Tire limits and teams working through different development programs make it difficult to read too deeply into preseason testing. But one takeaway from the IndyCar Series two-day open test at Phoenix Raceway is that Honda may have closed the gap on rival Chevrolet at the type of track where Chevy enjoyed its biggest advantage over the last two years.
That’s good news for Chip Ganassi Racing, which is switching camps from Chevrolet to Honda in 2017. It’s a surprising move, given that the Ganassi organization is coming off its worst campaign since 2005, with four-time IndyCar Series champion Scott Dixon failing to crack the top three in the driver’s standings for the first time in a decade.
Chip Ganassi has a history of making head-scratching moves with his Indy car team, but also of making them work. He switched to Toyota engines and Lola chassis in 2000 after winning four straight CART-sanctioned championships and remained a front-runner. A few years later, he chose the G-Force chassis when he moved his team to the IRL series when almost everyone else was using Dallara.
CGR was a Honda team when the IndyCar Series introduced its current chassis and turbo V-6 formula in 2012, but it switched to Chevy in 2014 despite the fact that Dixon won the third of his four titles for Honda in 2013. The last three years yielded another championship crown for Dixon in 2015, but in general, Team Penske’s Chevrolets have dominated the last two campaigns.
The move to Honda, which is very much perceived as an underdog at most tracks, could be Ganassi’s way of lighting a fire under his Indy car team. Team leader Dixon has thrown his support behind the decision.
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“I think the offseason for us, to be honest, has been a really good reset with the manufacturer,” Dixon said after completing 303 laps of testing at Phoenix, second most among the 21 entries. “I think last year as a team we made a lot of small mistakes and we didn’t get the small things right first, and it was probably one of our worst performances across the board.
“That was definitely frustrating, but good motivation for 2017,” he added. “Big changes for us and a steep learning curve in a somewhat stagnant development year, so it’s going to be interesting. But I’m definitely excited for the change, and I know the team is super excited about the upcoming year with Honda. Hopefully getting back to a lot of the basics and doing them better will help us with consistency and performance throughout the year.”
JR Hildebrand was the outright pacesetter at Phoenix in his Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet. But Honda cars from the Andretti Autosport team led both of the evening sessions, run in the same timeframe as the race scheduled for April 29.
In fact, Honda ran 1-5 in the final session of the test, led by Andretti’s Ryan Hunter-Reay. The 2012 IndyCar Series champion is pleased to have Ganassi back on the Honda side.
“I think it’s good for the manufacturer battle,” Hunter-Reay said. “I think it evens things out a bit and we’re going to have more competition for being top Honda, no doubt. But I can’t really get a sense yet for how that’s going to have an impact on our program or the Honda front.
“We know the areas we need to improve in, and we’ve been focusing on that this offseason,” RHR continued. “There’s no reason why we can’t, and there’s no excuse not to, so that’s something that we’re very focused on. I feel like we have a great opportunity to win four or five races this season, hopefully more. But it’s something where we’re going to have to go out and prove it.”
Whereas Ganassi returns the same fou- driver lineup of Dixon, Tony Kanaan, Charlie Kimball and Max Chilton, Andretti has replaced Carlos Munoz with the experienced but crash-prone Takuma Sato. Sato was one of four drivers who wrecked during the two-day Phoenix test; others included Andretti’s Alexander Rossi (his first major oval crash), Graham Rahal and Hildebrand, who lost downforce when he clipped the back of Will Power’s car, breaking a front wing.
Rahal observed that Ganassi’s ability to help move the Honda program forward was already in evidence at Phoenix, where he pointed out that the Ganassi cars were running an aerodynamic configuration he had never seen before on a Honda.
Rahal has almost always been Honda’s top runner for the last two seasons, winning a total of three races and finishing in the top five in the championship both years.
He and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing have consistently managed to find more speed than the other Honda entries, demonstrating that the maligned Honda aero kit may not be as bad as it has often appeared. This is the final year for aero kit competition in the IndyCar Series, and Honda and its teams still believe they haven’t found an ideal setup for some tracks.
“There’s lots of potential and we just have to find going forward a way to keep that performance level and enhance it a little bit,” said Rahal. “Is it a little bit tough kind of going into a season knowing, ‘OK, we’re going to have the same uphill battle we’ve had for the last couple years?’ Yes.
“My hope is that the engine can continue to improve and overcome what the aero kit lacks,” he added. “There is no doubt that there’s aero kit inefficiencies, but it is what it is.”
Honda also showed great strength on superspeedways the last two years, with the Andretti drivers demonstrably having the fastest cars in the 2016 Indianapolis 500.
Honda’s strength at Indianapolis was almost certainly a factor in Ganassi’s decision to make a manufacturer change for the final year of the aero kit era.
“Put it this way, I think we have a lot better chance than we had last year,” remarked Kanaan. “I think Honda’s package for Indianapolis proved the past three years that it was the package to have. The past two, they dominated, I would say.
“So for us — for me especially — it’s very promising.”
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