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Chicagoland
By A.J. Foyt
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photo by Ron McQueeney |
The Delphi Indy 300 Indy car race at Chicagoland Speedway was one
of the best that the IndyCar Series ran this year. From start to
finish, it was exciting. And what a finish! It was the closest in
history for the IRL when the cars were three-wide. The difference
between first and third was one-hundredth of a second or an eye-blink.
Our race was a little less spectacular and I was very disappointed
with the overall performance of the car. A.J. Foyt IV was flat out in
qualifying and the best he could manage was a high 217 mph lap in the
Conseco Dallara. When a driver is flat out and he goes that slow
(compared to the guy on the pole who ran 223), you have to look more
closely at the car.
I did that and I did not like what I saw. Trouble was, a lot of it had
to be fixed at the shop.
 Looking back, there were a couple of areas where my guys had become
sloppy. The car should have been more aerodynamic or slicker, because
on these high speed race tracks, the way the car moves through the air
is critical.
In the race, we had some handling problems. The car was pushing which
I could see on the telemetry because A.J. IV would have to lift
through the turns and wait for the car before he could get back on the
throttle. It wasn't much but with the cars running as close as they
are, it doesn't take much to fall behind the pack.
We made some changes to the car on the first pitstop but it didn't
help get rid of the push as much as it should have. On our second
pitstop we found out why. It had to do with the way the rear tires
grew in size as they came up to pressure. In this case, the left rear
tire grew more than the right rear so we lost some of the stagger in
the rear of the car.
Now this could get a little complicated to explain but I'll try so you
know what I mean by stagger.
Stagger is the relationship between the circumferences of the inside
and outside tires on either the front or rear of the race car. If you
have no stagger then the circumferences of the inside and outside rear
tires are the same. You have stagger when the outside tire's
circumference is greater than the inside tire's circumference.
The easiest way to think of it is the way Jack Arute once explained it
on TV at the Indy 500. He used a paper cup. He turned the cup on its
side and the brim of the cup was higher than the bottom of the cup.
On a race car, the right rear tire would be the brim of the cup and
the left rear would be the bottom of the cup. Roll the cup and it
won't roll in a straight line. Stagger helps the car turn through the
corners. You don't need a lot on an Indy car because of the size of
the tracks they run but you do need some and the amount is critical to
the handling. Too much stagger and the car will become loose because
the back end will want to snap around. Too little and the car will
push because there isn't enough stagger to help turn the car.
Anyway, we got it figured out and towards the end of the race, we
finally got the car handling pretty decent and A.J. IV was able to run
some competitive lap times. He still wasn't real good by himself but
at least he could hang with the pack and even pass some cars that were
having moiré problems than we were. He finished 17th but that was
because he lost a couple laps in the beginning when the car wasn't
handling.
The good news is that Team Conseco is doing good on pit stops. All of
the full tank pit stops were in the 9 to 10 second range. That had
been a weak area in the beginning of the year but we switched some
people around and since then the stops have been fast and more
important, consistent.
The other good thing is that we were able to take a poor handling car
and change it for the better during the race. Maybe I'm getting good
at seeing the silver lining to the dark clouds but it is real
important that a team and a driver can work together during the high
pressure conditions of a race to correct handling problems with the
car.
You always hope you start out with a perfect set-up and sometimes you
do but then the track changes and you have to know how to adjust the
car so it continues to handle when the track gets hot and greasy.
A.J. IV is getting better at diagnosing the problem and we're getting
better at figuring out what he wants so he feels comfortable in a car.
I sound like a broken record but I think Team Conseco and A.J. Foyt IV
are getting better all the time. We still have some problems that need
fixing but we're working on them. |
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