CHEVROLET RACING IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES
HONDA INDY 200 MID-OHIO
MID-OHIO SPORTS CAR COURSE, LEXINGTON, OHIO
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER POST RACE QUOTES
SUNDAY JULY 31, 2016
SIMON PAGENAUD, NO. 22 PPG AUTOMOTIVE REFINISH TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, RACE WINNER: ELATED AND SORE, BUT IT DOESN’T HURT NEARLY AS MUCH WHEN YOU GET TO CELEBRATE IN VICTORY LANE. HOW YOU ARE FEELING? “I can’t feel anything right now, so it’s all good. My back was fine all race. Unbelievable. Thanks to IndyCar medical. That was a race! Wasn’t that fun? It was awesome. I had a great battle with Will (Power) there at the end. I knew that was my chance. So, on that restart, it was time to go. It was a pretty interesting lap and it was fun driving like that. It reminded me of my sports car days around Mid-Ohio. That’s racing. It was fair and clean and it was hard racing and I’m just glad I won, really.
I just want to thank PPG and Chevy for providing us again, I always say, but for providing us such a great aero kit and engine and obviously Verizon. What an incredible job they’re doing to help IndyCar grow and continue growing. Thanks to them for bringing the fans to the race track. It’s awesome to see all the fans in the infield. The track is packed. It’s really cool.”
YOU GOT MAXIMUM POINTS THIS WEEKEND WITH THE POLE AND THE WIN, SO YOU’RE NOT AHEAD BY 58. WHEN THE YELLOW CAME OUT, WERE YOU THINKING ‘HERE WE GO AGAIN’ EARLY IN THE RACE?
“Yeah, it was going way too good at the start to be true to be honest. But, we bounced back. I never lost faith. The car was really good today; so when it was time to push, it was easy to lay down some fast laps. The Firestone red tires were amazing today on the car. So, I just pushed as hard as I could and here we are. Four wins. It’s good this year.”
WILL POWER, NO. 12 VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, FINISHED 2ND: AS TEAMMATES, YOU WENT TO GO SEE SIMON PAGENAUD RIGHT AFTER THE RACE. WHAT DID YOU SAY TO HIM? “Oh, I said ‘good job’, you know? It was an interesting battle there. I was sleeping on that bloody restart (laughs). I should have been more on it. Yeah, and then I got all marbles on the tires. It was a good, clean battle. It’s tough but yeah, it sucked finishing second with all the effort that you put into a race, but Simon did a good job and it’s turning into a pretty good battle as the points open-up, obviously. But, we’ll just keep pushing.”
ARE YOU SURPRISED THAT HE WAS THAT AGGRESSIVE? HE HAD A FAIRLY DECENT CHAMPIONSHIP LEAD. NOW IT’S BIGGER. BUT YOU ARE THE ONE WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN ATTACKING, BUT HE WAS ATTACKING YOU
“Yeah, I just slept on the restart. I should have been better than that, you know? I regret that, but he’s going to push. Obviously, the more gap he can open-up, the more comfortable it is for him and he saw an opportunity, so he went for it. He should. It’s on me for not really being on-top of it on the restart.”
HOW PHYSICAL OF A DAY WAS IT?
“It was very physical in that middle stint. And the end, it was okay. We were just saving fuel and just making sure we made it on fuel. But, yeah, physically, that’s as tough as it gets.”
SPENCER PIGOT, NO. 20 FUZZY’S ULTRA PREMIUM VODKA ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 7TH: “I was happy with the amount of cars we were able to jump on strategy and pass on track. We moved up to 7th so I was happy with that. We had a good strategy and also really good pit stops so a big thanks to them. I also have to say thanks to Fuzzy’s Vodka, Rising Star Racing, Mockett and everyone that helped me get here. I think we can keep moving forward. If we can qualify a bit better on Saturday, we won’t have to try and save as much fuel and do these alternate strategies. Today it worked out, but hopefully in Watkins Glen we can start by qualifying a bit higher up.”
CHARLIE KIMBALL, NO. 83 TRESIBA CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 8TH: I feel really badly for the 83 crew – they did such an awesome job in pit lane. They gave me positions in every single pit stop and really gave me the opportunity to go for the podium. I got a little aggressive trying to pass the 26 car on that last restart and lost some spots. We ended up eighth which is definitely a fight back from where we were out there in the dirt with 30 to go. It’s just difficult because the No. 83 Tresiba® Chevrolet was quicker than that today. I’m disappointed, but I have to give so much credit to the guys and everyone at Chip Ganassi Racing this weekend.”
