2018 short oval aero gets thumbs-up at Iowa test

The emerging trend from IndyCar's 2018 universal bodywork tests is Juan Pablo Montoya and Oriol Servia love driving their Chevy- and Honda-powered cars, and with the completion of today's outing at Iowa, more positivity was offered by those in attendance.

"I really like where they're going with this car," Montoya told RACER. "We tried high downforce like we always run here and then we did some running with less downforce, and I liked that the most."

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With Montoya in his Team Penske Chevy and Servia in his Schmidt Peterson Motorsports Honda, IndyCar aerodynamic director Tino Belli sent the oval aces out to try different downforce levels and to conduct some lead-follow lapping to get a feel for turbulence.

Of all the activities that took place on the 0.875-mile oval, dialing down the aerodynamic assistance left the biggest impression on the two-time Indy 500 winner.

"It's nice because you come out of the corners and the car accelerates," Montoya said. "You can feel the car go from slower to faster instead of being the same speed all the way around. With the high downforce, you go around in the higher gears all the time.

"With the lower downforce, we're like 8 mph faster on the straights, but you have to slow a lot more for the corners, so you have to drive the car a lot more and then accelerate for real coming out. You have to pedal the car in the corners, which is great."

Together, the two completed 270 laps and Montoya was credited with the fastest lap of 18.0 seconds (teammate Helio Castroneves set a best of 17.3 in qualifying for the July race in Iowa). Rather than chase lap records, Belli concluded the test once IndyCar's checklist was finished.

"First, we wanted to check the suspension loads, which is an important thing at Iowa with the speeds and banking," he told RACER. "Then we checked the downforce levels, with two long runs where Oriol and Juan alternated positions to assess how the car handles in traffic at each downforce level. Like Mid-Ohio, when it's following the car in front, it's a lot more stable, irrespective of the downforce level, so it's easier to follow."

Based on the feedback received from its drivers, IndyCar is leaning toward using the reduced downforce package for Iowa in 2018.

"We will probably go with what I call the 'medium' downforce level," Belli said. "It's not the lowest downforce we can go to; the car was designed with a large range of downforce options with front and rear wing adjustments. We still have to look through all of the data, but I think we'll go for what's right in the middle of what this car is capable of producing."

Compared to the high-downforce settings used with the current aero kits last month during the Iowa Corn 300, the medium setting from Thursday's test produced approximately "20 percent less downforce," according to Belli.

With a third consecutive test in the books with the 2018 bodywork, one more remains late in September on the Sebring short course.