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IndyCar
INDYCAR: Tony Cotman 2012 Car Update
2012 Indy car project manager Tony Cotman sits down with Marshall Pruett to provide his latest update for SPEED.com on the progress and development of IndyCar's new chassis and rules.
Tony Cotman explains all of the latest updates to the new 2012 Indy car and rules that will support the high-tech machine. (IndyCar)
2012 Indy car project manager Tony Cotman sat down with SPEED.com to provide his latest update on the progress and development of IndyCar's new chassis and rules.
Pruett: How much innovation will you allow with the electronics and displays on the 2012 car? More than now, I hope.
Cotman: Absolutely. We've always wanted to be able to provide a platform in 2012. I think it’s fair to say that the technology or future innovation, that’s what we’ve been designing this vehicle, I think we’ve tried to allow ourself the freedom in the future. I'm not guaranteeing that in 2012 you're going to see everything, by any means. There’s a few projects that we’re working on that are really probably two years away. But technology, as it exists at the moment, whether it's through cell phone technology, obviously, we have a great partner with Verizon, or whether it’s learned through aerospace, or many other companies, it’s about how to reach the younger viewer. How to attract a newer viewing audience. And when you do get them, what do they see? And I think that's something we’ve really spent a lot of time on. But, as you can imagine, it takes a while for some of those things to get put into play. Just always looking for new technology; being very aggressive about going after areas that we think can help us promote our sport.
Pruett: How will you monitor and control turbo boost with the new engines?
Cotman: I think turbo boost will be controlled differently, and obviously, we don’t have a pop-off valve anymore. So we’ll be trying to control it electronically through some sensors in the intake manifold, which will have to be calibrated quite extensively. The system is a bit of a change philosophically. If you’re going have a control boost as a means of controlling power or the power level, then, okay, we don't have a pop-off valve anymore but we’ve got the same electronic issues where we’re having to calibrate and control boost sensor levels.
So the intent is to control boost, we’ll have a maximum boost target controlled by an ECU. When it comes to new technologies, whether it's variable boost or… there's a lot of really cool things that are out there on road cars at the moment. And I think it's fair to say that while we continue to evaluate where we need to be long term, in my opinion, the best thing to do in the short term is to keep it simple and that's part of us developing a roadmap for the future. Turbochargers in just five years have come so far. There’s a lot of cool things out there now and all the other things that go on. For us, I think we need to start off relatively simple and go after reliability and durability, number one, and then in the future start looking at introducing some of the new whizbang things that are around.
Pruett: Will you look to implement some form of performance balancing in 2012?
Cotman: I think, quite simply, if you’re showing up and doing a great job, you shouldn't be asked to tailor back down or have your performance reduced because you did a good job. So, I doubt we're going to be reducing or eliminating somebody’s advantage by means of pulling them back. There are deficiency clauses built into the regulations, which at certain time periods during the season if we, IndyCar, feel the need to open the door to the manufacturer to do a little bit of development in some area to try and catch up, we have clauses built in for that. That’s acceptable. Having said that, it'd be several monitoring devices on the vehicle that are owned and controlled and only accessed by IndyCar. So we’ll be taking our own measurements of what's going on.
A manufacturer can’t show up two days before a race and claim to have a deficiency. The key is, I think, not to take a knee-jerk reaction. If an engine supplier is deficient, so be it. We need to gather data over, really, a period of time before we decide to make any decisions to allow a catch-up. But, at the end of the day, IndyCar needs to do what it thinks is best, to continue to have manufacturer involvement long-term. You can interpret that however you wish, but one thing to take out if it is, if you do a good job I don’t believe you should be penalized for it. It's really a matter of containing the evolution of development; that's where the dollars are spent.
Pruett: The current Dallara has a pullrod front suspension that’s not pleasant to work on, and a conventional rear suspension. What kind of suspension layout have you chosen for the new car?
Cotman: We’re back to a standard pushrod suspension as we know it, on all four corners. And I think, as most people know, that dampers themselves are free or open, or whatever you'd like to call it. There's not a spec component. The goal being that a lot of people have spent a lot of – a lot of teams – have spent a lot of time and resource on their current dampening package and they’ll be able to carry it over to a new vehicle. When it comes to the third damper, the third spring as we know it, you'll be able to – it's really a form of ride-height control—to use it however you want to use it. You’ll be able to use it with a spring or a bump rubber, but you’re not allowed to have that as an actual damper.
