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TonyEX
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This weekend... ALL weekend.
Wooohooo....
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P54
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Chevrolet yanks all 11 engines before Long Beach race
Chevrolet's strong start in its return to the Izod IndyCar Series suffered a significant setback Thursday when the manufacturer decided to change the engines for all 11 of its teams before they open the weekend at Long Beach.
The change means all 11 Chevrolet drivers will drop 10 spots on the starting grid before Sunday's race under an IndyCar rule that prohibits engine changes before each one has completed 1,850 miles.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/motor/indycar/story/2012-04-12/Chevrolet-yanks-all-11-engines-at-Long-Beach/54213828/1
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TonyEX
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TonyE wrote:
This weekend... ALL weekend.
Wooohooo....
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the ALMS race was great.. as usual... lots of cars on the grid. All kinds... but thankfully no Audi diesels ( boy.. were those cars boring.. the racing equivalent of a vacuum cleaner appliance).
Anyhow, the "Muscle Milk Honda Performance Development ARX-03a" pretty much walked away from the field.
They started second behind the Dyson Mazda Lola and for a while (40 minutes) it was a race, then MM passed him and effectively put it away.. but...
Then there was a full course yellow about half way through the race... when they all pitted, the MM crew did not do a very good job.. they took a long time, and to make matters worse they did not top off the fuel tank.. which means that in the same yellow they had to do a second pit stop to top off the tank.
Well, with 45 minutes to go, the MM car was behind the entire grid (but still in the same lap as the Dyson Mazda) and it proceeded to pass ALL of them. The Dyson Mazda was about fifth and it went to the front while the MM car was still mid pack...
So, it become a fun time to watch the MM car pulled through the field while the Tyson Mazda was running clear and then started to lap again.
Eventually it was Mazda and MM cars... one two again.
Lo and behold the MM car effected a very COOL pass right at the hairpin, right in front of us and it became a side by side race.
The MM car pulled away and after that I measured him pulling laps about 1 second faster than the Tyson when they both ran clear.
It was a most excellent race.. no one got hurt, no real accidents, and it ran under the green for most of the time.
It did finish with a partial yellow though...
Those prototypes are REALLY fast.
Great time.
The Indy lights and Indy qualifiers were fun. The new Indy cars look futuristic... and the Chevy motors are fast, even if they are unreliable. Today the entire Chevy contingent takes a ten position hit, which means the Hondas will be starting at front. I suppose those are the rules, go for power or for reliability.
Dario will be at the pole.
OH.. Adam Carolla drove pretty well in the Celebrity Race. He finally figured out the hairpin and took it very cleanly, getting on the power early on.
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CafeDelMar90
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Results for IRL from long beach:
1. Will Power Penske DW12-Chevy
2. Simon Pagenaud Schmidt DW12-Honda + 0.8675s
3. James Hinchcliffe Andretti DW12-Chevy + 13.2719s
4. Tony Kanaan KV DW12-Chevy + 18.1951s
5. JR Hildebrand Panther DW12-Chevy + 22.9947s
6. Ryan Hunter-Reay Andretti DW12-Chevy + 42.5631
7. Ryan Briscoe Penske DW12-Chevy + 1m40.1271s
8. Takuma Sato Rahal DW12-Honda + 1 lap
9. Rubens Barrichello KV DW12-Chevy + 1 lap
10. Justin Wilson Coyne DW12-Honda + 1 lap
11. James Jakes Coyne DW12-Honda + 1 lap
12. EJ Viso KV DW12-Chevy + 1 lap
13. Helio Castroneves Penske DW12-Chevy + 1 lap
14. Ed Carpenter Carpenter DW12-Chevy + 2 laps
15. Dario Franchitti Ganassi DW12-Honda + 3 laps
16. Oriol Servia Dreyer & Reinbold DW12-Lotus + 3 laps
17. Sebastien Bourdais Dragon DW12-Lotus + 3 laps
18. Charlie Kimball Ganassi DW12-Honda + 5 laps
19. Katherine Legge Dragon DW12-Lotus + 5 laps
Retirements:
Simona de Silvestro HVM DW12-Lotus 74 laps
Alex Tagliani BHA DW12-Lotus 46 laps
Mike Conway Foyt DW12-Honda 41 laps
Scott Dixon Ganassi DW12-Honda 27 laps
Graham Rahal Ganassi DW12-Honda 23 laps
Marco Andretti Andretti DW12-Chevy 22 laps
Josef Newgarden Fisher DW12-Honda 0 laps
man oh man, honda are getting their behinds whooped this season. WIll power makes a come from behind victory to ensure Penske have won all the races in the season so far. Hondas top hope in the standings, scott dixon, has a mechanical DNF...its looking worse and worse for Honda
