IndyCar: Graham Rahal completes first test with new engineer at Barber

Graham Rahal completed a trouble-free final day of testing Monday on the 2.38-mile Barber Motor­sports Park road course in prepa­ra­tion for the 2015 Verizon IndyCar Series season. He completed a total of 83 laps in what was his first time on track since the 2014 Verizon IndyCar Series season finale at Auto Club Speedway on Aug. 30. It was also his first test with Eddie Jones as his race engineer.

"It was a really good, and extremely produc­tive day," said Graham Rahal, 25. "All things consid­ered, I think the team is having fun again. With the new personnel we have in place, I think everyone is enjoying them­selves and I think our team­work showed it today and I'm excited about that.

"We were very effi­cient, we accom­plished a lot and we shaved a consid­er­able amount of time, just over a second, off of what was done at the race. I feel like we're in a good spot. Eddie (Jones) is really very open to many ideas and he's ready for anything that can improve the car and improve our team. I think there are some really good days ahead of us."

"The test went very well," added race engi­neer Eddie Jones. "It was very produc­tive. We came here with a pretty good plan and we followed it through and made some good strides for a successful day. We gath­ered some useful data for us to continue our devel­op­ment with so all in all it was a very good test. Graham was impres­sive as usual with great concen­tra­tion and ran quickly even though he hadn't been in the car for a while.

"We know that the new aero package will have more down­force but we can still work on the mechan­ical package of the car and that's what we concen­trated on. It was also impor­tant to get out there and run with Graham for the first time and estab­lish a rapport and I am pleased with the result."