CHEVROLET RACING IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES
KOHLER GRAND PRIX
ROAD AMERICA – ELKHART LAKE, WISCONSIN
TEAM CHEVY POST RACE RECAP
JUNE 25, 2017
Team Chevy Drivers Capture Four of Top-Five Finishing Positions at Road America
ELKHART LAKE, WISC (June 25, 2017) – Josef Newgarden, No. 2 DeVilBiss Chevrolet led the stream of four Team Penske Chevrolets to the finish of the Kohler Grand Prix at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin for the Verizon IndyCar Series. The Chevrolet-powered foursome finished second, third, fourth and fifth.
Starting from the third position on the grid, Newgarden, the newest member of Team Penske, was credited with leading twice for a total of 13 of the 55 laps in the race and took the checkered flag in the runner-up position. The finish moved Newgarden to fifth in the point standings.
Verizon P1 Award winner Helio Castroneves, No. 3 REV Group Chevrolet finished third after leading twice for 17 laps around the 14-turn, 4.013-mile natural-terrain road course. The three-time Indy 500 winner now sits third in points heading into the next round on July 9, 2017 at Iowa Speedway.
Defending Verizon IndyCar Series champion, Simon Pagenaud brought the No. 1 Menards Chevrolet to the fourth finishing position to maintain his strong second-place position in the standings. Pagenaud started fourth.
Will Power, No. 12 Verizon Chevrolet, finished fifth from his outside front row starting position, and now holds the sixth position in points.
Other Chevrolet finishers were:
Carlos Munoz – No. 14 ABC AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet – 11th
Spencer Pigot – No. 20 Fuzzy’s Vodka Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet – 12th
Conor Daly – No. 4 ABC AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet – 15th
JR Hildebrand – No. 21 Direct Supply Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet – 16th
Scott Dixon was the race winner.
POST RACE PODIUM PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT:
NOTE: Third-place finishers Helio Castroneves suffered from dehydration, received treatment at track care center and released. He was excused from participating in the post-race press conference:
JOSEF NEWGARDEN, SECOND-PLACE FINISHER:
THE MODERATOR: We’ll get started with our Verizon IndyCar Series post race press conference. Pleased to be joined by our second-place finisher, Josef Newgarden, driving the No. 2 DeVilbiss Team Penske Chevrolet.
Josef, congratulations on a podium finish, your first here at Road America. Take us through your race. Especially those last few laps, you were closing in on Scott. Not quite enough today, but a good finish for you, and also for Team Penske.
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Yeah, it was a good day. It stings a little bit coming home second when you feel like you have a winning car. Scott was great today. So was Ganassi Racing. Those guys did a great job. Certainly very deserving of the win.
But that’s tough coming up a little bit short. I felt like when the caution came out and we were on the primary tires, Helio and Scott had the alternates, I thought this is probably not going to be very good on the restart. It was hard to get temperature in them to get up to speed for the restart.
I don’t know if it sealed our fate, but once the race was over, I was like, That’s what sealed our fate. It was an ill-timed caution. If that didn’t come out, we would have gotten 10 laps or so on the tires, we would have been okay.
Once we shuffled back to third, it was about trying to get back by those guys. At that point we were on the same strategy pretty much the last stint. So it was hard to do anything with Scott. Felt we were a touch quicker than him, but couldn’t do anything on that final stint.
Tough coming up short, but a great weekend for us at Team Penske. We were strong all weekend. Just didn’t get it done when it counted in the race, so that’s going to sting.
THE MODERATOR: Your second IndyCar start here at Road America. Now that we’ve been back for the second year after such a long absence, your thoughts on the track, the atmosphere here at Road America?
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: It’s great. You can ask any IndyCar driver, any driver in general, they will tell you this is one of their favorite places, if not their favorite place, to race. It’s obviously a great road course for North America. To me, I think it’s one of the best road courses in the world.
It’s the longest course we go to I think all year long, about four miles. It’s beautiful. It’ll great to drive. Our average speed is around 145 miles per hour. That gives you an idea of how fast you’re moving around this place at a constant rate.
Yeah, it’s one of my favorites. I absolutely love running here. The atmosphere is electric. There’s always a great community of people that come up here. The weather, you know, it’s a beautiful time of the year to come up here. I don’t know about the winter. I don’t want to come up here during the winter necessarily. But during the summer it’s absolutely beautiful, the landscape. It’s got pretty much everything for an IndyCar race in summer.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for Josef.
