The first test of the season is in the books, with Honda topping the timing sheets on Saturday and Sunday after Mercedes led the times on Friday. While Friday was an especially warm day, reaching 75 degrees, neither Saturday or Sunday got past 61 degrees, which may have played into the strengths of the Honda teams.
Patrick Marcelli carried the Honda banner on both Saturday and Sunday, setting lap times within a tenth of each other for the top spots. His teammate, Champ Car rookie, Esther Hoffson, was second fastest on Friday and Sunday as well, with newcoming team Eastern Atlantic Motorsports showing its strengths right out of the gate before the second test in February at Las Vegas. Escuderia Aguila, to the surprise of few, showed pace throughout the test, though their testing program was largely focused on preparations for the first street course race of the season in St. Petersburg, adding to the Honda fleet occupying the top spaces. More surprisingly, Swift Autosport also represented Honda well across all three days of the test, despite the outfit only being able to compete in the Triple Crown this year. The team competed in IndyCar from 2016 to 2018, with minimal success, however those days may be behind them with newcomer Tim Kourting showing pace to hang with the veterans and full funded squads through the test.
Mercedes looked fast in the heat on Friday, with Simona Leroux topping the first day of the test, but as the temperature dropped across the weekend, so did her results as she rounded out the very bottom of the table on Sunday. Stephanie Porter-Kelley spent Friday and Saturday in the top 10 on the leaderboards before spending most of Sunday focusing on long runs with the returning Firestone Firehawk tires. Additionally, on Sunday, another newcoming team in LM Competition put two of their cars in the top 10, with veteran Ray Taylor and rookie Mildred Moon both occupying space on the final day.
Alpine kept much of their testing program between their two teams, with both Cherokee GP and Samsung Racing Team Impulse avoiding the top of the leaderboards on all three days, while also working to avoid the bottom of the leaderboards. With only five cars powered by Alpine for the full Champ Car season, the French marque may have required both teams to work in tandem for the test to better prepare for the season long battle against the armadas being powered by Honda and Mercedes.
The oval test in Las Vegas will be here before you know it, as the beginning of February looms large. The test will be open to all eligible Indy 500 participants, meaning we're likely to see more than the 26 full time entries when that test begins!
-Brent Doyle
Auto Racing Digest