Will Power Puts Chevy in Victory Lane at Road America
27th Career Victory Puts 2014 Verizon IndyCar Series Champion to Third in Standings
· Power came into Road America seventh in points – 117 points behind – and leaves the Wisconsin track third in the standings, 81 points down to leader Simon Pagenaud
· Tony Kanaan gives Chevrolet 1-2 finish in Verizon IndyCar Series popular return to Wisconsin’s Road America
· Victory gives Chevrolet eighth victory in nine completed races in 2016 including every road and street course race
· Team Chevy drivers captured seven of the top-nine finishing positions
· Verizon IndyCar Series return to Road America brought the largest fan attendance in the 61-year history of the facility
ELKHART LAKE, Wis. (June 26, 2016) – Will Power started on pole and led 46 of the 50 laps in today’s Kohler Grand Prix at Road America to capture the 27th career win of his Verizon IndyCar Series career. The driver of the No. 12 Team Penske Chevrolet took the lead down the hill into Turn One at the start and other than lead exchanges during green flag pit stops, never relinquished the top spot.
“I’m stoked to get the Verizon car to Victory Lane,” said Power. “Thanks to Chevy. It’s a phenomenal car and phenomenal engine. I’m just so stoked.”
It is the second victory of the season and second in a row for the 2014 Series champion, and moved Power from seventh in the standings, 117 points behind the leader, to third in points, 81 points behind leader and teammate Simon Pagenaud.
Tony Kanaan brought the No. 10 NTT Data Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet to the checkered flag in second place, his best finish of the season. Kanaan’s strong run gave Chevrolet a one-two finish in the Verizon IndyCar Series popular return to Wisconsin’s Road America.
“Will Power and his No. 12 Verizon Chevrolet team had great momentum all weekend long – from the pole to the top of the podium,” said Jim Campbell, Chevrolet U.S. Vice President of Performance Vehicles and Motorsports. “It was also great to see Tony Kanaan and No. 10 NTT Data Chevy run strong all day and capture a top-two finish.”
The win is the eighth for Chevrolet in the nine completed races to-date in 2016. The Firestone 600 was postponed until Aug. 27th after inclement weather stopped the action on lap 71 of the schedule 248-lap race. A Chevrolet driver has won every road and street course race thus far in 2016 including both legs of the Chevrolet Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix.
In total, seven drivers of the Chevrolet Aero Kit IndyCar with integrated 2.2 liter twin turborcharged direct injected V6 engine scored top-nine finishes today. Helio Castroneves, No. 3 Hitachi Team Penske Chevrolet, finished fifth followed by Charlie Kimball, No. 83 Tresiba Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet, in sixth. Juan Pablo Montoya, No. 2 DeVilbliss Team Penske Chevrolet, finished seventh with Josef Newgarden, No. 21 Direct Supply Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet in eighth, and rookie Spencer Pigot, No. 20 Fuzzy’s Ultra Premium Vodka Ed Carpenter Chevrolet in ninth place at the finish.
Chevrolet drivers occupy the top six positions in the Verizon IndyCar Series point standings through nine completed races. Although mechanical issues relegated him to 13th in the finishing order, Simon Pagenaud, No. 22 Menards Team Penske Chevrolet. continues to lead followed by Castroneves; Power; Scott Dixon, No. 9 Clorox Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet – who also encountered mechanical issues and finished 22nd; Newgarden; and Kanaan. Montoya sits ninth in points to give Team Chevy seven of the top-nine.
Next on the schedule is the Iowa Corn 300 on July 10 at Iowa Speedway, Newton Iowa.
Will Power and Tony Kanaan
Press Conference Transcript
THE MODERATOR: Joined now by the winner of the Kohler Grand Prix at Road America, Will Power, driving the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet. Will, your 27th career win, also your second here in 2016. You’re on a roll. What’s going on?
WILL POWER: Yeah, it’s finally back to my normal fitness level, and just the way I do things. Obviously the start of the year was very tough for me. I couldn’t train in the off-season. Didn’t do the first race, so my fitness really — I usually turn up for the season very fit. This year I turned up way off where I normally am. I’ve got my normal energy back and I can perform like I normally do, and that’s the difference.