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sadlerau
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CafeDelMar90 wrote:
man oh man, honda are getting their behinds whooped this season. WIll power makes a come from behind victory to ensure Penske have won all the races in the season so far. Hondas top hope in the standings, scott dixon, has a mechanical DNF...its looking worse and worse for Honda
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It is still early days. Honda decided to go with a single turbo set up which has put them at a disadvantage on street and conventional type circuits, but might be an advantage on ovals. They had actually brought an up-dated turbo for this round, but were not allowed to use it after the Chevy teams protested their use. Not sure of the political/regulation reasons for this, hopefully someone with more knowledge will fill us in. But hopefully this new turbo will fix Honda's problems or else it will have been a very poor effort to go with only a single turbo?
You must also remember that Will Power has dominated the start of the season for the last 3 years, so nothing new there. It is only later in the season that Franchitti closed the gap and eventually won. And I am expecting big things from Pagenaud, it's about time he took a championship.
Have a thought for how confused my feelings are in these races, as an Aussie I want Power and Briscoe to win, but they are driving Chevys!! :(
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P54
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It was not as bad as it seems. Sato was running 3rd till about the last half lap I think and then he suddenly stopped. Did he run out of fuel or was it mechanical problems?
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TonyEX
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P54 wrote:
It was not as bad as it seems. Sato was running 3rd till about the last half lap I think and then he suddenly stopped. Did he run out of fuel or was it mechanical problems?
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I think Sato's tires were wearing out and he felt pressure from behind.
In the 43rd lap, going into turn 10, he was power sliding bad. And he'd been slowing down for five laps by then. So I think it was a combination of his tires and the pressure from behind that forced him to push just a bit too hard in the last lap.
Sad because he was doing well.
I'll do my right up tomorrow, but know that the Honda cars were and did quite well today. Much better than the results.
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Honda Dream
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Well, the standings.... Chevy-Honda 3:0....it doesn't look good, but as you say it is early days and the season is long. We will see how it progresses. Anyway it looks like Chevy has an advantage at the moment as most cars in top 5 are regularly Chevy powered.We have to remember however that the 2nd and 3rd race we had a shot at win if the things were fortunate for us a bit more. There is much more stress at Lotus at the moment as they seem not to have any real chances to right with the two others.
It looks a bit similar to MotoGP - we didn't win at Losail, however pacewise we delivered. It seems that 2012 season just started unfortunate for Honda in terms of wins as we didn't get them while delivering solid performance. We have a reason however to stay opitimistic for the remainder of the races to be in position to fight and finally get the wins.
It seems that the regulatory body wants a dialogue about the changes Honda want to make with turbo. So it seems that the parties might just have a different interpretation about what they can do and what they cannot.
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CafeDelMar90
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sadlerau wrote:
CafeDelMar90 wrote:
man oh man, honda are getting their behinds whooped this season. WIll power makes a come from behind victory to ensure Penske have won all the races in the season so far. Hondas top hope in the standings, scott dixon, has a mechanical DNF...its looking worse and worse for Honda
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They had actually brought an up-dated turbo for this round, but were not allowed to use it after the Chevy teams protested their use. Not sure of the political/regulation reasons for this, hopefully someone with more knowledge will fill us in. But hopefully this new turbo will fix Honda's problems or else it will have been a very poor effort to go with only a single turbo?
