CHEVROLET RACING IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES
100TH RUNNING OF THE INDIANAPOLIS 500
INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DAY 4 PRACTICE RECAP
MAY 19, 2016
The month of May and activities at Indianapolis Motor Speedway are in full swing around the 2.5-mile oval. Practice for the 100th running of the Indy 500 continued today with six more hours of track time for the Chevrolet Aero Kit race cars with 2.2 liter V6 Chevrolet engines.
Chip Ganassi Racing’s Charlie Kimball led the charge for Team Chevy ranking fifth quick in the field of 33 cars that took to the track for practice, with a lap of 227.477 mph/39.564 seconds. He was followed by a parade of Chevrolet power in the top 10 which included previous Indy 500 winners Juan Pablo Montoya, Scott Dixon and Helio Castroneves.
As teams and drivers prepare for qualifications on Saturday and Sunday, each has their own notebook of items to work through in order to maximize performance-all with the goal of winning the pole for the Indianapolis 500.
Today is the first time since preparations for the ‘Great Spectacle in Racing’ began on Monday, that the sun has blanketed the yard of bricks during the entire practice session changing the track and the set-up’s for many of the teams.
In preparation for qualifying, prior to the start of practice on Friday, Chevrolet teams will be allowed to increase the boost pressure in their Chevy 2.2 liter V6 IndyCar engines to 140 kPa from the current 130 kPa. For the race, boost will be returned to the current setting.
On-track activity from Indianapolis Motor Speedway continues on Friday May 20 featuring one practice session which will run from noon to 6 p.m. and will be streamed live on RaceControl.IndyCar.com.
POST PRACTICE PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT:
CHARLIE KIMBALL, NO. 42 TRESIBA CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET:
THE MODERATOR: Charlie, you’re becoming a regular here. You’ve been in this room a lot; that’s good, and you had a good solid day, and you’ve had a good solid month thus far.
“Yeah, I think we’re pretty good. The 42 has been decent. It’s kind of weird saying the 42 rather than the 83, but the 42 has been pretty good in traffic, and we worked a lot on the race car today. I think at the moment it’s pretty tough. The conditions were fairly good. The weather was nice, the wind not terrible, but I think we’re fighting from a little bit of a hole here.
“But at the moment, we’re focused kind of from today moving forward into tomorrow to see what we get when the boost level changes, at least for qualifying, because it is a whole different package. We did a little bit of qualifying work at the end of the day, and that was enough. So we’ll focus on that tomorrow. But we spent a lot of time earlier in the day working in the packs, working in traffic, and pretty happy with it. Like we tried something that just didn’t work, and we tried to work with it and tried to work with it, and then went back, and it’s like, all right, we’re back on solid footing here.
“I think everybody at Chip Ganassi Racing, we’re sharing data. We’re learning a lot kind of following each other’s leads when they’re promising, and learning from each other’s mistakes, as well. That’s the greatest thing about having four cars like that that are solid, and Max is doing a great job, and then Scott and Tony are always forces to be reckoned with around here.”
Q. Charlie, you mentioned tomorrow in qualifying you have higher pulls. Does it require a lot of changes to cars in any kind of areas? Do you start at zero again with the setup?
“As far as I’m concerned, what I do doesn’t change much. You’d have to ask one of the engineers and the mechanics what goes on. I know it’s a little bit of tapping on the computer and then some stuff mechanically as far as I know, but other than that, in the cockpit it doesn’t really change, and that’s kind of my area of expertise.”
Q. Years ago when Formula 1 was here, Ron Dennis had a little press conference, and he made a comment which was interesting. He said, some of our guys come here and they think, how hard can it be, it’s just a circle, and he said, you need to think really hard about that. Do you think some drivers come here and think, how hard can this be, it’s just a circle, and then they’re just amazed at how much the track changes and how much it takes?
