Courtesy of Speed.com
After three days of heavy activity last week on the Sebring short course, IZOD IndyCar Series engine manufacturers wound down two-months of intensive testing by pressing the new McLaren ECU and its associated electronics into service.
“We now have the McLaren (TAG-400i) ECU up and running on the cars,” said Will Phillips, INDYCAR’s VP of technology. “We appreciate the patience the manufacturers have shown in getting it into the development stream, and they’ve been incredibly helpful.”
Of the two engine manufacturers present, Honda Performance Development led the most ambitious plan, cycling Sam Schmidt Motorsports’ Simon Pagenaud, Target Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon, and Takuma Sato--who was participating through an evaluation requested by Rahal Letterman Lanigan--through HPD’s Dallara DW12.
Chevrolet, which did not comment on its test, was present with Tony Kanaan and Ryan Hunter-Reay.
Using Pagenaud on Day 1, HPD technical director Roger Griffiths told SPEED.com that the new engine controller delivered no surprises.
“Things actually went pretty well,” he said. “Given how little we knew about the McLaren system in general, and for the short amount of time we had our hands on it, we had a remarkably successful test. We took our time getting going on the first day with Simon. We had to figure out not only how it worked in a live environment, but how to calibrate everything with a new engine. Once we wrapped out heads around how McLaren does things, it all went well.”
Although Pagenaud had a few laps in HPD’s DW12 on a wet day at Barber Motorsports Park, Sebring represented the Frenchman’s first proper day in the car, but ECU testing was his focus.
“Simon was a bit of a test driver in that sense,” Griffiths explained. “He got the first go at it, which was very much in the early stage of development. But we didn’t have any problems; it didn’t stop on track or anything like that. We progressed from there and made as many advancements as we could in three days. All of the functionalities exists that will [be there] when we go racing. When Scott got in the car on the second day, he continued that development and by the third day, when Takuma drove, we were reasonably happy with how the engine and ECU were performing together. The third day was when we were able to do a lot of running.”
Despite being tasked with the more mundane testing duties at Sebring, Pagenaud said he enjoyed the experience.
“I always enjoy myself when I’m in an Indy car,” he said. “It was a lot of system checks and mapping work. It’s very important stuff to do. I feel honored to be asked by Honda to help with this kind of work because it’s a proof that they really believe in my abilities.
“It sets up quite a bit expectation!” he said with a laugh.
Outright speed wasn’t the goal for Pagenaud’s day in the car, but the former Champ Car ace says he took away some positive and familiar impressions of the DW12 in road course trim.
“It’s agile, as an open-wheel car would be. We didn’t get to do much setup work on my time in the car, so we had a bit of understeer. The braking is strong with the carbon brakes. The engine, even though it’s a turbo, everyone is asking me about the lag, but there’s not much lag going on. That’s a good sign as well. At this moment, the engine is a lot of fun, but the entire car is an ongoing process. It’s still early; you don’t get perfect handling or whatever when you are early in the testing.
“For what I did feel, in the high-speed stuff, I can feel that it has more downforce, which is nice. It feels more like the [Panoz DP01] did in the high-speed corners. In the low-speed stuff, it still needs work, but we have plenty of time.”
As the closest thing they have for factory test driver, Pagenaud and the staff at HPD got down to business immediately, while Sato, according to Griffiths, arrived as a bit of an unknown quantity.
“The first thing that’s really easy with Simon is that we all know each other,” he said. “It’s all very familiar. It was an interesting thing with Takuma coming in. Other than knowing him through KV Racing, we don’t know Takuma Sato. Everybody thinks that because he’s a former Honda Formula One driver that we at HPD know him, but my first real in-depth conversation with him took place the night before his test on Thursday.
“We’ve never had that intimate relationship with him. He doesn’t know me; he didn’t know us or the Rahal people… I was really, really impressed with his feedback. I think he’s gotten a bit of a bad rap. His technical feedback and detail orientation was first class.”
Sato told SPEED.com he was happy to get back to business after being out of the cockpit since Las Vegas.
“It was a great day and a great opportunity to drive the new car,” he said. “For me, the Sebring track is so memorable because it’s the first track where I drove and Indy car two years ago with KV. Although that was only 20 minutes of driving, I really liked the track. Going back there now, it’s nice to have my first outing with the new car and to help with the development of the Honda engine.”
Like Pagenaud, Sato found the DW12 to be a refreshing change from its predecessor, the IR07, but also noted the need for its development to continue.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done in testing, but my initial thoughts were pretty positive,” he said. “There are some areas we need to improve a lot, but generally, I was impressed. We worked on setup and the car reacted with the outcome we expected. I was pleased with that. The engine is very different--being turbocharged--from what we had last year.”
Receiving feedback from Pagenaud and Sato—drivers with very different backgrounds in motor racing—was quite revealing, as Griffiths explains.
