SpeedCenter: Do they share that data with you?

Matsushita: No.

SpeedCenter: So you can't pass it on to other teams.

Matsushita: If we get Newman/Haas data, we cannot give their data to other teams. The only data we can give to teams is our own data. We are trying to be as fair as possible.

SpeedCenter: Can you put any pressure on NH to give you some of that data?

Matsushita: That is not our business. Their data is their property.

Matsushita professed a similar lack of knowledge about the custom parts that Newman/Haas might have developed for their own exclusive use:

SpeedCenter: Are there a lot of custom parts that NH is putting on the car?

Matsushita: Speaking very honestly, I cannot tell because I don't know. Each team develops their own parts. Some of them I can see, but I cannot tell, because it is each team's secret. Of course we develop our car every day, and every day we get updated data and we give data to teams. Each team has their own development program for their own parts. To be very frank with you, NH, their cars have maybe some custom parts. But the majority of the difference between NH and the other teams is data, setup data, not parts.

While Hiro appeared to be woefully in the dark about the Newman/Haas development program for his own chassis, Patrick Racing's Jim McGee was confident he was getting full access to the Newman/Haas information.

McGee: Like I say, Newman/Haas has been very cooperative with us with the setups. Certainly, if we don't do good with the swift, that's not going to sell them many customer cars. The thing they need is for a customer to be satisfied that he can run and he can be competitive with. Newman/Haas and Carl are doing everything that they can to help us.

SpeedCenter: So actually you feel like a satisfied customer?

McGee: Absolutely.

SpeedCenter: Do you think that if things had panned out differently, and you guys were applying your full effort to the Swift, would you be having pretty good season with it?

McGee: Oh, I definitely do, if our focus went that way I think we'd be having as good a year that Newman/Haas is having.

SpeedCenter: So you don't think they have anything that nobody else can get.

McGee: No. They've been very up front with us. I know those people. They worked for me, I was their general manager for two years in 1993-94, and we won the championship with Nigel Mansell. Carl and I and Peter Gibbons and Brian Lisles and the group, you know, we understand each other and they've been up front 100%.

SpeedCenter: Were those relationships one of the reasons you went with Swift in the first place?

McGee: Absolutely.

Team Gordon co-owner Mike Held had a completely different perspective on his experience as a customer of Haas Motorsports, claiming zero access to Newman Haas setup information.

SpeedCenter: Nobody seems to be getting anything out of the Swift other than Newman Haas. We're trying to figure out why.

Held: So are we.

SpeedCenter: Do you think Newman/Haas has access to something you don't?

Held: Well, the bottom line is that they're a pretty damn good race team. They've got their own engineering department that has been working for the last three years on this car. Unfortunately we don't have that luxury, and they don't share. Not that we would expect them to. The unfortunate part is that Swift as a company doesn't progress unless there's some sort of transfer of information.

SpeedCenter: Do you think that Swift could be doing a better job of giving you what you need to at least get started in midpack with it?

Held: Part of the issue is they are a new company too. Their growth really depends on how well the race teams communicate with them.. If you're a race car builder, you kind of, I don't want to say anybody operates in a vacuum, but they certainly don't operate on the racetrack, do they? I mean they built cars, they use wind tunnel data, they do the best job that they possible can, but they rely on their teams for a certain amount of feedback so they can make their product better. That's the way it works. That's why Reynard has been so successful in this series. So in order for them to continue to grow, they have to have the feedback from the teams, it has to happen.

At this point it started to appear as if Carl Haas has largely taken control over the ongoing development of Hiro's chassis, able to share or withhold the Newman/Haas propriety information at will. It seemed strange that while one of Haas' customers, Mike Held, knew nothing about the Newman/Haas setups, the other customer, Jim McGee, knew virtually everything, far more than Swift Engineering itself. Seeking to find out more about the particular nature and value of the Newman/Haas proprietary data, we asked ex-customer John Della Penna for details on the challenge of running a Swift successfully.

Della Penna: Essentially it's just not a user friendly car for a small team like ours. For us smaller teams out there, we don't have the depth in engineering that [Newman/Haas] have, and we approach the whole setup and the philosophy of the setup a little bit more basic than they do, a little more straightforward, and we just try to do some things that are common sense.

With the Swift, it has a high center of gravity, it's a car that does not like to run very stiff springs, and that kind of compounds itself with the Toyota engine, the phase 5 that we've been running for the last year and a half or so. That engine has a higher CG than the Ford, so then you get into a situation where all this stuff starts stacking up against you. The Swift wants to run at a particular height from the ground as well. Lower is not better for that car. Where on the Reynard, lower is better, stiff is better, it's a car that's more straightforward, common sense. You lower it, it goes better. All those things make sense.

For example, the Swift I had instances where if the car was oversteering, or losing rear grip, you have to raise it. Because the design of the undertray is such that if you run it too low, it chokes the air that goes to the tunnels and then it loses downforce. It's almost like a reverse principle to what a race car should really be like.

SpeedCenter: So it's counterintuitive to adjust it very often?

Della Penna: Yeah it is. With the Reynard, it's very simple, you run it as low as you can possibly run it. The Reynard is a very basic car to setup, and it does all the stuff it's supposed to do fairly well.