JOSEF NEWGARDEN, NO. 21 FUZZY’S ULTRA PREMIUM VODKA ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 10TH: “It was tough day. I feel bad for my guys because I think we had a good car. Pagenaud and Power would have been tough today, but I think we were a podium car for sure which would have been really good points for us. It’s tough having two races in a row where we have our rear bumper taken off. It’s no fault of our own but it ruins our race, it happened in Toronto and now here. I think it’s probably a question for IndyCar of how that’s going to be handled. It’s really hard for us to recover after those incidents. We did everything we could, our guys were lightning fast in the pits to get us back out with a new bumper. We tried to do some damage control and got a Top 10 out of it, we’ll take that and move on to try and win the next one.”
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, NO. 2 HAWK PERFORMANCRE EAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, FINISHED 11TH: “First, I want to say that I’m really glad that Vance (No. 2 car mechanic – pit crew) is okay, after the incident today. Secondly, the Hawk Performance Chevrolet was good all weekend and it definitely had the speed for a podium finish. For the race we went with a different strategy and it didn’t work out as well as we would have liked. We went with a different set of red tires that we thought would work well for us during the later part of the race , but the balance was off after that. We have to keep our heads up and look ahead. We just need to go back and look at things this week and see what we can do differently for Pocono.”
TONY KANAAN, NO. 10 NTT DATA CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, 12TH: “It was just one of those races where things didn’t fall the way we wanted them to. We made our way up into the top 10 after our last stop and we were in good position to keep it up there, but I was one of the only guys up front on blacks and we just couldn’t move forward or hold our position to the guys on red tires toward the end of the race. We had a really fast car in the No. 10 NTT DATA Chevrolet and we showed it all weekend in practice, but it just didn’t play out for us in the end.”
HELIO CASTRONEVES, NO. 3 HITACHI TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, FINISHED 15TH: “The Hitachi Chevy was consistent. Unfortunately, I don’t understand yet what happened with the No. 9 (Scott Dixon) in Turn 2. Obviously, I went to move to the inside. He was on the Push-to-Pass. I was on the Push-to-Pass. Unfortunately I felt a big hit on the back. I didn’t move anything. It is a shame. Not sure what happened. I have to ask him what happened. We stayed out but the side pod was a little bit off and the rear of the car was moving a lot, especially in the high-speed section. I believe that is where I went off when I was passing the No. 8 car (Max Chilton), the rear just took off. Looks like some of my competitors had a bad day except for Will and Pagenaud – great job for them. They are probably on their way to a good battle for the championship, but we will keep focused.”
MAX CHILTON, NO. 8 GALLAGHER CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 16TH: t was a long day in the office. I tried everything I could and I felt that my pace was pretty strong, but around here you have to be really strong to get by even with push to pass. It made it even harder with the temperatures, but I really did enjoy it out there this weekend. I learned a lot. It’s one of those things where you need the luck of the draw to do well and we just didn’t have it this weekend.”
SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS, NO. 11 TEAM HYDROXYCUT-KVSH RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 20TH: “After a frustrating qualifying yesterday we managed to find ourselves up front today after a good strategy call. Unfortunately, five laps to the end I felt I had a shot to get into the top-four. I haven’t seen the replay, but I guess I just got frustrated and missed my mark on the braking when I was close behind him (Takuma Sato). He braked and I tried to brake later and unfortunately I touched him. My bad to Takuma. The Hydroxycut car was good and I was growing increasingly frustrated not to be able to make use of it because he was not very fast. It just tipped me over the edge and I made a mistake. I feel bad for the Hydroxycut guys. They did a good job in the pits and deserved a better result. We’ll just have to regroup now and see what we can do the last four races of the season.”
SCOTT DIXON, NO. 9 TARGET CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 22ND: “Helio was coming out of the pits on the pit exchange and we were trying to go off sequence. He was off pace and we caught him on the exit of turn 1. I got alongside him and he kept edging me over until I just had nowhere to go. I braked when I was alongside him and then he just turned in. Had we had a little more room I think we could have gotten through there just fine. It was definitely an aggressive move but I should have known better trying that with Helio. It usually ends like this with him.”