INDYCAR: Duno Expresses Satisfaction with Debut Run
Written by: News Wire Kansas City, Kan. - 4/30/2007

Well off the pace at the start, Duno and her rookie team worked their
way through handling woes as the race progressed. (LAT photo)

SAMAX Motorsport's Milka Duno began her debut race at the back of the
pack and advanced seven positions through the field to finish 14th in
Sunday's Kansas Lottery Indy 300 at Kansas Speedway.

In her first race of her 10-race rookie season - and in only her
fourth day behind the wheel of her CITGO Dallara Honda - Duno worked
through some serious understeer at the start of the event, and built
her speed into 209mph range en route to a 14th-place finish, seven
laps down to winner Dan Wheldon.

"The car was handling crazy with so much understeer right from the
very start of the race, said Duno. "It was very hard to drive and I
just wanted to stay safe and be able to get the car to the pits for
the first caution. The crew went right to work and added some front
wing and it helped a little - but we still needed more. More was added
on the second yellow flag pit stop and it improved again and with one
last adjustment on our third stop it finally felt really good.

"My lap times really improved from that moment forward and I felt then
that I had a pretty good car," the Venezualan added. "The charts will
show just how dramatic a change it made and my lap speeds and average
laps speeds were really getting better and better - and not too far
off the mark from the top contenders.

"For a new team and a new driver I think this shows that our
communication is really good and I was able to relay how the car was
behaving and the team was able to translate that to into a solution
that worked," added Duno. "This is very important and a very good sign
for us. We're working very well together as a team and I'm sure it
will only get better from here on. Today's race has shown us that we
have an ability to quickly identify a problem, create a solution, and
then fix it. We've now got our first race behind us with a respectable
finish, so a lot of that 'first race' pressure has been reduced."

Team owner Peter Baron commented, "Milka did a really good job. We
gave her a car that had a considerable amount of understeer and she
did a great job of just getting the car to the first pit stop safely.
We made a little over a degree of wing change, which helped her a
little bit and brought up her speed a little bit, and then on the next
pit stop we added another degree and a half of front wing to increase
the front downforce. After that the car started working well and her
confidence in the car came in and the car started working well in
traffic.

"Going into the race was really the first time we had the car in any
real amount of traffic," Baron noted. "Group practice sessions have
additional cars in them, but still fall short of actual race traffic
conditions. You can be around and get around some cars, but a whole
group of cars in the heat we had today - it was our very first
opportunity to do that. The heat and the air from a group of cars
really affects the downforce pressure on the car and took a lot of our
front grip away. Milka did a great job of quickly identifying and
relaying the problem and the crew did a good job correcting it. Once
the problem was solved, Milka really got into it and turned some great
laps for the rest of the race."

The SAMAX squad says it has some aerodynamic updates to reduce drag on
its car that will be in place next month at Indianapolis.

http://www.speedtv.com/articles/indycar/auto/37038/

"Lenny" <haysooce (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote

snip....


aerodynamic updates = more throttle, less brake

alien