So you can only actually have four dampers. But what you do in those dampers is really your own business. It comes back to deciding what you want to police and how you're going to police it. If you can’t police a component on the car – I have a really strong belief that you don’t make rules that you can’t police, and dampers are one of those things that you either police them totally, and it's totally spec, or you stay way, away from it. And we’ve taken the approach that teams are going to carry over the dampers and continue the development and we’re going to stay away from it.
Pruett: What kind of roll control should we expect?
Cotman: I think there’ll still be mechanical adjustment for roll-bars. There's obviously still an option to run roll-bars front and rear. I think the adjustment range between the damper and the roll-bar will be quite extensive, eliminating the need for many, many different roll-bars. You can machine or play with the blade thickness shape, rather than having to go through multiple bars or ranges of bars. So I think we've got a pretty good range covered in the base car and I'm sure there’ll be something somebody will go out and do, or want to change motion ratios on a rocker or something. That's cool too. There's a lot of freedom built into the standard car.
Pruett: Does Dallara have a lock on providing all chassis components, or will outside vendors be allowed?
Cotman: No, I think there’ll be a few areas. It's definitely trimmed. When you sit down and look at it, if you want to contain and/or reduce cost significantly, there's only a few business models that work. And one of them is to be able to provide a manufacturer, no matter who it is, with a higher quantity of components. If they can manufacture a higher quantity and be given that business for several years, it works. At the end of the day, look, Dallara has made a significant commitment to Indiana, or the state of Indiana, and a reasonable portion of the vehicle will be done through Dallara. Having said that, there's several areas that are out for bid for many suppliers, whether it's uprights or the steering racks, whether it's suspension components, and, eventually, you'll get into carbon components.
At the end of the day, we need to select suppliers that can perform or build to the quality and expectations we want, provide technical support and, most importantly, be able to supply product to support a series. It's a big responsibility and it's a large task. It's not like I'm going to go and open a fabricating shop in my garage. We’re just not going to have the capacity. But one thing we’re trying to be very smart about is, when we select vendors as we’ve moved forward, we've made a pretty big promise to the teams that we’re going to contain costs. It doesn't mean by making a crappy product; that means we need to be smart about how we do business with companies. That drives a lot of it.
Pruett: Growing your tech team and tech tools is a major need—how’s that going and what can we expect to see by the time 2012 gets here?
Cotman: Yeah, I think one way to describe what we’re going to be upgrading and what we need to upgrade is… we need significant upgrades – I think everybody knows that – and we just don't have enough staff currently to be able to control or monitor what we are intending on doing. So, it starts with a good leader technically and someone who is a pretty diverse background. That’s Will Phillips. We start building from there. But we have an obligation to the engine side of things. We’re currently, seeking somebody who is the right guy to lead our engine program and oversee everything related to engines and deal with manufacturers. From there, I think you’ll find that underneath these guys will be data analysis people and so forth.
And we'll get into it at the appropriate time what we’re going to do on the aero side. I personally don't think we can go down the aero kit path without having our own dedicated aerodynamicist. Doesn’t mean that person is necessarily on contract; they don't have to be full time. Maybe… their employment status is neither here nor there, providing they can dedicate the time. When it comes to looking at hardware, obviously, for technical inspection we really need to look more in detail about how we’re going to go about that. With multiple body kits, what do you do, how do you inspect it? You're going to need a pretty slick process. Do we do that by scanning machines? Do we do it with coordinate measuring machines? How do we make sure people aren't fiddling around between races? It's pretty extensive. I think it’s fair to say that staff, in some way, shape or form, will probably double what there is now. And, obviously, equipment-wise, we don't have an awful lot right now. We've just got to invest in the appropriate equipment. So there’s a significant investment required of equipment and in resources from a personal standpoint.
Pruett: There have been questions about Lotus being able to produce an engine on time for 2012. Will we see them answer the bell?
Cotman: Absolutely. I expect to see them answer the bell in 2012. There’s, obviously, three different manufacturers probably at three different stages of the process. And it’s always going to be like that. Somebody starts before somebody else. Somebody signs on late. That's the way it's going to be. As of now, I'd say it’s fair to say everybody’s on schedule. We need to maintain our schedule and it's not easy on everybody, by any means, to continue the pace they're going, but options are slim. I expect them all to answer the bell. And will there be hiccups or bumps on the road along the way? Absolutely. We’re dreaming if we think that everything’s going to go perfectly. And we’ll just deal with those as they come up.
