Lotus, HVM Racing (the Lotus IndyCar test team) and Simona De Silvestro declared themselves very happy having completed a successful shakedown of the new 2012 Lotus powered Dallara DW12 IndyCar on Thursday. De Silvestro was the first driver of the Lotus powered teams to sample and test the new engine.
The team will continue with more in-depth testing of the John Judd developed Lotus 2.2 litre, twin-turbo V6 engine on Friday at Palm Beach International Raceway in Florida.
After two full days and 300 plus miles of testing over the weekend in West Palm Beach, the Lotus test team then moved on to Florida’s Sebring circuit for additional testing on Monday and Tuesday, in total completing 870 trouble free miles over the combined sessions.
Simona De Silvestro confirmed the initial test miles run so far had been very positive for the new Lotus engine, “I think it was really a good four days, we ran a lot of miles, we did a lot of laps, I’ve never spent so much time in a race car! We started tweaking on the race car just to see what it liked, it was a really positive test and to be part of the first laps on the Lotus engine. I learned so many things right there, these guys have been really open and showed me everything and we worked really well together which was really cool. I can’t wait to get back in the car again.”
IndyCar’s other engine manufacturers, Honda and Chevrolet have been testing their new engines for a couple of months already so Lotus and the teams that will be using their engines this year (HVM Racing, Dreyer & Reinbold Racing and Bryan Herta Autosport) will be working closely together, pooling and sharing information to speed-up engine development.
“We’re very satisfied with the way everything went,” said team HVM Team Manager Vince Kremer. “I feel like we made good solid strides. Simona put some solid laps in and the engine ran flawlessly. We exceeded what our original parameters were and we’re looking forward to the next test in a few days. I can’t emphasize enough how well the collaboration with the three teams and the engine supplier went.”
Olivier Picquenot, Lotus’s IndyCar Manager also considered that initial on track engine testing had gone extremely well so far, ”This was the most successful test I have ever participated in, we achieved more than I expected. The quality of the engine is perfect. We’re very pleased from a technical aspect on behalf of Lotus and Judd. I would like to thank Simona for her fantastic job during the 4 days. She was smiling all the time and was very good at giving feedback to the engineers to progress in our development. Hopefully the rest of the tests will be as successful.”
De Silvestro will drive the car again in February, fellow Lotus drivers Alex Tagliani and Oriol Servia will share driving responsibilities with the Swiss driver in the upcoming scheduled tests.
Test photo’s to follow.
Sergio Boroncini Gino Borsoi Luca Boscoscuro Gimmi Bosio Juup Bosman
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