Chevrolet “pushing limits” with components

That’s the verdict of Paul Ray of Chevrolet, who dmitted that despite having won nine of the 10 races this season, the company is still on the edge as it battles with Honda for supremacy.

“This year we’ve had our challenges with components, as you do when you’re pushing the limits as hard as you can,” he stated. “You get caught out by the quality of components that are batch-related.

“Every single year I think we’ve had a part – or two, sometimes – that you don’t get an opportunity to try beforehand. There’s no way of qualifying these pieces when they arrive in batches.”

Chevrolet has won the manufacturers’ title ever since its 2012 return to the sport, and has powered three of the four champion drivers in that time frame. Nonetheless, the Chevrolets of Scott Dixon [Road America] and Juan Montoya [Iowa] expired fully, while Simon Pagenaud’s performance was severely restricted by engine maladies at both the Indianapolis 500 and Road America.

Said Ray: “Simon [Pagenaud] at Road America dropped a cylinder, and again at Indy 500. Same as Scott Dixon [at Road America] – same issue, different outcome. An ignition part that caused an exhaust system failure, that resulted in a car fire, which meant we had to change the engine because we burnt the wiring. But the engine will be repaired and brought back.”

Despite this, Ray told Motorsport.com he remains a firm believer in IndyCar’s regulation whereby each engine unit must complete 2500 miles.

“We’re a big supporter of the 2500 mile regulation,” he said. “We weren’t originally, because every racer wants the ability to change everything all of the time.

“But the reality is that you just can’t afford to do that. The amount of money you have to spend is ridiculous. If you go back to the CART days, each car had three engines in one weekend! Practice, qualifying and race engine; but I was in charge of the budgets then and I can tell you it was a lot different budget back then than it is now.”

Despite rev limits moving from 17,000rpm in CART’s day down to 12,000rpm today, Ray says limits are still being pushed.

He commented: “We push the limit of ‘knock’ control because that’s where the power lives, up in the very high cylinder pressure. Running the engine into knock – which is basically pre-combustion. It’s crazy some of the stuff we do.

“We’re constantly tweaking the engine to allow a little bit more, little bit more, little bit more…. And occasionally you step over the edge because you just can’t test everything thoroughly enough all the time, especially components.”

Aerokit freeze would be “disappointing”

Ray says the prospect of IndyCar retaining aerokits for one more year but halting development before a complete makeover in 2018 went against the grain for competitive participants.

He said: “I think it’s a little disappointing, budgets aside, because at the end of the day we want to modify, develop and keep going. The minute you freeze something, you take away the ability to solve whatever problems you think you have at the moment.

“If we thought we were behind on power and someone say we were going to freeze engine development, we’d feel terrible about it. We’re racers, we need to be able to tweak this stuff and compete. That is what we do!”