“This is normal; I'm starting to trust his feedback after seeing what he's developed with the engineers,” he said. But it’s this way with any new driver. It was that way for me when I was young like Tristan. With more miles in the car, your feedback becomes more verified, you could say.

“It's not that his feedback isn’t good. It is. but there’s a transition. It’s like changing jobs. It takes time to be completely trusting in what that new person says. I think in the first few tests we do [together] now, he will follow my path, and after that he will start to follow his own.”

Pagenaud is known to the public as one of the nicest people in the IndyCar paddock, but as a competitor, there are few drivers that are more driven or direct than the 28-year-old…which creates an interesting dynamic with the addition of a teammate.

Simply put, Pagenaud signed to drive with Schmidt to win the IndyCar Series championship, not to mentor a rookie driver—even a fellow Frenchman like Vautier—or to divert his attention to anything other than his title aspirations.

However, if Vautier is fast and helping the team to increase its competitiveness, Pagenaud could directly benefit from the rookie’s presence in the Honda-powered No. 55 car.

Fontana winner Ed Carpenter, along with Bay Area native JR Hildebrand, will also turn their first Indy car laps of 2013 at Sonoma. (Photo: Marshall Pruett)

So, would Pagenaud be smarter to help Vautier in the name of eventually strengthening the team, or would he be better served to focus solely on his own No. 77 program? The answer appears to be somewhere in the middle.

“It's a good question. I'm in a position different to last year where the focus was just on me. Now we have data from another car and another driver. Obviously, I want to be at the top. To do that, I have to work with my teammate. Tristan is a good guy; I don’t think he'll stab me in the back,” he said.

“But I'm competitive. I want to beat my teammate. That's how I tackle it. I'm focused on myself this year. I can help him to develop his technical skills, which I will, and maybe he can help me see some things as a driver that I can improve. You never know.”

If the working relationship with Vautier develops as expected, the two will have every reason to feel bullish about the upcoming season. And it also wouldn’t hurt if things went slightly better for one driver in particular…

“It's not like we are enemies because we’re in the same team and both want the same thing,” Pagenaud explained. “It's like we're friends. But I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you I want to be the one who comes out ahead…”

Wednesday's test is free and open to the public.

Marshall Pruett is SPEED.com's Auto Racing Editor, covering IndyCar and sports cars. Now in his 27th year in the sport, Pruett was an open-wheel mechanic, engineer and manager before joining SPEED. He also contributes to RACER, Road & Track and Racecar Engineering. Follow him @MarshallPruett.