|
Hope y'all don't mind, I've lurked for years but posted very infrequently. I was an Indycar mechanic for 20 years before retiring. But for two glorious years I was the lead mechanic on the XM Sat Radio Acura ARX-01.
After listening to the video from Lausitzring, I remember something very similar at the Sebring open test in Feb. '08. The lead Penske 9R6 (Dumas & Bernhard) seemed to run exactly like the '07 car both days. The second car, during the afternoon sessions both days, sounded like it was running with a broken exhaust header. Shifting early, lower rpm ranges, on and off throttle in certain spots on track, we wondered why they ran the car so much with a header issue. I noticed after the sessions, the body work around the exhaust was covered in carbon, a lot more than normal. I asked one of my friends at Penske if they were trying to burn the car down. He told me he had no idea what was going on, Porsche engineers taking a lot of pictures and, inspecting the exhaust, the exhaust ports and valve stems.
After the next days afternoon session, one of our Japanese engineers, or "J"s, said that Porsche was testing the Direct Injection (DI) system. They were trying to "load" the combustion chamber without fully evacuating it at high rpms. Trying to "dirty up" the cylinder at the heat of the day. How does it effect the injection nozzle, valve seats, valve stem seals, ect. His opinion was that Direct Injection would not be a good setup for endurance engines that change operating temperatures drastically or do stop'n starts. Turn out he was wrong about that. I remember Penske have a few issues with DI, but they were straighten out alright.
Anyway, there will be 1000s of kilometers of teasing to come, and the Porsche at Lausitzring both sounded off and looked rather off the pace. I'm wondering if that was just an initial test of the DI setup.
I love sports car racing and LOVE Porsches (own 2 911s), and I'm looking forward to this program. If anyone wants to talk about the good ole days, just message me.
|