Hull says Road America test very important

Mike Hull

The last time Chip Ganassi Racing took an Indy car to Road America was 13 years ago, and most teams have some experience at Road America but with a different car.

"What experience does for you is it gives you a good reflection on how to go forward," Mike Hull, Ganassi's managing director, said Thursday from Indianapolis to the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal. "What experience does for you is it allows you to think more about the race and if you have drivers who have experience at a certain racetrack or have raced in series — in this case the IndyCar Series — for a while, no matter what the spec of the car is, they really do think about how to prepare themselves for the race.

"We'll work on what it's going to take to do a long run. What it's going to take with the tires we're given. What it's going to take with the aero package and so on.

"So we can work on the things that make the difference on a race weekend for us, which are each of those three or four segments between pit stops, in order to be at the front of the queue at the end of the race."

"There was a lot of variation that went on then, and we won the race being a high-downforce team when we raced there as opposed to being a low-downforce team. But it was won the other way also," Hull said. "(We had) a great deal of horsepower at the time. We had a lot of (aerodynamic) tunnel with the race car, a lot of bottom-side downforce.

"But even with that said, I think a lot of our people were there when we raced at that time, so there is a lot of general understanding of what the racetrack is all about."