The Indy Lights Championship ushered in its new Dallara IL15 chassis and AER turbo 4-cylinder era with 2012 Lights champion and 2013 IndyCar Series Rookie of the Year Tristan Vautier behind the wheel at Mid-Ohio on Monday. After a brief shakedown at Indiana’s Putnam Park road course last week, the series is using today’s test as the first proper run for its new 2015 car, and based on early impressions from the Frenchman, the attractive open-wheel design has had no major issues within its first 25 laps of exploration.
“Overall the car feels really good,” Vautier told RACER. “The brakes are amazing, the engine is really good; the driveability is already great. It feels great inside the car. The noise of the engine is really nice, the paddle shifting is really cool. At the moment, the balance – obviously we have to work on. The level of downforce we will be able to feel a bit later on when the tires get up to temp. It’s pretty cool; it’s a big step forward.”
The Dallara USA team and Indy Lights technical staff are overseeing the running and engineering of the car during the test, and have made a series of setup changes to find a general balance for Vautier. AER has limited the power and revs being made available on its brand-new 450hp engine, keeping the car around 8000rpm, and more is expected to be unleashed later in the day.
Anti-lag was enabled during one of the final runs before the lunch break, and as Vautier brought the car up to its first performance threshold, he set an unofficial lap of 1:16.1, which, after only 25 laps of testing, compares favorably to Sunday’s Indy Lights pole position of 1:14.04. The biggest chassis improvements came at the rear of the car, where lowering the ride height and softening the springs generated more traction and lateral grip.
UPDATE: Late in the afternoon, Vautier eclipsed both Indy Lights pole position times from this past weekend with an unofficial lap of 1:13.4 in the new car.
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