By alley - Mar 13, 2017, 3:31 PM ET

Ricky Taylor has new appreciation for IndyCar after test

Ricky Taylor has been to countless Verizon IndyCar Series events. As one of the stars of North American sports car racing, he's raced on IndyCar's undercard with Grand-Am or IMSA, and never had a reason to turn up to watch the open-wheel championship during a free weekend, but that changed at St. Petersburg.

Coming off a recent one-day test for Team Penske at the Homestead-Miami road course

where he drove Simon Pagenaud's championship-winning No. 1 Chevy

, the Floridian made to trek over to St. Pete to serve as an interested spectator. While there, he made sure to say hello to his new IndyCar friends and observe their performances with a new appreciation for what takes place in the cockpit.

"After Team Penske gave me the chance to do my first IndyCar test, my view of what I see is totally different," Taylor told RACER. "When you watch them on TV and you see their hands moving around, you think you know what they're dealing with, but after driving Simon's car and realizing every kick of the wheel is as hard as you've ever felt, you know they're out there muscling the cars around and fighting with all their effort to maintain control of them while going as fast as humanly possible."

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Building from the biggest win of Taylor's career, which came in January at the Rolex 24 at Daytona where he anchored the Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R effort, the surprise opportunity to help Team Penske with its IndyCar preparations in February was a dream scenario for the 27-year-old sports car ace.

"It was just great to be able to stop in and say hello to the team here," Taylor said. "Even getting to drive a little bit and be a part of the team to watch how they work was fascinating for me. You can stand back and appreciate how all of the engineers and the crew work in such an impressive way. You know why they've been so successful for so long."

Although there are no known plans for Taylor to leave IMSA's WeatherTech SportsCar Championship for IndyCar, the smile on his face while watching the field of 21 cars practice at St. Pete suggested he'd welcome the chance to join the fight at some stage in his career.

"The IndyCar drivers are gladiators these days," he said. "I was thinking of my test at Homestead where there's one really fast turn and how much physical stress it puts on you. And then you think about what it takes to race Barber or Mid-Ohio in an IndyCar where it has to be insane. You look at the drivers walking around pit lane and they're huge for their size, and you know why because they need all the strength they can because the cars are so physical to drive. It doesn't look easy; they never get time to rest, but it also looks like a lot of fun."