CHEVROLET RACING IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES
HONDA INDY TORONTO
STREETS OF EXHIBITION PLACE
TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA
TEAM CHEVY POST RACE RECAP WITH TRANSCRIPT AND QUOTE PACKAGE
JULY 15, 2018
Simon Pagenaud Puts Chevrolet on Podium in Toronto
TORONTO – July 15, 2018 – Today was a good day for Simon Pagenaud. First the French National Team brought the FIFA World Cup home to his beloved home country – France. Then Pagenaud brought his No. 22 DXC Technology Team Penske Chevrolet to the finish line in second place to put Chevrolet on the podium in Toronto.
It was the best finish to-date for the 2016 Verizon IndyCar Series Champion and jumped him to seventh in the standings.
Charlie Kimball, No. 23 Novo Nordisk Carlin Chevrolet scored his first top-five of the season, and gave Carlin, the first year Verizon IndyCar team he drives for, its first-ever top five finish. The strong run gave Chevrolet two of the top-five finishers in the 85-lap race around the 1.786-mile/11-turn temporary street course in Exhibition Place, Toronto.
Tony Kanaan, No. 14 ABC Supply AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet, finished sixth to notch a season-best finish for his team.
Defending Series’ Champion and pole winner Josef Newgarden recovered from contact with the wall to finish ninth behind the wheel of the No. 1 Hitachi Team Penske Chevrolet. He remains second in the standings after 12 of 17 races in the record books.
In addition to scoring four of the top-nine finishers, other Team Chevy drivers finished as follows:
No. 20 Jordan King 11th
No. 88 Conor Daly 13th
No. 4 Matheus Leist 15th
No. 32 Rene Binder 17th
No. 12 Will Power 18th
No. 21 Spencer Pigot 20th
No. 59 Max Chilton 23rd
Scott Dixon was the race winner, and Robert Wickens (Both Honda) completed the podium.
Next on the schedule will be July 29, 2018 at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.
IndyCar Media Conference
Sunday July 15, 2018
Simon Pagenaud
Post Race Press Conference
THE MODERATOR: We welcome in Simon Pagenaud, on a big day for your country, how excited are you to end up on the podium here?
SIMON PAGENAUD: First of all, I think it was quite incredible to see the crowd today. I think this weekend, the support is definitely on a rise. You can see the excitement from the fans. I want to thank Toronto for such great support of the Verizon IndyCar Series. For us, coming here and racing at cities and events like this is very special. Thanks to all the fans and to you guys from Toronto for the support.
Personally, it was a great day. I just wish I went one spot higher to make it a very, very special day for France. Very proud. I think we haven’t had the easiest season. This new package threw us off quite a bit. But it’s a testament to Team Penske, Chevy and Menards as well, obviously, for all the hard work they do in the background.
Obviously we come here every week, go racing every week, but there’s a lot of work being done in the background. I want to thank everybody for that. It brought a lot of updates, it’s starting to really suit me. This weekend I felt like I was back. That’s my usual level of performance, which felt very positive.
In the race, I had a quiet start. We got crowded a little bit. Either I was going for it and we were all going to crash four-wide or I gave up to try to finish the race and see if I was going to get another chance, and I did.
The famous and infamous restart was a bit of a chance for me. Unfortunate for Josef. For me, it was a good opportunity to make some ground. On cold tires, I was really strong. The car was really good. That’s how we made spots. Fastest guys in the pits today. I want to also thank my new crew. It’s a brand-new crew this year again. My crew chief, his second podium. It’s pretty cool to be able to give those guys some good results and see how good they are. So great day.
THE MODERATOR: I don’t even have to awkwardly write it up. I was going to have each of you give your perspective. From our perspective watching the screens, that battle between the two of you is one of the key moments of the race. What was your perception on that battle, Simon, how it shaped your podium finish?
SIMON PAGENAUD: I think it’s IndyCar racing. It’s hard racing on the streets of Toronto. Two cars that are battling for the same real estate. I’m coming out on cold tires in a position advantage. Robert tried. He had to go into turn one as deep as he could. I really thought I was actually going to crash in turn one after we had contact.
