Davison has tough task ahead

James Davison certainly wasn't the most popular choice to replace Sebastien Bourdais in Dale Coyne's No. 18 Honda, but the hard-charging Australian hopefully quieted some of his doubters after Monday's performance.

It had been 729 days since Davison turned his last lap in an IndyCar – at the 2015 Indy 500 in a Coyne Honda – yet it only took five laps for the open-wheel and sports car racing ace to reach 217mph. So much for needing a refresher.

"To be honest, you do this race once, you know what to expect," he said after posting a best of 223.670mph during 88 laps of running. "The cars are always going to be set up with a lot of downforce. The sticker Firestone tire's just phenomenal. You go out of the pits, you nearly want to go flat first time into Turn 3, having not been in the car for two years. It was no issue, yeah, being flat by lap two or three this morning, or early this afternoon."

Davison spent the day driving a car that has not been optimized for superspeedway competition, and by the sound of it, he'll race with it that way for 500 miles on Sunday. The spare DCR chassis, prepped for road course racing, lacks all of the special parts and aerodynamic fitment that reduces mechanical and aero drag in order to boost top speed.

"Yeah, in regard to what we can do with the state of our road course package, to be honest, I'll actually asked that question when we took a break in the middle of practice today," he said. "Yeah, I didn't really get an answer, to be honest. The engineers were just focusing on what we can do to get the handling in the window.

"I'm sure there's something we can do. But it can't be too, too big. As we know, a lot of these teams spend, especially my team, they spend months massaging the gearbox, uprights, getting the friction reduction done, the body fit right, in addition to the engineering."

Having seen Bourdais' primary car reach above 231mph, being stuck at 223mph in the road course backup was a visible demonstration of why teams spend months perfecting their superspeedway cars before arriving at Indy.

"Yeah, obviously Sebastien's crash, you know, that all went out the window," Davison added. "You've seen it in the past when I think Ed Carpenter wrecked in early morning qualifying probably two years ago. He gets out of the car, you can see he's more upset about the state of his racecar that can potentially win the race, because he knows their best foot's behind them."

Depending on the pace of the race, Davison's speed could allow him to be in the mix, but if it's a fast day, he knows climbing from 33rd and last on the grid will be all but impossible.

"We're just going to have to do the best with what we've got," he said.

Davison and the rest of the field will have one more chance to get ready for the Indy 500 on Friday when they roll out for the one-hour Carb Day session.