Q. When you do have a strategy race, how confident are you when you have Cindric at your disposal making the right call?
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Man, Tim gives me a lot of confidence. He’s so cool on the radio, so experienced. You know, I can ask him anything. I feel like I’m very prepared with Tim on the box. He makes sure I know everything I need to know. Something that I don’t know, I know he’s going to know it.
Things like today, where the yellow came out, you can’t predict those type of deals. We made the right strategy for us with the way the race was unfolding. We had a good lead. If you asked me what tires I wanted to go out on in that third stint, I would have said the primary tires. I thought we made the right call.
The caution didn’t fall our way. You can’t predict that stuff. It hurts when it comes at the wrong time. That’s pretty much what happened today. With Tim, I feel confident with all our decisions, everything those guys do on the pit box.
Things just didn’t fall our way today.
Q. The restart where Scott was able to go to the outside to pass you, it was a pretty bold move on his part. How did you feel? Were you pretty impressed that he was able to pull it off?
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: No, because he had red tires on (laughter). I thought, He better get me if he has red tires on.
It’s a second quicker. It was a good pass. I tried to race him as clean as I could. I went as deep as I could with him on the black tires. That’s as hard as I could go without running into him, into the side. I tried to give him some racing room. Kind of similar to Helio and me, the way we ran together into turn one.
It was a good move. I got chewed up by him in turn one, and I got chewed up out of T3 by Helio. He stabilized in front of Simon, because he had the same tires as us.
It was tough. I knew it was going to be like that going to the restart. It was tough coming to the green like that.
Q. If I understand correctly, you said earlier the tires didn’t warm up enough at the first caution.
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Yeah, well, they don’t. The primaries are very difficult to bring up to temperature like the reds. The reds were up to much more temperature than the primaries were.
Q. In principle, can you not adjust it with tire pressure?
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Not necessarily, no. It’s a reflection of the compound of the tire, the construction of the tire. It’s an engineering reason. The reds are easier to bring up to temperature. You can’t do anything to really bypass that, you know. You try and put as much heat into the red as you can, you try to put as much heat into the primaries.
The red is always going to come up quicker generally. It does change track to track. But at this track, it’s more difficult to bring up the primaries. It’s the nature of the tire. It’s what we deal with, pretty much.
Q. A year after you raced here injured, what was it like this year?
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Yeah, I mean, certainly no distractions. Last year there was probably a little more distraction from trying to deal with comfort inside the cockpit. But from a performance standpoint, I don’t think it was much different.
I wouldn’t blame the injuries last year for any performance deficit. I thought we were actually very good in the race last year. We had a top 10. I made a mistake in qualifying, which I think if we didn’t do that, we probably could have had a top five last year. If anything, it was nice not having any distractions personally.
From a performance standpoint, I think it was similar to last year. I felt optimistic knowing what we had in the race last year.
Q. You seemed to be having a lot of fun coming into this race, knew your cars were strong. Any other tracks you can look forward feeling that confident going into the race weekend?
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: It’s hard to tell. I feel like you could say, you know, a couple different places we should be strong at. If you look at where Penske was good last year, like Mid-Ohio, they were very good last year. With IndyCar, you just can never tell. There’s always little differences every year. Sometimes it sways your way, sometimes it doesn’t.
I think we’re going to be pretty good at most tracks we go to this year. Are we going to be as good as this year, I’m not 100% sure, to be honest with you.
Q. The last restart, the guy you’re behind is Scott Dixon. If it’s somebody else, are you maybe a little more confident that you have a shot at him? He doesn’t seem to make a lot of mistakes.
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Yeah, I mean, Scott’s one of the hardest to pass. It was funny, because it was kind of a reverse Barber situation. At Barber this year, you had Scott behind me at the end with a little more overtake, then it was me behind Scott this time with a little more overtake. You kind of had a similar result almost.
I think it doesn’t necessarily matter who it is. For sure, you know, you give Scott a lot of credit, he’s going to be tough. He’s not going to make a lot of mistakes. You really got to push the issue with him.
But I think I was concerned about getting by him, just his race pace. We were quicker than him, but we weren’t quick enough to overtake him. We were probably only 2, 3/10ths quicker than him outright speed, which wasn’t enough to do much with him.
