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Thursday, April 5
Cheever Jr. works out kinks during break
By Eddie Cheever Jr.
Special to ESPN.com
Everyone on the No. 51 Excite@Home team was glad to get the Indy Racing season opener out of the way because we hadn't done as much pre-season testing as we should have. In principle, we always like to put 3000 miles on the engines before the start of the season. We weren't able to do that this year because we were waiting for the new Infiniti engine.
|  | | Eddie Cheever Jr., left, talks with his chief mechanic Owen Snyder, after a test run at the Homestead-Miami Speedway in February. |
We did probably 600 miles of testing over the winter, and when the new engine arrived - just 10 days before the first race - we had to throw out all the data we had on the old engine and start with a fresh piece of paper. The 35A has a different crank in it, the torque curve is different, and the way the car handles as a result of that is totally different.
We started off slowly at the Phoenix race but got better and better. The No. 51 Excite@Home car was running right behind Eliseo Salazar - who finished second - when we had a problem with the throttle linkage. The goal with the new Infiniti was to avoid the pitfalls that we had encountered with the old engine, so the 35A was tested and re-tested and tested again to ensure that when it came out, it would be reliable. And it has been very reliable - it's just the little miscellaneous things that have been giving us problems.
In our case, it was a two-cent screw that broke at Phoenix, and the irony of it all is that it was one of the few pieces that we carried through from the old engine. It was a real pity, because we probably could have finished second or third in the race.
But the Excite@Home team has done a lot of testing since the season opener. Both Scott Goodyear and I have had some very successful test sessions with the 35A at Homestead, and the team is primed with a lot of new ideas and set-ups. We've changed a couple of things on the engine, so we're very anxious to see how much progress we've made since Phoenix.
Homestead is obviously a very important event for us since it is the Infiniti Grand Prix of Miami. Everyone on the No. 51 Excite@Home team is very aware of the fact that Infiniti competes in the Indy Racing League because it wants to demonstrate the performance aspect of its cars. The new 2002 Infiniti Q45 is coming out, and it is definitely one of the best performing cars out there. It has a lot of horsepower - 340hp - and there is clearly a correlation between our Excite@Home Infiniti-powered race car and this new performance luxury sedan.
The new 35A engine is a platform from which we are trying to launch a serious challenge for the Indianapolis 500 and the Indy Racing championship. It just so happens that Infiniti is also launching a number of new cars, including the 2002 Q45, at the same time. I am very optimistic that our new engine package is going to complement all the positive things that we have been working on for the last 24 months. Our relationship with Infiniti is finally starting to bear the fruit that we had all waited for.
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