CHEVROLET RACING IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES
IOWA CORN 300
IOWA SPEEDWAY
NEWTON, IOWA
TEAM CHEVY POST RACE DRIVER QUOTES
JULY 8, 2018
DRIVER QUOTES:
SPENCER PIGOT, NO. 21 FUZZY’S VODKA ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET – Finished 2nd
BEST CAREER FINISH AT YOUR VERY FIRST TIME AT IOWA IN AN INDYCAR WHAT WAS IT LIKE RUNNING UP FRONT AND HAVING A TON OF SPEED?
“Yeah, it was a tough race. Right from the get go I knew we had a fast car the way we were getting through traffic, but I think as the stints went on we just seemed to get stronger and stronger and before we knew it we were right up towards the front, which was great. I can’t thank the guys enough, my engineer Matt () made some really good decisions and gave me a great car. The whole Ed Carpenter Racing team, Fuzzy’s Vodka, Chevrolet, a real team effort here and it was fun, it was tough, a lot of close racing, but yeah I really enjoyed it.”
JOSEF NEWGARDEN, NO. 1 HITACHI TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET – FINISHED 4TH: “This is IndyCar racing. You have to expect the unexpected. It’s never sorted out and locked up right at the beginning. We had a great No. 1 Hitachi Chevrolet and for the first half of the race, we had the car to beat. And it just fell away from us. Sometimes you can’t predict exactly what you’re going to need at the end of these things. Today, we didn’t have exactly what it was that we needed but we’ll come back and try it again. I think Hinch did a great job. Congrats to him and SPM. They deserved the win. They did a great job at the end there and happy for those guys. I’m just disappointed. We had such a good car and could have capitalized on it in the end but we just seemed to get worse as the race went on. All the guys did a great job. The Hitachi car was fast and Team Chevy did a great job. We’ll just chalk it up to we need to be a little better for next time.”
DID YOU KNOW WHEN JAMES HINCHCLIFFE GOT BY YOU THAT WAS FOR POSITION?
“Yeah, I mean I was being told where I was at and I think I was more surprised at how much he picked up. I think we had a great car today. The Hitachi car right from the beginning of the weekend has been solid. Team Chevy did a great job. We had a good package. I can’t complain much. It’s a tough pill to swallow. We just didn’t have it at the end. Sometimes you can’t forecast that completely you know we put on the car what we thought was going to be right for today and I think for the first half of the race, it was. I thought we had a great car and you know it just went away from us. So, tried to do what we could to get competitive there at the end and we just ran out of time. Again, you don’t know how that is going to play out. You try and make the best bet possible, but the team did a great job. I think we picked up some valuable points. Look, we will chalk it up to it was a great day what could have been, but wasn’t, so we will go on to the next one and try and make it happen.”
DID YOU GET CAUGHT UP AT ALL BEHIND YOUR TEAMMATE WILL POWER WHEN JAMES WAS GETTING BY YOU?
“No, if anything Will (Power) helped me out. Both Simon (Pagenaud) and Will they were both super nice to me. They were super sporting. They are the best teammates you could have. They helped me out. That is how we work together at Team Penske. But congrats to Hinch (James Hinchcliffe), he did a great job. They had a good car at the end. Those guys deserve to win we just have to come back and try and best them next time. You know go a little bit further in this race and have a good car at the end.”
WILL POWER, NO. 12 VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET – FINISHED 6TH:
“I think we lost a lot of ground in the first stint because there was something going on with the radio. The team called me in for three laps and I just didn’t hear it. Unfortunately, we lost a lot of positions. We lost a lot and went backwards at that point. The rest of it, we were just forward and back all day. The car was just reasonable. I think a top five would be the best we could do so sixth was ok.
YOU LED EARLY ON BUT YOU WERE ALMOST LAPPED AT THE END OF THE FIRST STINT WHAT HAPPENED?
“I mean Josef (Newgarden) was very good through the traffic there and Roger (Penske) called me in three times, apparently, and I did not hear it. And we lost a lot of time in that space, so that is where we lost a lot of ground to some of these other guys, but we just simply weren’t as good on the first stint once the tires degraded. I think we were not bad for the rest of the race trying to claw back positions. I mean honestly it was fun racing. You were sliding and trying to hold on. You are going two-wide, I mean it is a really good package that IndyCar brought here, I really liked it.
