St Cyr pleased with first Acura ARX-05 DPi test

HPD president Art St Cyr says that development of Acura Motorsports' new ARX-05 Daytona Prototype international is proceeding according to plan following the car's first shakedown test ahead of its 2018 debut in IMSA's WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with its partners at Team Penske.

Built by the French ORECA firm on its Le Mans LMP2-winning 07 chassis, the car's initial laps were turned in France.

"We did our first shakedown at Paul Ricard last week, had a few little teething pains as you normally do, but the cars shook down OK, the cars run, and they are getting shipped here as we speak," St Cyr (above) told RACER. "They'll be delivered to the Penske shop and we'll have our normal test plan as we get ready for next year's races."

Once the twin-turbo V6-powered machines arrive at Team Penske's base in North Carolina, more testing will take place throughout North America as the two-car factory program readies itself for the Rolex 24 At Daytona in January.

According to St Cyr, there was nothing that emerged at Paul Ricard to slow the ARX-05 program's momentum.

"The general things went right," he said. "The cars started, the parts fit, and those went without a hitch. This was the first time the cars were put together outside of a virtual environment; you have to expect some things won't fit, the wires aren't right...

"There's things that go wrong that you don't expect, and we had a handful of those, but we got through the test plan we expected to do. The characteristic electrical gremlins you had to track down... but there were no major issues."

In a final positive note, the aerodynamic data correlation issues that plagued 2015's ARX-04b did not emerge at Paul Ricard.

"The car performed the way we expected it to," St Cyr continued. "With our wind tunnel testing, our CFD; we got everything we thought we were getting, so we're pretty happy with our starting point.

"Now we need to get it ready to race. Achieving reliability, power, making sure it sits in its [Balance of Performance] window properly all needs to be done. But we're pretty happy with where we're at to start."