CHEVROLET IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES
FIRESTONE 600
TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER POST QUALIFYING QUOTES
JUNE 5, 2015

WILL POWER, NO. 1 VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, POLE WINNER: “Yeah, I drew number one obviously this morning in the drivers meeting. I was a little worried about the conditions. It kind of stayed consistent over the whole run of qualifying.
I was really happy to get pole honestly. I felt if I could be in the top five, I’d be happy. Starting first, really happy about that.
The race, it’s going to be interesting. You know, you got all this stuff you can put on to add downforce if you want. But it’s quite draggy, so you lose a bit of speed.
It’s going to be about finding the right compromise for speed loss versus grip. I guess we’ll try some things tonight and see how it all stacks up. I think you’ll see a few different variations of what people bolt on as far as body kits go for the race.”

PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT: THE MODERATOR: What is it about Texas Motor Speedway that fits your style?
WILL POWER: I’ve always liked this place a lot. It’s fun to drive. It’s not just stuck. The car moves around. It’s hard. I feel like it’s a real driver’s oval. I enjoy that.
My wife’s from here, so I got the whole family out here. I got the pressure to always do well. Otherwise, won’t be invited to dinner (laughter).

THE MODERATOR: We’ll open it up for questions.
Q. Eddie Gossage said he wasn’t happy with last year’s race. He said he thought it was too much of a runaway. What do you recall of last year’s race? Do you think the new format will allow for a more competitive race than last year?
WILL POWER: You know, it’s hard to say. I think it’s not to do with the cars. I think it’s to do with the fact that there wasn’t any yellows. As soon as there’s yellows, you got a really good race on your hand. I think that’s why last year it spread out.
I don’t think it would matter what package we ran. If it went green the whole way, it’s going to spread out through pit stop sequences. It’s just going to be the nature of it.
You throw a few yellows in, everyone packs up, different tires, it starts to become a really good race. Yeah, that’s the reason.
I mean, this year we got more downforce. We have quite a bit more downforce, if you want. If it stayed green, it would be kind of similar. If it goes yellow, I think you’re going to see a lot of hard racing.
Q. Will, how much more confident and capable are you now as an oval driver? Now it seems like since you scored a couple oval victories, you’re the guy wherever they go now.
WILL POWER: I feel like every track I go to now, yeah, I have a shot to win. I really look forward to coming to ovals. I enjoy them a lot.
It’s just a part of IndyCar racing. To win the championship, you have to be good at all disciplines. Actually, you’ve got to be the best at all disciplines to win the championship.
I think it’s cool. The series has really such a variety of all sorts of tracks as far as street courses, road courses, short ovals, mile-and-a-half high-banked ovals, even high-banked short ovals, superspeedways. You have to be good at all of that. I’ve spent a lot of time in IndyCar now, seems like I’m strong everywhere.
Q. Eight races to go for the championship. You’re fighting Juan ahead of you. You have Scott Dixon behind you. Looking like the end of the Indy 500. Those are three huge names fighting it out for this championship. How monumental of a battle do you see this shaping up to be?
WILL POWER: I think you’re right. It’s going to be interesting as it all unfolds here. You have so much experience involved in it, so many good guys that have all won championships, 500s, a lot of races.
Yeah, inner team battle, Dixon in there. Focus a race at a time, don’t even think about it. Just focus on my job and myself.
THE MODERATOR: Will, thank you very much. Good luck tomorrow night.
WILL POWER: Thank you.

