Racing Editor, covering IndyCar and sports cars. He also contributes to Road & Track and Racecar Engineering. Follow him @MarshallPruett on Twitter.