CHEVROLET RACING IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES
HONDA INDY TORONTO
STREETS OF TORONTO, EXHIBITION PLACE
TEAM CHEVY POST RACE RECAP
JULY 16, 2017
Josef Newgarden Takes Chevy to Victory Lane at Streets of Toronto
Second Victory of Season for Newgarden is Sixth of 2017 for Chevrolet
TORONTO (July 16, 2017) – Josef Newgarden took the lead for the final time on lap 57 of the 85-lap Honda Indy of Toronto and masterfully held off the competition to score his second victory of the 2017 Verizon IndyCar Series season.
Newgarden powered his No. 2 DeVilbiss Team Penske Chevrolet to the checkered flag 1.8704-seconds ahead of his closest competitor. It is the fifth win of his career and his second on the Streets of Toronto, Exhibition Place. The victory moved Newgarden to fourth in the standings, 23 points behind the leader.
“Team Penske executed a great race strategy that put Josef Newgarden and his No. 2 Chevrolet in the position to take the lead” said Mark Kent, Director of Motorsports Competition for Chevrolet. “Josef drove a great race to maintain a strong advantage on the way to capturing the checkered flag and the win today on the Streets of Toronto. With five races remaining on the schedule, the championship battle is very tight. We look forward to the competition as we head into the stretch contending for our sixth straight manufacturer championship in the Verizon IndyCar Series.”
The victory is the sixth win for the Chevrolet Aero Kit with the 2.2 liter twin turbocharged direct injected V6 engine.
Giving Chevrolet two of the top-five finishers was defending Series’ champion Simon Pagenaud, No. 1 DXC Technology Team Penske Chevrolet. He sits third in points, 19 points down from first place.
Helio Castroneves brought his No. 3 Hitachi Team Penske Chevrolet to the finish in eighth position and turned up the heat in the championship battle. His strong run reduced the points deficit to just three points out of the lead in second position with five races remaining.
Other Chevrolet drivers finished as follows:
JR Hildebrand 13th
Carlos Munoz 15th
Conor Daly 17th
Spencer Pigot 18th
Will Power 21st
Alexander Rossi (Honda) and James Hinchcliffe (Honda) completed the podium.
Next on the schedule the July 30th event at Mid Ohio Sports Car Course, Lexington, Ohio.
POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
JOSEF NEWGARDEN
THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by the winner of the Honda Indy Toronto, Josef Newgarden. This is the second win of 2017 for Josef and the fifth win of his IndyCar career. It’s the second win on the streets of Toronto. He previously won this year at Barber and also won in Toronto in 2015.
Josef, congratulations. I know pit strategy, maybe even a little bit of luck, played into a great finish for you. As we all know, luck never plays purely a role in a race win. It takes a lot of team and driver effort to get that result done. Take us through your race and ultimately how you moved to the front.
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: I think track position was a big thing today. I didn’t get to see the race from really the middle or the back. But I have to think it was very difficult to pass people today. If you got track position, I think that was king.
Obviously we were good. We’ve been good all weekend on old tires and certainly the primary tires. I think we missed out a little bit in qualifying and were disappointed with the Q2 segment, how it kind of fell for us. I thought we were better than that. Certainly could have been up closer to Will and Helio. We wanted to dig deep and have a good race.
Like you said, I think the yellow for sure played a part in winning this race. It was a good call at the right time for the 2 car guys and Tim Cindric. That was the first domino for us to fall and after that it was a matter of managing a race, making good fuel mileage and driving fast.
Once that scenario came about, I thought we had everything we needed to win the race. I was very confident in our racecar going into it with everything that the 2 car guys had given me.
Tough day, not easy. Glad the rain held off. It would have been fun to run in the rain, at the same time it’s nice when you’re out front to have a straightforward race. I think that played into our favor as well.
THE MODERATOR: Were you concerned after qualifying with track position? Did you ever imagine you could end up on top if perhaps that domino hadn’t fallen in the race?
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: I think if it didn’t fall against us, we could still potentially come out victorious. It’s impossible to predict, if we didn’t catch the yellow, would we have won the race? I have no idea. Maybe we would have finished fifth or fourth or something.