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any links on that? id definitely like to read up on any news of engine development. Ive gotta say its still looking quite grim even if its early days. its going to take a big push from Honda to turn it around this year..fingers crossed. Honda were the ones pushing for manufacterer competition back when it when they were sole suppliers, and now theyre getting theyre wish repayed with interest.
good on ya for supporting Power. As a kiwi it was a race to forget for my driver Dixon, but im confident he'll be back up there come the next race
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P54
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TonyE wrote:
P54 wrote:
It was not as bad as it seems. Sato was running 3rd till about the last half lap I think and then he suddenly stopped. Did he run out of fuel or was it mechanical problems?
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I think Sato's tires were wearing out and he felt pressure from behind.
In the 43rd lap, going into turn 10, he was power sliding bad. And he'd been slowing down for five laps by then. So I think it was a combination of his tires and the pressure from behind that forced him to push just a bit too hard in the last lap.
Sad because he was doing well.
I'll do my right up tomorrow, but know that the Honda cars were and did quite well today. Much better than the results.
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Found the reason for Sato's misfortune:
For a large portion of today’s race, Takuma Sato looked like a contender for the victory, as his Rahal Letterman Lanigan team adopted a similar strategy to Power’s. Sato ran in the top three for much of the race, and led 16 laps, but was knocked out of third place on the final lap by contact from Ryan Hunter-Reay. The incident dropped Sato to an eighth-place finish, and earned Hunter-Reay a post-race time penalty that dropped him from third to sixth in the official results.
http://world.honda.com/INDY/2012/03longbeach/race/
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TonyEX
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TonyE wrote:
This weekend... ALL weekend.
Wooohooo....
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The Chevy engines sounded raspier than the Hondas. I noticed this in Saturday. The Lotus were smooth. I did not hear as much pop off valves on them.
Normally, exiting the hairpin the drivers go WOT at a lower gear so they will be at redline by the time they pass the entrance to the pits. The Chevys kept poping off, the Hondas not so much, the Lotus were eerily quiet on this respect.
...
OK, by now you all know that Honda did not win at the Indy Car race.
Towards the end it was actually quite exciting. I'm not quite sure that the engines were that much of a factor at LB (except for Lotus which was really down) because it's more of a driver's place what with all those turns.
Of course, torque is good here, top end speed not so.
Sato really hung in there towards the end, but I think his car was getting loose and he was running slower. In the last lap he was punted out which was a shame. Sato was just trying to block any passing going into the last turns so as to preserve his 3rd place.
Power must have been conserving fuel because Pagenaud was really running fast at the end. Pagenaud stopped in for a brief fuel and tire pit with about 20 or laps to go so he had the package to go fast at the end. Even before his last pit stop, he was going really fast, having put about 18 seconds over Power and Sato. The pit stop put him 4th, just behind Barrichello -who was then running 3rd.
A set of pits ensued and meanwhile Pagenaud started to put some torrid laps. He passed Sato and then was running @ SECONDS faster per lap that Power. So you can imagine. He was hauling ass.
With just three laps to go, Pagenaud was two seconds to go, in the penultimate lap, Pageanaud was right behind Power.
In the last lap Power finally reached down for his fuel and came alive a bit... Pagenaud simply ran out of laps. I think that if he had had four more laps he would have gone around Power since the latter did not have the fuel to go without a pit.
Now, the race was interesting... the first half had two (three?) rather long full course yellows, which sort of screwed up the pit strategy. The second half was all green ( I think there was/were one or two local yellows) so the race went fast.
Since most cars pitted around the 20th or 40th lap, the former had to come in for fuel under the green around the 60th oe so while the latter hoped for another yellow to do a splash. Lo and behold the second half was green so those pit stops were under race conditions, hence there quite a few shuffles in the leadership.
The race was clean, the end was quite exciting....
Marco Andretti went flying.. why is it that the Andrettis are always expectacular at LB? His dad used to blow tires there left and right.
