The DeltaWing team chose to conduct a three-day test at NOLA Motorsports Park instead of competing in the TUDOR event in Detroit. The team ran endurance tests, experimented with different race set ups, and broke in a new, lighter tub. Keene was encouraged by the results.
“We wanted to go out and actually try to break things, to really pound the car. We’ve had tests before where we ran without issues, then got to the race track and had things break. Running hard over a three-day test, we knew some of those things would pop up and they did. We had some electronic and some driveline things that came up and we’ve made some improvements on those systems. We also ran parts a lot longer than we would have on a race weekend. Since we make most of our own parts, we have to come up with our own mileage limits, and we have some better ideas on that now.
“We did driver changes, pit stops – more than we would have done if we’d been at Detroit. It was also good to run through all these things with (race engineer) Catherine Crawford. This is only her second test with us, so it was good for her to really see what the car would need in certain situations. Plus, the weather really changed a great deal, from cool and cloudy to rain, to unbelievably hot. It’s good to see the car in all those conditions. Now it’s just a matter of becoming more competitive, to put ourselves in a position to be able to use race strategy and performance to get a win.”
DeltaWing Racing Cars
