It was surprisingly frigid, started early, and ended shortly after noon, but Firestone says it learned everything it needed to sign off on the tires it will use during IndyCar’s first race at Phoenix Raceway in eight years. The series will return to the track in March for the first time since 2018 as part of a double-header with NASCAR.
“Other than being cold, it was a good test,” Cara Krstolic, Firestone’s director of race tire engineering and production, and chief motorsports engineer, told RACER.
“We had to shorten it pretty significantly. We still got all of the long runs that we were planning on getting done so all of the important things that we needed to get done, we’ve accomplished.
“But the night before the test, we were looking at the weather forecast, thinking, ‘Oh no, this is going to be a challenge.’ It looked like we were going to have rain starting at 11am, so we worked with the track to move the beginning hours a little bit earlier. So we started it right at eight, and then got in what we needed to get in. Got in setup running, and then did a lot of a few full-tank long runs and were able to get the data that we needed to get ready for the open test.”
The crews from Andretti Global for Will Power (main image) and Team Penske for Josef Newgarden were bundled in thick jackets during the test, and with the cool air enveloping the one-mile oval, the No. 2 Penske Chevy and the No. 26 Andretti Honda were bathed in extra downforce.
“It didn’t ever get up to 60 degrees, but we were able to get a lot of good data in, and with the cooler temperatures, you end up with more downforce and you’re able to theoretically go a little bit faster, although lap times were pretty similar as when we were in here in November,” Krstolic said.
“However, we got the data that we needed to understand the differences between different compounds and different constructions.”
Newgarden echoed Krstolic’s comments.
“It was cold today. Still drivable,” the 2018 Phoenix race winner said. “You know, it’s about 55-60 degrees, but maybe not what we’re going to see in March, but definitely got through a lot of running to tick the boxes for Firestone, make sure that they understand what they want to bring back here. And yeah, happy with that. It’s really nice just to be back with the team. You know, it’s still somewhat early days, but it feels like the season’s right around the corner, and in a lot of respects, it definitely is.”
With the running coming to an end around 12:30pm, Krstolic spent the rest of the afternoon working on a report of the day’s learnings to share with every IndyCar team ahead of the Phoenix Open Test on February 18-19. She also fielded a number of outreaches from her Firestone colleagues waiting to get the green light to start production on the tires required to outfit the entire field.
“They were sending us notes during the test,” Krstolic said. “’Hey, what have you decided? What compound are we going with?’ So we are going to head back to Akron tomorrow and get all of the data we need to our manufacturing team for them to start working on these tires.”