The 51st Annual Mobil 1
12 Hours of Sebring
Presented by Dodge
March 12-15, 2003
Team Nasamax Testing Report
Photo Courtesy:Team Nasamax
Team Nasamax has just completed 2 days testing at Sebring,
Florida, in preparation for the Sebring 12 Hour race on Saturday 15
March.
The team continues with development of the Cosworth XDE 2.65
litre turbo, running a Reynard LMP900 in the top category of this
major sportscar race, fuelled with renewable fuel bio-ethanol.
Champcar driver Bryan Herta joins the team here for the first time.
John McNeil, Technical and Renewables Consultant, gave an
overview of the 2 days:
"The high ambient temperature and particularly high humidity is
robbing the engine of power, because the air density is too low. It's
hit us harder than expected. Being such new technology with this
engine running on bio-ethanol, we have no routines in place yet to
adjust to the conditions changing between test sessions from below
zero celcius to 31 degrees celcius. In Champcars they are running
this engine without a restrictor, too.
We've put in the driver miles today, getting used to the car and the
circuit."
The car completed 25 reliable laps in the 90 minute session, setting
a fastest time of 1 min 57.540 seconds. This is a 1.5 second
impovement on yesterday's lap times.
Bryan Herta: 'The first two days have been encouraging for what
we've l earnt already. The technology is very new and to be
competing at this level is very good. We'll be making many more
improvements in this week and up to Le Mans. If we can just finish
the race and prove the reliability of the package we can work on the
speed. The car is comfortable to drive. For me, it's good to get a bit
of rust out of the system and to be in competition again.'
2003 Sebring Index
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