Weekend sessions test car setup, safety
IndyCar’s pursuit of protection from flying debris for its drivers takes the next step with materials being tested this weekend at Phoenix International Raceway.
Safety expert Terry Trammell told USA TODAY Sports on Thursday that IndyCar “very reasonably could have a functional device for 2017.”
Trammell was reached in Arizona after visiting with a company providing at least one concept for a non-halo device, although Trammell declined to discuss specifics.
The materials to be tested in the Verizon IndyCar Series’ open session Friday and Saturday will be studied for effectiveness in withstanding the forces of abrasive debris such as excessive tire rubber along with the sand and pebbles present in desert climates.
Justin Wilson died in August a day after suffering blunt force trauma when he was struck in the head by an untethered piece of nose cone from another driver’s car during a race at Pocono Raceway. Nose cones will be tethered to the cars this year at large oval venues such as Pocono and Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Trammell said Wilson’s frontal impact was similar to what Formula One driver Felipe Massa experienced in Hungary in 2009 when a spring struck his helmet visor and broke his skull. (Massa recovered and is racing again.) The key to this process, Trammell said, is to determine how much energy can be absorbed by the new materials.
Without divulging the companies, IndyCar President Jay Frye told USA TODAY Sports that more than one of them had military contracts and their ideas were rooted in lightweight, costeffective devices that could be implemented in the car design and transferred between cars. Specific costs haven’t been formulated, but it’s likely they could come in well below $25,000 per car.
Some of the potential manufacturers are small, nimble companies with the ability to react quickly, Frye said. “That was eyeopening. We thought this would be at some astronomical cost, but a couple of these are quite promising,” he said.
Participating this weekend will be 21 car-and-driver combinations — 11 from Chevrolet, 10 from Honda — with another driver set to watch the race unfold. Rookie Alexander Rossi was signed by Andretti Autosport too late to be ready for action. The manufacturers will roll out the chassis updates they’ve been allowed to make during the offseason.
In this game of speed, it’s time to start showing cards. James Hinchcliffe thinks everyone will.
“I think they have to, because we get so little track time on a race weekend,” Hinchcliffe told USA TODAY Sports. “There’s no points (awarded this weekend), there’s no prize money, but everybody will be there with the (pieces) they’ve developed over the winter. And if you go there and you’re 20th, you don’t have a lot of opportunity to improve the car and the setup that much before we go back and race in April.”
IndyCar will make its return to the 1-mile oval April 1-2; its last race there was in 2005 and won by Sam Hornish Jr.
While this is an oval track, the bodywork configuration used this weekend will be in play at the street circuits and road courses. So 81% of the season is with this fundamental package. Hence the need to maximize a testing opportunity.
“We can’t get caught in a game of sandbagging, because at the end of the day (chassis changes) are set; there’s nothing anybody can do about it,” Hinchcliffe said. “We’ve got what we’ve got, so let’s see what we’ve got.”
Said Team Penske’s Juan Pablo Montoya: “For me, it’s perfect. I felt we struggled last year on the short oval. We had really good speed, but we struggled in traffic. That’s going to be (a point of emphasis) for us. It’s hard to know where you need to really be and how good you need to be. We’ll see what it brings.”
Surely both manufacturers will realize gains, but Honda was able to convince IndyCar it was at a competitive disadvantage last year, which gained it more areas of this aero kit to modify. Honda was not allowed to change its superspeedway package.
Ryan Hunter-Reay said it would take time to experiment with the new variables.
“I haven’t been on a short oval with this package, and I haven’t been to Phoenix (to drive a car),” he said. “A lot’s going to happen this week.”