IZOD INDYCAR SERIES
FIRESTONE 550
TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER POST RACE NOTES AND QUOTES
JUNE 8, 2013
 
HELIO CASTRONEVES, NO. 3 AAA INSURANCE TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, RACE WINNER: IT HAD BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE YOU HAD CLIMBED THAT FENCE.  HOW GOOD DOES IT FEEL TO WIN?
“Oh it’s been great.  I tell you first of all I want to thank AAA, the boys did a hell of a job.  The Hitachi’s guys, SKF, Quicken Loans, Verizon, all of our sponsors, Shell-Pennzoil come on PPG, everyone if I’m forgetting I’m sorry I’ve run out of memory.”
 
HOW WERE YOU GUYS ABLE TO MANAGE THE TIRES SO EFFECTIVELY?
“Jonathan (Diuguid, engineer) did a great job, the Chevy guys did a great job because we were able not only to manage the tires, manage the fuel and it was setup.  We were just doing a lot of homework and it paid off.  Thank God it paid off.  Texas is awesome.  I love this place.”
 
FOURTH WIN HERE AT TEXAS I DON’T KNOW IF I HAVE SEEN YOU THAT EXCITED GETTING OUT OF A RACE CAR:
“I’m excited because it’s a lot of things going on.  Obviously these guys deserve it.  We certainly had a great car.  We just putting nothing wrong out there and that is what we need.  We need small details to make it happen.  We battle for the championship and that is what we need.”
 
YOU SAID IF WE COULD WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP WITHOUT WINNING A RACE THAT WOULD BE GREAT.  COME ON THIS FEELS PRETTY GOOD DOESN’T IT?
“It feels fantastic right now.  We feel great.  We have got to keep going.  Right now I’m going to enjoy this awesome moment.  This is awesome.  I want to thank the Lord as well because man that guy upstairs always keeps looking after me.  So it was great.”
 
YOU LED 132 LAPS.  YESTERDAY WHEN WE TALKED YOU WERE A LITTLE DISAPPOINTED WITH HOW FAST YOUR TEAMMATE WAS.  WHERE DID THE SPEED FROM THIS RACE CAR COME FROM?
“Well we might not of had the speed by ourselves, but we definitely had a consistent speed.  The balance was just absolutely great.  Like I said Jonathan (Diuguid, engineer) and the boys did their homework.  They look after what we need to be done and we done.”
 
ROGER PENSKE, NO. 3 AAA INSURANCE TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET – WINNING TEAM OWNER
THIS IS A BIG WIN FOR THIS ORGANIZATION ESPECIALLY FOR HELIO CASTRONEVES:
“Well they did a great job.  The guys had a good car for him.  There is no question that he drove the wheels off it.  Terrific, just a terrific day.”
 
RYAN HUNTER-REAY, NO 1 DHL ANDRETTI AUTOSPORT CHEVROLET, FINISHED 2ND: YOU WERE BEHIND HIM (HELIO CASTRONEVES) BUT YOU JUST COULDN’T GET CLOSE ENOUGH.  HOW MUCH OF A HANDFUL WAS THIS CAR TONIGHT?
“Yeah it was just varying levels of bad just because of how loose it was.  Man, the drivers had to drive it tonight.  That No. 1 DHL Chevy was great.  We made the most of it.  We just lost it there with the yellow when it came out.  Our strategy was such that we needed that yellow not to come out and we had a good shot at winning it today though.  It’s just… man after a long day like that need to down some Sun Drops.  That was interesting.  It was hard to even get by some of the slower traffic.  You were just searching everywhere for grip.  I had so many catches out there that I thought were going into the wall.  Man, even be tough to go to sleep tonight.”
 
A CHAMPION CALIBER KIND OF RUN TONIGHT IN TEXAS:
“Yeah, I’ve got to bring it home on days like today.  I thought we had the car to win there for a bit, but great job to Helio (Castroneves), congratulations it was just light out there.  You had three or four laps to really go full out and then from there you are just pedaling it searching for grip.  I was begging the team to throw me a life jacket.  It was definitely treading water out there today.  It was interesting.  The No. 1 DHL Chevy was great.  Going to down a Sun Drop here and hopefully be able to go to bed at some point.  I’m pretty jacked on adrenaline after that.  I caught the car many times thought it should have gone in the wall.”
 
YOU LED 35 LAPS YOU ARE NOW THIRD IN POINTS JUST 27 BACK.  ARE YOU HAVING THE KIND OF SEASON THAT YOU WANT?
“Yeah, we were third in the points coming in.  Unfortunately the guys that we are fighting Helio (Castroneves) and good job to Marco (Andretti), unfortunate for him. The guys that we are fighting had a good day too.  It’s tough, but so early in the season still and now we are getting ready to get into the string of races where we were pretty strong last year.  We are certainly not expecting to go out and win three straight like we did last year.  We are just expecting to be strong and that is all we can do.”
 