Once we were up to temperature, we were all running full, we both had red tires on, they were new tires for both of us, it was kind of hard to do anything once we got up to speed. I couldn’t make anything happen. As soon as I did something with overtake, he would do it. We were just kind of tit for tat till the end. He’s obviously one of the toughest to race against.
I think if the situation were reversed, we would have been okay, as well, to win the race. So it’s just tough strategy today.
THE MODERATOR: Josef, congratulations.
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Thank you.
CHEVROLET RACING IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES
KOHLER GRAND PRIX
ROAD AMERICA – ELKHART LAKE, WISCONSIN
TEAM CHEVY POST RACE NOTES AND QUOTES
JUNE 25, 2017
JOSEF NEWGARDEN, NO. 2 DEVILBISS TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, FINISHED 2ND: YOU HAD THE FASTEST LAP OF THE RACE AND DROVE A GREAT RACE. IT SEEMS YOU JUST GOT UNLUCKY WHEN THE CAUTION CAME OUT WHEN YOU WERE ON BLACKS
“Yeah, you can’t predict that stuff and I think our strategy was spot on. We were doing what we needed to do to stay out front there all day. But you just can’t predict those yellows and some days they fall your way and some days they don’t. Today they didn’t fall our way. Dixon and the whole Ganassi team did a great job and they deserved to win with the job they did. I felt good about what we had and we had four strong Chevrolets all weekend with Team Penske. It stings a bit that we didn’t get the win because of how good this car was all weekend. We looked good and you couldn’t miss us. We had the fastest lap which was pretty cool and I am just proud of all our guys. Just disappointed we couldn’t get it done.”
AT THE END YOU HAD MORE PUSH TO PASS BUT YOU COULDN’T REALLY GAIN ON HIM. DO YOU THINK HE WAS KEEPING AND EYE ON YOU?
“It got so difficult when you were up to temperature. He did a great job on the restart as he had a little more temp. When we got up to temperature a little bit quicker but it’s so difficult to pass when you are up to full temperature and he is as quick as he is. I think we were quicker than him, but not enough to where we could get a big run. It was just wrong place at the wrong time on that restart. We needed to be in the lead.”
HELIO CASTRONEVES, NO. 3 REV GROUP TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, FINISHED 3RD: “The Rev Group Chevy was good, especially in the beginning. I was taking it easy and saving fuel, a lot of fuel actually. When we put the blacks on, I knew it was going to be rough. At the end of the race Scott (Dixon) did a good job saving fuel and going a lap farther. They were fast for sure and it’s a shame because our car was really good without question. But when you battle this close with everyone it’s the difference of one small detail. At the end of the day it was a good day for the points championship. It’s kind of disappointing that Team Penske didn’t get the win here today considering how strong all of the cars were. That’s the way it goes sometimes. We’ll come back ready to go for Iowa.”
THIS IS A TOUGHER ONE TO SWALLOW BECAUSE YOU WERE CLOSE ENOUGH TO THE LEAD AND IN THE LEAD FOR A WHILE. YOU PROBABLY TASTED THAT WIN DIDN’T YOU?
“Yes, definitely. Team Penske did a phenomenal job. The Rev Group Chevy was good, especially in the beginning. I was taking it easy and saving fuel, a lot of fuel actually. When we put the blacks on, I knew it was going to be rough and Josef (Newgarden) ended up getting the best of ours. But in the end we exchanged pits and we passed him again. At the end of the race Scott (Dixon) did a good job saving fuel and going a lap farther. They were fast for sure and it’s a shame because the car was really good without question. But when you battle this close with everyone it’s the difference of one small detail. At the end of the day it was a good day for the points championship.”
WHAT HAPPENED ON THAT LAST STOP? THERE SEEMED TO BE A BIT OF MISCOMMUNICATION
“We mentioned in the debrief that if in turn 14, the blue lights come on, you are to come right away. So I came in. I am sure they had a little buffer, and they knew what exactly was going on. He said keep going but I couldn’t quite understand him. See Roger, that is what happens. I need you back. (laughs). But at the end of the day it didn’t cost us anything in terms of a win or second place.”
