INDYCAR: Texas Test Update, Tuesday

IndyCar

INDYCAR: Texas Test Update, Tuesday

Tony Kanaan, Ryan Briscoe, Alex Tagliani, Marco Andretti and INDYCAR's Will Phillips provide SPEED.com with updates from a busy day of oval testing.

Marshall Pruett | Posted February 22, 2012

Ryan Briscoe and Tony Kanaan did most of INDYCAR's investigative testing on Tuesday. (Photo: Benito Santos/Kanaan Racing)

With Monday’s planned running at the 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway cancelled due to rain, three teams compressed their schedules into one hectic day of testing on Tuesday.

With the remnants of Monday’s rain seeping up through the track, lapping didn’t commence until late morning, where KV Racing’s Tony Kanaan, Team Penske’s Ryan Briscoe and Lotus’ Alex Tagliani took to the oval’s high banks.

The IZOD IndyCar Series, with INDYCAR VP of Technology Will Phillips in attendance, envisioned using the two Chevrolet-powered DW12s and Lotus’ factory DW12 to help conduct 1.5-mile aero configuration testing, but after losing Monday, Lotus, which was conducting its first oval test, was forced to opt out for the majority of the group running.

Kanaan and Briscoe spent time running side-by-side and took turns leading and following to generate data for Phillips to use when the series returns to test at Texas next month with a larger field of cars.

Although he now has plenty of info to comb through to arrive at next month’s aero specification—one the series hopes will do away with pack-racing, Phillips told SPEED.com the initial impressions on the DW12’s 1.5-mile aero package was favorable.

“We had no issues throughout the day, which was good,” he said. “We’ve got lots of great information and we’re very appreciative of Penske, KV and Lotus for coming here. Now we’ve got to sit down and take in the data and decide the next step for our return in March.”

Once the track dried, Phillips worked in concert with the teams to simulate pack-racing with only a handful of cars at his disposal.

With limited running time available, Tagliani and the Lotus test team concentrated mostly on chassis setup and engine tuning. (Photo: Lotus)

“We didn’t get going until 11 a.m. or so; but it was a sunny and dry day so we ran until six-o-clock,” he said. “The drivers and teams initially all had some time to make themselves comfortable with the car, and I’d worked with all three engineers before so the aero setup was similar across the cars. They trimmed the cars out from where we started; Ryan and TK then ran some laps together, seeing what the tow was like, if they could complete the pass, etcetera.”

After enduring months of negative comments about the DW12’s handling on ovals, Phillips was pleased—if not somewhat surprised—to be on the receiving end of positive feedback from his test drivers.

“None of the drivers had any real complaints about the cars,” he remarked. “They all ran the new suspension, which was their first opportunity to do that, so [their lack of complaints] was nice to hear. It means we can mostly concentrate on the racing from here forward.”

Outright speed wasn’t the goal for the teams on Tuesday, but fast laps fell in the 210-212 mph range for the Chevrolet tandem (Tagliani set the Texas pole last June at 215.1 mph), while Tagliani reportedly peaked around 205 mph while running on his own.

Although this wasn’t Kanaan’s first time driving the DW12 on a 1.5-mile oval, he did report that the car’s revised oval package handled just as expected.

“I had already tested the car at the Homestead oval,” he said. “We’re now playing with things trying the break up the pack-racing, but for me, it still feels like an Indy car. It’s not that much different that way. It’s just a matter of what package they’re going to come up with.”

Briscoe came away with the same impression.

“Things felt really good,” he said. “We tried the offset suspension configuration, and in terms of car balance, everything felt normal, which is sort of what we were looking for all along.”

Running with Kanaan provided some solid directions for Briscoe on how the DW12 performed in the draft and where he’d like to see Phillips develop the car for the series’ next visit to the track.

“We were able to get on with [Team Penske’s] test program, and then Tony and I ran together,” he said. “The good thing is that these cars aren’t really affected by turbulence at all. That’s going to be great on road courses. There’s still some work to do on sorting out the pack-racing stuff because you could draft up from pretty far back. You could run nose-to-tail pretty easily, so now it’s a case of refining the [1.5-mile] package.

“For me, I felt like we had too much downforce for the track, so there’s some things you can do to the underwing to reduce more downforce that they might look at. Maybe they’ll come back for the next test with that as mandatory; I think it would help break up the pack-racing more.”

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