bigbadbrother
03-13-2015, 03:59 PM
Bruce Martin
In a world of superstition, “Friday the 13th” is often a day where imagination takes over and simple mistakes throughout the day take on the lure of “Bad Luck.” But Friday, March 13 has a special meaning to the Verizon IndyCar Series and once again it is exemplified by the world of imagination.
It’s the first day teams can test the Chevrolet and Honda Aero Kits that will give each manufacturer a distinctly different look. And many of those teams hope to work up a little “Black Magic” in the world of “Voodoo” with a test at NOLA Motorsports Park just outside of New Orleans.
When INDYCAR announced the advent of “Aero Kits” to change the look and performance of the Dallara DW12 chassis, engineers at Chevrolet and Honda were literally given a clean sheet of paper to devise the designs for each kit. The final product shows imagination and creativity even if the new kits look like a youngster has gone wild with his set of Lego’s.
To the small but very vocal collection of IndyCar fans many of them have screamed for change for years but when given something that looks different they immediately object. Some fans claim the Aero Kits are “so ugly as to scare small children.”
But to the engineers and team strategists in the Verizon IndyCar Series beauty is defined by speed.
“How it looks is an interesting question,” said Mike Hull, the managing director of Target/Chip Ganassi Racing – a Chevrolet team. “What it is going to look like to a fan particularly up close and personal if somebody goes to the St. Pete race even though it’s a street race with tight confines you are going to see speed because the kit provides a lot more downforce than what we have with the DW12 so you are going to see speed.
“I prefer a car that goes really fast. We can get used to the way a car looks if it goes really fast. You can look at any race car in any series and say the same thing about it. The visual beauty of a race car is in the eye of the beholder. What is aesthetically pleasing to you and to me but not be pleasing to somebody else. I think the aesthetical part of it may be generational and not necessarily broad fan based.
“If you take a kid that is 12 years old and ask them to draw a race car and ask a 50-year-old to do that you get two different pictures. It all depends on what you like that perceives how you will see the car.”
Steve Eriksen is the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Honda Performance Development (HPD). Chevrolet was the first to release its renderings of the final Aero Kit on Feb. 17 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Eriksen and Honda didn’t show its Aero Kit until this past Monday at an event in Culver City, California.
The beauty of the designs is both manufacturers took two different approaches to its Aero Kits.
“I thought Chevrolet took a very different approach to solving the same problem than we did and I was pleased because it makes for variety for the fans to be able to tell the two manufacturers apart,” Eriksen told FOXSports.com “I think they are coming at it from their experience and we are coming at it from our experience. The two backgrounds aren’t exactly the same so you end up with two different solutions.”
9 March, 2015, Culver City, California USA Honda Racing unveils the 2015 IndyCar Aero Kit in Los Angeles. Courtesy of Honda Racing ©2015, Honda Racing LAT Photo USA
From first glance it looks like Chevrolet’s kit eliminated speed-robbing drag while Honda went all in on providing more downforce.
“It’s hard to say because I’m not an aerodynamicist by training how draggy the designs Chevrolet has worked out are,” Eriksen admitted. “The renderings in the car that we showed is what would be appropriate for a road and street course include so many options that what you see there are not necessarily what you would see on another circuit in road and street course category because you are tailoring it to the characteristics of the specific track.
“There are some tracks where you will take as much downforce as you can possibly make and don’t care how much drag you are putting on. There are other tracks where drag is absolutely vital so you are in a completely different mode.”
Chevrolet officials said its Aero Kit has 123 pieces. Honda’s Aero Kit has close to 200 different bits and pieces, winglets and scoops and additional body parts. Keep in mind that not all of these pieces are required, most are optional, which opens a Rubik’s Cube of setups that each team’s engineers can devise on any given race weekend.
“That is another element of interest for the Aero Kits is the regulations allow you to run a different configuration from qualifying than for the race,” Eriksen said. “In qualifying, it’s all about the quickest lap time regardless of fuel economy. In the race you are going to make a race able car that doesn’t do bad on fuel economy and gives you the ability to deal with two different sets of tires. In qualifying, it’s the optimum set of tires for the optimum set of laps you need to get pole position.
“With the combination of the two you will have a very interesting trade-off. Do you target passing at the end of a long straight or is there another spot on the course where you can target passing in the more twisty sections? It will be interesting to see which pieces get used and which flap angles and where whickers are used or not used and what parts are not put on because you will have quite a bit of control on the aero balance of the car, the drag, the downforce, the characteristics that impact tire degradation. It’s a complex puzzle but it’s nice to have the flexibility to adjust it and tune it to those things.”
Testing of Aero Kit pieces and designs were done in secrecy during the offseason but the Homologation deadline was Jan. 18. That is when all plans, drawings, blueprints, CAD designs and other data had to be “locked in” and turned over to INDYCAR for final approval. The individual parts were tested independent of the overall kit so today’s road course test at NOLA Motorsports Park is the first time the complete Honda kit will be on the race cars.
“This will be a fully production representative kit rather than prototype components,” Eriksen said. “These will be the real pieces all coming together and teams can test from March 13 onward. Before, we never had all the pieces on the car at the same time. All the pieces that we feel are representative of a good starting spec. We have wind tunnel results and straight-line results of all the pieces but we don’t have traditional on-track running with all the pieces.”
With dramatically increased downforce, drivers will have to adjust their driving style, as the IndyCars do not have power steering unlike other forms of racing.
