By Josh Farmer

FORT WORTH, Texas – Substitute driver Tristan Vautier is off to a strong start as me makes his Verizon IndyCar Series return in tonight’s Rainguard Water Sealers 600 at Texas Motor Speedway.

Tristan Vautier looks down pit lane prior to practice for the Rainguard Water Sealers 600 at Texas Motor Speedway. Photo by Chris Jones

The 27-year-old Frenchman was called up to replace Sebastien Bourdais, who is on the mend from a crash at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway last month.

Yesterday, he turned the fifth quickest two-lap average at 221.801 mph.  Considering he only had one practice session to get acquainted with the team and car, he was bullish about his result.

“I’m more pleased about the overall run with the day,” he said. “It’s been pretty good from the start. The car had really good grip straight away this morning for sure.

“That helped me for sure get back up to speed. The team did quite good with the level of downforce.”

Vautier last competed for Dale Coyne Racing in 2015 where he drove 11 races for the team. The team has since made some engineering changes to strengthen their organization. The veteran of 30 IndyCar starts noted that those changes made all the difference as he got back behind the wheel.

Tristan Vautier sails into Turn 1 during practice for the Rainguard Water Sealers 600 at Texas Motor Speedway. Photo by Chris Owens

“Dale is really, really putting a lot of effort into making the team as good as it is now,” he said. They’ve had two very strong drivers in the car and stability and two very strong engineering teams.

“I think that stability, and as I said, a wider engineering team with like Craig Hampson coming and Olivier, I think they’ve been able to share ideas with their experience from our teams on how the team has been running, and overall, yeah, the team is very strong.”

In two previous starts at TMS, Vautier has a best finish of 18th in 2013, when he was driving for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports. The track underwent a reconfiguration during the offseason where Turns 1 and 2 were widened and had their banking reduced by four degrees.

While Vautier himself did not feel fazed by the track changes, he noted that the team was behind the curve a little bit as they did not take part in the series’ mass test two months ago.

Tristan Vautier sits in his No. 18 Dale Coyne Racing Honda prior to practice for the Rainguard Water Sealers 600 at Texas Motor Speedway. Photo by Chris Jones

“Whether it was this track or the same track, I was still going to have to re-adapt so I didn’t think about too much,” he said. “What was annoying is that team was not able to come here to test so we were questioning how much downforce to run. I was nervous overall, but not about the track.”

Vautier backed up his qualifying speed by setting the eighth fastest time in the 30-minute final practice session. Heading into tonight’s race, he and the team are focused on bringing the car home in one piece, and anything better than that would just be a bonus.

“If we are at the end and we are in the top ten, we’ll be happy,” he said. “We don’t want to focus on the race and the outcome, we just want to focus on our job and maximize everything we can.”