Oriol Servia reaches for the napkin on his lap during dinner as a metaphor for what Verizon IndyCar Series drivers will face April 30 on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.
The Open Test is a clean sheet.
“It’s exciting because some people have run the road course but not in the exact configuration as now so it’s good that we all start at the same point,” he said. “I’m sure the rookies are excited, too, because we go to Long Beach for all these years and the rookies are at a disadvantage. But now the rookies are like ‘OK, I’m going to show you now.’ It presents new opportunities, so it’s interesting.”
The 10 a.m.-noon and 2-5 p.m. (ET) sessions on the 2.439-mile, 14-turn circuit are free and open to the public to watch from the South Terrace grandstand and Turn 2 mounds as drivers and teams prepare for the inaugural Grand Prix of Indianapolis on May 8-10. Pit lane assignments
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The course was constructed for the U.S. Grand Prix, which featured a Formula One race from 2000-07. A $5 million reconfiguration and enhancement project began last autumn, and the 82-lap Verizon IndyCar Series race with a standing start headlines the race weekend that also incorporates all three rungs of the Mazda Road to Indy.
A few current drivers, such as Marco Andretti and Graham Rahal, competed in Indy Lights races contested in conjunction with the U.S. Grand Prix. Initially, that experience will be negligible, though Servia notes that experience truly is a great instructor. He’ll commit it to memory on the Honda simulator in Brownsburg, Ind., but in the days between the testing and opening of practice.
“You get there and walk it and for the first time you actually see it with your eyes, and then it’s amazing how after all these years of doing this the brain gets used to learning it very quickly once you go out with the car,” said Servia, who will drive the No. 16 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing entry.
“I always enjoy a new track because it’s a new challenge. But there’s something about going to a place for 15 years that you know very well because in your head you’ve had to have worked every little detail that you struggled in that one corner, so at the end of the 15 years you feel like you know every little thing and you want to make it a little better this year.
“On the way to the track you actually go back and think, ‘I wonder if those bumps in Turn 9 are still there.’
“It’s like an oval. We all talk about how much we love Indy. There are only four corners. We were there for two weeks at a time for many years and we still think it’s the most exciting thing because you keep learning and going to small details of what you can do to make the car better, you better. Repetition doesn’t make it boring when you’re trying to get close to perfection.”