“I mean, listening to Max and his sort of first foray, he spent a decent amount of time here last year racing in Lights practice and qualifying in Lights, and then as the wind conditions, having Dario mentoring him has helped, but it’s amazing, still to this day, me, I am blown away by how much all four corners change with a little wind direction, a little wind velocity, cloud cover, sun. One car in front of you, two cars in front of you, a train in front of you, cars behind you, it completely changes the complexion of each corner, and so you need to make sure as far as mechanically and aerodynamically with the car, you’ve got a car that can work within that window as those corners evolve, as the racetrack grows and evolves during the course of the week and then on race day as those 500 miles develop, as clouds come and go and wind comes and goes. The racetrack does not stay the same for 500 miles, so you have to make sure that you’ve got a car and you can race the track as it changes.”
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTES:
CHARLIE KIMBALL, NO. 42 TRESIBA CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET:
“I’m pretty happy with the race work we did earlier today in practice. We made a lot of progress with both balance and grip. We tried some things that didn’t work, but we circled back and the No. 42 Tresiba® Chevrolet came alive again. I feel like we have a good direction and good platform and grip to be able to work in traffic, which is really the most important thing. We went through some qualifying work and I think it’s going to be tight. It’s going to be fun to get the extra horsepower out of the Chevy engines tomorrow and we’ll see what the team Chevy aero kit brings this weekend.”
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, NO. 2 VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET:
“The Verizon Chevy ran well today. We had a little bit of a problem there earlier, but we made some changes and were able to make progress towards the end of practice. We’re getting up to speed, ending practice much faster than we did previously. Honestly, I’m very happy with where we’re going right now.”
SCOTT DIXON, NO. 9 TARGET CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, 2015 VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES CHAMPION:
“We were better today with the Target car. We ran some of last year’s stuff or close to it and the car was much better overall. We did some race running and then some qualifying running. Overall in the laps for outright speed we were around second or third so we’re happy with that.”
HELIO CASTRONEVES, NO. 3 PENNZOIL TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET:
“It was another good and productive day for the Pennzoil Chevy crew. We were working on race setup. We haven’t even touched the qualifying setup. Tomorrow is a new game, though. We’re going to have more boost. Everybody is going to have more boost. So, speeds are going to increase and looking forward to focusing on qualifying tomorrow.”
JOSEF NEWGARDEN, NO. 21 PREFERRED FREEZER ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET:
“Another productive day. No big dramas, so that’s good. I think we got a good program going and we’ll try to keep it solid for tomorrow. Get some good boost and see where we’re at. I feel good. We worked a lot on race run and it should be pretty decent in traffic. Now we have to make it fast by ourselves.”
SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS, NO. 11 TEAM HYDROXYCUT – KVSH CHEVROLET:
“I feel a little better today. The Hydroxycut – KVSH Racing Team struggled through this numbness with the car the car and no responsiveness. Then we hit something that was very sensitive (with the setup). The car is not perfect by any means, but it seems to be pretty solid on our own and in traffic we managed to find a little bit of front grip without destroying the rear. So, I am happy with that. We will regroup tonight, think about it, try and make it better then obviously, make the transition to qualifying mode. That is what we need to get after.”
SIMON PAGENAUD, NO. 22 MENARDS TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET:
“It was a good day. It was a long day. We did a lot of laps. I’m really happy; I think we found something that I like in traffic. We did a bit of qualifying run, but we didn’t spend too much time on it. I just need to iron the details on the car. I think the Menards Chevrolet is really good in traffic and I can be aggressive. I think it’s a really good sign for the race. Tomorrow is Fast Friday, so we’ll work on qualifying and see how much speed we can get out of the No. 22 car.”
TONY KANAAN, NO. 10 NTT DATA CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET:
“Another solid day of practice at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the No. 10 NTT DATA Chevrolet. We did a lot of work today out on-track with qualifying and race setups and I was really happy with where the car was for both. We’ll really focus in tomorrow on our qualifying runs and setup to get it exactly where it needs to be for this weekend.”
