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This
afternoon I met with Roger Griffiths, Technical Group Leader-Race Team,
Honda Performance Development in a 30-minute, one-on-one Q&A. Roger
came to Honda from Cosworth in their final CART season.
One other thing, here are the Honda engine lease costs:
Full year lease: $1.1 million
Full month of Indy lease: $225,000
"Second Week" Indy lease:
$95,000
O/IRR:
Roger, after seeing speed increases at the first three oval track races of
2007 we had expected to see 230 mph plus speeds at Indy, I felt the pole
would take a 229 mph average, with a lap or more above 230, where did the
speed go?
Roger:
We saw that as a possibility as well, but in conversations with Brian
Barnhart he made it clear that he didn’t want 230-mph speeds, and might
be happier at 222-mph. It isn’t easy to detune a proven engine package
that you race every week for just one event, but there are ways to limit
the performance. We were concerned that the teams, with 5 years of
experience with these cars, would find a 2-mph speed gain, and we could
see another mph gain from this 3.5 liter engine. That could have meant
232-mph laps, and nobody wanted that.
O/IRR:
Are you saying that you left the engine alone and made the changes/speed
reductions electronically, through the ECU?
Roger: Yes,
they were made with the ECU. While the ECU’s are the same, that
doesn’t mean what was in them was though.
O/IRR: Did the
teams practice at Indy with the same engines they ran in the race at
Kansas Speedway? Didn’t they use the Motegi engine to practice with last
year?
Roger: No, they started with fresh engines this year, just as they
had last year.
O/IRR: What were the mileage limits on the engines this year?
Roger:
There were two programs, first the full month, 2-engine plan including a
practice and race engine. The practice engine was limited to 1,200 miles.
The other package, for the lack of a better term, was a “2nd week
program” with just one engine allowed for 500 practice miles and the
500-mile race distance. We monitored both programs closely, even though
teams did all they could to find ways around the limit, asking things
like, “do pit practice laps count too?” Yes, every lap was counted,
and there weren’t any exceptions.
O/IRR:
I guess that’s why three drivers with high-mileage engines had to sit
out some practice sessions late last week. When PJ Jones was having handling
difficulties and didn’t have the speed needed to make a qualifying run
and was about topped out on practice miles, the team was told they could
run three more practice laps and that’s all, were you allowing him to
run past he mileage limit?
Roger:
We wanted to give him a fair chance, and we didn’t want to do anything
to interfere with the final minutes of Bump Day excitement either. All
month we monitored mileage with both programs and kept teams informed
about how much mileage they had left, but never told teams how they should
use those miles. That team must have felt they needed to be on the track
sorting out those problems, other teams were up to speed within 150 miles.
All engines used at Indy were fresh when the teams got them with the
exception of those used in ROP, the ROP engines had been used elsewhere,
so those teams had a chance to run ROP and still run all their practice
miles as well. (On edit, I just looked at total
laps run through Bump Day, and
with 480 being the 1,200 mile figure and 200 laps equaling 500 miles,
nobody went over the limit, with Sarah Fisher and Dan Wheldon coming the
closest 1195 miles. On the "2nd week side," Jimmy Kite actually
did go past the 500 mile maximum during his last "Q" run by 5
miles. Had PJ Jones made a full "Q" run, he would have as well.
O/IRR:
Will these engines that are used in the 500 be run again?
Roger:
Yes, they will be run at Milwaukee and then at Texas. Last year Sam
Hornish ran the engine he won the Indy 500 with at Watkins Glen, and then
won the pole at Texas with it the week after that.
O/IRR:
So Roger Penske wasn’t able to retire the car and engine that won the
2006 Indy 500, will he eventually be able to get that engine back to keep
as part of the winning race combination?
Roger:
Nobody gets to keep the engines.
O/IRR:
The engines used last year were very reliable, I think I recall Sam
Hornish losing one and perhaps one or two others, is that correct?
Roger:
Last year we ran over 180,000 race miles with three engine failures.
You’re correct; Hornish had one engine failure along with one each for
Vitor Meira and Buddy Rice. This year at Indy we have run over 33,000
practice miles without an engine failure. (I had already crunched those
numbers, through today the total miles run were around 34,300).