But I managed to get a really good run out of turn one. From there, I was like, Okay, now I’m defending as hard as I can. I have to keep this position.
It’s my job to keep my position and try as hard as I can. Obviously it’s not about running each other into the walls or crashing together. The key is to just be on the limit of that.
Certainly was on the limit, but two very professional racers in my opinion that just raced really hard. That’s what IndyCar is about.
THE MODERATOR: We’ll open it up for questions.
Q. Simon, Scott brushed the wall.
SIMON PAGENAUD: I saw.
Q. You were able to cut down his gap fairly significantly. What happened after that in terms of he was able to pull it back up again?
SIMON PAGENAUD: Binder didn’t help. Closed the gap, made Scott’s life difficult, my life difficult. C’mon, man. It’s the end of the race. Getting really close here. Make it easy on people.
But it doesn’t take much with these cars. With so much on the limit, just takes your air away a little bit, you start sliding around. I lost a little bit of time on Scott. I have to say he was really, really fast. It would have been really tough for me to match him.
I thought I had something and I tried. But gave it everything I had.
Q. Simon, you mentioned having to be less aggressive early in the incident that dropped you back three or four spots. How much of a factor do you think that played in your mentality for the rest of the race, including that incident with Robert?
SIMON PAGENAUD: I was really upset, that’s for sure. I mean, you do all that work, qualify the best you can, by turn one I was seventh. Man, what just happened? So you have to obviously rebound from there. You just can’t wait and continue to dig a hole. Just keep going, keep trying to find more positive.
That point started saving as much fuel as I could, which helped. Then people were starting to make mistakes. I think they were pushing on the restarts, all the guys in front, started making mistakes. I thought my car was pretty good. Certainly when the restarts happened, I went the other way. I went through attack mode. I took chances.
After that, it was a battle with Robert all the way to the end. So definitely changed into full attack mode after that.
Q. There was a lot of talk before the race that turn three was the turn everybody was worried about, then it really turned out to be turn one. Did that surprise you when you realized that was the turn you had to be careful of?
SIMON PAGENAUD: I think actually kind of 11 was tough. The thing is, the line was actually changing throughout the race. It was getting more and more marble. Turn shallower to get closer to the inside wall. It was getting really tough. On the restart, you could see it was very difficult.
Turn one was actually not a big deal. I think it just started in turn 11, that section 9, 10, 11 was really tough today. I think that’s what happened.
Q. The layout specifically here, what do you think?
SIMON PAGENAUD: Yes, awesome. It’s an awesome track. I mean, again, this year they made improvement on the track. It’s a lot less bumpy, which personally I like the bumpiness because it’s more difficult to drive, it rewards good cars, good drivers. This year was a lot easier to drive into turn one.
But overall, it’s an awesome track. I think it creates great racing. I think it’s one of the most dicey races we have all the year. Like Robert said, anything can happen any time of the race, yellows and restarts. Yeah, I’ve led the race and finished 22nd in 2013 actually. Anything can happen here.
Q. A lot of racers and drivers have coaches. Is there any coaches that
SIMON PAGENAUD: I brought him there actually.
SIMON PAGENAUD: Personally, that’s a great question, my favorite journalist here. Sorry guys. Gil de Ferran for me has been a tremendous mentor. It was a very interesting part of my career because we were actually teammates in a sports car. The first time I could feel what he thought was a great car. I could actually feel it. That’s very unusual to have that chance. We were sharing the same ride. He was setting up the racecar, telling me how it should be. I would try it. We would talk about it overnight. He had the things that he liked, I had the things I liked. He was like an open book to me, and he still is. It’s been life changing to get to work with him.
Obviously there were a lot of people along the way. Sebastien Bourdais helped me come to the U.S. Derrick Walker was a great manager. It’s about meeting the key people and getting those opportunities and maximizing it. All about meeting the right people.
Q. How tough is going to be to keep him from winning the championship?
SIMON PAGENAUD: Which one is it?
Q. Mid-Ohio.
SIMON PAGENAUD: How many times has he won there? Too many, yeah.