After the first start, we found ourself in fourth position after we missed Will and Scott’s incident, so it was a really good start for us.
From there we still had a plan we needed to have track position. That was our go-to plan to differentiate ourselves between us and the leaders. If the yellow didn’t fall, we were still doing something like that. How it would play out, I have no idea. The yellow just worked perfectly.
We were still fast, still up there. Always will take a little bit of luck. I think we all would. It’s funny because Rick Mears told me one time, this was one of the best things I’ve ever heard. He said, You’ll have more days where you should have won the race and things go against you and you don’t win the race, then you have days where it go goes your way and you end up winning the race. So the days it goes your way and you get something lucky, you just take them. Because there’s more days where you could say, We should have won that race. So I’ll take a lucky yellow any day of the week.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for Josef.
Q. What is interesting about this year is you’ve won at the two tracks where you got your first two victories. How strange is that for you?
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: It’s odd. Very odd. I think we missed out at Road America. I really think we had a win in our grasp there. Obviously didn’t play out for a couple different reasons with tire strategy, the way the yellow fell there, actually fell against us, in my opinion. We’ll take the yellow today. At Road America when it came out, I would have loved for it not to.
It’s almost in a weird way payback for Road America. But I definitely thought the same thing. I was like it’s so weird that we won at two places I already won at, the first two places I won races. For me it would be nice winning at a place I haven’t won yet with the 2 car and Team Penske. I would love it for myself and love it for the team.
I don’t know what that says. These places, this is the second time that a yellow fell in my favor here at Toronto, too. I don’t know if it’s a little bit of Canadian luck. It seems to give it to me here.
Q. What does this finish do to your outlook towards the end of the championship? How do you feel at the tracks that are coming up on the schedule?
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: It’s a good day for us. Specifically on the 2 car, it’s a good day. I think for Team Penske as a whole it’s a good day with where Scott finished. I haven’t seen the full breakdown. I’m assuming it was a very good day for all of us, a very good day for us on the 2 car. I’m excited about that.
The big thing for us is we can’t get into many more incidents like we have the first half of the year. I think month of May is really what killed us in the points championship. We had a bad GP with a pit lane speed limiter issue, and a bad Indy 500 wrecking out with 20 to go, getting caught up in something. We’ve had some races that we’ve had to pick up from a deficit, and I think if those weren’t there, we’d probably be leading the championship.
But other guys can say the same thing. They’ll say, We had races like this, too. It kind of yo-yos back and forth for everybody. Everyone is going to have good races and bad races. We have to prioritize having solid finishes from here to the end. I think if we’re the most consistent, we absolutely can win the championship. It’s going to be the guy who does that the best.
Q. Another victory north of the border, should make you an honorary Canadian.
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: I love beating Hinch in Canada. I love Hinch. He’s a great representative. He was joking actually. We got on TV in Victory Lane. He’s like, I’m going to promote Nashville when we go there, because I’m from Nashville.
He is like, We’re going back and I’m going to beat you in Nashville.
It’s fun being up there. Love Canada. Love the sport.
Q. Can you discuss the similarities and victories between the victory today and your last?
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Well, this one, that’s a good point. They were both difficult. They both feel stressful. It’s a street course. Whenever you’re in the lead on a street course, it always feels stressful. It doesn’t feel easy. You’re in the lead, have a good gap, manage it and finish the race. I feel like a street course always brings a bit of stress with the walls and all the variables that you’re always dealing with.
Today there was a little more with the rain. I was concerned about that, how it would throw a wrench into the works. It starts raining when I’m on the wrong end of the track, that wouldn’t be very good.
There were things that stressed me out for sure. But, you know, it was a fairly straightforward day. I think probably it felt a little bit easier than the first year when I had my first win here and the second win of my career. The more you do it, the more you drive the cars, the easier it all becomes.
Today was just more of a normal process, you know, just doing what we always do when we come to an IndyCar weekend. That was probably the main feel difference.
THE MODERATOR: Josef, congratulations.
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Thank you, guys.