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Florida was the site of a flurry of testing last week as the Team KOOL Green CART program and Team Green Academy winner Alex Gurney prepared for the 1998 season. Paul Tracy tested the #26 KOOL Reynard-Honda for two days at the Miami-Dade Homestead Motorsports Complex, while Gurney was at Sebring International Raceway for his initial test in the new Reynard 98E which will be used in this season's Barber Dodge Pro Series. Tracy ran a total of 230 laps on Homestead's 1.5-mile oval on February 24 and 25, turning a fast lap of 25.8 seconds in the process.
"We're a few tenths away from where we want to be," said team technical director Don Halliday. "But we're still learning about the '98 Reynard-Honda. We've got a persistent understeer that we haven't been able to totally dial-out of the car."
Previously, Tracy had lapped the Homestead Oval at 26.6 seconds in his first run with the new Reynard in January before turning a 25.93 during Spring Training earlier this month. Teammate Dario Franchitti's best time to date at Homestead has been a 25.78 at Spring Training.
"We put what we learned at Spring Training to use and went quicker right away," said Tracy. "Unfortunately, we weren't able to make much additional progress. Conditions were not ideal - it was pretty windy - but we definitely have some work to do."
"I can't get through the middle of the turns. We're picking up an understeer - the front end of the car loses grip. That not only makes us slow in the turns, it costs us momentum coming onto the straightaways."
Although he was far from satisfied with his times, Tracy continued to sing the praises of his Firestone Tires.
"I'm impressed with the durability and consistency of the Firestones," he said. "Your fastest laps will always come on new tires, but even with 50 or 60 laps on the Firestones we're able to run within a couple tenths of our fastest times." Meanwhile, 175 miles north of Homestead, Alex Gurney was getting his first taste of the new Barber Dodge Reynard. Gurney, who bested a field of 25 talented American drivers to win the 1988 Team Green Academy competition joined other Barber Dodge Pro Series regulars for four days of tests at Sebring. Gurney ran on the CART test track February 23 and 24, then switched to a shorter circuit the following two days.
"It was a good four days," said Gurney, who was joined by Team Green Academy instructor Bob Earl and Team Green's Kim Green during the test. "There is a lot to learn about the new Reynard; there's such a massive improvement in performance and safety over the previous Barber Dodge cars. But the tests went very well. I think I'll stack up pretty well against the competition and I'm looking forward to a very competitive series."
The racing season begins in earnest at Homestead on March 13-15 with the opening round of CART's 1998 FedEx Championship Series. The Barber Dodge Pro Series kicks off the following weekend at Sebring with a Saturday morning race as a prelude to the 46th annual 12 Hours of Sebring.
Source: Team KOOL Green
