{"id":50608,"date":"2018-04-11T11:07:17","date_gmt":"2018-04-11T18:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=50608"},"modified":"2018-04-11T11:07:43","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T18:07:43","slug":"indycar-engineer-makes-switch-to-technical-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/indycar-engineer-makes-switch-to-technical-director\/","title":{"rendered":"IndyCar Engineer Makes Switch to Technical Director"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IndyCar<\/p>\n

Schmidt Peterson Motorsports (SPM) has changed a lot over the past few years. While they\u2019ve kept their No. 1 driver, Canadian James Hinchcliffe, as the linchpin of the squad, internally the changes have been extremely interesting.<\/p>\n

At the end of 2017, the team hired Canadian Todd Malloy as their technical director. Malloy, who had been working with Tony Kanaan at Chip Ganassi Racing the previous three years, was the lead engineer for Bryan Herta Autosport at Indianapolis in 2011 when the late Dan Wheldon secured his second Indianapolis 500 victory.<\/p>\n

In 2011, BHA had an alliance with Sam Schmidt Motorsports, so Malloy knew and already had affinity with his current team co-owner. \u201cHe\u2019s such a good person, and it\u2019s always nice to work with people you\u2019ve had time with before,\u201d SPM\u2019s new technical director said. (He continued with Herta\u2019s team until the close of the 2014 season, when BHA joined Andretti Autosport.)<\/p>\n

Malloy has been in the open wheel racing business for 21 years and, prior to his most recent stops in the Verizon IndyCar Series, worked predominantly with CART\/Champ Car\u2019s Team Green, Player\u2019s Forsythe Racing and Newman\/Haas\/Lanigan Racing, three well-known incubators for mechanically talented people. \u201cI think all the years I\u2019ve had at these different places have helped dramatically,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know you\u2019ve seen everything, from the lowest of the low budgets to – maybe not the Penske-level situation, but with historically well-funded programs in this business.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"IndyCar<\/p>\n

So far, obviously with only two races – of 17 total – in the books for INDYCAR, SPM and their two Canadian drivers, Hinchcliffe and rookie Robert Wickens are having a good go of it. Wickens led laps at both the season opening road\/street course race in St Petersburg and the second oval contest in Phoenix. He finished second at the latter race, his first competition on an oval, any oval. He\u2019s turned heads with his exceptional driving. Hinchcliffe has been steady and earned finishes of fourth and sixth.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach team is different, but at this stage of my career I\u2019ve seen a lot of different options,\u201d Todd Malloy said of the team he\u2019s chosen to work with. For the first time, he\u2019s not running a car as its engineer, but overseeing those that do. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty different, a new challenge for sure, and I\u2019m enjoying seeing this new group of people come together. There\u2019s a hard road – I\u2019m not going to lie, there\u2019s a hard road.\u201d<\/p>\n

While SPM elevated their relationship with engine supplier Honda Performance Development over the off-season, they weren\u2019t on-track until the end of February, getting a few good days at Sebring, Fla. prior to the season opener. Dealing with new driver\/engineer combinations, a new UAK18 body kid (universal aero kit 2018) for their Dallara chassis, \u201cWe were go-go-go (over the winter), so it\u2019s really been a big challenge. We got more track time; we got less development time and we\u2019ll take the track time,\u201d he laughs.<\/p>\n

\"IndyCar<\/p>\n

Not only is Malloy training a new driver in Wickens, he\u2019s got a lauded sports car engineer to work with in Leena Gade, former lead engineer at the Le Mans-winning Audi prototype team. \u201cIt\u2019s been a massive, massive change for her as IndyCar racing is not sports car racing. It\u2019s always important,\u201d Malloy reflects, \u201cto keep in mind other perspectives because so many of us have been doing this for so long, the same way all the time, it\u2019s important to have a little bit of influx from outside thinking.\u201d Gade certainly provides that.<\/p>\n

Even though Robert Wickens failed to gain the win at St Petersburg after dicing with 2016 Indianapolis 500 winner Alexander Rossi, he did finish on podium at Phoenix. This weekend the SPM team is part of a 24-car field for the 44th Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach on the 11-turn, 1.968-mile venerable street course, where Hinchcliffe is the reigning champion. For Todd Malloy, the challenge is to see either one of his drivers atop the podium step.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe owners want to see us run competitively throughout the season, and I think what I want to see is continuous progress. I want to see us get better and better and, honestly, I didn\u2019t expect to unload as well as we have. Part of my job,\u201d Malloy realizes, \u201cis that long-term planning that has us maintain top-level performance throughout each weekend and the season. We\u2019re definitely well on our way in terms of projects and I\u2019m looking forward to this year and keeping our momentum going.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Schmidt Peterson Motorsports (SPM) has changed a lot over the past few years. While they\u2019ve kept their No. 1 driver, Canadian James Hinchcliffe, as the linchpin of the squad, internally the changes have been extremely interesting.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":50611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3470,5029],"tags":[5614,712,3601,41,1632,5896,5897,5895],"class_list":["post-50608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-racing","tag-anne-proffit","tag-indycar","tag-james-hinchcliffe","tag-news","tag-racing","tag-robert-wickens","tag-schmidt-peterson-motorsports","tag-todd-malloy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Todd-Malloy-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-dag","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50612,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50608\/revisions\/50612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}