SIMON PAGENAUD, NO. 22 AVAYA TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 2ND:
PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT: The car is really nice actually. It’s a nice carryover from Indy. Just missed it by a little bit, right?
Yeah, I tried to push it as hard as I could. Yeah, we dropped a bit on the second lap, but hat off to the Team Penske boys. They’re giving us fantastic cars. It makes our lives super easy as a driver.
Tonight is going to be a great session, practice in the cool condition. It’s going to be interesting to see how the cars behave in race trim of the.
But this morning was surprisingly pretty good for us on the 22 car.
THE MODERATOR: Talk about what we can expect with the new aero kit tomorrow night.
SIMON PAGENAUD: I think actually IndyCar is really well balanced with the level of downforce. This morning was interesting. It’s really in our hands to drive the car, slide around a little bit in the corners, the tires are being used up quite a bit because of the lack of downforce. It’s great. It’s giving us the opportunity to really drive hard.
There’s a bit of a drop-off I think you’ll see similar to last year where we’re going to start pretty fast, in the 215 area, and then we’re going to drop off in the 205 miles per hour average at the end of a stint.
It’s going to be interesting strategy, a lot of passing. That’s what it’s all about here in Texas. Pretty excited about it actually.
THE MODERATOR: Texas has been one of your stronger ovals. Talk about what it is about Texas.
SIMON PAGENAUD: I really like this track. Because of the banking, you have the opportunity to choose the line you want to run. You want to go high to pass someone or high to save your tires. Then you can run down low to run lap times and protect your position as well.
It’s a lot thinking about the tires, thinking about your car, how it evolves during the night. Obviously we go through the sunset, which means the temperature cools down. With the IndyCars that means the car is getting downforce throughout the race.
It’s all about adjusting it. I really like that work with the engineers on the radio, trying to guess smartly what’s going to happen towards the end.
THE MODERATOR: We’ll open it up for questions.
Q. Simon, at this track, it’s one and a half miles, but there’s not much in the way of straightaways. What is the engineering goal in terms of downforce? Is this a track you want not a lot of downforce because the drag would slow you down? How does that work with the tires? We’re hearing after one or two laps the tires fall off.
SIMON PAGENAUD: Yeah, which is what IndyCar tried to achieve to avoid pack racing like we’ve had in the past. Now it’s really much, like I said, in our hands. The car slides around. Tires drop off after two laps like you said. You can see from the lap time here in qualifying.
It’s a trend. It’s a combination of how much downforce you need, the drive level you want to run in the race. You don’t want to be too draggy because you can’t get away from the pack and you get passed. If you have a good car, you can’t really get away from some other cars.
You have to find that right line. That’s the engineer’s job really. I can only say I have enough downforce or not enough.
With the new aero kits, especially the Chevy one, we have a lot of opportunities, a lot of wing that we can add or take off. That gives us plenty of opportunities on the level of downforce.
I think it’s great. That’s what’s fun. Tonight I’m going to work hard with my engineer to find what we think is the perfect combination. That’s going to take us a lot of research, a lot of study. That’s what’s very rewarding when it works.
Q. Simon, last year Ed Carpenter was able to build a huge lead on the way to the win. Do you get a sense that the new setup this year will provide for a closer, more competitive race?
SIMON PAGENAUD: Yeah, I thought last year was a great race, to be honest. There was a lot of passing. Like I said, the biggest thing is the pit sequence. When someone pits, goes to new tires, then you see a lot of passing.
I think it’s going to be even better racing than last year. The cars are similar, but the tires should hold on a little bit better. I think it’s going to be really good racing.
Q. So tonight you have one more practice, but it’s only 30 minutes. Can you actually go through a whole fuel stint in that time? Does it give you a chance to adjust the car for race conditions tomorrow?
SIMON PAGENAUD: Yeah, it’s a short practice for sure. It would be nicer to have 45 minutes, for example, to do a whole stint.
It should allow for understanding which way the tires are going, which way the car is going with the balance, understeer or oversteer. I think we’ll have a good idea tonight.
But, yeah, it won’t be enough to feel how it really feels when it’s bad. There will be some happy drivers tonight (laughter).
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Simon.
SIMON PAGENAUD: Thank you.

HELIO CASTRONEVES, NO. 3 AAA INSURANCE TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 3RD: HOW WAS YOUR CAR? “Good run, I can’t believe it. Was it close? I don’t care because if its close its close. The AAA Chevrolet is strong and we are all working together and hopefully Simon will be up there and there are still a lot of good cars to go. But we know here, it really doesn’t matter where you start, it’s where you finish and we feel we have a strong car for the race.”

DO YOU FIND THE REDUCTION IN THE POINTS OF THE PENALTY TO BE MORE FAIR? “Obviously to this day I do not think it was anything intentional and I did everything I could to avoid contact. At the end of the day I think it’s fair for what happened and we will move on.”

THERE HAS BEEN A LOT OF TALK ABOUT TIRE FALL OFF. WHAT CAN YOU DO BEHIND THE WHEEL TO EXTEND THE LIFE OF THE TIRE? “In this particular race it’s like Indianapolis because you can change the downforce of the car during the race. So you can do quite a lot in those conditions. Plus the weather helps a lot from when you start the race until about the middle of the race when it cools down and helps the tire consistency.”

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, NO. 2 VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 5TH: ON HIS QUALIFYING: “We took all the downforce out of the car and see where it runs. I think we are pretty good. The balance is not there yet. We need some work to do to be a little quicker, but it is what it is. The aero kits drive a little different. We are just trying to figure out what we need to do and where we need to run. We have options to run a lot more downforce if we want to. It is a big penalty so you have to figure out what is the best compromise.”

SCOTT DIXON, NO. 9 ENERGIZER CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 9TH: : “For the most part it’s about consistency – a consistent car over the stint. That’s the hardest part, the degradation here and the amount you slow down is almost 15 miles per hour in a stint. That’s going to be key but obviously getting to the end of the race to start with is the big one. I’ve come up short here a few times but I have a quick car. Hopefully the No. 9 Energizer® EcoAdvancedTM Chevrolet is going to be fast. It seems pretty good in long runs.”

