NEW CADILLAC NORTHSTAR LMP 02 MAKES RACE DEBUT IN 50TH SEBRING 12 HOURS
SEBRING, March 13-16, 2002 – Cadillac's new Northstar LMP 02 sportscar will make its race debut in next week's 50th running of the famed Sebring 12 Hours. Sebring marks the first event of a six-race ALMS program which the centenary brand will undertake this year. At the same time it is the first test against the talented competition the Cadillac team will face this June at Le Mans.
The new Cadillac Northstar LMP 02, unveiled at the same track in January, features all the latest in sportscar technology, both in the mechanical and the aerodynamic domain. The best technological experience and knowledge in sportscars was made available by matching the Brackley, UK, based design team, led by Nigel Stroud and the Warren, Michigan, based GM Racing engineers. The trans-Atlantic team produced the stunning looking car in less than nine months.
Since the launch, Team Cadillac has been busy on both sides of the Atlantic. "The race team based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA has continued the track testing program with chassis 01," Program Manager Jeff Kettman says. "Apart from that they have completed a full scale wind tunnel test and conducted a suspension rig test. At the same time the design office in Brackley, England has been working on any updates necessary, running some more scale model wind tunnel tests, and assembling chassis 02 and 03."
Needless to say that any team with the ambition of going for podium finishes this year has to put in lots of testing miles in order to get there. "Since the shakedown at Savannah, Georgia on January 7 and the tire test at Sebring the following week, we've run a 2-day test at Road Atlanta followed up by a shift at the Lockheed windtunnel, then three days at Miami-Homestead and another two days at Road Atlanta," Jeff Kettman explains. "At all of the venues, the primary objectives have been to learn more about car setups, put kilometers on components, and find what areas need attention and implement the fixes. Basically, the advantage of a new car is that it has a lot of potential, the difficulty is that our notebook is full of blank pages and we are doing our homework to fill up that book."
The most positive thing from all these tests is surely that only a few minor changes had to be made, which means the car was sound straight out of the box.
"We just had to do the usual thing," Kettman continues, "the normal adding dive planes for downforce and tuning some of the other aerodynamics to achieve the balance desired. Also, as mentioned above, we have uncovered some of the issues you would normally expect to have with new car of this complexity and have implemented changes as necessary. Some of those have involved the designers back in England and some have been taken care of at the shop in the US. A fair amount of time has been spent learning how the car reacts to various setups so we have that information available as we go into the Sebring race."
"The full-scale tunnel at Lockheed has the capability of running at +200mph and this allows us to do several things we aren't able to do with the scale wind tunnel. One of those is to check on driver buffeting and improve his comfort. I am pleased to say that we were very good on that and only had some minor tuning to perform. The other area the full-scale tunnel was beneficial is to work on cooling flows and upper body adjustments. We found some interesting ideas which were subsequently tried on the scale model and then track tested."
The first two races of the Cadillac program – the Sebring 12 Hours and the Le Mans 24 Hours – car and drivers will normally notch up more hours and miles then in the rest of the season put together. This means durability is the key word in developing the Northstar LMP 02. "We started some long runs at Homestead and carried on with long runs at Road Atlanta at the end of February to get as many miles as possible on the components prior to Sebring," Kettman explains. "Our first real endurance run will be the Sebring race and we intend to stay after and run some more at Sebring the week after the race. It is worth noting that the same engine has been utilized in all of the tests to date – some 3,000 miles – which gives us a good feeling about it's reliability."
For the first time since the start of the program three years ago, Team Cadillac has welcomed a new driver in their line-up. 1995 Le Mans-winner JJ Lehto joined the team for a test at Road Atlanta in early February, and will race with Eric Bernard and Emmanuel Collard at Sebring, Le Mans and Petit Le Mans.
"He was very quickly on pace and provided some good feedback in his limited track time at that test," Kettman says. "At that test, we still had some issues with the car setup to work out and he pointed those out. I think he sees the potential, but we have work to do, to better understand what setup the car needs. JJ's previous LMP experience allows him to get on the pace quickly, he knows what a car in this class is capable of doing in terms of braking and cornering, so he can push it soon after getting in. It probably takes some time to recalibrate, but all of our guys are pro's and it shows by how quickly they are up to speed. Since that test, we have hired Chris Gorne from Panoz to be the lead chassis engineer in Atlanta and he is already having a positive influence."
At lot has changed since the last race of 2001 in early October. The IMSA name was recreated for the series organizers, the unpopular "rovals" (road courses inside an oval) have disappeared, street courses in Miami and Washington have been added and the number of teams has increased dramatically. Last year there were just 40 entries for Sebring, this year the organizers have had to refuse entries because the number of cars is limited to 60.
Says Kettman: "When Don Panoz and his staff announced the proposed schedule along with the rebirth of IMSA, those of us who were involved with IMSA racing during the late 80's and early 90's, were very pleased with the direction and growth of the series. We are going to a lot of the same venues that held excellent sportscar races back then and I think that the people will be happy to see them back. The street races present their own challenges in terms of logistics and car setups, but it brings the races to a different audience than we might otherwise reach. I know the Washington D.C. race in particular is shaping up to be a very important race for Cadillac, with the local dealers very excited to have us racing there."
"For us the competition looks to be as strong as ever and for the most part have well developed packages, like Audi and Panoz. Also, there looks to be several strong independents like the Dallara-Judd and the R&S-Elan that could do well in ALMS races. I think Sebring will give us a good read relative to the competition and will give all of the competitors an idea of where their weaknesses lie. It looks like one of the strongest fields for Sebring in a long time and will certainly be crowded, with more LMP's than we have seen in a race here in the US. We'll have to keep an eye on the LMP675's, and Sebring is notorious for breaking cars."
"We look for good results in 2002. The car and engine packages are by far the best we have had, at the same time it is new and we are still developing it. We want to do well at Sebring. We had very positive tests there and we know what our competitors have done in testing. We expect to be able to race with them and to be there at the end," Kettman concludes.
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