Last Saturday’s race at World Wide Technology Raceway opened a window into one of the more interesting processes developed by the NTT IndyCar Series since it converted to hybrid powertrains in June.
The new IndyCar Energy Recovery System (ERS), made in a joint cooperation between Chevrolet and its engine partner Ilmor Engineering, and Honda through its Honda Racing Corporation US firm, is supplied in an annual engine lease for each entry, and within that lease, strict guidelines for usage are provided in an operations manual.
In relation to WWTR, the rules governing issues and alarms triggered by the ERS came to light with two drivers and in their cases, two different outcomes were recorded.
The first ERS issue struck Andretti Global’s Marcus Ericsson, whose No. 28 Honda encountered a problem with its motor generator unit (MGU), which harvests and deploys the added 60hp punch.
“We were having a really good weekend and fighting for a win, and then it just got taken away from us,” said Ericsson, whose night at WWTR ended 109 laps before the checkered flag.
According to IndyCar, the No. 28 entry had high-level ERS fault warnings on the dash, but the team chose to continue racing while the MGU was malfunctioning. RACER understands the final call to park Ericsson was made upon instruction from the manufacturer.
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Teams are allowed to ignore the high-level fault warnings, but in doing so, they accept any financial repercussions that could arise by running the car and potentially damaging the ERS unit. Per the hybrid guidelines, once a fault warning appears on the driver’s dash — and on the team’s timing stands — the driver has 30 seconds to slow and bring the engine to below 3800 rpm and report to pit lane.
And if that procedure isn’t followed and the MGU made by Chevy/Ilmor or the Energy Storage System (ESS) made by Honda/HRC is harmed, teams are said to be liable for up to $175,000 in repairs, the equivalent of the ERS unit being destroyed.
The other team to suffer ERS issues was Team Penske with Scott McLaughlin, who finished second at WWTR with the No. 3 Chevy without a functioning ERS. Like Andretti with Ericsson, the Penske team also chose to ignore the fault warnings with the No. 3 which arose after the late red flag and subsequent restart with eight laps to go.
Rolling the dice on the financial side, there was no way the team was going to call McLaughlin into the pits with the checkered flag in sight, and once the race was over, his crew was able to start the car and the ERS came to life and functioned without issue. Along with Ericsson’s ERS unit, the unit in McLaughlin’s car was removed for inspection by Ilmor between WWTR and this weekend’s race in Portland, and on McLaughlin’s side, the unit is expected to return to action with no repairs necessary.
“In the case of Scott, there was a boot-up issue and an initialization issue of the of the MGU coming out of the red flag,” Penske managing director Ron Ruzewski told RACER. “You always learn, right? The alarms weren’t set where you would have caught it when it was in the pits. But once the car was on track, coming off the red, we saw that the MGU wasn’t working properly. There was a fault. The team chose to monitor it and watch what’s going on. But it was also in a situation where it was locked out, where you couldn’t use it.”
Ruzewski said the matter with McLaughlin’s MGU was one of failed communication, not a mechanical issue that would come with costly repairs. It’s unclear whether Andretti will receive an invoice for fixing Ericsson’s ERS.
“We learned a couple things from that and how we set up our alarms. We potentially could have prevented that issue before we left pit lane, because it was essentially the software didn’t work,” he added.
“It didn’t wake up the MGU. It needed a reboot. If we would have just shut the car back off and restarted the car at the end of the red flag, which is what we did after the race, everything would have come back up.”