Poor Dario had car issues. It was a pity because he was quite fast in Saturday's qualifiers.
Now then...
Honda has an issue now... and I think it's not so much the engine but the teams. Right now, IMHO, the best drivers and teams are using Chevy engines.
Chevy has the power now but perhaps not the reliability. It remains to see what they will do because they can not go on replacing engines as they did. At some point, Honda will tweak up the power and then Chevy will get hosed.
Lotus had indeed the best looking cars. Really nice looking cars, really good sounding too in a "quiet" sort of way, which is likely not good.
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World Cup.
Cunningham was not doing well yesterday. The Kia was fast.
And there were no Civic Si's, except for the pace car.
The race was fun, very loud as usual, lots of Porsches ( we should all give thanks to Porsche, really) of all types so long as they are 911 shells. The Cadillacs were fast and LOUD.
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Drifting.
FUN. We were just away from exit of the hairpin, which means that we got to see the section of track where the judging was done.. It was fun. The winners did the last three turns (including hairpin) in perfect coordination and lots, LOTS of tire smoke. They deserved it.
The Mustang did not not generate enough tire smoke, but it sure sounded LOUD.
The 240SXs seem to be the best vehicle for this sort of thing.
...
Anyways, parking right across the Convention Center was cheap... 25 bucks each day.. in the heydays of CART, we'd pay 40 bucks on Saturday and 45 on Sunday.... but don't YOU dare park there... that's my secret and NOT worth it to YOU. :-)
Beer, Tecate, was 9.75 per 12 oz cup. We don't try Tecate Light. Blah!
Food... there was King Taco and Bad Bubbah's BBQ again... good food if you like Tecate, good Mexican and California Style BBQ ( no BBQ sauce, thank you..).
We love that kind of food and drink, it's perfect at the Fair/Race.
The porta-potties were overwhelmed by Sunday. Best to do your thing at the Convention Center and cut down on beer and sodas.
Weather was fantastic.. if a bit cold/windy up in the stands on Saturday. After a washed out Friday, the track was clean on saturday and there wasn't much rubber on it until Sunday.
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TonyEX
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CafeDelMar90 wrote:
any links on that? id definitely like to read up on any news of engine development. Ive gotta say its still looking quite grim even if its early days. its going to take a big push from Honda to turn it around this year..fingers crossed. Honda were the ones pushing for manufacterer competition back when it when they were sole suppliers, and now theyre getting theyre wish repayed with interest.
good on ya for supporting Power. As a kiwi it was a race to forget for my driver Dixon, but im confident he'll be back up there come the next race
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http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/98801
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Bullwinkle
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THE TURBO ISSUE:
1) The advantage of two small turbos over one larger one is that the two small ones will spin up faster.
2) The Turbos are supplied by Borg Warner. The twin turbo setups and the single turbo were supposed to be relatively similar from a performance standpoint on the dyno.
3) Honda says that in the real world, the performance of the single turbo is not as good as the dyno would lead one to believe. So they want to switch to a BW turbo with different specs that would allow it to spin up faster.
4) Either Chevy or Lotus protested, so the change was pulled at the last minute.
Now Indycar will examine data from the races and practices to date and decide if the change Honda wants is reasonable.
If the change is not allowed, Honda has virtually no chance of winning a road race this year. NONE.
Next season, Honda will have it's own body kit, which will be able to take full advantage of the compact design of the engine/turbo config.
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sadlerau
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Bullwinkle wrote:
THE TURBO ISSUE:
1) The advantage of two small turbos over one larger one is that the two small ones will spin up faster.
2) The Turbos are supplied by Borg Warner. The twin turbo setups and the single turbo were supposed to be relatively similar from a performance standpoint on the dyno.
3) Honda says that in the real world, the performance of the single turbo is not as good as the dyno would lead one to believe. So they want to switch to a BW turbo with different specs that would allow it to spin up faster.
4) Either Chevy or Lotus protested, so the change was pulled at the last minute.