SpeedCenter: Do you think that the off the shelf Reynard out of the box with a standard setup is a lot more competitive than the same thing with the Swift?

Della Penna: Without a doubt.

Jim McGee verified that managing ride-height sensitivity was at the heart of successfully running the Swift.

SpeedCenter: What's the most difficult part, technically, of running this package well?

McGee: It's got a different aero package than the Reynard. To get the aero balance right was a big problem at the beginning of the year and they've done a lot of things to modify the car aerodynamically to improve the situation, which they have. But it's still a little tricky especially on tracks that have up and down hills where you get a lot of ride height changes, it seems to have more of an effect on it than the Reynard.

If keeping the Swift undertray at the proper ride height is so vital to the car's performance, it would seem logical that the Newman/Haas edge might be in the area of shocks, dampers, and other related parts. It was Mike Held who first mentioned this possibility to us.

SpeedCenter: A lot of the Reynard teams are building custom parts. Are you building any parts? Do you think Newman/Haas is building custom parts?

Held: Oh yeah, we have the ability to make parts, but are we building parts, no. We're trying to figure out our team. To be perfectly frank- we've got our own issues, we're basically a brand new start up from scratch team. My personal feeling is that, some of the stuff they're doing is probably not directly chassis related. It's the ancillaries that hang off the chassis, the geometry positions, the damping systems, those are some things that I think those guys are pretty sophisticated. If they spent their time and money and effort in developing those, maybe it's the case of why should they share.

It took John Della Penna, unencumbered by any ongoing relationship with Swift Engineering or Haas Motorsports, to specify the likely Newman/Haas edge.

Della Penna: I think Newman/Haas is very deep in terms of engineering obviously. They have pretty advanced stuff in terms of ride control systems, and dampers and things like that which they make themselves. They have an exclusive program with Ohlins, the damper manufacturer, and they have a lot of elements available to them that we didn't have.

SpeedCenter: Do you think that without those special parts that Newman/Haas has an exclusive on, the Swift just isn't the same Swift that they're getting the great results out of?

Della Penna: Yeah, I really do, I don't think it's the same Swift. Again, you've got to consider that Peter Gibbons and those guys have been working with the car for three years, and they have a certain philosophy they follow in terms of setup that suits that car. Maybe for a team like Newman/Haas the Swift is OK. I still think that Michael and those guys will probably do better in a Reynard, I really do.

When asked about the exclusive Ohlins dampers, Jim McGee simultaneously confirmed the existence of such a system and dismissed its importance.

SpeedCenter: John Della Penna told us that NH had some exclusive Ohlins dampers that solve a lot of the problems with the ride height on the Swift, do you know anything about that?

McGee: Nah, that's just a lot of baloney. I worked at Newman/Haas, I know that system. The system has some little teeny advantages but it's not the big reason the car is the way it is and that Newman/Haas is so successful. They've go two good race drivers, they've got a team that's focused 100% on the Swift. I've been around this racing long enough, and you can always think that somebody else has got more than you have, but that's your problem, because you're just not doing a good job with the stuff you have. That's excuses.

As one of the elder statesmen of the paddock and the winningest GM/Chief Mechanic in the history of CART, McGee shows an admirably sporting attitude. But what if those exclusive Ohlins dampers really are the difference between Michael Andretti qualifying on the pole position at Elkhart Lake and PJ Jones qualifying 21st? What if the factory Swift is simply not capable of performing competitively without the addition of a sophisticated ride-control system to maintain the exact ride height for maximum downforce?

We're finally ready for the conspiracy theory. Flash back to 1996. Carl Haas is fed up with the poor performance of the Lola, and wants a new chassis. Meanwhile, Hiro Matsushita is preparing to retire from driving and looking for another way to spend his millions to stay involved with CART. Haas has a brilliant idea: why not offload the capital intensive wind-tunnel testing and carbon-fiber fabrication work onto the deep-pocketed Hiro, while purchasing the chassis at a steep discount as Swift's charter customer and exclusive distributor. Put the money saved into an intensive engineering program to develop exclusive parts for the car. That way Haas Motorsports can eventually sell Swifts at a profit to other teams while retaining the exclusive parts necessary to run the car competitively. You end up with a fast car that nobody else has, at a fraction of the cost of creating and maintaining an entire car-building operation. Pretty clever!

SpeedCenter: How does Carl Haas' role work as your distributor. Why do you need a distributor? You know everybody, there's only 26 drivers right?

Matsushita: Well, four years ago when we were thinking of getting involved with Indycar racing, was saw that we couldn't do it by ourselves. We needed a partner that knew distribution. That's why we chose Carl Haas Motorsports as our distributor. Of course sometimes he has special parts, because he owns a team and he owns the distributor. It's a separate deal, but most of our other team owners, they don't think that way.

SpeedCenter: Does it cost the same for a team owner to buy a Swift, a Lola, or a Reynard?

Matsushita: Well, I don't know. It's probably close.

SpeedCenter: What happens if without the Newman/Haas special fairy dust that nobody else has, you can't be competitive with the car?

Matsushita: Then our business would fail. That's simple.

Our sentiments exactly.