The most successful by far of Roger Penske’s three race teams this year has been his ALMS team.
The pair of yellow Penske Porsche RS Spyders have taken this year’s American Le Mans Series by storm, repeatedly thrashing the previously all-conquering factory Audi R10 turbo diesels as well as the trio of new factory-backed Acura teams.
Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas scored the Penske/Porsche team’s sixth win in a row at Elkhart Lake last weekend and the team is looking to record its seventh successive win at Mosport this weekend on a track which should be much more suited to the LMP2 Porsches than Elkhart Lake.
In this space back in March I took a close look at the winter development programme which transformed the RS Spyder from a solid contender in its first year to a pace-setting, regular race winner in its second season. If you want to review that work take a look at the March 12 posting of ‘The Way It Is’ wherein Penske engineer Nigel Beresford delineated the development programme which has brought this year’s successes.
Much of the improvement comes from an intensive aerodynamic development programme orchestrated by Michael Pfadenhauer, a German aerodynamicist who was hired by Porsche from Audi two years ago, but engine performance and fuel efficiency have been equally important.
John Erickson is the general manager of Penske’s ALMS team and his comments about last winter’s intensive development programme reflect those made by Beresford in March about the close liaison between Porsche and Penske engineers.
“From the performance side, I think a lot of accolades go to Porsche,” Erickson said. “They did a good job with the basic car. Our job is to get the information to Porsche when we see something that can be improved and they’ve been very good in responding. They did a nice job last winter and we’re just fine-tuning the aero package.
