After a hectic final week of preparation the prototype Panoz DP01 Champ car ran its first test laps at Sebring on Monday. Driven by Roberto Moreno, the car ran twenty laps at Sebring in its debut outing and is scheduled to run every day for the rest of the week.
Like the first run for any new racing car there were a series of last-minute glitches to overcome. A leaking fuel cell prevented the scheduled shakedown at Road Atlanta last Tuesday and Wednesday and another undisclosed problem resulted in an oil leak, stopping the car from running later in the week. Panoz’s development team, led by Peter Parrott, had to build a small metal fuel tank to hold a few gallons of methanol and finally ran the car on Saturday in the parking lot at Road Atlanta with Anthony Lazzaro driving because Moreno had to fly home for a few days.
As I’ve written before Champ Car couldn’t have selected a better man for the job of testing the new Panoz DP01. Moreno, 47, has a wealth of experience in Champ cars, Indy cars and
Formula 1. He won Champ Car races in Vancouver in 2001 and Cleveland in ‘02 while driving for Patrick Racing, finished second to team-mate and old friend Nelson Piquet in the 1990 Japanese GP with the Benetton team, and was a
Ferrari F1 test driver in the late ‘80s when he developed Ferrari’s first automatic transmission with John Barnard.
The leaking fuel cell has been put aside for a few days and crew chief Parrott has decided to push on with the jerry-rigged aluminium tank so the development team can work on sorting out the basic systems.