Pruett: How much innovation will you allow with the electronics and displays on the 2012 car? More than now, I hope.
Cotman: Absolutely. We've always wanted to be able to provide a platform in 2012. I think it’s fair to say that the technology or future innovation, that’s what we’ve been designing this vehicle, I think we’ve tried to allow ourself the freedom in the future. I'm not guaranteeing that in 2012 you're going to see everything, by any means. There’s a few projects that we’re working on that are really probably two years away. But technology, as it exists at the moment, whether it's through cell phone technology, obviously, we have a great partner with Verizon, or whether it’s learned through aerospace, or many other companies, it’s about how to reach the younger viewer. How to attract a newer viewing audience. And when you do get them, what do they see? And I think that's something we’ve really spent a lot of time on. But, as you can imagine, it takes a while for some of those things to get put into play. Just always looking for new technology; being very aggressive about going after areas that we think can help us promote our sport.
Pruett: How will you monitor and control turbo boost with the new engines?
Cotman: I think turbo boost will be controlled differently, and obviously, we don’t have a pop-off valve anymore. So we’ll be trying to control it electronically through some sensors in the intake manifold, which will have to be calibrated quite extensively. The system is a bit of a change philosophically. If you’re going have a control boost as a means of controlling power or the power level, then, okay, we don't have a pop-off valve anymore but we’ve got the same electronic issues where we’re having to calibrate and control boost sensor levels.
So the intent is to control boost, we’ll have a maximum boost target controlled by an ECU. When it comes to new technologies, whether it's variable boost or… there's a lot of really cool things that are out there on road cars at the moment. And I think it's fair to say that while we continue to evaluate where we need to be long term, in my opinion, the best thing to do in the short term is to keep it simple and that's part of us developing a roadmap for the future. Turbochargers in just five years have come so far. There’s a lot of cool things out there now and all the other things that go on. For us, I think we need to start off relatively simple and go after reliability and durability, number one, and then in the future start looking at introducing some of the new whizbang things that are around.
Pruett: Will you look to implement some form of performance balancing in 2012?
Cotman: I think, quite simply, if you’re showing up and doing a great job, you shouldn't be asked to tailor back down or have your performance reduced because you did a good job. So, I doubt we're going to be reducing or eliminating somebody’s advantage by means of pulling them back. There are deficiency clauses built into the regulations, which at certain time periods during the season if we, IndyCar, feel the need to open the door to the manufacturer to do a little bit of development in some area to try and catch up, we have clauses built in for that. That’s acceptable. Having said that, it'd be several monitoring devices on the vehicle that are owned and controlled and only accessed by IndyCar. So we’ll be taking our own measurements of what's going on.
A manufacturer can’t show up two days before a race and claim to have a deficiency. The key is, I think, not to take a knee-jerk reaction. If an engine supplier is deficient, so be it. We need to gather data over, really, a period of time before we decide to make any decisions to allow a catch-up. But, at the end of the day, IndyCar needs to do what it thinks is best, to continue to have manufacturer involvement long-term. You can interpret that however you wish, but one thing to take out if it is, if you do a good job I don’t believe you should be penalized for it. It's really a matter of containing the evolution of development; that's where the dollars are spent.
Pruett: The current Dallara has a pullrod front suspension that’s not pleasant to work on, and a conventional rear suspension. What kind of suspension layout have you chosen for the new car?
Cotman: We’re back to a standard pushrod suspension as we know it, on all four corners. And I think, as most people know, that dampers themselves are free or open, or whatever you'd like to call it. There's not a spec component. The goal being that a lot of people have spent a lot of – a lot of teams – have spent a lot of time and resource on their current dampening package and they’ll be able to carry it over to a new vehicle. When it comes to the third damper, the third spring as we know it, you'll be able to – it's really a form of ride-height control—to use it however you want to use it. You’ll be able to use it with a spring or a bump rubber, but you’re not allowed to have that as an actual damper.
