Had long talk with Alex Zanardi. He says hi, but he doesn't tweet yet. He's doing well. I think we'll see him at an IndyCar race in 2012

Heard a few weeks back that Lotus had received their new Dallara chassis, but their first on-track test has now been delayed from the middle of next month to somewhere in January:
http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/indycar-lotus-pushes-first-track-test-back-to-january/
Also, the new car was slow at Indy:
http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/indycar-series-trying-to-solve-2012-cars-speedway-issues

I think the problem with DW12 for being slow is that it doesn't have that much downforce at the front as the old car. They still have the negative rake on it, so they're still trying to get rid of aerodynamics. Give them more power and they can use more downforce and get rid of the bad rake without losing speed on straights.

I see the cornering understeer as a positive problem for this car. It doesn't have the downforce to make cornering too easy. Giving them, say, 100 - 150hp more from raising the maximum boost could make this car very interesting.

So what would you put the turn in over steer down to?

From Mario Andretti's twitter

Mario Andretti

According to the drivers, the car is "wicked loose" on corner entry, and "wicked tight" on exit (Dan Wheldon's exact words), indicating that it's not as simple as a downforce/aero problem.

To me it seems the car has too much rear weight, which on corner entry is causing the "tail to wag the dog" and then on corner exit, it's squatting down causing the under steer, a nightmare from an engineers point of view to sort btw.

I just wondered what you're opinion of the cause was, maybe this is a conversation best left to the technical discussion thread you started though.