THE MODERATOR: Being back here at Road America, what does that mean to you as a driver coming back to compete on such a historic racetrack?
WILL POWER: It’s just a cool, old-school track. There’s not many of them around that we go to anymore, and any of the ones that we do go to — you go to Mid-Ohio there’s a big crowd. You come here, it was amazing just walking around on Thursday, there was so many people. But even Friday night I went for a walk through the camping grounds and it was just awesome to see so many people having fun and just so many people, and on your parade lap, it was just such a big crowd, it was crazy. It’s great, great for IndyCar. We should have been back here a long time ago.
THE MODERATOR: What was going through your mind late in the race when there was that late yellow and you knew a restart was coming up with just a few laps to go?
WILL POWER: Yeah, I was like, oh, you always dread that late restart, but I thought I’m going to make the absolute most of it and do the best I can and try to get a jump. I knew I had Push-to-Pass in hand, which I thought before the race is going to be the key here, to keep that for the end, and that’s what I did. If I didn’t have that, TK was going to — he would have had a really good shot at getting me. He was very quick, and on reds, too.
Yeah, very satisfying race. Very satisfying because I felt like I’m back where I was, and that’s a good feeling for me.
THE MODERATOR: I heard somebody ask you this in victory circle, they asked are you thinking about the championship now, and you replied I was thinking about the championship before this race started. What’s on your mind now with another win?
WILL POWER: Yeah, if you look at the points situation, obviously things can change so quickly. You look at the last race, there can be something like an 80 or 90-point swing if the guy you’re racing has a bad day and you win. You know, and then you’ve got seven more races. It’s just so many points left and so much to happen. Obviously Pagenaud has had a very good-flowing season up to this point, but that doesn’t continue, it never does. You always — you have your good runs, it goes in cycles, and we’re very determined from here on out. We want to be there at the end. We want to win the championship, simple as that.
Q. You’ve got your teammate you’re going after, but Dixon had a really bad points day, so you’re getting closer to leapfrogging him. Every guy you pick off, how important is that?
WILL POWER: Not even looking at the people I’m picking off, just going out there and trying to win races. Obviously the gap — that’s what you’re looking at. Who cares about everyone in between. It’s the points lead that you have to close. You’ve got to continually finish ahead of that guy. That’s how you win the championship from here. You’ve just got to, every time, knock him off every weekend.
Q. Are you going to start to petition to do more races in Wisconsin? At the mile last year you flat-out dominated that race, too.
WILL POWER: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, it’s a pity we’re not going to the Milwaukee Mile. Yeah, that was also one of my most satisfying wins was — that was in 2014, and that started my run to win the championship. Same here. I screamed on the radio when I won the race here because I was so excited. I was just so — like just all weekend I wanted to get pole, I wanted to win the race, and I did it.
Q. How hard is it to have a dominant weekend like this anymore? You used to have it a lot kind of in the old car, but in the DW12 era this doesn’t happen often. How satisfying is it to have a weekend like this?
WILL POWER: Yeah, it is, it’s super satisfying. The races have been very green this year, and I was just so pissed off that I wasn’t fit enough to qualify like I normally do. I wasn’t where I needed to be. It wasn’t really a fitness thing I guess in qualifying so much, but there’s so many times that we should have challenged for pole but we made a mistake or got traffic or got a penalty, and a lot of those races were green, so we lost a lot of points there. But there was a point in the season where I just felt like I couldn’t use my talent, when you don’t quite have the energy to do it, but now I do, so you start getting into the flow of things and feel like you’re a challenge every weekend to win.
THE MODERATOR: You mentioned you have a new fitness routine or a new diet or something that you’re doing differently that gives you the energy now. What kind of things are you doing that’s caused this energy swing?
WILL POWER: Well, it’s just getting back to where I was. I had some health problems in the off-season, so I couldn’t train. Some of that was some food allergy stuff and a couple of other things. But it’s just slowly building myself back up so I could do my normal regime. I haven’t changed anything the way I exercise, it’s just being able to do it, and then having car fitness.
Yeah, then diet played a role in that. Suddenly I couldn’t eat certain foods. It really, really destroyed me.
