CHEVROLET RACING IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES
HONDA INDY OF ALABAMA
BARBER MOTORSPORTS
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER POST RACE QUOTES
APRIL 25, 2016
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTES:
SIMON PAGENAUD, NO. 22 PPG AUTOMOTIVE REFINISH TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, RACE WINNER: IT WAS A NEAR PERFECT RACE AND THEN THINGS GOT REALLY INTERESTING. BUT BACK-TO-BACK WINS IN THE VERNON INDY CAR SEASON. “I tell you, that was impressive. Thanks to everyone. We are just on a roll. The car is amazing. I’m so comfortable driving the PPG car. Chevrolet… I always tell Jim Campbell (Chevrolet U.S. Vice President, Performance Vehicles and Motorsports) after a good race that it’s the best equipment they can give us. Thanks so much for that. I’m just so excited. OK, it was another green flag race. But we made it exciting at the end for the fans, which is great. I’m happy there was some action.”
TELL US WHAT HAPPENED WHEN YOU WERE ABLE TO REPASS GRAHAM RAHAL: “I was dealing with traffic pretty much all the way through the race. It’s so hard in with this aero to pass
people, especially (Connor) Daly. He was pretty fast so it’s not like I was two seconds faster a lap. We’re talking eight-tenths of a second so that’s not enough to pass him. Then Graham… that was a great piece of driving from him, but that was a late pass. It’s not a corner where you can pass. I went off but in the end it made me really upset, I have to say. I said I was going to pass him back, and that’s what we did.”
HOW WERE THE FIRESTONE FIREHAWKS TODAY? “Amazing. A lot of people were expecting tremendous degredation but our PPG car was so good that we could keep going and i barely had any degredation whether it was red tires or black tires. They were amazing tires to be on.”
JOSEF NEWGARDEN, NO. 21 FUZZY’S ULTRA PREMIUM VODKA ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 3RD: : “That was tough, man. I was hoping we would have a little more today. I’m happy we got a podium. That’s great and good points. It was fun trying to keep up and pass a little bit. The Fuzzy’s car was great; it wasn’t like it was bad but it wasn’t enough for the top two guys in Pagenaud and Rahal. We had to have a little more but it was a long day. With no yellows, this is a hard place to go flat-out around. Everyone was working really hard out there.”
WILL POWER, NO. 12 VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, FINISHED 4TH: “The Verizon Chevy boys worked really hard to keep us up in the forefront. We had a good car going into it. However, we had a slower pit stop on our last pit stop and that’s how we lost track position, from P2. Then on the last lap, we caught the train of cars and didn’t have enough time to make that back up, unfortunately. Passing is very hard here. It’s not the finish we hoped for, but, overall, I’m proud of the Verizon Chevy team and we’re excited to go back to Indy. We’ll definitely look for better results there.”
THE INCIDENT WITH GRAHAM RAHAL REALLY GOT THE PACK BOTTLED UP THERE IN THE LAST FEW LAPS. “Yeah, I saw a piece of wing on the track and stuff flying everywhere. I wasn’t sure what happened. It definitely gets difficult when you get a lot of air like that.”
WHAT WOULD A PODIUM DO TO YOUR PSYCHE RIGHT NOW? “At the end of the day, you have to finish ahead of those guys who keep extending their points gap. We’re due for a good result. We’ve had a bit of slow start to the year obviously. But we’ll have fun out there.”
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, NO. 2 VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLE, FINISHED 5TH: “The Verizon Chevy was very good. We had a good car all weekend, but just in qualifying, our tires just didn’t come in. I don’t know what happened and we’ll go back and look at what went wrong there. We knew we had a fast car. It was fun and we made some good moves today. On the red tires, I ran them all day pretty much. They were wearing at the end a little bit, but we kept pushing it. At the start of the race, if you would have told me I would have finished fifth, I wouldn’t have believed it. I’m pretty happy where we finished and now we look ahead to Indy.
HOW WAS THE CAR ON RED TIRES? “It was good. I ran them all day pretty much. I started on black and went to red and stayed there. They were blistering at the end a little bit and wearing, but we were pushing them pretty hard. It was fun.”
HELIO CASTRONEVES, NO. 3 AAA INSURANCE TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, FINISHED 7TH: “We started on the black Firestone tires with the AAA Chevrolet and we stayed just inside the top 10 all day. We couldn’t seem to move forward, unfortunately. Stategy-wise, it was very tough to pass out there. I got held up by a group at one point, then we just started blistering tires. They were down to the cords at one point. So all of those details resulted in us finishing seventh. At least we collected points for the championship. Now, let’s move forward to Indianapolis.”
TONY KANAAN, NO. 10 NTT DATA CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 8TH: We had a top-five car but made a bad call on the tires. We should have gone to reds but went to blacks when everyone else was on reds. We got passed by three cars and could never make it back. All in all, we had great stops. The NTT guys did a great job in the pits. It’s one of those things. It could have gone right for us but it was the wrong call this time.”
CHARLIE KIMBALL, NO. 83 TRESIBA® CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 9TH:
SCOTT DIXON, NO. 9 TARGET COCA COLA CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 10TH:
SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS, NO. 11 TEAM EUROPA KVSH RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 16TH: “Obviously not what we wanted today. I feel really sorry for Scott (Dixon). He was collateral damage in something that was not in any way his fault. I was fighting with Graham (Rahal), side-by-side with him, trying to hold position and Scott was probably trying to do the crossover on the inside in turn five on someone. I was boxed in. Scott in front and Graham on the right, there was no escaping from there. It is my fault, so I have to apologize for that. It is a shame because the car had pace. I held the gap with Simon (Pagenaud) despite running into some traffic. I definitely had the car to content at the front. I just couldn’t show it. I am very disappointed for the Europa – KVSH Racing guys. They worked really hard all weekend. This was a wasted opportunity, but there is nothing I can do about that now, so just move on and try not to make a mistake like that again.”
MAX CHILTON, NO. 8 GALLAGHER CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 21ST: