The rookie went to the top midway through the session with a lap of 1m.09.0120s, putting him 0.8 seconds under the official lap record held by Will Power, although the times were some way off those set at the Alabama track in testing last month.
As well as topping the timing screens, Vautier was also responsible for the only red flag of the session when he spun into the gravel at Turn 2 with five minutes remaining.
His car was undamaged, although the soggy conditions left from overnight rain led to some delays in retrieving his stricken Schmidt machine.
Second-quickest was Ganassi’s Scott Dixon with a time 0.05s down on Vautier’s, giving Honda a one-two to kick off the weekend.
It would have been a one-two-three for the Japanese manufacturer, but Chevrolet-powered Ryan Hunter-Reay was able to improve his time in the five minutes that remained after the restart to jump ahead of Charlie Kimball, who had previously occupied third.
Kimball’s time was still good enough for fourth ahead of Will Power, Dario Franchitti, Simona de Silvestro and Simon Pagenaud.
AJ Allendinger’s competitive return to single-seaters began with him setting the ninth-best time, just shading Penske team-mate Helio Castroneves.
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