Foyt team coming up to speed with Chevy

Carlos Munoz in the #14

Larry Foyt, president of AJ Foyt Racing, says he’s being cautious over the team’s encouraging pace in the final session of the Phoenix open test, and regrets the simple lack of track time heading into the 2017 season.

The team owned by IndyCar icon AJ Foyt has undergone a bigger change in the 2016/’17 offseason than any of its rivals, switching from Honda to Chevrolet engines, replacing both its drivers and hiring a new technical director, Will Phillips. Unfortunately, it has coincided with IndyCar drastically reducing test time.

Although new recruits Carlos Munoz and Conor Daly finished the Phoenix open test 17th and 20th overall, the pair were sixth and seventh in the final Saturday evening session, making them the fastest of the Chevy-powered cars. However, Larry Foyt cautioned against reading too much into those test times.

He told Motorsport.com: “There were a lot of guys in race trim in that final session, whereas we were in between qualifying and race trim for a little bit. We never did a true qualifying sim[ulation], but we’re truly only scratching the surface with the Chevy kit on ovals, and there’s so much to learn. I just wish we had more time before the season starts; there’s a lot of potential so we want to use it.

“If you think about it, we are literally years behind the other Chevy runners, and it feels like it! It is a different animal and it needs a different mechanical setup to get the best out of it, compared with Honda. We’re looking at just the basic stuff, so that’s why we’re behind the guys who’ve had years to refine it, but like at our last Sebring test, we got a lot done, we made good progress.

“Put it this way, Carlos and Conor have experience of the Honda package and Carlos at least was happy with where we ended up with the setup."

Daly suffered a loose oil line that caused his engine to dump oil around the track on Friday afternoon’s session, but he eventually clocked 201 laps over the course of the 12 hours of track time, compared with Munoz’s 239. However, given that teams were only given six sets of tires to use over the course of those 12 hours, Foyt said it wasn’t a huge loss.

“It was a shame to lose that running time, but we were tire-limited anyway, so it probably didn’t cost us too much," he observed.

“Looking at the evening times, it’s probably a bit misrepresentative, but I do feel we were gaining the whole time over the two days. And we have another test at Sebring before [the season-opener] St. Petersburg, so we’ve got to keep making progress there, too." Motorsport.com