SIMON PAGENAUD, NO. 22 MENARDS TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET – FINISHED 8TH: “I had a blast. It was awesome short track racing! I think we were quite strong, but it was all about tire degradation. I do think we did have a little bit more than others, but our Menards Chevy was very fast. Overall I had a good time and it was good fun. It was a lot of action out there, but really good racing – lots of action from the cockpit. Here it is about finding the lane that works for you and your car. But you continue to move up and down from lane to lane the whole stint. You have to find the place to make your car comfortable and you comfortable. It changes all the time. That makes it hard to keep tires on the car, but it makes it more fun and challenging for sure.
YOU SAID WHEN YOU GOT OUT OF THE CAR YOU NEEDED TO DEBRIEF TO FIND OUT HOW THIS ALL TRANSPIRED:
“Yeah, I tell you when you are going that fast around this short oval it’s really hard to understand who is on the lead lap, who is not on the lead lap, who you are fighting for position, so there is a lot of communication with the spotter and with the strategist. I think we had good speed. I got stuck in traffic a lot of time and that was enough to get checked out from (Josef) Newgarden who I think was really fast today and obviously (James) Hinchcliffe, congrats to him. But, yeah, I think we had quite a bit of tire degradation which was tough in traffic, but essentially it was an awesome race. From the cockpit I had so much fun. It was about setting up people trying to understand where they were running, where your car was best with the tire degradation running high, running low, conserving your tires it really was a lot of thinking, a lot of driving and to me that is a lot of fun. That is pure racing.
ED CARPENTER, NO. 20 FUZZY’S VODKA ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 10TH: “We didn’t get off the way we wanted to. The first stint wasn’t very good. We had a ton of understeer and started losing spots. But we were able to make adjustments and started getting spots back. We started off stints a little slowly, but the car got better as the stint went along and we could make up a lot of ground. That first stint really hurt us…we went from ninth back to 15th. We had to spend too much of the race digging out of that hole fromn the first stint. There were moments when I thought we had one of the better cars.
“I’m really happy for Spencer to get a break-out run and get his first podium in an IndyCar. Both cars in the top-10, not what we came here for, but not miserable either.
Spencer’s run is good for the whole team. We all work really tight together as a unit. It is, however, getting a little annoying that my teammates keep getting the better of me here. (Laughs) They made a couple of decisions at the beginning of the race different than we did. I think that helped him early, but we were probably a little better late, but we had already lost so much ground by then. But like I said, good job to them. Both cars in the top-10 is a good thing on a day like today when you see a lot of teams struggling.”
CHARLIE KIMBALL, NO. 23 TRESIBA CARLIN CHEVROLET, FINISHED 14TH: “I continue to be proud of these Carlin guys. They’ve done such a great job with so little testing experience here and they showed up yesterday morning with a good car in the No 23 Tresiba Chevrolet that was able to advance from our starting position throughout the race. We definitely learned a lot today, especially about short-track racing. I feel like we can take a lot of things away from today. We seemed to have really good pace at certain times throughout the race which was great, but now we just need to learn why we couldn’t have that same pace every lap.”
MAX CHILTON, NO. 59 GALLAGHER CARLIN CHEVROLET, FINISHED 15TH: “That was a very long race, even though it wasn’t really time-wise. With 300 laps you have a lot of time to feel how your car is working and the balance shifts so much throughout those 90-lap stints. We had more pace in every session we did this weekend, but it’s just so hard to come in with no testing and expect to do well. We had some high points today in the No. 59 Gallagher Chevrolet, but we struggled massively when we were out behind someone. If we were ever stuck behind someone, we were stuck there for quite a long time, but when we were just running in clean air, I think we were around the top-10 pace. Unfortunately, a few different factors just didn’t allow us to get there today.”
GABBY CHAVES, NO. 88 HARDING GROUP HARDING RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 21ST: “Obviously today we had a very disappointing race as we didn’t see the checkered flag for the first time. It’s hard to accept that. Sometimes you have those days and you have to make the right choice to avoid making it even worse, so for now we’ll just concentrate on taking a look at the car and figuring out if anything was broken or if there were issues that we missed overnight that would identify why we struggled so much during the race and go from there.”