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[h=2]Taylor fast on IndyCar test debut with Penske[/h] Thursday, 23 February 2017


Marshall Pruett / Image by LAT

American sports car star Ricky Taylor got his long-awaited run in an IndyCar with Team Penske on Thursday at the Homestead-Miami road course. The newest winner of IMSA's Rolex 24 at Daytona was part of talks to test an Ed Carpenter Racing Chevy IndyCar in recent years, but the first opportunity came with Penske in Simon Pagenaud's championship-winning No. 1 entry.
"Looking at the car with the No. 1 on it was surreal," the second-generation driver told RACER. "It was a lot of nerves to start because you want to drive for the best teams, you want to be a professional, you want to show them what you can do in one day without making mistakes and giving good feedback. So many drivers would love a shot like this with a championship-winning team, so all I wanted was to do a good job for them."
Taylor, who has driven Chevy-powered racecars for most of his career, says getting acclimated to the Dallara DW12-Chevy Indy car came quickly.
"The Team Penske Chevy was a blast to drive; the car gives you so much confidence," he added. "It's all about the little details of how much downforce you're running, the short braking distances, and everyone's running around the same terminal velocity, so the margins you're looking for are so tiny. It's the same in every series, but in IndyCar, the margins are really small.
"You always build things like this [first IndyCar test] up in your head, but you need to treat it just like another car to be able to drive it in anger. In the end, it was just a blast, and working with Team Penske was better than I could have imagined."
Taylor, who shares the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R with his brother Jordan, is believed to have come close to matching the best time set by Pagenaud. The 27-year-old Floridian attributed his extra pace to favorable track conditions.
"Even if I didn't have a reference lap from somebody of the caliber of Simon, it was great, but he only got a couple of laps in the morning and the track got better when I did my best lap in the afternoon, so it was easier to run my pace," he explained.
In an interesting historical note, Taylor and new Team Penske driver Josef Newgarden raced against each other while starting out in open-wheel competition. Prior to the eventual direction change that sent Taylor to racing prototypes in Grand-Am and IMSA, the two were equally matched in their formative years.
"It was funny to see Josef in the Penske shop during my seat fitting because I haven't seen him a bunch since our Skip Barber days," he said. "We spent a lot of time together back then, and had a lot of great races together, but those cars are a lot different from an Indy car."
Although Team Penske's house is currently full on the IndyCar side, there could be an opening if Helio Castroneves ever decides to retire. And with Penske in the midst of preparations to field a factory Daytona Prototype international effort for Honda, other opportunities within the organization could exist for Taylor.