Now Indycar will examine data from the races and practices to date and decide if the change Honda wants is reasonable.
If the change is not allowed, Honda has virtually no chance of winning a road race this year. NONE.
Next season, Honda will have it's own body kit, which will be able to take full advantage of the compact design of the engine/turbo config.
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If there is no significant advantage to the single turbo on the Ovals their use by Honda will be an embarrassment to the engineers. Obviously they didn't do due diligence when deciding which way to go. But having said that, the differences are very small, but racing is about the infinitesimal :)
The body kit if they can use the single turbo to advantage still won't necessarily help them on street circuits!
Still, we need to reserve judgement until at least Indianapolis.
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JeffX
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TonyE wrote:
CafeDelMar90 wrote:
any links on that? id definitely like to read up on any news of engine development. Ive gotta say its still looking quite grim even if its early days. its going to take a big push from Honda to turn it around this year..fingers crossed. Honda were the ones pushing for manufacterer competition back when it when they were sole suppliers, and now theyre getting theyre wish repayed with interest.
good on ya for supporting Power. As a kiwi it was a race to forget for my driver Dixon, but im confident he'll be back up there come the next race
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http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/98801
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Hmm, sounds like they had the RDX turbo configuration or something ;).
| The Japanese manufacturer, which uses a single turbo layout as opposed to the twin-turbo systems deployed by rivals Chevrolet and Lotus, had brought an update to Long Beach with the aim of addressing a reported deficiency in throttle response. |
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JeffX
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TonyE wrote:
TonyE wrote:
This weekend... ALL weekend.
Wooohooo....
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.....
World Cup.
Cunningham was not doing well yesterday. The Kia was fast.
And there were no Civic Si's, except for the pace car.
The race was fun, very loud as usual, lots of Porsches ( we should all give thanks to Porsche, really) of all types so long as they are 911 shells. The Cadillacs were fast and LOUD.
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World Cup? They played soccer in Long Beach?
here's the official press release from Realtime:
Rain and Sun at the Beach
RealTime Acuras Take Pole and Top Five at Long Beach
LONG BEACH, Calif. (April 16, 2012) – RealTime Racing weathered the highs and lows of race week at the Pirelli World Challenge Long Beach Grand Prix presented by StopTech. Peter Cunningham, of Milwaukee, Wis., kicked things off with the pole position, but a brake line issue resulted in a seventh-place finish. Meanwhile, Nick Esayian, of San Diego, Calif., stormed from eighth on the grid to fourth.
RealTime’s trip to the beach started with a rainy practice session, but Cunningham and Esayian made their own sunshine by putting the No. 42 RealTime/Acura/HPD Acura TSX and No. 34 RealTime/Acura/HPD Acura TSX one-two on the time sheets.
A dry 1.968-mile course greeted the team early Sunday morning for qualifying. Cunningham took full advantage of the conditions and laid down the fastest GTS lap, a 1:29.269 (79.364 mph), and earned his World Challenge record-extending 46th career pole position. Esayian qualified his TSX in eighth.
Both the GT and GTS classes were featured in the World Challenge race at Long Beach. The 17 GTS entries were gridded behind 18 GT cars. When the lights went out on the standing start, polesitter Cunningham found himself stuck behind a stalled GT car, enabling the No. 68 Porsche Caymen S of Jack Baldwin to take the lead. Cunningham fell to third briefly, but was back in second before turn three.
It wasn’t long before Cunningham noticed an issue with his Acura’s brake pressure.
“Street courses are notoriously hard on brakes,” Cunningham said. “But, when the brake pedal went to the floor on lap two, I knew we had a serious problem and I was in for a long race.”
Cunningham did everything he could to hold his ground and admirably kept his car on track for all 50 minutes of the race, but as time ticked away without a full-course yellow, the World Challenge veteran fell to seventh.
“After the race we were able to get a better look at the problem and determine it was a brake line fitting failure. I lost all the fluid in the front brakes, which on a front-wheel drive car, is a huge hurtle to overcome.