In a world of superstition, “Friday the 13th” is often a day where imagination takes over and simple mistakes throughout the day take on the lure of “Bad Luck.” But Friday, March 13 has a special meaning to the Verizon IndyCar Series and once again it is exemplified by the world of imagination.
It’s the first day teams can test the Chevrolet and Honda Aero Kits that will give each manufacturer a distinctly different look. And many of those teams hope to work up a little “Black Magic” in the world of “Voodoo” with a test at NOLA Motorsports Park just outside of New Orleans.
When INDYCAR announced the advent of “Aero Kits” to change the look and performance of the Dallara DW12 chassis, engineers at Chevrolet and Honda were literally given a clean sheet of paper to devise the designs for each kit. The final product shows imagination and creativity even if the new kits look like a youngster has gone wild with his set of Lego’s.
To the small but very vocal collection of IndyCar fans many of them have screamed for change for years but when given something that looks different they immediately object. Some fans claim the Aero Kits are “so ugly as to scare small children.”
But to the engineers and team strategists in the Verizon IndyCar Series beauty is defined by speed.
“How it looks is an interesting question,” said Mike Hull, the managing director of Target/Chip Ganassi Racing – a Chevrolet team. “What it is going to look like to a fan particularly up close and personal if somebody goes to the St. Pete race even though it’s a street race with tight confines you are going to see speed because the kit provides a lot more downforce than what we have with the DW12 so you are going to see speed.
“I prefer a car that goes really fast. We can get used to the way a car looks if it goes really fast. You can look at any race car in any series and say the same thing about it. The visual beauty of a race car is in the eye of the beholder. What is aesthetically pleasing to you and to me but not be pleasing to somebody else. I think the aesthetical part of it may be generational and not necessarily broad fan based.
“If you take a kid that is 12 years old and ask them to draw a race car and ask a 50-year-old to do that you get two different pictures. It all depends on what you like that perceives how you will see the car.”
Steve Eriksen is the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Honda Performance Development (HPD). Chevrolet was the first to release its renderings of the final Aero Kit on Feb. 17 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Eriksen and Honda didn’t show its Aero Kit until this past Monday at an event in Culver City, California.
The beauty of the designs is both manufacturers took two different approaches to its Aero Kits.
“I thought Chevrolet took a very different approach to solving the same problem than we did and I was pleased because it makes for variety for the fans to be able to tell the two manufacturers apart,” Eriksen told FOXSports.com “I think they are coming at it from their experience and we are coming at it from our experience. The two backgrounds aren’t exactly the same so you end up with two different solutions.”
9 March, 2015, Culver City, California USA Honda Racing unveils the 2015 IndyCar Aero Kit in Los Angeles. Courtesy of Honda Racing ©2015, Honda Racing LAT Photo USA
From first glance it looks like Chevrolet’s kit eliminated speed-robbing drag while Honda went all in on providing more downforce.
“It’s hard to say because I’m not an aerodynamicist by training how draggy the designs Chevrolet has worked out are,” Eriksen admitted. “The renderings in the car that we showed is what would be appropriate for a road and street course include so many options that what you see there are not necessarily what you would see on another circuit in road and street course category because you are tailoring it to the characteristics of the specific track.
“There are some tracks where you will take as much downforce as you can possibly make and don’t care how much drag you are putting on. There are other tracks where drag is absolutely vital so you are in a completely different mode.”
Chevrolet officials said its Aero Kit has 123 pieces. Honda’s Aero Kit has close to 200 different bits and pieces, winglets and scoops and additional body parts. Keep in mind that not all of these pieces are required, most are optional, which opens a Rubik’s Cube of setups that each team’s engineers can devise on any given race weekend.
“That is another element of interest for the Aero Kits is the regulations allow you to run a different configuration from qualifying than for the race,” Eriksen said. “In qualifying, it’s all about the quickest lap time regardless of fuel economy. In the race you are going to make a race able car that doesn’t do bad on fuel economy and gives you the ability to deal with two different sets of tires. In qualifying, it’s the optimum set of tires for the optimum set of laps you need to get pole position.
“With the combination of the two you will have a very interesting trade-off. Do you target passing at the end of a long straight or is there another spot on the course where you can target passing in the more twisty sections? It will be interesting to see which pieces get used and which flap angles and where whickers are used or not used and what parts are not put on because you will have quite a bit of control on the aero balance of the car, the drag, the downforce, the characteristics that impact tire degradation. It’s a complex puzzle but it’s nice to have the flexibility to adjust it and tune it to those things.”
Testing of Aero Kit pieces and designs were done in secrecy during the offseason but the Homologation deadline was Jan. 18. That is when all plans, drawings, blueprints, CAD designs and other data had to be “locked in” and turned over to INDYCAR for final approval. The individual parts were tested independent of the overall kit so today’s road course test at NOLA Motorsports Park is the first time the complete Honda kit will be on the race cars.
“This will be a fully production representative kit rather than prototype components,” Eriksen said. “These will be the real pieces all coming together and teams can test from March 13 onward. Before, we never had all the pieces on the car at the same time. All the pieces that we feel are representative of a good starting spec. We have wind tunnel results and straight-line results of all the pieces but we don’t have traditional on-track running with all the pieces.”
With dramatically increased downforce, drivers will have to adjust their driving style, as the IndyCars do not have power steering unlike other forms of racing.