IF THERE WAS ANOTHER CAUTION YOU HAD TWO SETS OF STICKER TIRES.  DO YOU THINK THAT WOULD HAVE MADE A DIFFERENCE IF THE CAUTION DID COME OUT?
“I would have been begging them to come in for new Firestones that is for sure.  I mean it was a handful.  I hope it was a good show.  We had a bit less downforce today.  The racing has been awesome this season.  We are going to keep moving on and I think Milwaukee next weekend is going to be an awesome race.  We love going there.  I love that track.”
TONY KANAAN, NO. 11 SUNOCO “TURBO” KV RACING TECHNOLOGY – SH RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 3RD: “First of all it was a great job by the team and I’m very happy to give Sunoco and Turbo this podium on their first race with us. On our strategy we were actually counting on a yellow toward the end of the race which would have put us in a very, very good position for the win, but I’ll take third place here any day. The next stretch of races should be very good for us. We’re fourth in the championship and we think we can keep up the momentum from the win at Indianapolis going forward.”
ED CARPENTER, NO. 20 FUZZY’S VODKA ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 4th: “I thought we had a shot for a podium finish (3rd) but Tony (Kanaan) had a lot fresher tires (35 laps) at the end.  We will take fourth tonight and we scored some points for the ECR/Fuzzy’s Vodka team.  It was a great night for Chevrolet with a one through five on the scoreboard.  We had a couple of miscues in the pits, one with some debris on the front of the car, and I didn’t hear the guys call me in for the stop.  Overall, those didn’t hurt us.  It was hard out there tonight.  I was racing more car more than the other drivers at times.  I hope the race was good for the national television audience tonight.  This place is one of the toughest oval on the series now.  The cars are a handful here.  But we’ll take the fourth place and move on to Milwaukee next week.”
MARCO ANDRETTI, NO. 25 RC COLA ANDRETTI AUTOSPORT CHEVROLET, FINISHED 5TH: “It’s always easier to be the Monday morning quarterback. I think it worked out for Ryan (Hunter-Reay) – he had a vibration and came in early. He went out, running some quick laps and he didn’t catch a yellow. We tried to do the same thing, we caught the yellow and the RC Cola car ended up a lap down. So, it’s unfortunate and to top it all off the worst guy in the championship fight against me won, but congrats to him (laughter).”
WILL POWER, NO. 12 VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, FINISHED 7TH: “It was definitely a good day for the Verizon Chevrolet. I thought we had a car that was good enough to win but unfortunately the car went loose on the last stint to cost us quite a few positions. All in all, it was a productive day with the top-10 finish and obviously a great day for the team with Helio taking the win. He was just on another planet.”
ON HOW THE RACING WAS TODAY: “You were really earning your pay out there today, you really had to driv
e the car. It was great racing.”
JAMES HINCHCLIFFE, NO. 27 GODADDY ANDRETTI AUTOSPORT CHEVROLET, FINISHED 9TH: “At the end of the day, I’m pretty pleased with a top 10; it was a tough night. The whole setup with the new tire and downforce configuration made it tough to drive, the GoDaddy guys gave me a good car, but I think we were a little hampered by track position. Clean air was definitely king today, and starting back where we did, we had to fight in the thick of it a lot more. We ended up stopping it a bit early on the first two stops, and we got both those yellows – just really hurt us. We lost a lap and had to earn it back. If we had managed to have the yellows fall at a better time for us, I think maybe we would have been a bit higher. But it’s so close, it’s so tight, everybody was struggling… we’re just happy to bring it home in one piece.”
E.J. VISO, NO. 5 TEAM VENEZUELA PDVSA CITGO ANDRETTI AUTOSPORT HVM CHEVROLET, FINISHED 10TH: “Tough race. I think I got an unfair penalty… we had everything to finish in the top three. I’m not very impressed in how this situation was handled, and I feel they penalize certain people for certain things and not others in certain situations. The penalty happened because I hit one of Ryan (Hunter Reay)’s tires during the pit stop, but I just touched it and he came back out in his original position. For me, they made the wrong call. Decisions can affect the sport as we just saw.”
 
SEBASTIAN SAAVEDRA, NO.  6 TRUECAR DRAGON RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 14TH:
 
SIMONA DE SILVESTRO, NO. 78 NUCLEAR ENTERGY AREVA KV RACING TECHNOLOGY CHEVROLET, FINISHED 16TH: “The car was awesome all night and we just kind of got unlucky out there. First of all with the yellow; when it came out we were stuck behind the leader. We fought our way back and then we got a 30-second penalty; I don’t really know why. But, at the end of the day, the car was awesome and I think we could have had an awesome finish. We learned a lot. I think for me it was a really good experience. It was just a lot of fun out there racing and passing people. Big thanks to the team; they did an awesome job the whole week. They gave me a really comfortable car out there, so big thanks to them, Chevrolet and Nuclear Clean Air Energy.”
 
ORIOL SERVIA, NO. 4 NATIONAL GUARD PANTHER RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 19TH: “Definitely not the initial race I wanted representing the National Guard and Panther Racing. I had really high hopes to go for a win, since we’re out of the championship anyway. We made a bunch of changes before the race, and I think the car was not way off, but one of the stints we put too much wing in, and at the end of the tires we probably should have come in two or three laps before that because we were already very loose. Then on one of the bumps the rear just went, which was unfortunate. Luckily we saved the car, but the truth is the race was still not lost, because sometimes you can get your laps back at a place like this, but with no more yellows we couldn’t make any miracles happen.”
 
SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS, NO. 7 MCAFEE DRAGON RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 20TH: