Andretti team impressed with Alonso

It should come as no surprise to learn the Andretti Autosport team came away from Wednesday's test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway with a healthy appreciation for Fernando Alonso's talent.

The one-day introductory outing, arranged by Andretti, its partners at the McLaren-Honda Formula 1 team and the Verizon IndyCar Series, gave the Formula 1 ace his first taste of oval driving at the 2.5-mile circuit where he'll make his Indy 500 debut on May 28.

New to the art of turning left, but far from inexperienced with how to prepare for a new challenge, Alonso made quite an impression on how he approached the daunting speedway during six hours of live streaming action.

"I would say [I'm] relieved the first live test we've ever been a part of went OK," Andretti COO Rob Edwards (pictured) told RACER. "It's the first test I've ever done where we had a production planning meeting beforehand! It was good, right? Why would we not expect him to do a good job, given his credentials?

"Given the amount of time he spent preparing, he's just super thorough about every aspect of it and has taken a lot of time and effort to educate himself about what to expect. I think it went every bit as well as we hoped it would, and fortunately the weather held off for us and we were able to tick all of the boxes on the test list."

Across 110 laps, Alonso completed IndyCar's Rookie Orientation Program, tried a number of aerodynamic setup changes and one mechanical change, got a feel for Firestone's tires, tried running in fuel conservation mode and simulated everything from race-like pit stops to caution periods. Altogether, the 35-year-old absorbed more in one day of intense learning at IMS than most rookie earn in a week of open practice.

"As everyone was able to see, we did yellow running, he was able to practice exiting off of Turn 4 which is something as a rookie he wouldn't have a chance to do until Carb Day," Edwards added. "His exploring nature [was seen]; a couple of times he just came in off of Turn 3 rather than Turn 4 because he was out to experience as many different aspects of the track as he could today. [I'm] impressed with everything he did, but not surprisingly impressed because that's very much his nature."

Alonso's race engineer clearly enjoyed the first day of working with his new driver.

"He'd been in the simulator for some laps, [and] of course you're never sure how that's going to pan out," said Eric Bretzman (pictured above), who won the 2008 Indy 500 and three IndyCar championships with Scott Dixon at Chip Ganassi Racing. "It was closer than what he expected so he was reasonably comfortably pretty quick. I think a lot of it was how he imagined; maybe not all of it.

"I think he's got a very good understanding and very good appreciation for the details and nuances of the track and the different corners and different lines. He's asking a lot of the right questions, seems to be worried about a lot of the right things. Pretty impressed."

More than a decade of working alongside Dixon has given Bretzman a solid understanding of what supreme talent looks and acts like when faced with new obstacles, and he found Alonso to be up for the task of becoming a serious contender at the Indy 500. Some Indy rookies step out of the car at the end of their first day feeling overwhelmed, but that wasn't what Bretzman saw with the Spaniard.

"He would have stayed until the sun went down if it didn't rain," he said. "It is not happening faster than him at the moment, so that's good. He's got more experiences he needs to encounter, and has all of the running in traffic to encounter, so we had a talk about that tonight. That will be his next big challenge to take that in and figure out what to do with it and our next big challenge is to keep making the window wider on the car to put the car where he wants it."

Alonso's ability to run just above 220mph range on his first day was an indicator of his natural ability and the quality of the car he was given by Andretti Autosport. His best lap of 222.548mph came as a result of the comfy downforce Bretzman kept on the No. 29 Honda to ensure his driver built confidence throughout the test, but that will need to change when he returns after the Spanish Grand Prix.

Trimming downforce and drag in pursuit of the 230mph-plus laps to earn pole position will transform his car from a gentle friend at 222.5mph to living on the razor's edge to fight for a top starting position. Getting Alonso to the point where he knows what to ask for from Bretzman is part of the process; Bretzman and the Andretti team will also need to educate Alonso on what to want and what to avoid.

"We've been telling him some of the usual pitfalls you have to watch out for," he said. "Obviously you can't keep reducing push because you're going to find out the hard way [and understeer into the wall]. He's got a pretty good hard disk on his shoulders and he's processing a lot as well. We have to teach him how to practice, and help him to understand the questions he needs to ask."

Although downforce modifications comprised the majority of the setup changes that were thrown at Alonso, one suspension tweak was completed for the sake of adding to his mental database.

"He's an amazing combination of laid-back and super detailed," Bretzman said of Alonso's Dixon-like demeanor and attitude. "We made one left-rear spring change so he could feel an asymmetrical change, because he never had that before.

"You wouldn't do that in F1, but on an oval, it's normal, but he's never felt what it was like to change a spring on the left-rear to alter the feeling of the right-front. We tried that in the simulator, and he perked up and said 'hmmm, that's interesting...' so we wanted him to experience it in real life."

With the day done and more than 250 miles logged by Alonso, Edwards hoped his driver’s motivations for tackling his first Indy 500 – in the middle of a dismal F1 campaign – will be seen with total clarity by his detractors.

"He's only here to do one thing, and that's to win the race," he said. "Everything he's doing is to prepare himself is to achieve that goal, no question. He's not here because he wants to compete in the Indianapolis 500; he's here because he wants to win the Indianapolis 500."

Behind the scenes, Edwards and the Andretti team have also found Alonso to be the opposite of any F1 driver stereotypes.

"He is not aloof, he's not pretentious, [or] any of those things a preconceived notion might be," he continued. "He's fun to be around, he's appreciative, everyone on the team's has warmed to him in a very short space of time. For everything he's done and achieved, he's just very down to earth, very normal, just great to work with."

If there was one slight error made by Alonso on Wednesday, it was failing to avoid a pair of birds sitting on the backstretch. Approaching at nearly 230mph, the unsuspecting creatures were pulverized by the No. 29 Honda as an explosion of feathers trailed behind the car.

Asked if it was part of the test plan, the good-natured Bretzman insisted the maneuver wasn't on his to-do list.

"He was just showing off getting two birds ... all those years, we never got more than one...he got two simultaneously," he said with a smile. "We got a lot of birds [in the past], just never two at once."

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