O/IRR:
Regarding engine distribution; are both HPD and Ilmor still rebuilding the
engines, and how are they issued?
Roger:
With every rebuild cycle HPD builds engines for four drivers and Ilmor
builds the remainder, the dyno numbers are virtually identical regardless
of which company builds them. The HPD engines are then shipped to Ilmor in
Michigan and given to the IRL for distribution.
O/IRR:
Does HPD always supply the engines for the same four drivers?
Roger:
No, we don’t know which drivers will get the engines; we ship them out
to Ilmor and IndyCar officials by serial number.
O/IRR:
Are the ECU’s distributed randomly as well?
Roger:
No, and we rarely change out ECU’s. At times there have been teams that
felt that some of their problems were ECU related, and we changed them,
but the results were the same.
O/IRR:
There were allegations of cheating leveled at one team after the first
week of qualifying, I’ve never seen an official mention as to the team,
so we’ll leave out the names, what can you tell me about that? What made
Honda engineers first think something might an amiss, did it show up in
the engine data, and did it involve the exhaust gas temperatures?
Roger:
We first saw it in LAMBDA (an exhaust sensor that provides more
information than EGT) sensor and our first thought was that something was
wrong with the sensors. We then checked the results from other cars, and
they were normal. Then we thought that perhaps there was something wrong
with the fuel in one of the tanks on pit road. We had a fuel sample that
was taken from the car previously, so we checked that against what was in
all the other tanks on pit road and it turned out to be a one car only
situation, at that point we turned our findings over to series officials,
that’s their area of responsibility.
O/IRR:
Were the teams using their own pit-side tanks or ones provided by IMS on
pit road? Also, can you tell me how the methanol got into the system; was
it stored, pumped and injected or simply added to the tank?
Roger:
All teams were using IMS provided tanks in the pits. Lets just say we
found the methanol in the fuel and leave it at that.
O/IRR:
How much methanol would be needed in the mix to make an appreciable
difference?
Roger:
“Appreciable?”
O/IRR:
OK, lets say “noticeable” instead?
Roger:
What did Brian Barnhart say, about 27% methanol, wasn’t that the figure
he used?
O/IRR:
I’m thinking that you would need around 4.5 gallons minimum for a
“Q” run to be safe from running dry (nod’s of agreement here). That
would be a little over a gallon of methanol (probably 1.25 gallons as I do
the math as an afterthought).
O/IRR:
The Panoz situation, why was a modification needed to the cooling system
after the switch to 98% Ethanol?
Roger:
When we agreed to run Ethanol we were concerned with the amount of heat it
“rejected,” so we contacted both Dallara and Panoz and gave them the
data and asked if their cars could handle that amount of ‘heat
rejection?” Dallara replied that theirs could or could be made to, but
Panoz answered that they were concerned that if the Indy 500 was run in
100-degree temperatures there might be some problems. That’s why we
decided that the Panoz car would have to be modified if they were going to
be allowed to run. All Panoz cars that qualified have been modified.
O/IRR:
Now that there is a modification in place, would Honda have a problem with
teams running those chassis in future races?
Roger:
I am not sure they would be legal, that would be up to the IRL.
O/IRR: In
2005, the year Honda dominated the series and the last year Honda raced
against Chevy and Toyota and winning with three teams and about seven
drivers; there were always claims and suspicions that Danica Patrick got
“select” engines. Did all Honda teams get the same engines, whether
from HPD, as with Andretti Green or Ilmor for RLR and Fernandez?
Roger:
In 2005 Honda only had one R&D team/driver that got all the latest
engines, for better or for worse.
O/IRR:
That wasn’t Danica Patrick’s team, would that have been Brian Herta
and AGR?
Roger:
Yes, and all he got out of it was the dominant win at Michigan and a lot
of things that didn’t work out so well.
O/IRR:
Lets look at the future, providing engines and support for the IndyCar
series has to be very costly, there are all kinds of rumors floating
around in cyberspace about just how expensive it is, can we talk about the
budget?
Roger:
No, there are two things I don’t talk about, budges and horsepower.
O/IRR:
Well I tried, and I had to ask, lets try another tough one. Honda is
committed to IndyCar through 2009, are there any plans to continue beyond
that you can talk about now?
Roger:
Yes its true, we are going to be in the series through 2009 (laughs).
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