Q. The records will show that you led 46 laps, never gave up the lead on the track, were out by several seconds a few times. Were you that much better than everybody else today, or was it just a matter of getting out early and getting out after the restart?
WILL POWER: You know, you had to look after your tires, so it was not a matter of — obviously I could have gone a lot faster at the beginning of the stint but then you’d struggle at the end, so I really tried to maximize the whole stint, like never really lean on it or slide, which is the fast way anyway, I was just very particular about that because I knew that that would be a factor. And as the track rubbered up, I started to be pretty quick at the end of stints.
If we had to push, we could, pull the lead, and then we’d save fuel like we wanted to at the first stint and did everything we needed to do to win the race basically.
Q. So you were just playing with them?
WILL POWER: No, not at the end there with TK. That was everything I had because he had reds, new reds, and he was coming fast. But I’d saved Push-to-Pass for that reason, because I knew if there’s a late restart, you want to have a lot of Push-to-Pass because it’s such a huge gain here.
Q. When we were at the mile for four years, it always seemed in the back of the minds whether the race would stay in Milwaukee. What’s the feeling now after today with the show and the race and a weekend like IndyCar had this weekend about the future of having IndyCar here at Road America on a more permanent basis like it was as opposed to Milwaukee was a little more clouded?
WILL POWER: Yeah, I mean, obviously, when you look here, we’d be crazy not to come back. I think it’s a three-year deal. I actually don’t know, but that’s great. I just think the series needs to go to tracks like this. It’s tough on street courses because you don’t have them long enough to build that fan base, and you need to come back to these old tracks on the same time every year so it becomes a routine for me, and you can build a really good fan base. I just think permanent road courses are much easier.
The street courses, yeah, Long Beach and St. Pete that have been around a long time, you see Long Beach always gets a big crowd because it’s been there so long. It’s just tough to find street courses now that stick around long enough. That was why I was really happy we were going back to Watkins Glen because it’s the same thing, a track with a lot of history. IndyCar has been going there, Formula 1 before that. It’s got a big history of open wheel racing, and same with here. That’s how you build a series.
THE MODERATOR: Will, thank you very much. Congratulations.
THE MODERATOR: We’ll welcome our runner-up in today’s race, Tony Kanaan, driver of the No. 10 NTT DATA Chip Ganassi Racing Chevy. Tony, great rating out there.
TONY KANAAN: It was. Great battles all day. Between me and Graham and then at the end, we kind of swapped tire strategies a little bit, and me and Graham were on the reds, but I think you had to use reds, so it was a little bit of disadvantage for him on the last few laps.
We were on the right strategy. I thought we had a car to fight for the win, but in the last lap when they told me we had three Push-to-Passes and I had to use two to hold Graham up, I’m like, I’m toast.
I still used it like when we opened the last lap I used it coming up the hill, and actually kept the gap, I’m like, oh, awesome, and as soon as we turned out of Turn 3 Will just disappeared and out of the carousel, as well. It was kind of depressing to be honest.
But he led a lot of — the entire race, and with us battling, we were a little bit out of sequence. I was pitting a lap earlier, so having trying to like beat Graham out of the pits, he’s trying to beat me, getting in the Push-to-Pass on his in laps, so we kind of gave Will a pretty big break, I think, by doing that between ourselves, but that’s racing.
Q. So he owes you two dinner?
TONY KANAAN: Yeah, I think he can afford to buy dinner for sure.
Q. Talk about what it was like to race here with this great crowd today, being back on this great track and as competitive as the racing was today.
TONY KANAAN: I think we always stress that, but Graham has been coming here forever, since he was like pooping his diapers, I guess.
GRAHAM RAHAL: Definitely.
TONY KANAAN: And then we kind of knew how this place was, and when you try to describe that to some of the young guys, I don’t think it makes justice. It’s like telling somebody how great Indianapolis is. If you don’t go there, you’re never going to experience, and this place didn’t let us down. I showed up here on Thursday and this place was packed. I took the scooter around the camping grounds, and it’s amazing. This is the type of places we want to race. If you ask any driver about this road course, it’s one of their favorites by far, and the fans, too. It’s a great combination, and hopefully by putting a show like this, we can come back here for many years.
