Alexander Rossi became the first Chevrolet driver to test the new IndyCar IR28 chassis at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. On a rainy Saturday in Speedway, Indiana, Rossi became the first IndyCar driver to test out the first new IndyCar chassis since 2012. As the IR28 looks to replace the IR18 the season after next, the California native believes that the updated car shows promise after a weather-shortened, limited run around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s Road Course.
Ed Carpenter Racing’s Rossi was chosen as the Chevrolet driver to take part in the first test of the new car along with Chip Ganassi’s Alex Palou for Honda. “Man, it’s pretty cool,” Rossi told IndyCar’s in-house media. “It’s a very big honor to kinda be the first guy to experience it, and to do it at IMS is the cherry on top. It’s been a fun day and a half so far, and I look forward to seeing what else we can learn.”
View Price on AmazonThe differences between the IR18 and IR28 can be felt before the car comes up to speed, with a more thought-out cockpit that offers more space and better ergonomics for the driver. “The car feels, well, first of all, before you even drive it, when you sit in it. It feels substantially different; there’s quite a bit more room in the cockpit,” Rossi said. “The cockpit’s ergonomics and design is substantially better. You feel, leaving pit lane right away, all of the integrated cooling that comes into the cockpit, which is great.”
With this being the first test of the new chassis, aside from some straight-line runs earlier in the week, Rossi reports the ride as remarkably smooth, with minimal vibrations at speed. “I think it’s a car where you don’t feel as many vibrations, so you can tell the build quality is quite high,” Rossi said. “From pure balance and performance, right now, it’s still hard to say because it’s super early days right now. We’re going through certain parameters and making sure it’s functioning as normal.”
The changes don’t feel extremely drastic; at the end of the day, Rossi feels that it drives and feels like the car he’s become accustomed to since his breakout season in 2016 when he moved over to the world of IndyCar from Formula One. “It’s an IndyCar man, you brake at roughly the same spot,” Rossi said. It was a drying track, and I could already feel that there was quite a bit of load in some of the high-speed corners.”
Source: roadandtrack.com
