While the Rolex 24 at Daytona caught the attention of most motorsport fans last week, IndyCar teams were able to put the series’ new aerokit to the test in anger at another iconic Floridian track: Sebring Raceway. Between 23 and 24 January, series veterans and new faces alike got their first taste of what the 2018 season has in store for us.
“It’s a sexy car. Let’s be honest, that’s a big deal for a lot of fans. That’s what they enjoy watching and seeing. It’s a huge, huge step forward.” With these words, Graham Rahal summed up the visual impact of IndyCar’s new look. The new standardised aerokit features a cleaner upper surface, devoid of the many additional winglets that the DW-12 chassis had gained in the last couple of seasons, when manufacturers were allowed to tinker with the aerodynamics of the car.
In theory, this should translate to a cleaner airstream behind the cars and in turn to closer racing. It also means that the handling of the car has drastically changed, which is why the series chose gave teams additional testing mileage this winter in order to work out the growing pains of the new package. Lap times were not made public for this test for this same reason.
But the car was not the only novelty for fans of the series at Sebring. The rookie class of 2018 turned out in force for the test. Andretti’s Zach Veach and Foyt’s Matt Leist got acquainted with their new working quarters for the year. Dale Coyne also gave Zachary Claman Demelo and Pietro Fittipaldi an outing to measure their chances at occupying the #19 seat.
The Schmidt Peterson team also had new and exciting faces to introduce at Sebring. Canadian driver Robert Wickens showed off his number 7 machine in an all-black testing livery. From the pitwall, Le-Mans-winning engineer Leena Gade was on duty heading James Hinchcliffe’s crew in preparation for her first season in premier American open wheel racing.
Series veteran Sebastien Bourdais was pleased with the direction of the new package after the test. “In ‘14, ‘15, ‘16 and ‘17, we kept putting more and more downforce into the cars, but it didn’t feel like we were gaining any power,” explained the Frenchman. “But now that we’re taking the downforce out of it again, it feels like you have to modulate how you put the power back down and things like that. You feel the car accelerate quite a bit faster. You’re now getting a full glimpse of how much the manufacturers have gone forward with the whole package. That’s kind of cool to see.”
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