A full day on the 2.303-mile, 12-turn road course at Sonoma on Thursday was welcome for Dragon Racing's Sebastien Bourdais and Katherine Legge. It marked the first full test of the season for Bourdais, in preparation for the Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma there on Aug. 24-26. Legge's lone in-season test in the TrueCar-sponsored car came in June at Iowa Speedway.
The pair, who are splitting duties in Dragon's No. 7 Dallara-Chevy this season, combined for 127 laps during the session on the challenging 2.303-mile, 12-turn road course.
“The new car is nice, and it's nice to have time to get stuff checked and settled in and do our job,” said Bourdais, who finished sixth in his IZOD IndyCar Series debut at Sonoma last year. “This is a very specific track. You almost approach it like a street course. The pavement is slippery and low grip, so the car has to work very hard.”
Dragon Racing will return to Sonoma with Bourdais to test again Aug. 17 alongside Penske's Ryan Briscoe and Helio Castroneves, Rahal Letterman Lanigan's Takuma Sato, Schmidt Hamilton's Simon Pagenaud, Andretti's Marco Andretti, James Hinchcliffe and Sebastien Saavedra, and owner/driver Ed Carpenter.