SAGE KARAM, NO. 24 DREYER & REINBOLD KINGDOM RACING GAS MONKEY ENERGY CHEVROLET:
“Today we tried a different direction on setup for our race car, and we can take plenty of notes from it, what to do, what not to do going forward. I think we have a good direction of where we want to go with the No. 24 Gas Monkey Energy Chevy for the remainder of the month. I think tomorrow we’re going to go out with what we think will work and find a baseline to work from. Being that it’s Fast Friday tomorrow, the speeds are going to be a bit quicker, and we’re going to be working on more qualifying simulations tomorrow. We’ll just pick away at that as the day goes and hopefully at the end of the day we can work more on the DRR-Kingdom race car and get the thing ready for May 29.”
MAX CHILTON, NO. 8 GALLAGHER CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET:
“This morning the first few hours we drove with race downforce levels, then spent the next few hours turning the car around to qualifying specs. I did my fist-ever oval session in qualifying spec and did three runs and kept taking more and more downforce off. The last run was really good and then we spend the last part of the day working on race running so I’m happy where things are at with the Gallagher team.”
WILL POWER, NO. 12 VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET:
“We had some good runs out there today. We definitely made some gains and have a little bit more to go, as we’re still making adjustments for the coming days. I’m pretty confident that the Verizon Chevrolet will be in good shape for qualifying and the weather conditions are supposed to be good, too, so that helps, as well. So, getting another practice in tomorrow should get us where we need to be.”
ED CARPENTER, NO. 20 FUZZY’S ULTRA PREMIUM VODKA ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET:
“It was kind of a tough day. We chased a lot of issues. We had a gearbox problem part of the day and never really got it solved, we just worked around it. Not the Thursday we were hoping for but we did finally get some race runs in at the end and it made me feel a little better. I think the car is in a pretty decent place. Handling-wise, I was relatively happy. You always have to make improvements here and there, but we’re just struggling to find the speed in it. We’ll keep looking on our end and see what we can come up with. Obviously, we’ll get some help tomorrow with power so we’ll see how it goes.”
JR HILDEBRAND, NO. 6 PREFERRED FREEZER FUZZY’S VODKA ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET:
“We got a lot of running in today. We’re trying to get ready for qualifying. Today there’s sort of a mixture of qualifying stuff and race stuff. We’re getting ready for Fast Friday tomorrow, which will be entirely qualifying preparations. We’re just trying to collect as much data as we can and get ready to rock and roll when we get some extra horsepower tomorrow.”
STEFAN WILSON, NO. 25 DRIVEN2SAVELIVES – KVRT CHEVROLET:
“It was a really productive day, we got a lot of track time. We made a lot of changes, I feel like we found some that were good, some that were bad. At the end of the day I feel like the Driven2SaveLives No. 25 was running pretty good and it’s probably the most comfortable I’ve felt all month. I’m really excited to come back tomorrow for Fast Friday with the extra boost and see what it’s like there.”
MATT BRABHAM, NO. 61 PIRTEK TEAM MURRAY – KVRT CHEVROLET:
“We’re still working away, trying to get some more out of the car – it was good to put in 97 trouble free laps around the Speedway today. We were plodding away today to get more experience on how the race car should be. We still have some more work to do on the race car. We have to compare some data with our team-mates and see what they are doing and what we might be able to learn from that. Throughout today’s program, we were experimenting with the race car setup and finding as much as we could there. I think the PIRTEK Team Murray guys did a great job, a few things setup wise didn’t work, but I did my fastest lap of the week, hitting 224 mph.
“Tomorrow, we’ll be working on the qualifying side of things through Fast Friday. Obviously, the weekend is pretty important in terms of securing a good grid position for the race.”
BUDDY LAZIER, NO. 4 LAZIER/BURNS RACING CHEVROLET:
“We got some good running in today. We cycled through some aero bits, working on our race set-up. All in all it was a pretty good day. I’m looking forward to Fast Friday and I feel as though my team and I are working well together.”