Cannon predicts competitive Indy 500 for Dale Coyne Racing
Conor Daly’s race engineer Michael Cannon believes Dale Coyne’s early decision to run extra cars at Indy is paying off, and that DCR is better prepared than ever.
Photo by: IndyCar Series
Cannon said that the combination of Gabby Chaves, Conor Daly, Pippa Mann and Bryan Clauson has already allowed the team to make big strides in practice for the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500, and that their potential was not reflected by qualifying.
The quartet will start between 21st and 28th, but Cannon said those lowly positions actually reflected a combination of running out of time and not risking low downforce following Mann’s accident.
“When we started to strip off downforce, that’s when we realized we’d probably made a mistake in terms of mechanical grip,” Cannon told Motorsport.com, “but by the time we realized what we’d done to ourselves, we didn’t have time to jump back to something we knew would produce better balance in hot weather.
“Then when Pippa had her problem with the failed wing endfence, we decided to just take our lumps and add downforce for qualifying. But it paid off; you saw how well Pippa ran in race trim yesterday [fifth and fastest Honda] and Conor was so happy he said ‘Don’t touch it; run it like this for Carb Day.’ So it’s been really encouraging. And Gabby of course is fine around here.”
“Bryan [Clauson] has been great too. He’s happiest in clean air, but remember; driving 240mph on pavement isn’t what he does. This is only his third IndyCar race. I feel sorry for him because it’s a Herculean task, isn’t it?
“But in fact his feedback has been really good, he’s made a lot of intelligent choices and decisions. He’s been very valuable, and his feedback has been excellent; he’s actually the first guy to pick up on something that the car should or shouldn’t be doing.”
Running four cars “very helpful”
Cannon believes pre-season preparation and the ease of getting feedback on various set-ups had vindicated Coyne’s decision to run four cars this year.
Said Cannon: “I learned at Andretti Autosport when we ran five cars at Indy how helpful it can be.
“We were lucky we knew well in advance that this was going to happen, so we had good people in place. In fact, as long ago as December we knew we’d definitely have three cars.
“So now, when we’re trying out stuff, we test it on two cars, then take it off and test it on the other two. If the conclusion is that it worked, then we get four of them. We had that scenario yesterday, and we’ll have the item on all four cars by Friday.”
Asked how good he thought Daly’s chances were for race day, Cannon replied: “Conor had a lot of trepidation at first about the domed skids. And I said to him, ‘Look, I’ve run the numbers every way I can think of and it’s not going to be an issue,’ and when he got in the car, sure enough, he was happy.
“And then yesterday, like I say, he was extremely happy with the car and didn’t want to change anything by the end of the session.
“All I can say is that when Conor was in a queue of cars, he could pass and he wasn’t being passed, which is the ideal scenario. I think we should be very strong.”
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