CHEVROLET RACING IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES
HONDA INDY TORONTO
STREETS OF TORONTO, EXHIBITION PLACE
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUALIFYING RECAP
JULY 15, 2017
Simon Pagenaud Puts Chevy on Pole at Toronto
First Pole of the Season for Defending Verizon IndyCar Series Champion
TORONTO – Simon Pagenaud won the Verizon P1 Award for Sunday’s Honda Indy Toronto with a record-setting lap of 58.9124-second/109.138 mph. It is the first pole of the season for the Series’ defending champion in three appearances in the Firestone Fast Six. It is also the 10th of his career and the first on the Streets of Exhibition Place for the driver of the No. 1 DXC Technology Team Penske Chevrolet.
Pagenaud’s pole is the eighth of the season for Chevrolet in 12 events.
Helio Castroneves, the most recent Series’ winner on the Iowa Speedway oval, will start third in the No. 3 Hitachi Team Penske Chevrolet with teammate Will Power, No. 12 Verizon Chevrolet alongside in the fourth starting position.
Josef Newgarden, No. 2 DeVilbiss Team Penske Chevrolet, will start seventh giving Team Chevy four of the top-seven qualifiers for the 85-lap/151.81-mile race around the 1.786-mile/11-turn temporary street course.
Other Chevrolet drivers will start as follows:
JR Hildebrand 12th
Spencer Pigot 13th
Conor Daly 18th
Carlos Munoz 19th
CNBC will telecast the 85-lap/152-mile Honda Indy Toronto on the 11-turn, 1.75-mile street circuit live at 3 p.m. ET Sunday with a re-air at 7:00 p.m. ET on NBCSN. The race also will be broadcast on INDYCAR Radio Network affiliates, IndyCar.com, indycarradio.com, the INDYCAR Mobile app, Sirius 212, and XM209
IndyCar Media Conference
Saturday July 15, 2017
THE MODERATOR: We’ll welcome Helio Castroneves, who will be starting third in tomorrow’s Honda Indy Toronto. Take us through your qualifying run and what led to this third-place starting position.
HELIO CASTRONEVES: Yeah, it was pretty good. The Hitachi Chevy was running really, really good, and obviously my teammates, we’re all working together, pushing each other, and in my group the car was running really smooth, picking up a little bit of understeer with the blacks, so I was trying to make some adjustments.
That’s the fun part about it, you start making some adjustments and try to rush into it, but it worked pretty well, and we saved the best for last. But definitely Simon put up a phenomenal lap out there. I mean, I wish I would have started with a brand new one instead of stopping and coming back in, so it would have given us a little bit more of a possibility to keep pushing every lap.
THE MODERATOR: Our reigning winner Will Power sitting to Graham’s right will be starting fourth in tomorrow’s Honda Indy Toronto. We’ve been seeing you a lot in these press conferences. What’s been going right for you this weekend, and ultimately take us through your qualifying run.
WILL POWER: Yeah, obviously the cars are really good. My qualifying on the blacks was really fast, definitely car felt good, a bit on the reds. Didn’t get a good read on that — when it went red there. I only had one lap and it had a lot of push, and I thought, well, maybe the fronts weren’t in and then didn’t have time to make a change for the Fast Six.
Yeah, just big imbalance, and got as much as I could out of it, as it was, so starting 4 is pretty good around here. Try to keep out of the mess.
THE MODERATOR: We’ll continue with our qualifying press conference with our pole winner Simon Pagenaud, who’s set a new track record in the new track configuration of 58.9124 seconds. His first pole in 2017 and also here on the streets of Toronto and his 10th career pole. You’ve been atop the speed charts for most of yesterday and also today; did you have a feeling that you had a pretty good shot at pole heading into this afternoon’s qualifying session?
SIMON PAGENAUD: Yeah, I feel like the DXC car was pretty competitive all weekend, so I felt really comfortable. It’s really the first weekend of the year that I’ve been able to do exactly what I want with the car, and it’s a lot of fun when that happens. And also, just like Graham was saying, it feels so rewarding when you feel like you extract the best out of yourself and feel one with the car. It was definitely some really fast laps there in the Fast Six, and I really put everything down on the line.
Very satisfying, but my race car has been phenomenal this weekend, so I hope we can transform that into a win tomorrow. It would be perfect timing in the championship.
Q. You’ve seen your teammates Helio and Will go back and forth on several different pole wins throughout the season. Does it matter to you to finally get a pole in 2017 and join that rank, or are you more focused on race results?
SIMON PAGENAUD: For me it’s race results. That’s really what pays. But every race car driver has an ego, and I think qualifying is all about ego. We all want to be the fastest man. Like I said, I think from the moment we start in go-karts, when you manage to do that special lap, it’s the best feeling in the world, and I think that’s what we all hear, is to us, it’s the grand when you get to do the pole and put that perfect lap together. That’s what we seek for. That’s what I seek for the morning when I wake up, and when it happens, when I manage to put it all together on a given time, it’s very enjoyable. It’s the best reward in the world.
