“Today wasn’t bad. We used up the test day trying different things on setup. There’s not much you can do with the rules restriction, so you work on all the obvious things. Speeds were pretty similar to the race weekend, but it was obviously a bit cooler,” he said, referring to the 70°F temperatures teams experienced after Monday's rain.

Power also made light of his first trip back to the Fontana oval after crashing and losing the championship to Ryan Hunter-Reay.

“I tried not to emulate what happened here last time…,” he said in a wry tone. “I even went out in a road car yesterday to look at the seam where I crashed. We’ve looked at all the data and overlaid the laps before and I didn’t do anything different inside the car so the seam is all that we can come up with.”

Andretti Autosport's Marco Andretti, who claimed pole in September at 216.0 mph in scorching 100°F conditions, was fourth on the speed charts and also pulled double duty after lapping in Ed Carpenter’s race-winning car.

“It was an idea we had to help each other out,” he said. “Obviously, I had the qualifying pace and he had the race pace. I worked on the race pace in my car and we made huge strides today. I’m a lot more confident leaving here. I had kind of a one-lane car during the race, and if they got in my lane, I couldn’t pass them, so we worked a lot on things so I could run in any lane I want.

"It was really successful. We weren’t really worried about speeds; we have a year until we come back and we know we have the pace after getting the pole.”

With a baby due any moment, Carpenter, who rounded out the five runners during the one-day test, flew home to be with his wife in Indiana once the activities drew to a close.

Marshall Pruett is SPEED.com's Auto Racing Editor, and covers the IndyCar Series. Before joining SPEED, Pruett worked in open-wheel racing for 20 years as a mechanic and engineer. He also contributes to RACER, Road & Track and Racecar Engineering. Follow him @MarshallPruett.