Yeah, he’s good there. Sometimes he’s unlucky, too. We all did. It’s just part of life. Yeah, get to work and find a way to beat him.
THE MODERATOR: Congratulations. Thank you very much for your time.
SIMON PAGENAUD: Thank you.
CHEVROLET RACING IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES
HONDA INDY TORONTO
STREETS OF EXHIBITION PLACE
TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA
TEAM CHEVY POST RACE DRIVER QUOTES
JULY 15, 2018
SIMON PAGENAUD, NO. 22 DXC TECHNOLOGY TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET – FINISHED 2ND
IT WAS A GOOD BATTLE WITH YOU AND ROBERT WICKENS AND HE GAVE YOU A LITTLE BUMP AT THE END. IT LOOKED LIKE JUST HARD RACING
“Yeah, hard racing and good racing. I had fun. It was really, really tough out there. The track was changing all the time. I don’t know if it’s the dust or the tires, but certainly re-starts, where I had wheel speed up to 50 on the front straightaway. It was a blast to drive. It was really difficult. But when you have a good result like this it feels very rewarding and a lot of fun. I’m really proud of the DXC team for a great effort this weekend. I think we showed that we’re back, so I’m excited.”
WICKENS GAVE YOU A LITTLE SHOVE GOING INTO TURN 1.
“Yeah, I really thought I was going in the tire wall. Fortunately, I managed to get a good run down the straightaway and I made his life difficult in Turns 3 and 4, but after that I wasn’t going to be nice. It’s racing.”
THIS HAS BEEN A TOUGH SEASON, SO THIS IS A GREAT RESULT FOR YOU AND A GOOD WAY TO GO INTO THE LAST FIVE RACES
“Yeah, you know what? At the end of the day it’s racing. We have good seasons and we have not as good seasons, but the big thing is to bounce back and I think we’re doing just that. We’re working diligently in the background and it’s showing this weekend. All three Penske car were in the Fast Six on a street course, so we couldn’t be happier this weekend. I’m sorry for Josef (Newgarden) and Will (Power’s) race, but we’ll get them next week.”
CHARLIE KIMBALL, NO. 23 NOVO NORDISK CARLIN CHEVROLET – FINISHED 5TH:
ON HIS RACE: “I’m just really proud of the Carlin guys. They fight and work so hard, weekend in and weekend out. They’re the first ones here in the paddock in the morning and the last ones out at night. We struggled a little on Saturday but on race day we were able to bring it. We showed up in Toronto with a great foundation from Detroit race two, a top-10 car, and we were able to make it a little better this weekend. The No. 23 crew had two fantastic pit stops—that second stop was just rock solid. To be able to come out with a top-five, leaning on fourth at the end, was a great way to cap off the weekend. Really pleased to bring home Carlin’s first top-five in IndyCar and my first top-five of the season.”
YOU WENT FROM STARTING 20TH TO FINISHING 5TH. WHAT WORKED SO WELL?
“Well, I think it comes down to the hard work by the Carlin Racing guys. They’ve been working so hard week in and week out, all year and all season. We came here with a solid foundation. We got an 8th in the Detroit race 2 and worked on it all weekend. We struggled a little bit yesterday. The changing conditions and an electrical problem yesterday morning in warm-up. We knew we had a pretty good car and the great stops on pit lane meant that we were close to the Top 5 at the end and we were able to pick-up a Top 5.
DID YOU HAVE ANYTHING FOR JAMES HINCHCLIFFE IN THE CLOSING LAPS?
“Yeah, my best bet for that was that he had five-lap older Firestone primaries and it was a little like when we raced around here back in 2010 in Indy Lights. He had a moment with about three laps to go coming out of Turn 3 and got all crossed-up. And I thought, all right, here we go with the run of all runs. And he defended to be inside the Top 5 and I thought, okay, he learned from 2010. It’s always fun racing with those guys. You don’t want to lean on him too hard in front of the Canadian fans. But it was a good result for the Carlin crew and the No. 23 car representing Novo Nordisk Canada here in Ontario.