THE MODERATOR: The Verizon IndyCar Series races on many different types of tracks. When you get to a street course here like Toronto, do you feel like in terms of the other street courses we visit throughout the season, how important is it to qualify well here in Toronto specifically?
SIMON PAGENAUD: Yeah, to me it’s the most important place to qualify well, so that’s why this pole position is very important to the race results. It’s going to count toward it. But if everything happens normally, that’s the problem here. Like I said earlier in the press conference, Toronto always has a twist for you on the strategy. But it’s always better to be up front for sure. So that’s mission accomplished on the pole position, but we have one more thing to do, and that’s the race. The whole weekend is tackling practice 1 a certain way to be well set up for practice 2, and practice 3 is all about qualifying. When you check everything that you want to check to that point, that’s satisfying.
Q. I know you just mentioned that it’s about the race results at the end of the day, but judging by your entrance here, there’s got to be a certain level of excitement winning pole here in Toronto.
SIMON PAGENAUD: Well, yeah, that’s big excitement. I love this city. I’ve been racing here since 2006, and this is really a fun track to me. I’ve just never had the success that I thought I could get for unknown reasons, so again, being able to put a perfect lap together in Toronto is very unusual because it’s a very tough track. So I feel very satisfied that way. But there’s a huge competition within the team. Obviously Helio has been on a tear this year, and I needed some poles to catch up on that competition. Last year I was the one that won that competition, but it’s a fun — we’re just having fun with that. That’s why the entrance was a bit flamboyant.
Q. You mentioned the term perfect lap though, and multiple perfect laps when you think about it, you beat Will and then you beat that time again. How do you get that consistency on Sunday in the variants of weather and temperature and all that jazz?
SIMON PAGENAUD: I think it’s a different story. I think I’ve done my job into qualifying. Now we’ve got to forget about pace over one lap, right. We’ve been thinking one lap pace. I’ve got to extract the best out of the tires, the car. I’ve got to be as close as possible to the wall. I’ll tell you, I took all the risk necessary in Turn 11, for example, to get a little tense here and there.
If I do that in the race, I won’t finish the race. So it’s a different approach. I’ve got to set up my car a little differently for the race, maybe a little less aggressive with the rear end of the car to actually keep my tires underneath me and be stronger the whole stint. And like you said, we don’t know what the forecast is going to be. That’s the one thing you can’t control, so we’re all going to have to adapt to that. But it’s the same for everybody.
Q. Last year at Detroit if I remember correctly, you started the race and went over 20 laps on red tires, and I think you were the only driver to successfully do a full fuel stint and make those tires last, and I don’t think your speed really dropped off. This year here at Toronto, the track is different, it’s a street course, it’s a lot slicker, I guess, in places, but Firestone said that they brought a tire that had a lot more grip. How do you feel about the red tires in terms of longevity and all that?
SIMON PAGENAUD: Yeah, it’s tough for me to answer. I had some issues yesterday in practice, too, so I didn’t manage to do a long stint on the red tires. I don’t know the degradation. I know because of my driving style I feel like my front tires are going to go away quicker than the rear, and I’m going to do everything that I can tonight to make sure that we can keep our tires underneath us, but we also need a fast car on the black tires. So it may be more a case of limiting the number of laps on reds and switching to blacks afterwards. I think the blacks are going to be faster on the long run. But if the conditions are difficult, you’re going to want to use the reds just because if it’s spotting in places, you’re going to be more comfortable on reds. There’s a lot that goes into it in the trailer that not many people get to see, but there’s going to be a lot of conversation tonight to try to see what we can do and make sure that the car is going to be consistent.
Q. This is a race that in the past has had a lot of cautions. How does that affect the way you guys plan for a race, especially seeing as we could get some weather tomorrow that could throw even more cautions in the wind?
SIMON PAGENAUD: It’s tough. That’s a constant discussion. You know, the problem is statistically that yellow comes out at the end of the first stint right in the wrong spot. What do you do? You try to pit before that statistical lap that seems to be around 14 or 13. But the problem is if it doesn’t go yellow, then you really shoot yourself in the foot. You kind of have to react to the situation on track, and that’s Kyle Moyer and Ben Bretzman, my strategist Kyle to decide with me in the discussion during the race to what to do.
Also they’re always looking at the competition, where they’re at on track and what are they doing. We’re obviously looking at Dixon very closely, and that’s the main competition for us. So that’s what we’re going to be looking at. But tomorrow we need to go out there and win the race. That’s the bottom line.
Q. What does it say about this event that the only two tracks that have been held on the schedule longer are the Indianapolis 500 and the Long Beach Grand Prix?
SIMON PAGENAUD: Well, I think it’s definitely a classic here. When you talk about Toronto, everybody knows the Indy Toronto. It’s a beautiful event. The crowd was amazing on Friday. It’s still amazing today. I think obviously the sport is growing, and it’s growing back. I think it’s phenomenal to see that. The track is improving every year. But when you look at the pictures, you still see the exact same background as it used to have, and I think that’s what makes this track, this place very historical. I love coming here. It’s a great track, great event, great food. It’s cool, yeah. Got some good places.
THE MODERATOR: Simon, congratulations. Thank you very much.