The launch started on the front straight near the yard of bricks, with the car under wraps and key personnel of FIRST having a press conference, key quotes are included below: Adam Blocker – Team Principal & Co-Owner FIRST Motorsport “Hope everyone is doing well today, welcome to Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Ever since I have gotten involved in Formula Virtual, I’ve wanted to have a car launch here and I’m proud to say that we’ve finally made that happen. We’ve been lucky to have some success here in V-Prix of recent years, including a win in 2020 – the first time an American team won the United States V-Prix. Today we’re looking forward to a more lighthearted historical moment when we unveil our 2022 car and it becomes the first FV car to ever run in anger around the Indianapolis Oval. As has been tradition for us over the past few years, we’ve opted to name our chassis after an influential American motorsport engineer or designer. This year’s car has been named after legendary Indianapolis 500 engine designer and builder Fred Offenhauser. Offenhauser got his start in racing in 1913 as a machinist for an Indy 500 team. After working for other engine shops for about 20 years, in 1934 he started his own engine company – Offenhauser. His namesake company produced engines for everything from IndyCars to Sprints and Midgets to land speed record cars. Offenhauser’s company won 24 Indy 500s – the most of any engine supplier all time – including every race from 1947 to 1964. His presence at the track was a rarity though, preferring to stay out of the spotlight and focus on his duties at the race shop.” With the introductions out of the way, Blocker got on to the car itself: “The guys and girls in Rock Hill, SC have worked hard over the past year to design the Offenhauser 22, just as those in Dearborn, MI have over the past 2 years on the Ford FV 180A – both of which have a lot of new concepts in them that we previously haven’t used before. Since 2019 our chassis and engine designs have largely been evolutions year on year which helped us roughly maintain our standing in the FV pecking order, win a couple races and overall achieve the best results in our FV program to date. But over that time we’ve learned a lot from those cars and had some pretty extensive technical wish lists of things we could have done better and wished we had a chance to incorporate into the design of those cars. On the chassis side, our new facility in Rock Hill has been crucial in the development of the Offenhauser 22. Between more space that allowed us to hire more engineers, the more efficient prototyping processes, a seven-post rig that we can get better data from, an improved Driver in the Loop simulator, and more we’ve had the opportunity to do a lot more than we ever have in almost all areas of the car. Likewise, on the engine side our colleagues at Ford have had the massive challenge of managing two engine programs at once – working on continued support and development of the previous engine, the 183, while also doing lots of design, simulation, and early development on the 180. The 180, while similar in displacement to the 183, has a lot of differences architecturally – most of which have been aimed at improving its integration with the rest of the car. The 180 offers tighter packaging, lighter materials/design, and a lower center of gravity compared to the 183, all things that the chassis teams at FIRST and North Star complained about over the past couple of seasons. And before our marketing department kills me, I must thank all of our sponsors and supporters for making all of this possible. From the Palmetto Racing Group, the fairly new co-owners of the team that have made a long term investment in FIRST, to loyal sponsors 3M, HP, Verizon, Jif, YouTube, and Motorcraft – it wouldn’t be possible without all of their help. I’d also like to welcome one new sponsor for 2022, Pfizer Pharmaceutical, an impressive American company that is working on a lot of exciting developments to make all of our lives better. With that, it’s time for to present the Offenhauser 22. Felix and Stefan, do you guys care to do the honors?” After some still photos of the car on the front straight, both Felix Perez and Stefan Klien got an opportunity to sample the Offenhauser 22 around the famous 2.5 mile oval. The team had the car set up in the lowest possible downforce trim with some setup and car prep modifications to allow the car to operate more safely and effectively on the oval. The fastest recorded lap time was a 40.21 second lap, for an average speed of 223.8 mph (360.2 kph). Drivers were able to hold full throttle around the lap but had to use all of the track width to do so. Driver Felix Perez had the following to say of his experience in the new car:
“First of all it’s a big honor to be able to drive the oval here at Indy, a bucket list item for sure. I got to go speeds I’ve never gone in a race car before, an experience I’ll never forget. Obviously, this is well outside the typical use case for our car so I can’t really give any impressions that will be useful for our season, but the car handled driving around the oval pretty well actually. It was stable at high speed and predictable.” When asked how he thinks a Formula Virtual race would go on the oval, Felix responded: ”I think it would work well if there were some mandated modifications to the cars to limit downforce. Even fully trimmed and with high ride heights from what we normally would run on road courses it was flat out. So I think the series would have to force teams to limit downforce substantially. But if that could be achieved I’d love to race here – I think it would add some great diversity to the series.” Stefan Klien echoed the comments of Perez and added: “As someone who didn’t grow up with oval racing, but has started to have some exposure through eVirtual and now this demonstration, I’ve really started to become more interested in it. This experience was much different than that of the eVirtual car, just with the huge horsepower increase. It was a ton of fun and I’m really going to have to consider seeking out other ways to do some oval racing in the future.” Overall on the day the Offenhauser 22 completed 25 laps without reliability issues. The team is rumored to have a private two day test lined up at an undisclosed American track before the traditional group FV test kicks off the season in March. It is also understood that grabber blue wheels will return to the car for the group test and FV races.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
|