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An interview with John Dick
of Super Aguri Fernandez Racing.
By Miles Nelson
Originally published by
OpenWheelRacing.Com
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In 1994, I was a rookie “yellow shirt” at the Indy 500, working on pit road and assigned to a station next to the Pro Formance Racing pit. John Dick was the Chief Mechanic and John Paul Jr. was the driver, and against long odds, the team managed to make the 500. IIRC, the team had a year-old Lola with a Chevy “C” engine, the only example of that combination to make the race. That year at Indy was a lot of fun, mostly because of John Dick and that Phoenix-based crew. I saw John later that year when I “worked” the first Brickyard 400. After a stint in NASCARland, John worked for Team Green before heading up the Blair Racing IRL team. Last year John took over the same duties at SAF Racing. While I knew John was with SAF, I never approached him until today. I introduced myself and reminded him of when and where we met, surprisingly, he remembered me. I wasn’t prepared to do an interview, but what started out as a couple of innocent questions, became a full scale question and answer session. I am posting this from memory, and I want to be very careful not to put any words in John’s mouth.
OWR, “John, what made SAF Racing switch from the Dallara to the G Force, was it at Honda’s request?”
JD, “Let’s see, how can I answer this and still remain politically correct? Let’s just say that Honda wanted to have both chassis options well covered, so SAF and Team Rahal went with the G Force chassis.”
OWR, “Based on the Homestead results, do you have any regrets? Does SAF still have their Dallara’s?”
JD, “It is too early to tell, I think the Homestead results were skewed, they didn’t have a tech inspection there, and some of the teams ran underweight, some made unapproved aero changes and some blocked off their air outlets, they shouldn’t run the test that way. Yes, we do have our Dallara’s”
OWR, “The Homestead results indicated that there was a wider gap in speed between the Dallara Honda and the G Force Honda than that of teams using the same engines with the Dallara chassis, was that indicative of an aero/drag issue, or an air outlet problem?”
JD, “First you must remember that both Team Rahal and our team were in their first test session with the G Force cars, but I think most of the problem was with the airbox. Dallara may have spent $1 million on the airbox alone. In addition, Dallara does a much better job in working with their teams, by supplying more technical data and help.
OWR, “I see that SAF has a modified air scoop ready to go, it looks somewhat different than the Ganassi version, and did the teams make their own modifications?
JD, “Yes we did make ours, obviously we won’t be able to race anything other than the G Force made and IndyCar approved version, but we needed to find out how it will work on a Honda engine.
OWR, “I had heard that the sidepod modification tested by TCGR at Homestead had been approved, is that true.
JD, “Yes as you can see over there, some other teams have them. Those are G Force produced pieces and have been approved.” (OWR note; John was indicating the sidepods from the Rahal car, they added the sidepod modification but hadn’t made the air inlet change, while SAF had done just the opposite.)
OWR, “Last season it was the Dallara that supposedly had more drag and downforce, with handling being at a premium at PIR, do you think the opposite is now the case this season, and if so, do you think that we will see the G Force get the better of the Dallara tomorrow?
JD, “Based on what data I have seen, the G Force should do better here, we will soon find out.”
OWR, “with all preseason high-speed testing completed at Homestead, do you think you have learned enough to be comfortable going back there and racing the G Force, or would consider changing back to the Dallara?
JD, “We should be ok, we will learn what we can here, and then G Force will make whatever changes that are needed to the cars.
OWR, “It has always been rumored that AGR uses different engines than SAF, Team Rahal and Access, is that true?
JD, “Yes, that is true, AGR gets their engines directly from Honda, while ours come from Ilmor.”
OWR, “With every Toyota team with the exception of Foyt able to win in 2003, could that force a change in the Honda approach, whereby all the teams would get the same engines?
JD, “No, I don’t think so.
OWR, “Are you comfortable with the driver change from Roger Yasukawa to Kosuke Matsuura, and with his limited oval experience, will Matsuura be ok here?”
JD, “I only wish that we could have ran two cars so that we could have the both of them, Roger had learned what it takes to run these cars on the ovals, Kosuke will be ok here.”
OWR, (note, here it comes, my one-man crusade)“John, with three engine manufacturers each having a plenum of different size and shape, coupled to the two dissimilar air inlets of the Dallara and G Force, could one manufacturer have an advantage over the others?”
JD, “possibly, I think the series should have supplied the plenums, to assure everyone is the same, yes, possibly. This temporary change has cost a lot of money, and it would have been so easy to fix it by putting a restrictor in the air inlets. If one chassis manufacturer ended up with an advantage, all you would have had to do is change the restrictor size until you got it right”
I would like to thank John Dick for taking the time to thoughtfully answer all of the questions I asked, he never held anything back. John was careful in answering me when I asked the reasoning behind the switch to the G Force, I told him I wouldn’t mind a “no comment,” and “that I would be posting his answer.” In addition, I never got the feeling that possible road racing was an issue in the G Force decision.
In closing, I asked John one more question, regarding his team owner, Adrian Fernandez and how things were going with the OWRS/CART operation?”
JD, “We had a good test last week at Sebring, the car was really fast, everything went very well.”
OWR, “How do you think the new series will do, and how many races do you think they will run?"
JD, “ It is hard to tell, so far they have only talked about spending money, CART went through $86 million last year, even if OWRS does come up with 18 teams, with each able to run out of their own pockets, they will still probably have to spend more than a quarter of that amount, say $26 million, of their own money, I don’t know how ready they are to do that? (I added, “And for how long?”) I thought it was interesting that John joined the team at Sebring, before coming here, but he was in Florida anyway, for Homestead.
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