Q. IndyCar seems to draw better crowds at the road races than it does on the ovals. We’re an hour and 15 minutes from Milwaukee, and there’s no race there this year. Michael couldn’t make a go of it. What is either missing at an oval like Milwaukee or what makes Road America so much better? You’re drawing from the same group of fans here.
TONY KANAAN: It’s a tough call, but I think one thing in my opinion, it’s people can come here and camp all weekend long. They can see all the racetrack. They don’t have to — you don’t have to go in the grandstand to watch the race if you don’t want to. You can see it in your camper on the top of your camper and watch. So this becomes a family weekend. You can bring all your kids. Obviously the timing, also, I think they said that they couldn’t agree on a date because you’re trying to time when the kids are off school so people can bring the kids and camp and stuff.
To me it’s not about an oval or a road course. I think if you can make an oval with this type of environment, we’re still going to have the same crowd showing up. I remember when you used to go to like Kansas or Kentucky, people were camping there, too, so I think that was the biggest — it is the biggest difference in my opinion.
Q. Can you talk about the weekend being an event, it’s not just you guys, it’s all this development series for IndyCar? Did that seem to help in terms of the attraction for the event?
TONY KANAAN: Yeah, I think that helps, but I don’t think that’s the key. I think it’s just the entire environment. Like Graham touched on a very good point. We just need to go find the places that people want to come and watch us. We have a great product. Some people say, well, what about your racing? Our racing is good, and we prove when we come to places like this, we go to Indy, we go to Mid-Ohio that we have places packed.
I mean, it doesn’t hurt to have other series. You just always have action. But funny enough at a track this big they have so many other things to do. When it went yellow, I looked between Turn 7 and 8 and there were people on the go-kart track go-karting.
TONY KANAAN: Yeah, on the zip line. I guess some of them weren’t even watching the race. But it helps. It definitely helps.
Q. Was there any point during the race or any place on the track where barring some sort of mechanical or mistake, Will looked vulnerable?
TONY KANAAN: I don’t think he was much stronger, but obviously the advantage of being in the lead, you have clean air in that first three laps, that’s when he got the gap, and we were trying to sort ourselves out with our cars. Nowadays if you have a car in front of you that is even like a two-car length, it’s already taking the air out of you so you’re not going as fast, and having a clean track helps a lot, and then I think you saw that on the restart. He got it, me and Graham started to fight a little bit, he pulled away, and then I started to fight with Pagenaud, he pulled away even more. It took me an extra lap to catch him.
But I think he had a fast car, but I don’t think he was like anywhere stronger — we closed the gap any time we needed to, but he just had that little advantage every time because he was in the lead.
Q. TK, the next race coming up is at one of your favorite tracks, Iowa Speedway. Do you view this portion of the schedule a great opportunity for you to make up a lot of points?
TONY KANAAN: Of course. You know, this year I’ve been working really close with Dario trying to improve some of my weaknesses that maybe has been costing me a little bit, and I think we’ve done a lot better. We’ve been qualifying a lot better. That was my weaknesses in the past two years.
Yeah, but Iowa, obviously it’s a track that I won a few times. I have a lot of podiums there. So for sure I’m looking forward to it.
Q. Pagenaud was a factor right before he dropped out at the end, but how do you think you stacked up against Pagenaud?
TONY KANAAN: Well, for us it’s good. He’s not going away with the lead. To be honest, we swapped strategies. I personally think I would have passed him, and I would have gone to chase Will because the reds were so much better there at the end and I had a brand new set. Obviously him having the problem just helps with the points because he dropped even more. Instead of being third, I don’t know where he finished, but — so that’s a big — I’m only 92 points behind now, you know, so it’s — it makes the championship very interesting. He was strong. When he passed me, he was on the Push-to-Pass on the red tires and I was on the black. We were going to swap at the end.
Q. We’ve heard aero wash and the way these cars affect each other on racetracks quite a bit this year. Is it any more or less noticeable here at Road America? Do the straits offset that at all?
TONY KANAAN: No, it’s actually a little bit better. With the long straightaways, it affects us in the corner a lot, but in the straits we have a lot of places to pass. Having those long straights helps. So no, to be honest, it’s actually better than some other places.