Tristan Vautier tops opening Indy Lights practice in Long Beach

POST-PRACTICE QUOTES:

TRISTAN VAUTIER (No. 77 Mazda Road to Indy/Sam Schmidt Motorsports): "There were two corners that were wet, one corner, Turn 10 was wet, but the rest was all dry. Then we started to get the rain drops and we were like, 'Oh, is the track getting wet or not?' It was quite hard to know or judge how the track was going to be. We were getting to the corners because it was raining more and more, and we didn't if it was really getting the track that wet, so it was pretty interesting." (About conditions): "It was really slippery, we're really far from the times from last year. But of course, we only ran for 15 minutes, so I think it's always the same in these kind of situations."

OLIVER WEBB (No. 7 Lucas Oil/Sam Schmidt Motorsports): "When we first went out it wasn't that bad, it was pretty dry, the wind was quite heavy and we thought it was coming, but I think we both managed to do quite a few laps before the rain came in. It's a bit inconsistent when you're getting rain drops on your visor, but at the speed you're doing it's hitting our visor obviously more than it's hitting the track, so you have to judge that point when it starts affecting the track and when you have to start backing it off a bit and not go as close to the walls. It wasn't too bad, I think both of our main priority was to learn the track because none of us have been here before and Star Mazda doesn't do this track, so it's good to for us to get some laps in before the rain really came down." (About the conditions) "I think if anything it's good that we went out on a green track because it's still raining and still heavy, our original thought was, "Great, the IZOD IndyCar guys are going to go out before us and rubber the track in for us and we'll know what it's like to go on the track tomorrow," but I think we went out on a green track, it's rained again, it's now green again. By the time we go out tomorrow morning with it being early, 8'oclock in the morning for practice, it'll probably be just as similar and we'll be quite far off the time anyway unless magically the sun comes out really early tomorrow it's going to be a bit slippery, I think."

SEBASTIAN SAAVEDRA (No. 27 Team AFS Racing): "It's always good to be back in Long Beach – this is my fourth time racing at this track and it's always good to come into a weekend with that experience, especially when the rain cuts the session short. The session started out dry but then the rain seemed to come out of nowhere so we weren't able to get a lot of laps in today with the AFS car. But we managed to get a good baseline for the car and we are looking strong already."

CARLOS MUÂ¥OZ (No. 26 Team Dialy-Ser): "This is my first time on this circuit so I was looking to get ten laps (in on dry conditions) before tomorrow because the rest of the weekend will be dry. Overall I feel strong and am looking forward to practice and qualifying tomorrow."

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