So you can only actually have four dampers. But what you do in those dampers is really your own business. It comes back to deciding what you want to police and how you're going to police it. If you can’t police a component on the car – I have a really strong belief that you don’t make rules that you can’t police, and dampers are one of those things that you either police them totally, and it's totally spec, or you stay way, away from it. And we’ve taken the approach that teams are going to carry over the dampers and continue the development and we’re going to stay away from it.
Pruett: What kind of roll control should we expect?
Cotman: I think there’ll still be mechanical adjustment for roll-bars. There's obviously still an option to run roll-bars front and rear. I think the adjustment range between the damper and the roll-bar will be quite extensive, eliminating the need for many, many different roll-bars. You can machine or play with the blade thickness shape, rather than having to go through multiple bars or ranges of bars. So I think we've got a pretty good range covered in the base car and I'm sure there’ll be something somebody will go out and do, or want to change motion ratios on a rocker or something. That's cool too. There's a lot of freedom built into the standard car.
Pruett: Does Dallara have a lock on providing all chassis components, or will outside vendors be allowed?
Cotman: No, I think there’ll be a few areas. It's definitely trimmed. When you sit down and look at it, if you want to contain and/or reduce cost significantly, there's only a few business models that work. And one of them is to be able to provide a manufacturer, no matter who it is, with a higher quantity of components. If they can manufacture a higher quantity and be given that business for several years, it works. At the end of the day, look, Dallara has made a significant commitment to Indiana, or the state of Indiana, and a reasonable portion of the vehicle will be done through Dallara. Having said that, there's several areas that are out for bid for many suppliers, whether it's uprights or the steering racks, whether it's suspension components, and, eventually, you'll get into carbon components.
At the end of the day, we need to select suppliers that can perform or build to the quality and expectations we want, provide technical support and, most importantly, be able to supply product to support a series. It's a big responsibility and it's a large task. It's not like I'm going to go and open a fabricating shop in my garage. We’re just not going to have the capacity. But one thing we’re trying to be very smart about is, when we select vendors as we’ve moved forward, we've made a pretty big promise to the teams that we’re going to contain costs. It doesn't mean by making a crappy product; that means we need to be smart about how we do business with companies. That drives a lot of it.
Pruett: Growing your tech team and tech tools is a major need—how’s that going and what can we expect to see by the time 2012 gets here?
Cotman: Yeah, I think one way to describe what we’re going to be upgrading and what we need to upgrade is… we need significant upgrades – I think everybody knows that – and we just don't have enough staff currently to be able to control or monitor what we are intending on doing. So, it starts with a good leader technically and someone who is a pretty diverse background. That’s Will Phillips. We start building from there. But we have an obligation to the engine side of things. We’re currently, seeking somebody who is the right guy to lead our engine program and oversee everything related to engines and deal with manufacturers. From there, I think you’ll find that underneath these guys will be data analysis people and so forth.
And we'll get into it at the appropriate time what we’re going to do on the aero side. I personally don't think we can go down the aero kit path without having our own dedicated aerodynamicist. Doesn’t mean that person is necessarily on contract; they don't have to be full time. Maybe… their employment status is neither here nor there, providing they can dedicate the time. When it comes to looking at hardware, obviously, for technical inspection we really need to look more in detail about how we’re going to go about that. With multiple body kits, what do you do, how do you inspect it? You're going to need a pretty slick process. Do we do that by scanning machines? Do we do it with coordinate measuring machines? How do we make sure people aren't fiddling around between races? It's pretty extensive. I think it’s fair to say that staff, in some way, shape or form, will probably double what there is now. And, obviously, equipment-wise, we don't have an awful lot right now. We've just got to invest in the appropriate equipment. So there’s a significant investment required of equipment and in resources from a personal standpoint.
Pruett: There have been questions about Lotus being able to produce an engine on time for 2012. Will we see them answer the bell?
Cotman: Absolutely. I expect to see them answer the bell in 2012. There’s, obviously, three different manufacturers probably at three different stages of the process. And it’s always going to be like that. Somebody starts before somebody else. Somebody signs on late. That's the way it's going to be. As of now, I'd say it’s fair to say everybody’s on schedule. We need to maintain our schedule and it's not easy on everybody, by any means, to continue the pace they're going, but options are slim. I expect them all to answer the bell. And will there be hiccups or bumps on the road along the way? Absolutely. We’re dreaming if we think that everything’s going to go perfectly. And we’ll just deal with those as they come up.
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