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IndyCar
INDYCAR: Rahal And Kimball Test Updated Oval-Spec Dallaras
“I’m not the kind of guy to sugarcoat things,” said Graham Rahal, "but I’ll be brutally honest here: The car was just a lot of fun to drive and I didn’t expect that."
Graham Rahal and teammate Charlie Kimball put their revised Ganassi Racing Dallara DW12-Hondas through the paces at Auto Club speedway on Thursday. (Photo: ACS)
Ganassi Racing’s one-day test on the Auto Club Speedway oval in southern California got off to an slow start when rain pushed Wednesday’s planned activities back to Thursday, but the team pronounced itself pleased with the updated Dallara DW12-Honda oval package.
The Ganassi team, along with Team Penske, tested at the 2.0-mile Fontana facility last November and worked through a number of information gathering exercises to help INDYCAR and Dallara find directions on how best to fix the car’s Superspeedway handing and aerodynamic deficiencies.
With the fruits of those efforts on the cars of Graham Rahal and Charlie Kimball for Ganassi’s second visit to ACS, the remedies produced by Dallara left everyone involved in feeling extremely positive about the car.
“I’m not the kind of guy to sugarcoat things,” Rahal told SPEED.com. “And as you’ve seen, that sometimes gets me in trouble, but I’ll be brutally honest here: The car was just a lot of fun to drive and I didn’t expect that. This was my first time driving the car on an oval and I’d heard everything the other drivers had said about it being evil to drive, but it just wasn’t like that. I’d feel comfortable racing the car tomorrow and I think the fans would get to watch a helluva race.”
Like Rahal, Kimball also got his first taste of the 2012 car and engine package on an oval, and had the same sense of relief regarding its improved handling characteristics.
“The foundation of the car is solid,” he said. “We put in a lot of laps on me, the engine, and made progress all day. I did as many miles today as I did in a half-season of testing last year, so it was nice to get in that much development time. To hear all the doom and gloom talk about how bad the car was, and then to get in and have a really encouraging day in the car gives everyone here a lot of confidence going into the rest of the year.”
Back-to-back comparisons between Ganassi’s first and second ACS tests are hard to draw as most of the team’s running on Thursday was done with high winds present.
The November test was also conducted with experimentation in mind, and a variety of higher boost and lesser downforce settings were tried as the series sought answers on how to improve the DW12’s rear-heavy weight bias and somewhat underwhelming lap speeds.
With the 2012 oval specifications now set and a (lower) fixed boost limit in place, Ganassi Racing General Manager Mike Hull said the team spent the day learning about the car while dealing with 30 mph gusts of wind.
“The weather limited our complete freedom in that manner,” he said. “We spent the majority of the day in high-downforce trim to compensate for the wind; that was the only choice to give Graham and Charlie the stability they needed on the race track. You can’t really compare the two tests for speeds, but for handling and balance, everyone here was satisfied with the progress the series has made with the car since we last visited Fontana.”
Lap speeds in the 210 mph range were achieved on Thursday, and Hull’s confident more speed will be found in subsequent oval tests.
“It became clear right away that today would be about learning about the car, due to the weather,” he said. “The biggest thing is we put miles on the car with some very different components in place. First, we ran with the new a-arms that help to correct a lot of the rear weight bias the cars displayed in oval trim. INDYCAR also lent us a box full of aero add-ons to try, and we used the rear wheel in-fills, [radiator] blockers, sidepod blockers and trim pieces--the items that Dallara developed and that came from their windtunnel test at Windshear.”
Although the new aero bits did not make a massive difference in lap speeds, Hull believes another round of tweaks and updates will get the car closer to the speeds the previous car turned at places like Indianapolis.
The Ganassi team, along with Team Penske, tested at the 2.0-mile Fontana facility last November and worked through a number of information gathering exercises to help INDYCAR and Dallara find directions on how best to fix the car’s Superspeedway handing and aerodynamic deficiencies.
With the fruits of those efforts on the cars of Graham Rahal and Charlie Kimball for Ganassi’s second visit to ACS, the remedies produced by Dallara left everyone involved in feeling extremely positive about the car.
“I’m not the kind of guy to sugarcoat things,” Rahal told SPEED.com. “And as you’ve seen, that sometimes gets me in trouble, but I’ll be brutally honest here: The car was just a lot of fun to drive and I didn’t expect that. This was my first time driving the car on an oval and I’d heard everything the other drivers had said about it being evil to drive, but it just wasn’t like that. I’d feel comfortable racing the car tomorrow and I think the fans would get to watch a helluva race.”
Like Rahal, Kimball also got his first taste of the 2012 car and engine package on an oval, and had the same sense of relief regarding its improved handling characteristics.
“The foundation of the car is solid,” he said. “We put in a lot of laps on me, the engine, and made progress all day. I did as many miles today as I did in a half-season of testing last year, so it was nice to get in that much development time. To hear all the doom and gloom talk about how bad the car was, and then to get in and have a really encouraging day in the car gives everyone here a lot of confidence going into the rest of the year.”
Back-to-back comparisons between Ganassi’s first and second ACS tests are hard to draw as most of the team’s running on Thursday was done with high winds present.
The November test was also conducted with experimentation in mind, and a variety of higher boost and lesser downforce settings were tried as the series sought answers on how to improve the DW12’s rear-heavy weight bias and somewhat underwhelming lap speeds.
With the 2012 oval specifications now set and a (lower) fixed boost limit in place, Ganassi Racing General Manager Mike Hull said the team spent the day learning about the car while dealing with 30 mph gusts of wind.
“The weather limited our complete freedom in that manner,” he said. “We spent the majority of the day in high-downforce trim to compensate for the wind; that was the only choice to give Graham and Charlie the stability they needed on the race track. You can’t really compare the two tests for speeds, but for handling and balance, everyone here was satisfied with the progress the series has made with the car since we last visited Fontana.”
Lap speeds in the 210 mph range were achieved on Thursday, and Hull’s confident more speed will be found in subsequent oval tests.
“It became clear right away that today would be about learning about the car, due to the weather,” he said. “The biggest thing is we put miles on the car with some very different components in place. First, we ran with the new a-arms that help to correct a lot of the rear weight bias the cars displayed in oval trim. INDYCAR also lent us a box full of aero add-ons to try, and we used the rear wheel in-fills, [radiator] blockers, sidepod blockers and trim pieces--the items that Dallara developed and that came from their windtunnel test at Windshear.”
Although the new aero bits did not make a massive difference in lap speeds, Hull believes another round of tweaks and updates will get the car closer to the speeds the previous car turned at places like Indianapolis.
2013 INDY 500 Practice
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