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IndyCar
INDYCAR: Teams Readying For Hectic Pre-Season Testing Programs
INDYCAR's Will Phillips explains what teams can and can't adjust and Mike Hull provides insights on timelines and teething problems with the Dallara DW12.
JR Hildebrand's Panther Racing Dallara DW12 gets its paint prior to assembly and its first track test a few weeks from now. (Photo: Panther Racing)
One month after receiving their first Dallara DW12 chassis, IZOD IndyCar Series teams are busily preparing for the testing window which opens up starting next Monday, Jan. 16th.
Few, if any teams will be actively testing once the testing window on the 16th, due to two primary factors, although engine manufacturer testing will resume in the coming days with Lotus also expected to turn its first laps at the Palm Beach road course.
“We’ll do two days at Sebring next week for Honda, and at the end of the month, our intention is to do our first team test there the 30th and the 1st,” Chip Ganassi Racing Managing Director Mike Hull told SPEED.com.
“We’ll hopefully have all four of our drivers there, but it’s just a matter of how the sequence of chassis availability works and how many of our own cars we’ll have to test. We’ve only had one production car delivered, and another one is due here soon.”
For teams like Ganassi that were part of the first batch of DW12 deliveries on December 15th, the need for new, updated parts from Dallara and its vendors will push back their first tests back to late January or early February.
Teams that are in the second batch of DW12 deliveries should receive cars late this week, and multi-car teams should also begin to take receipt of their additional DW12s.
Although Hull and the rest of the teams with production cars in hand would like to start testing on Monday, he says that some of the parts delays could be a blessing in disguise.
“With the production cars, we’re working through some shortages,” he said. “To be blunt, most people In IndyCar racing have been spoiled. They’ve forgotten what it’s like to get a brand-new car without all the parts and pieces in the box. Some vendors are either late, or have been busy making updated components based on the manufacturer testing both Honda and General Motors have been doing. In a way, that’s good.
“It’s good that the manufacturers have learned a lot about the cars beyond what the series learned during their testing phase (that concluded on October 15th) because it has allowed us to feed that knowledge back to Dallara. And from there, they and their vendors have jumped right on making those updates and fixes so the rest of the teams don’t have to go out and encounter those problems on their own. Teams are able to benefit from having pretty much all of the teething problems taken care of up front.”
Hull recalled some of the common issues that once slowed teams in testing during CART’s busiest years.
“We were so used to getting new cars year in and year out, going out to test and finding out the brake bells didn’t fit, or the master cylinders didn’t have full plunge, or the steering rack didn’t deliver the full lock it was supposed to under load, or the final drive was different than what it was marked as, and all those things that only show up once you’re on the race track and the car’s hot and working hard. Every team would venture out and have to learn these things on their own, but that’s no longer the case. In my opinion, I think it’s a good thing that teams will be getting a car, when everything is delivered, that’s ready for them to get right down to business.”
Sebring’s short course will be working overtime until the season starts on March 25th at St. Petersburg, and with a full week of testing just added at the Floridian track, Hull joked that IndyCar might as well hold a race at the historic venue.
“We’ve always said Sebring would be a perfect place for us to race because all the teams have so much knowledge of the place,” he said. “The fact is, we don’t go there looking for outright lap times or the perfect Sebring setup.
The goal is to use the track to simulate many of the other road and street courses we go to, so you ultimately end up trying setups and changes to suit other tracks. It’s what you can find there under braking, cornering, transitions and other aspects of what you’d find at St. Pete. Long Beach, Toronto and other tracks that makes it so valuable. It’s a low-grip, bumpy place that can teach you a lot very quickly."
As teams found by reading the first iteration of the 2012 technical rulebook, the DW12 is actually more restricted in terms of what componentry can and can’t be used than the IR07 it replaces. Other than allowing teams to freely choose their damping packages, INDYCAR intends for its teams to race the car with only the parts shown on the packing list.
Few, if any teams will be actively testing once the testing window on the 16th, due to two primary factors, although engine manufacturer testing will resume in the coming days with Lotus also expected to turn its first laps at the Palm Beach road course.
“We’ll do two days at Sebring next week for Honda, and at the end of the month, our intention is to do our first team test there the 30th and the 1st,” Chip Ganassi Racing Managing Director Mike Hull told SPEED.com.
“We’ll hopefully have all four of our drivers there, but it’s just a matter of how the sequence of chassis availability works and how many of our own cars we’ll have to test. We’ve only had one production car delivered, and another one is due here soon.”
For teams like Ganassi that were part of the first batch of DW12 deliveries on December 15th, the need for new, updated parts from Dallara and its vendors will push back their first tests back to late January or early February.
Teams that are in the second batch of DW12 deliveries should receive cars late this week, and multi-car teams should also begin to take receipt of their additional DW12s.
Although Hull and the rest of the teams with production cars in hand would like to start testing on Monday, he says that some of the parts delays could be a blessing in disguise.
“With the production cars, we’re working through some shortages,” he said. “To be blunt, most people In IndyCar racing have been spoiled. They’ve forgotten what it’s like to get a brand-new car without all the parts and pieces in the box. Some vendors are either late, or have been busy making updated components based on the manufacturer testing both Honda and General Motors have been doing. In a way, that’s good.
“It’s good that the manufacturers have learned a lot about the cars beyond what the series learned during their testing phase (that concluded on October 15th) because it has allowed us to feed that knowledge back to Dallara. And from there, they and their vendors have jumped right on making those updates and fixes so the rest of the teams don’t have to go out and encounter those problems on their own. Teams are able to benefit from having pretty much all of the teething problems taken care of up front.”
Hull recalled some of the common issues that once slowed teams in testing during CART’s busiest years.
“We were so used to getting new cars year in and year out, going out to test and finding out the brake bells didn’t fit, or the master cylinders didn’t have full plunge, or the steering rack didn’t deliver the full lock it was supposed to under load, or the final drive was different than what it was marked as, and all those things that only show up once you’re on the race track and the car’s hot and working hard. Every team would venture out and have to learn these things on their own, but that’s no longer the case. In my opinion, I think it’s a good thing that teams will be getting a car, when everything is delivered, that’s ready for them to get right down to business.”
Sebring’s short course will be working overtime until the season starts on March 25th at St. Petersburg, and with a full week of testing just added at the Floridian track, Hull joked that IndyCar might as well hold a race at the historic venue.
“We’ve always said Sebring would be a perfect place for us to race because all the teams have so much knowledge of the place,” he said. “The fact is, we don’t go there looking for outright lap times or the perfect Sebring setup.
The goal is to use the track to simulate many of the other road and street courses we go to, so you ultimately end up trying setups and changes to suit other tracks. It’s what you can find there under braking, cornering, transitions and other aspects of what you’d find at St. Pete. Long Beach, Toronto and other tracks that makes it so valuable. It’s a low-grip, bumpy place that can teach you a lot very quickly."
As teams found by reading the first iteration of the 2012 technical rulebook, the DW12 is actually more restricted in terms of what componentry can and can’t be used than the IR07 it replaces. Other than allowing teams to freely choose their damping packages, INDYCAR intends for its teams to race the car with only the parts shown on the packing list.
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