“It’s disappointing for sure, especially after our strong performance in practice and qualifying,” Cunningham said. “But we still scored enough points to hang on to second in the Drivers’ and Manufacturers’ points.”
Esayian’s experience at Long Beach was the opposite of his teammates’. Lining up eighth on the GTS grid, the Californian climbed his way through the field to finish fourth, narrowly missing a podium finish. Looking back, Esayian wondered if a yellow flag may have changed his fortunes.
“I was really surprised we went the full race without a yellow flag, especially on a street circuit,” Esayian said. “After the hectic opening laps, I just put my head down and starting picking off cars left and right. By the end I had second and third place in my sights, but the Porsche had checked out. I think if we’d had a couple more laps or a yellow flag, a podium was in the cards for us today, but it didn’t work out that way.
“We were happy to put on a good show for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation though. This group provides scholarship grants to the families of fallen servicemen and women, so their children are ensured a great education. We had a couple Navy SEALs from Coronado join us this weekend and they had a great time.”
Another ray of sunshine on the Long Beach weekend was the return of BuyBrakes.com to the RealTime Acura team. BuyBrakes.com will be featured on the sides of the Acura TSXs for the remainder of the 2012 World Challenge season.
Points
Cunningham remains second in the GTS Drivers’ Championship with 354 points, 61 points behind leader Bell. A top five finish at Long Beach moved Esayian to top five in points with 209. Acura remains second in the Manufacturers’ battle, but the point it scored for the pole helped diminish the extra points Ford earned for second in the race.
Next Up
RealTime Racing now prepares for round three of the Pirelli World Challenge Championships: the Utah Grand Prix at Miller Motorsports Park just outside of Salt Lake City. The race will go green at 2:35 PM MT, Saturday, April 28, and air live on www.world-challengetv.com. Live timing and scoring is available on www.world-challenge.com.
Sponsors
The 2012 season for RealTime Racing is brought to you by Acura, HPD, Red Line Oil, Eibach, Sparco, BOSCH, Brembo, BuyBrakes.com and Total Auto Body. |
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TonyEX
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Jeff wrote:
World Cup? They played soccer in Long Beach?
here's the official press release from Realtime:
[ /I]
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Perdoname... I'm still dizzy from 2010... whenever I see "World" I think of the star on Spain's jerseys.... ;-)
But yes.. Cunningham really fell off the pace.. during the first half of the race he sort of kept up but eventually he _really_ fell off. In one lap the went waaaay back.... and after that he just held off. He must have been pumping/pushing with all his might at the entry of the hairpin...
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Colin
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TonyE wrote:
Honda has an issue now... and I think it's not so much the engine but the teams. Right now, IMHO, the best drivers and teams are using Chevy engines.
Chevy has the power now but perhaps not the reliability. It remains to see what they will do because they can not go on replacing engines as they did. At some point, Honda will tweak up the power and then Chevy will get hosed.
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I agree, how did Honda fail to get either Penske or Andretti? I can understand wanting the Ganassi cars, but maybe Honda could have snatched KV? Maybe they would have tried harder if they knew Barrichello was headed there!?
As for the engines, don't forget that Honda had built a 2.4 before the spec changed to 2.2. Although they denied that this set them back, I can't imagine that it didn't cost them time and money. Hmmm, maybe with a 2.4 the best setup WAS a single turbo?
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CafeDelMar90
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Colin wrote:
TonyE wrote:
Honda has an issue now... and I think it's not so much the engine but the teams. Right now, IMHO, the best drivers and teams are using Chevy engines.
Chevy has the power now but perhaps not the reliability. It remains to see what they will do because they can not go on replacing engines as they did. At some point, Honda will tweak up the power and then Chevy will get hosed.
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I agree, how did Honda fail to get either Penske or Andretti? I can understand wanting the Ganassi cars, but maybe Honda could have snatched KV? Maybe they would have tried harder if they knew Barrichello was headed there!?
