INDYCAR: Foyt optimistic after engineering revamp

Larry Foyt is optimistic that a reinforced engineering group and the experiences from a tough 2015 campaign will help AJ Foyt Racing to take some strides forward in the coming IndyCar season.

The team went into last year as a newly-expanded two-car operation, with Jack Hawksworth having been signed to partner Takuma Sato. However Sato's second place in the Sunday outing at Detroit represented the team's only top-five finish for the year, and Foyt said that in retrospect the team expansion coupled with the arrival of the new aero kit was too much to absorb at once.

"Obviously last year was a big step with us growing to two cars, and certainly with us being down here in Texas, a lot of people were moving and getting settled down here ... it was probably a tougher growth than I expected," he told RACER.

"But now, after a year of all that getting settled, things are much more in place and so far everything is going smoothly. [Last year] was kind of a perfect storm. Not only were we growing, but when the aero kits came ... the complexity of the aero kit was the hardest part for us, because it took resources away from other parts of the team where we hadn't planned for it."

Foyt maintained that both of his cars showed flashes of competitiveness during the year, but failed to convert that speed into results.

"Last year there were plenty of times where we still had the speed and showed at some events that we were the fastest Honda," he said.

"We just didn't put it all together, and didn't get the results. Obviously the Rahal guys did a fantastic job, and some other Honda teams got wins, and we didn't. But many times it wasn't because we weren't competitive. We had a lot of little gremlins; it was one of those years where when we were running well, it seemed like something [bad] would happen.

"So I don't just sit here and say that we weren't competitive, because it wasn't just that. It was hard for all of the Honda teams last year, and when you add on that we were growing and had some teething issues, it just made it worse for us."

Both Sato and Hawksworth have been retained for 2016, giving Foyt some consistency on the driver front, but a lot has changed behind the scenes. The team announced several weeks ago that Takuma Sato's engineer Don Halliday had been promoted to technical director and George Klotz hired from Andretti as team manager, however additional reinforcements have been added right through the engineering department.

Most notable is the arrival of Dan Hobbs, who most recently engineered Schmidt's No.7 entry and who will now oversee Hawksworth's car, with Hawksworth's 2015 engineer Raul Prado moving across the garage to head up Sato's car.

"Dan is going to be on Jack Hawksworth, and Raul will be on Takuma's with Matt Curry [ex-KVSH] as his assistant engineer," Foyt said. "So there's a lot of experience with Matt as well, and Raul was Takuma's assistant engineer for three years before going over to work with Jack. So far it has been a good fit. There's a good feel around the team right now. Hopefully that will translate."

While the results of the team's work over the winter won't begin to reveal themselves until the Honda and Chevy entries test side-by-side at Phoenix later this month, Foyt said that he is encouraged by what he saw when the team ran at Sebring last week.

"We had a long off-season but the guys were working all the time and had a lot of ideas, and we just concluded our first Sebring test and it was really positive that a lot of their ideas seemed to really correlate with the race track," he said.

"So that was good. I know that everybody is always thinking optimistically as you come into a new season, and I was optimistic and excited going into last year, although obviously when we unloaded for the first test we and the other Honda teams knew pretty quickly that it was going to be a long year. But I'm really impressed by Honda's effort, they've really tried to step up and say 'we're going to make this better', and the teams are trying to do the same. Hopefully all the hard work will pay off."