SIMON PAGENAUD, NO. 1 MENARDS TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, FINISHED 4TH: “It’s a little disappointing that a Team Penske car didn’t win today, but no complaints about the No. 1 Menards Chevy. Congratulations to the (Scott) Dixon team. They did a great job. We did all that we could do. There were a lot of different tire strategies in play. We were one of the few teams that started on blacks and it worked for us. We just never had the opportunity to get around some cars and make more noise. In the end, it was a good day for us. It’s an honor to carry the Menards name in the Midwest. The fan support was fantastic again this year.”
YOU WERE FAST TODAY, JUST NOT FAST ENOUGH
“Yeah, we flew under the radar. You didn’t see my off course but we recovered well. It was an interesting day with all the strategy on tires. We started on blacks which I thought went really well and fuel had a big part in every stint. If you could go a lap longer it was gaining you a lot of time. We didn’t have as much fuel efficiency as (Scott) Dixon but Josef did an amazing job in the first stint. I think that is what helped him a lot. The car was great and one of these days all four guys are going to be at the front. We were really fast and we raced each other hard but we didn’t have enough push to pass at the end unfortunately. Great to have the Menards Chevrolet here, its Wisconsin, the home state.”
IF I HAD TOLD YOU BEFORE THE RACE THAT ONE OF THE PENSKE CARS WASN’T GOING TO WIN, YOU WOULD HAVE TOLD ME…..?
“It’s a shame. We missed that one. Our cars were dominant this weekend and it’s really a shame that we didn’t bring a win home for the team.”
WILL POWER, NO. 12 VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, FINISHED 5TH:
“We were just caught up in things all day. The Verizon Chevy was fantastic just as it had been all weekend. I battled good with (Scott) Dixon on that first stint. Maybe we could have gone one more lap on that first set of tires, but the fuel numbers might not have worked out, so we played it safe. My hat is off to Scott (Dixon). I felt pretty good about a Team Penske victory today, but they did a great job. The guys gave me a great car and the we didn’t have any problems in the pits. We gave it all that we could. It was a good day for points and it will be very interesting from here.”
DISAPPOINTING?
“Yes, obviously it was disappointing for one of our cars not to win. Dixon was obviously fast and getting good fuel mileage, so he was going to be tough to beat.”
THERE WERE A TON OF BATTLES GOING ON OUT THERE, IT WAS AN EVENTFUL DAY WASN’T IT?
“It really was. Very eventful. I kept coming out of the pits on cold tires and battling people with warm tires, so yes, it was a job in just trying to keep position all the time. We didn’t quite have the car, but fifth place is still good points.”
HOW FRUSTRATING WAS IT IN TRYING TO MAKE TIME BUT SAVING FUEL AT THE SAME TIME?
“It’s definitely hard, especially when you have someone breathing down your neck. Dixon was all over me in the first stint, and he went a lap longer. I think we had the fuel to do it, but we weren’t confident we would make the lap. I like it when you can push hard, but that is IndyCar and you know you have to do every kind of discipline including saving fuel.”
CARLOS MUNOZ, NO. 14 ABC SUPPLY AJ FOYT RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 11TH:
SPENCER PIGOT, NO. 20 FUZZY’S VODKA ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 12TH: “There was a lot of hard racing out there today. We had gotten pretty far up into the field before we had some issues with the front suspension that prevented us from continuing our move forward. We had to make a few extra stop that took a long time, but the Fuzzy’s Vodka guys did a really good job at diagnosing the problem and fixing it as quick as they could. Our pace was really good and I’m slightly satisfied to come back to 12th. It was unfortunately another race where we should have finished much higher up!”
CONOR DALY, NO. 4 ABC SUPPLY AJ FOYT RACING CHEVROLET. FINISHED 15TH:
JR HILDEBRAND, NO. 21 DIRECT SUPPLY ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 16TH: “We felt pretty good about how the race was going for a while, we were running with some normally racy guys. Then that last yellow came out and we were stuck on blacks without much overtake left. I’d burned up a lot of overtake just trying to get up to where we were at. We may have ended up 12th or 13th, something like that. It wasn’t going to be anything to write home about, but at least we had worked our way up through the field a little bit. When it went back to green, we just got eaten up by those guys that were on red and still had a bit of overtake left. Then we had a mechanical issue within the last three laps of the race that really took us out of the running altogether. We just kind of have to take this result on the chin and move on to Iowa.”