Standing starts still a work in progress

We doubt that Champ Car will do standing starts for the first three races unless tomorrow's Standing Start practice goes better than it did today at Mazda Raceway. At the start of practice the majority of drivers were stalling their cars but by the end of the 1-hour standing start practice most had figured it out. The problem was simple, the drivers who were stalling were running the engine up against the rev limiter for 5 seconds. What does a rev-limiter do? It cuts power. What happens when you drop the clutch when the engine has limited power? Right, it stalls. By the end of practice the drivers who did not run the engine up to the rev limiter launched successfully time and time again.

We spoke to Cosworth Engineer Ken Deagle who confirmed our observation. "When the engine is up against the rev limiter the engine is running very rich and slowing cutting power. With the turbo not wound up the engine has very little torque and the guys were stalling it. Tonight we are going to get together with our engineers, put our heads together, and see if we can make the system work better."

Unfortunately the new Champ Car still has a mechanical throttle linkage because if it was fly-by-wire (i.e. electronic) Deagle confirmed that it would be much easier for them to develop a more foolproof system. After tomorrow's standing start practice we will have a better idea whether we will see standing starts in Las Vegas.