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as i understand it Roger Penske ower of Penske and who also co-owns Ilmor wanted to stay with Honda, but near the end of last year Honda told him that they wanted to go-it-alone for next year and beyond. Given that he wanted his busineess to continue, Penske went to Chevrolet to see if he could get a deal done. Lo and behold, a few months later you see the so far dominating Illmor-Chevy engines that have won all the races.
I really wish Honda did stick with ilmor but maybe it was the ongoing relationship with Wirth Engineering in LMP that made them stick with Wirth in desinging the Aero kit for Indy?
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sadlerau
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Honda's relationship with Wirth would have no bearing on any relations with Ilmor. But I can understand why they wold not want to go with Ilmor with the engines - Honda's engineers would be learning nothing about engine design and developemnt if Ilmor were involved. They have to take some pain initially, but if the engineers can learn, then it is pain worth bearing.
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Colin
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CafeDelMar90 wrote:
Colin wrote:
TonyE wrote:
Honda has an issue now... and I think it's not so much the engine but the teams. Right now, IMHO, the best drivers and teams are using Chevy engines.
Chevy has the power now but perhaps not the reliability. It remains to see what they will do because they can not go on replacing engines as they did. At some point, Honda will tweak up the power and then Chevy will get hosed.
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I agree, how did Honda fail to get either Penske or Andretti? I can understand wanting the Ganassi cars, but maybe Honda could have snatched KV? Maybe they would have tried harder if they knew Barrichello was headed there!?
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as i understand it Roger Penske ower of Penske and who also co-owns Ilmor wanted to stay with Honda, but near the end of last year Honda told him that they wanted to go-it-alone for next year and beyond. Given that he wanted his busineess to continue, Penske went to Chevrolet to see if he could get a deal done. Lo and behold, a few months later you see the so far dominating Illmor-Chevy engines that have won all the races.
I really wish Honda did stick with ilmor but maybe it was the ongoing relationship with Wirth Engineering in LMP that made them stick with Wirth in desinging the Aero kit for Indy?
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Yeah, I kinda know the history there. I was just thinking that the stats didn't tell the whole story. IMO, the only frontrunning Honda 'failure' was Dixon. Franchitti??? not sure of his problems all season but I don't think they're engine related. Newgarden was contact, Sato was contact, Rahal contact so it's still hard to say that the problem is the engines themselves or the teams/drivers?
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TonyEX
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Colin wrote:
Yeah, I kinda know the history there. I was just thinking that the stats didn't tell the whole story. IMO, the only frontrunning Honda 'failure' was Dixon. Franchitti??? not sure of his problems all season but I don't think they're engine related. Newgarden was contact, Sato was contact, Rahal contact so it's still hard to say that the problem is the engines themselves or the teams/drivers?
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Franchitti's car was understeering.
Nothing wrong with his engine... on Saturday he was one of the fastest qualifiers.
Sato was running strong. I think he started to back off in the last 10 laps to conserve fuel. (And I also think his tires were wearing off - saw him swerve too much through turn 10 in the last two penultimate laps (before he got shunted).
I think the issue at Long Beach might have been that the Honda single turbo setup doesn't have the low end of the Chevy twin turbo.
Since LB is a street race with lots of tight turns it's not a top end, top speed track like an oval. The need here is to for low end torque to race from turn to turn.
Ergo, the Chevy setup was more optimum for LB (and most street races).
We'll see what happens in the ovals... of course, by then Honda might have shifted to twin turbos so this whole issue will be moot.
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DrWhiner
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sadlerau wrote:
It is still early days. Honda decided to go with a single turbo set up which has put them at a disadvantage on street and conventional type circuits, but might be an advantage on ovals. They had actually brought an up-dated turbo for this round, but were not allowed to use it after the Chevy teams protested their use. Not sure of the political/regulation reasons for this, hopefully someone with more knowledge will fill us in. But hopefully this new turbo will fix Honda's problems or else it will have been a very poor effort to go with only a single turbo?
