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Bourdais “building a book of feedback” at new-look Coyne team

After just two days of road course testing at Sebring, Sebastien Bourdais believes that he and the Dale Coyne Racing team are already making considerable progress with the “fundamentals” of his new ride.

Sébastien Bourdais, Dale Coyne Racing Honda

Sébastien Bourdais, Dale Coyne Racing Honda

IndyCar Series

Sébastien Bourdais, Dale Coyne Racing Honda
Sébastien Bourdais, Dale Coyne Racing Honda
Sébastien Bourdais, Dale Coyne Racing Honda
Sébastien Bourdais, Dale Coyne Racing Honda
Sébastien Bourdais, KV Racing Technology Chevrolet
Sébastien Bourdais, Dale Coyne Racing Honda
Sébastien Bourdais, Dale Coyne Racing Honda
Sébastien Bourdais, Dale Coyne Racing Honda
Sébastien Bourdais, Dale Coyne Racing Honda
Sébastien Bourdais, Dale Coyne Racing Honda

Despite four wins over his three years at KV Racing, Bourdais made an early decision last season to join Dale Coyne’s operation for 2017 and eventually his KV race engineer Olivier Boisson decided to come with him. They have been joined by Craig Hampson, who was Bourdais’ race engineer at Newman/Haas Racing for the final five seasons of Champ Car racing, in which the Frenchman clocked four straight championships.

Bourdais and DCR took part in the single test day at Gateway Motorsports Park last October, but he says the team’s two-day test at Sebring this week has been an eye-opener in terms of progress made.

He told Motorsport.com: “We lost a couple of guys, so we’re a bit short on people and we’re trying to implement a lot of things. Obviously Craig and Olivier have worked pretty hard to try and improve on everything they had. “But operationally I would say things are pretty darn good. We’ve got a really strong bunch of mechanics, some really switched-on people and now it’s just a matter of having more time to get everything sorted and under control. But already now it’s going pretty well and I’m pretty happy with everything.”

Bourdais also said any worries over switching from Chevrolet to Honda power have been laid to rest, although he was not yet prepared to pass judgment on HPD’s aerokit.

“With the engine, everything is different [from the Chevy] – the feel, the engine response,” he observed. “But I was quite happily surprised. That side of things seems very strong, and actually there are a lot of very positive things about it that I personally really like.

“On the chassis or aero side, it’s always tough to judge until you get head to head with somebody else. And you always have to be a little careful judging from Sebring because the track always ends up being superfast because of how it picks up grip. You’re left wondering if it’s representative or not. But there were not so many cars – just four others on Tuesday, three others Wednesday – so it didn’t get really grippy. And as long as the track doesn’t get too stupid with grip, then Sebring is the best permanent facility we’ve got for representing a street course. Hopefully we didn’t lure ourselves in the wrong direction…”

Finding solutions for potential problems

Bourdais said that what most pleased him about the test was the fact that the work being done wasn’t about solving issues, but projecting issues they might encounter on street courses in the year ahead and learning how to deal with them.

“Over the two days we got some really good reads on basic fundamental changes, and that’s really important,” he commented. “Basically, we’re trying to build a book of feedback – ‘OK, if I have this problem, then we do this or that to fix it,’ – that type of thing. And I think we’ve gotten really good answers on issues that Olivier and I were trying to figure out for most of last year.

“And the great thing is, we’re not really having to change a lot from what we had. By the end of the day it all worked out, the car felt really nice and very balanced so we can be really pleased with that.

“Like you say, how much we trust in a good setup at Sebring is difficult to say. But I think we’ll probably start off with this setup at St. Petersburg [the opening round of the season] and see where we go from there. We at least know now that we have plenty of ways to react, depending on what we feel at St. Pete, which is all you can ask for from preseason testing. We found a lot of answers to any potential problems we might find.”

 

 

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