Rd.2 PHOENIX RACING REPORT BY MARCUS SIMMONS
To finish 15th doesn’t sound like a racing driver’s objective from any weekend, but for Takuma Sato to do that on the Verizon IndyCar Series’ return to the famous one-mile Phoenix oval was not a bad result at all.
The Japanese had suffered an enormous accident in the #14 AJ Foyt Racing Dallara-Honda right at the beginning of Friday practice and, after a fantastic rebuild job on the car by the team and a bit of medical advice from the doctors for the driver, he was able to finish the race in 15th position, one lap down. Useful points on the board, despite having gone into the race with effectively less than 10 minutes of running over the weekend.
“I’ve still got a little bit of a headache and I’m tired a little bit,” he said the day after the race. “But I had some painkillers for the race under the supervision of the doctors. The impact was huge – 78G! Not the biggest I’ve had, but close. The impact reminded me of my 2010 Indianapolis 500 practice crash.”
The whole weekend was somewhat disappointing for all the Honda teams, with all the manufacturer’s cars slower than all but one of the rival Chevrolets in practice and qualifying. “It was a nightmare,” said Sato. “Over the winter we had an open test here a month ago. It was a two-day test, with a day session and a night session. Both went relatively smoothly and I was quite satisfied with how it went. We reviewed all the things since then and brought a package slightly different for our qualifying simulation.
“Usually we go through practice and then concentrate on qualifying runs in the end with new tyres, but because the tyres were limited, and especially because I was top 10 in the championship after St Petersburg, I didn’t get an extra set because of the rules. We did a little bit of a Penske-ish programme but maybe we were overconfident. The big teams often go straight into a qualifying simulation on new tyres, but you need to be really prepared well and have big resources and know exactly what’s going to happen. We can probably now say we weren’t so much.
“We brought a few new things on the car, which we should have tested individually to know exactly what they do before we went to qualifying trim. We just asked too much of the car – there was not much aerodynamic downforce, critically the actual aero balance was much further forward than what the calculator said, and this track is violent: you pull close to 5G in qualifying trim!”
Sato’s car snapped out of control and he backed heavily rearwards into the wall, an accident that was replicated soon afterwards by James Hinchcliffe and Carlos Munoz. “Oval racing is such details,” said Taku. “You have a minimum slip angle to not scrub off speed, and in qualifying the car is almost neutral – feels like zero-steering. But it means the rear is about to go any time. Phoenix Turn 1 has such a tight radius – it has high banking but it’s very tricky and it’s still progressing as you turn in. It was the third lap, I wasn’t even flat yet but the back of the car went into an instantaneous spin. I was only a passenger.”
Sato therefore missed qualifying – meaning he would start the race 20th – as well as the post-qualifying practice session, while the Foyt boys rebuilt the #14 car. Then, thanks to discretion from IndyCar officials, he was allowed a five-minute practice run to get back into the groove. “You are only allowed one system-check run – one lap out and in,” he explained. “But IndyCar gave us a five-minute run. We really appreciated that.
“If you have an accident from your own mistake you understand it, and when you get back in the car you are flat-out immediately. But this kind of situation takes your confidence away so much. I hadn’t felt like this for five or six years. It was tricky to feel the car well. Coming through Turn 2 every 20 seconds was difficult – first I did it completely off the throttle, then 50 per cent, 60, 65… Finally I was flat and they called me in, so that was much needed before the race.”
With the team needing to change its set-up philosophy for the evening race, Taku had to ‘borrow’ team-mate Jack Hawksworth’s set-up. “I had gone up to the spotter area for the last practice session and it’s quite impressive – Phoenix is a very fast track,” he said. “The track is great and the fans are very enthusiastic, and it was nice for IndyCar to be back.
“But with the current aero downforce configuration it’s very difficult to overtake here and the racing lines are very limited. It’s unlike Texas, Fontana and even Milwaukee. There is high banking on Turns 1 and 2, while Turns 3 and 4 are pretty flat, like a miniature Pocono. We had to put on some downforce because of the difficult circumstances, and I hate to say it but we were a little bit conservative. Plus, we had to change the engine because of the crash so it was a little bit tighter. Because of this, and our car being draggy, we were using a lot of fuel.”
Sato stayed with the pack through the first half of the race, but that high fuel mileage meant he was one of the early stoppers, and this provided the crucial blow when Munoz crashed just after Taku’s second stop.
“I followed the pack and did decent lap times,” he said. “The first pit stop was under yellow so that was good, but the next one was under green and three or four laps after the second there was a caution, the leader didn’t come in and that meant I was two laps down now.
“There was some possibility for a wavearound but because I was so far back in the queue it was not possible. All night long I just had to run on the back of the train, hovering around 17th place, and eventually managed 15th.
“It could have been better, it could have been worse, but the boys did a great job to put everything back together. We were not fast enough, but we learned a lot.”
Next, the IndyCar circus makes the relatively short trip from Arizona to California with the Long Beach round, scene of Sato’s IndyCar win, coming up.
“But before that, we go to Indianapolis Motor Speedway for our first test for the 500,” said Taku. “The weather doesn’t look great but hopefully we’ll do our first shakedown and test. After that I’m looking forward to Long Beach, not just because it’s Long Beach but because we have a good road-course package, and at St Petersburg we had good performance. I think we could have a strong weekend.”