“Simon is great in that capacity because he knows what he wants, has so much experience driving so many different cars, and he knows the Sebring track inside and out,” he said. “He was very comfortable with the car and the track, has a lot of experience driving turbo cars—especially diesel-fueled ones, and he was very particular about what he wants the engine to do and how he wanted it to respond. He had all kinds of ideas—let’s try this, let’s try that, and so on—which is great for us to help push the program forward.
“Compared to Takuma, who had never driven a turbocharged racing car, it was interesting to get the two different types of engine feedback from the two of them. It gave us a very good reference point.”
From his days in F3 to F1, and even in the IndyCar Series, Sato’s point of reference on racing engines and their characteristics had come from naturally-aspirated powerplants, which meant using Honda’s 2.2-liter turbocharged V6 would be a rather educational experience.
“It’s a small capacity engine and it’s turbocharged, and it was the first time I drove a racing engine like this in my life,” he said. “It was interesting to see how all the controls work, all the programming works, the boost, the gauges and everything else.”
Once he’d come to grips with the new chassis and powerplant, Sato was able to enjoy himself a bit.
“This was such an important test for Honda, but having said that, I had the opportunity to feel the car and I was driving very cautiously to begin with, but once I got more confidence, I started to drive at racing pace and push it hard,” he said. “We had the opportunity to try different setups to get the taste of how the car reacts. That’s the only way to show the performance of the car. Sometimes, OK, you got a little bit of wheelspin, but it was fun to drive. It was a productive day.”
The lack of torque found with the new turbo engines has been a steady source of complaints, but Griffiths said it wasn’t an issue in his camp at Sebring.
“I was looking at the throttle traces from Takuma driving and there was plenty of wheelspin,” he said. “The car was moving around a bit. That’s what we want.”
The topic of adding more power, as Griffiths reveals, has died down rather heavily within the series and the IndyCar Engine Committee, which should help to cement the boost and RPM levels teams will use once they begin testing next month.
“There hasn’t been any more talk of needing more power,” he said. “I had quite a long chat with one of my counterparts at GM, and we kind of concluded that to us, if we’re racing at Indy at 215 mph rather than 225, it really doesn’t matter as long as the racing is good. If the racing is poor, and we’re slow, then that’s obviously a problem. But if it takes us three years to get back up to 225, so what? At the end of the day, it’s a number.
“If the car is difficult to drive, that’s good. That means the good drivers will do well and the drivers that aren’t as good won’t do as well. If [the DW12] is right at its performance limit to start, what are we going to do with it for the next five years? We’d be starting off right where we just ended up with the previous car.”
Griffiths also sees the opportunity for savvy teams to take the fight to Ganassi and Penske if they can solve the DW12’s rather complex performance puzzle.
“The complaints about the last car—it was too easy to drive, you could do anything you wanted with it, there was nothing left to try on the car, that the engineers were left to just change springs and dampers—are gone now. There’s a lot of development to get the most out of the car now. If it was a benign car that everybody could easily understand, the top two or three teams would jump out to another big lead.
“I think that a small team with a sharp group of engineers and a good driver can genuinely surprise next year. It has some quirks to it, it isn’t simple to understand, it’s temperamental, and it will bite you if you don’t respect it… It will be fast on the road courses, and we’ll see where we start off at on the ovals, but it’s not a car that’s easily solved.”
In the meantime, the Chevrolet and Honda test teams will download what they learned from Sebring and what they’d like to see improved on the McLaren ECU.
“McLaren have a web portal where they request the manufacturers post all feedback and they look at it daily,” said Phillips. “Any updates required are returned as soon as possible. We’ll slowly bring on-line any alternate shifting strategies that are needed. And the anti-stall features will be brought on step-by-step.”
Staring at a month of downtime, HPD will continue working hard on developing its engine with the new ECU, and improving the DW12 chassis using virtual tools at its southern California base before heading back to Sebring.
“We’re done for the remainder of the year as of the 15th,” said Griffiths. “The testing blackout is lifted on the 12th of January. The next test for us and GM will be the 16th and 17th of January back at Sebring along with a number of teams with their cars.”
Although HPD’s staff knows exactly what it will be doing in the coming weeks, the same can’t be said for Sato. His evaluation left everyone at Honda and its partners at Rahal feeling encouraged, but the Japanese driver says he’s not ready to relax until he has a signed contract with RLL or another IndyCar team for 2012.
“To be honest, in this world, until everything is sorted, it’s difficult to say where I’ll be,” he said. “I’m honored to be called for the manufacturer test and it was a worthwhile trip. Making the trip from Japan to India [to Sebring] in one-and-a-half days was a big journey, but it was worth it. It was hectic, but everything we’re doing is to prepare for next year. Things are looking very positive and [I’m] very optimistic that I could have a big smile on my face very soon.”
Pagenaud has the luxury of knowing where he’ll be driving next year, but after two workman-like tests with HPD, he can’t wait to be unleashed on a track with SSM’s DW12-Honda.
“I can’t wait to get [SSM’s] car on the track and to start digging into the setup, to make it my own, really, and to start working on a better balance. I want to be able to do full attack. The Sebring test was mostly about engine testing and electronics, not attacking, so I will wait a little bit for that present to arrive!”
