MVN - Most Valuable Network

Short-term pain, long-term gain

Reigning CCWS champions Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing prepares for a tough learning process in its inaugural IRL season.

Back in its days as a Champ Car World Series team, the Lincolnshire, Ill.-based Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing was always at or near the top of the food chain. The team was eight series championships, including a stunning four in a row with French driver Sebastien Bourdais — an achievement that brought more prestige to a team already held in high regard and to Bourdais, a chance to drive in Formula One this season.

None of that matters now.

With the unification of American open-wheel racing in February, the Indy Racing League absorbed Champ Car into its organization and by doing so, put the teams in the troubled road racing circuit in a bind. NHLR was no different, having to force an offseason’s work of preparation into just mere weeks. They’re now having to learn about the Honda-powered Dallara packages. And of course, let’s not forget the IRL’s lean toward ovals, a type of track that became extinct in Champ Car last season as it moved to road and street courses exclusively.

It’s all made NHLR’s drivers, Graham Rahal and Justin Wilson, take a very sobering look at their prospects for their inaugural season as IndyCar Series pilots. Today, in an IRL media teleconference, the American and the Brit both admitted that their team has a long way to go toward adapting to the Indy way of life — even though many believe they’ll be the quickest of the former Champ Car squads to do just that.

The late unification has forced Rahal, driver of the No. 06 car, to utilize all options in order to acclimate himself to his new environs. That apparently includes plenty of videotape:

“I’ve been watching as much video as possible. But at the same time, it’s, until you’re actually doing it, it’s always tough to tell how it’s really going to feel. There are a lot of driving simulator systems out there that I’ve looked recently into getting my hands on. But unfortunately due to cost, I haven’t been able to. But I don’t think ‑‑ at this point the best I can do is watch tape from not just last year but years in the past, every circle we go to.”

Rahal finished fifth in the points standings last season in Champ Car, so while he’s going to have to learn a whole array of new tracks, he’s certainly got the goods on the road and street courses. No pressure there.

But ovals are an entirely different matter. The son of Indy 500 champ and IRL team owner Bobby Rahal said that he’s only raced one other oval in his life and that was in a slower Star Mazda car.

Not only that, he’ll have to get used to being part of a “second coming” of sorts for many of the great open-wheel families. He’ll be racing alongside his old rival Marco Andretti as well as A.J. Foyt IV, which has the potential to excite many fans. But the younger Rahal says that while he’s excited to be driving against them, he wants to beat everybody else too:

“For me at this point, I’m just trying to focus at the task at hand. Obviously for the fans, it’s exciting you have the Foyts and Andrettis and Rahals racing against each other once again. To be completely fair, do I expect to run with them initially? No. Obviously I’d love to be able to say yes, I can go out there and do that. But with my lack of experience on these ovals, it’s certainly going to be a tough thing…

“…Like I said, at this point we need to focus on our job as a team at Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing and look at, certainly put aside, things like beating Marco and A.J. (Foyt IV). As much excitement as that may offer for us, at the end of the day we want to go out there and beat everybody. That does include beating them as well.”

In the meantime though, Rahal is under no illusions about what he wants to accomplish in his IndyCar debut season. He knows that right now, his team is no match for Team Penske, Target Chip Ganassi Racing and Andretti Green Racing.

But considering that he’s also with one of the top open-wheel teams in North America, he can also count on being at least a dark horse when the series moves to St. Petersburg, Watkins Glen and the rest of the road/street courses. He’s also allowed him to aim a little higher as far as his chances go for Bombardier Rookie of the Year:

“It’s going to be very tough for us to contend with the Penskes and Ganassis of the world, AGR, but as time goes on it will get closer and closer. So hopefully we can fight for the rookie‑of‑the‑year award. And I think that’s the most we can do at this point. Obviously on road courses, we feel more confident that we can be close and hopefully contend for wins there.”

With him the entire way will be Justin Wilson, who will be replacing the F1-bound Bourdais in the No. 02 McDonalds machine. The British pilot, himself a former F1 shoe, was one of the Frenchman’s main rivals last year while driving for RuSport. He finished second in the standings and scored one win in the Netherlands despite having his team merge with Rocketsports in the ill-fated RSports venture, which broke apart toward the end of the ‘07 season.

Considering that he’s inherited one of the top open-wheel rides of the past decade, Wilson would seem ready and raring to get started. But in this current situation that he and his team finds itself in, he’s instead preparing for a long, hard slog:

“We’ve got a long road ahead of us trying to work everything out. The guys are working very hard right now, so it’s hard to understand what kind of goal to put on it. But our aim is, or my personal aim is, to do the best we can, whether that is trying to get a podium or pick up race wins. I don’t want to overestimate and I don’t want to underestimate.

“We’ve got to judge the competition when we get there and be realistic and not get carried away. These first few races will be very difficult. The short time we’ve had to get the cars prepared and the lack of information we have as far as set‑up wise, we don’t have years of experience setting these cars up.”

With that in mind, he also told the media that it wasn’t wise to judge his team and the rest of the former Champ Car squads with a harsh lens considering what they’ve all had to go through lately. NHLR won five of its eight CCWS titles during the split years and the question of whether or not they truly are the best of the best in American open-wheel racing can certainly be raised in that context.

But Wilson remains hopeful that once his team adapts to the IRL and gets its hands on the league’s next-generation machine in 2010, the battle will be more equal and no team will have any excuses:

“…Everyone’s in the same boat, where we’re starting very late in the year with a car we don’t know compared to some excellent teams that have had them for four or five years. So it’s going to take a little bit of time to catch up. Once we all get the same equipment at the same time I think you’ll see a lot closer racing and, most of all, competition.”

Like his teammate Rahal, Wilson will also have to learn the art of oval racing, which he said will be “an eye-opener” for him. He only has a handful of oval starts to his credit, and his first American test came on the old Homestead flat-track configuration in 2002. 

But he feels that once his team picks up how to go fast on the speedways, his lack of experience won’t count so much against him — as long as his team doesn’t get in over their collective heads:

“[The 2002 test] was quite an experience and great fun. But I felt a little bit under prepared for that. But that and this year, we’re just going to have to take it easy and learn as much as we can, because obviously these guys have been doing it for years and know how to race and know what it’s like in traffic.

“That’s all stuff we have to work out and understand before we get too carried away.”

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KV Racing meets the press

Also along for today’s teleconference were KV Racing Technology co-owner Jimmy Vasser and his drivers, Australian pilot Will Power and Spanish racer Oriol Servia. Power will be driving the No. 8 Aussie Vineyards/Team Australia machine, while Servia will take the No. 32 car onto the track this season.

As a rising star that quickly made open-wheel observers take notice during his time in Champ Car, Power will have to undergo a baptism by fire on the circle tracks, beginning with his first IRL oval test session on March 24-25 at Homestead Miami Speedway. I asked him what would make a successful test for him there and if he and his new team have made a game plan for that session. Here’s what he said:

“…The aim will be to just go do laps, see what I think, see what I feel. And the second day I guess start working on the car. And it’s just going to be a slow process. It will be a learning process. I’ll have to ease into it, because you just can’t afford to make any mistakes on an oval because it costs you a lot of time and money. I haven’t really got any set plan. I just went to the team the first time yesterday and haven’t made a plan yet. But we’ll have to see how it will be, just ease into it.”

I’ll put the spotlight on the entire KV team in an article that will be posted sometime tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.