YOU SLOWED OFF QUITE A BIT FROM LAP ONE TO LAP TWO. IS THAT HOW FAST THE FALL OFF IS HERE THAT YOU LOSE THAT MUCH IN JUST TWO LAPS?
“In qualifying you see a little bit more just because you are trimming out and you are hundreds of pounds of less downforce than what you would typically race. Over the 50 laps stint you are still going to lose about 15 mph, but we will have to hopefully contain that some, keep that under control and I think that is what will win you the race.”

TONY KANAAN, NO. 10 NTT DATA CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 8TH: “Our qualifying run was okay – obviously not as fast as we wanted it to be. We did one qualifying run this morning during the practice session and we made some changes we thought would work. Once we went out on track we realized those changes weren’t the best way to go. Qualifying here at Texas Motor Speedway is such an unknown, so it is what it is. We’ll work more on the race setup tonight and make sure everything is good to go for tomorrow night’s race.”

CHARLIE KIMBALL, NO. 83 LEVEMIRE FLEXTOUCH CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 9TH: “The No. 83 Levemir® FlexTouch® Chevrolet’s qualifying run was pretty good. We had a little more understeer than we would’ve liked which was too bad because I think we’ve been pretty quick this weekend so far in practice. We spent a lot of time during this morning’s practice working on our race car, so we’ll see where we’re at during tonight’s practice heading into tomorrow’s race.”

SAGE KARAM, NO. 8 LEXAR CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 10TH: ON HIS QUALIFYING: TALK ABOUT YOUR RUN OUT THERE AND WHAT KIND OF TRACK CONDITIONS YOU CAME ACROSS “Well, this is my first time at Texas Motor Speedway so I spent most of my morning just getting used to the place and getting used to turning laps in a higher downforce setting. I pretty much got thrown out there today in qualifying with low downforce but I was really impressed with how the car stuck. It was a very good set up and I think looking back now I think we should have done what my teammates did and trimmed it out even a little bit more. But I think we are going to start in a respectable spot because we are in the top-ten right now. I am looking forward to it. The track is very, very challenging – but very fun. It’s going to be a hard race and it’s going to be who has the best car in traffic and I think tonight we are really going to have to tune the thing.”

YOU THINK TONIGHT WILL GIVE YOU A BETTER IDEA OF RACE CONDITIONS?
“Yes, I think tonight is going to be a very important session. But that is pretty much any weekend you go to. Qualifying is all good and everything, but the race car is where it counts. Tonight you are going to see who is really good, who can make some passes, and who has a really good car on a long run.”

JOSEF NEWGARDEN, NO. 67 HARTMAN OIL CFH RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 14TH: “This morning we were probably the only team that did not do a qualification simulation run, that’s why we appeared to jump up quite a bit in our qualifying times. It’s still not good enough, we’re not where we need to be. It was hard to make up any ground with only a one hour session and then qualifying. We have another half an hour practice tonight to keep working on it. We’ll keep fighting, we’ve got a great team at CFH Racing. It’s a long night tomorrow, we’re going to put our heads down and see what we can get out of it.”

ED CARPENTER, NO. 20 FUZZY’S VODKA CFH RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 15TH: “It’s not a speed problem for us, we know how to make the cars go fast. However, it’s hard to do that when the car does not handle well as well as we know it can. We have to figure out how to make this new car work with this new package. We haven’t done a good enough job of that up to this point but we will keep working on it.”

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS, NO. 11 TEAM HYDROXYCUT – KVSH RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 18TH: ”I think the Hydroxycut machine is a good race car. It’s just in qualifying trim we didn’t get it right. That is the problem with just one practice session before qualifying. We didn’t get a good read, so in qualifying the car was a bit too free and we didn’t take enough downforce out. It’s a shame. It is going to make our life a bit harder tomorrow starting 18th.”

STEFANO COLETTI, NO. 4 KV RACING TECHNOLOGY CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 23RD: “It was the first time for me on a high banked oval. To be honest any ovals are new to me. Unfortunately in practice this morning we had a problem with the car, which mean’t I lost about 35 minutes of the session and on a track like this you need as much track time as possible especially when you only have one 75 minutes session before qualifying. It was my first time with a half way trim for qualifying as we didn’t have enough time to be fully trimmed out and it was ok, but we could have done more. We will work on our race setup this evening, it will be a little easier with cooler track temps and luckily oval races are long so it wont matter quite so much where we start.”

COMMENTING ON HIS SECOND OVAL EXPERIENCE AND FIRST AT TEXAS: “Indianapolis and Texas are completely different. Here it is pretty hard, almost like riding a roller coaster, it squishes you down like you were going up and down on a ride. It is a lot of fun to drive and to be honest the first time I got on track this morning, I thought ‘wow this is banked’ but I think by tomorrow I will be used to it.”