You must also remember that Will Power has dominated the start of the season for the last 3 years, so nothing new there. It is only later in the season that Franchitti closed the gap and eventually won. And I am expecting big things from Pagenaud, it's about time he took a championship.
Have a thought for how confused my feelings are in these races, as an Aussie I want Power and Briscoe to win, but they are driving Chevys!! :(
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"Motorsport: Honda hoping to get boost from engine changes
Teams using Honda engines at the Sao Paulo 300 are expecting to see an improvement in performance this weekend after changes have been allowed to the cars' turbochargers.
A panel upheld an IndyCar decision to allow the changes, and the six teams using Honda power are expected to have the modified engines ready to go for the first practice session of the weekend on Saturday.
The new engines will have a new compressor cover on their single turbochargers, something Honda says will help reduce the power disadvantage to the twin turbochargers from Lotus and Chevrolet." http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=10802091
Note:
- Honda wanted to make the changes before the Long Beach race two weeks ago.
- Franchitti said he believed that BorgWarner, the turbo supplier to the IndyCar teams, intended to make the changes earlier but couldn't get the parts fast enough.
- Honda said the change had been approved before the season started.
- "The new compressor cover helps to offset the performance disadvantage of the current IndyCar single turbo hardware as measured by IndyCar's turbo supplier," Honda said in a statement. "This correction was designed and provided by the turbo supplier under the direction of IndyCar and was approved prior to the 2012 season."
I think there is report that Honda will have race cars designed in-house next year that will be able to take full advantage of the benefits from using a smaller single turbo (compare with twin turbo).
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Bullwinkle
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DrWhiner wrote:
sadlerau wrote:
It is still early days. Honda decided to go with a single turbo set up which has put them at a disadvantage on street and conventional type circuits, but might be an advantage on ovals. They had actually brought an up-dated turbo for this round, but were not allowed to use it after the Chevy teams protested their use. Not sure of the political/regulation reasons for this, hopefully someone with more knowledge will fill us in. But hopefully this new turbo will fix Honda's problems or else it will have been a very poor effort to go with only a single turbo?
You must also remember that Will Power has dominated the start of the season for the last 3 years, so nothing new there. It is only later in the season that Franchitti closed the gap and eventually won. And I am expecting big things from Pagenaud, it's about time he took a championship.
Have a thought for how confused my feelings are in these races, as an Aussie I want Power and Briscoe to win, but they are driving Chevys!! :(
|
"Motorsport: Honda hoping to get boost from engine changes
Teams using Honda engines at the Sao Paulo 300 are expecting to see an improvement in performance this weekend after changes have been allowed to the cars' turbochargers.
A panel upheld an IndyCar decision to allow the changes, and the six teams using Honda power are expected to have the modified engines ready to go for the first practice session of the weekend on Saturday.
The new engines will have a new compressor cover on their single turbochargers, something Honda says will help reduce the power disadvantage to the twin turbochargers from Lotus and Chevrolet." http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=10802091
Note:
- Honda wanted to make the changes before the Long Beach race two weeks ago.
- Franchitti said he believed that BorgWarner, the turbo supplier to the IndyCar teams, intended to make the changes earlier but couldn't get the parts fast enough.
- Honda said the change had been approved before the season started.
- "The new compressor cover helps to offset the performance disadvantage of the current IndyCar single turbo hardware as measured by IndyCar's turbo supplier," Honda said in a statement. "This correction was designed and provided by the turbo supplier under the direction of IndyCar and was approved prior to the 2012 season."
I think there is report that Honda will have race cars designed in-house next year that will be able to take full advantage of the benefits from using a smaller single turbo (compare with twin turbo).
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There is a good article explaining the specifics of this turbo issue on SpeedTV.com:
http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/indycar-hondas-turbo-change-explained
As to 2013, Honda is having Nick Wirth design an Aero kit for its indycars. The packaging of the Honda engine (wider V angle than the others as well as single turbo) should allow an aero kit with significantly reduced drag and better balance. But it can't be used until next season.
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