Adding to IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard's comments about the new IndyCar spec chassis at the two-year anniversary of the design's unveiling, IndyCar's vice president of technology, Will Phillips, said in an interview published on IndyCar.com that he's pleased with the performance of the car halfway through its first season, while acknowledging some additional tweaks are needed.

“It's met objectives of being faster than last year on the road and street events, short oval,” he said. “The racing's been good from a show perspective. The performance at Indy was the most concerning; that's why we did so much work on the car – for the superspeedway. The biggest concern was would it be fast enough. Dallara worked very hard to address many of those issues.

“One of the things we didn't get there was that without the manufacturers turning the boost up we wouldn't have made the speed we needed at Indy. Next year, I think we will. It's been where we wanted it to be on road and street circuits.

“The manufacturers have ended up on most of the roads and streets using the original suspension and weight distribution, so all the effort that went into that you could question whether we had to do that. But, for the ovals, I would say we would have done it still.”

Phillips agreed with Bernard that the net costs of the DW12 are lower than the previous-generation Dallara, despite car owners' griping to the contrary.

“There are arguments over the prices, but from our viewpoint it is less expensive than the old car," he said. "Now we're going to be picking on the details and fix the aggravating issues that have annoyed the people using the car.

“If I pick on Indy (RIGHT), what wasn't right? To me, the rear wing mainplane is too big. We had to run it as negative as we can get it. That doesn't seem right. (I'd rather) get it to a position of midrange. Put the car back in the drivers' hands. If the front wing is almost on the edge of stall, we need to address it with being mindful of the cost. We can't just open up this, this and this. We need to work with the manufacturers on adequate cooling as an example, although we can't address the performance deficiencies of one over another. We have to be fair above all else.”

  • Read the full interview with Will Phillips here.