TONY KANAAN, NO. 14 ABC SUPPLY AJ FOYT RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 6TH: “Great day for the ABC Supply team–we finally had everything going our way. We had good stops, good passing and obviously we had a couple people do us some favors on the race track –that’s the way this race goes. It’s the best result for the team so far—top 6 on a street course where we’d been improving our car all weekend. Really happy for ABC, Larry and for A.J. He’s not here so I wanted to give him a good result.”
JOSEF NEWGARDEN, NO. 1 HITACHI TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET – FINISHED 9TH :
ON HIS RACE: “It was a tough race. Making contact with the wall didn’t help. I don’t know what it was to be honest with you, it was either marbles or dust from the sweepers; they’re trying to clean off the track and that yellow, when we already had tons of marbles 27 laps in. I don’t know what to tell you, I went straight into the wall. And part of that is my fault, just making a mistake, but I didn’t expect it; I’ll tell you that. I just had no idea the car was going to do that. I knew it would be low grip, but not zero grip. I just lost the front end completely. I feel terrible, it’s not fun to make a mistake. This No. 1 Hitachi Chevy was quick today, I think it was capable of being in the top three or potentially winning the race if I didn’t make the mistake, but you have days like this in racing. We have to move on now and try to pick it back up. With the championship battle, we’ve got a long way to go. This doesn’t help but look, we have plenty of racing. We need to keep our head up here. We’re going to be just fine, we’ve got fast cars and the best in the business. If we get our mistakes sorted out, we’re going to be just fine.”
YOU LED THE FIRST 20-SOME LAPS AND THEN EVERYBODY KEPT SAYING MARBLES, MARBLES, AND YOU SAID IT WASN’T MARBLES THAT CAUSED YOU TO HIT THE WALL
“Well, I don’t know what it was to be honest with you. It’s either the marbles or its dust from the sweepers. They’re trying to clean off the track. It was 27 laps in and you already had tons of marbles. I don’t know what to tell you. I went straight into the wall. Partly that going to be my fault just making a mistake, but I didn’t expect it, I’ll tell you that. I just had no idea the car was going to do that. I knew it would probably be low grip, but not zero grip. I lost the front-end completely. I feel terrible. It’s not fun to make a mistake. This Hitachi car was quick today and was capable of being in the Top 3 and potentially winning the race if I didn’t make a mistake. But, you have days like this in racing. We’ve got to move on now and try and pick it back up.”
WAS IT SIMILAR TO BEING AT INDY AND GETTING IN THE GRAY?
“It felt like that. It felt like I was getting in the gray but I was in the middle of the track. And then I did finally get into the gray on the outside of the track and then I couldn’t really do anything. I was going to hit the wall. I just tried to minimize the damage. I was going so slow, I actually didn’t break anything. That’s how slow I was going. So, I don’t know what to tell you. We’ve just got to chalk it up to a learning experience that this same car at this track with that sort of yellow situation, there’s going to be no grip there in the corner. I guess I didn’t forecast that well enough and was a mistake on my part and I’ll have to learn from it now.”
JORDAN KING, NO. 20 FUZZY’S VODKA ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 11TH: “The first few laps were quite tricky, being on blacks while everyone was on reds. With the incident this morning, we weren’t 100% sure where we were with the car. I maybe struggled a bit more in the first stint than I did at the end of the race, I’ll put my hand up for that one! We got to the lead on strategy and once we were in clean air, the pace was quite good. Tim (Broyles, ECR General Manager) was telling me what was happening so I was quite happy. And literally, just about as we were going to come into the pits, no more than 100 meters from the pit commit line, the yellow came out and my heart just sank. It was almost perfect! That dropped us to the back of the field, but I had a couple of good restarts with the yellows that were later. On the last restart, I got pushed a little bit wide and it took me about three laps to recover, just trying to get the dirt off the tires. Those two things were a little bit annoying but overall I thought our pace was good. It was a great job by the Fuzzy’s Vodka guys to get me back out in time for the race and I am glad I could perform for them. It was a decent result, but if the dice had rolled differently for us as we came into the pits I think we could have been set for a solid Top 10, maybe even a bit higher!”
CONOR DALY, NO. 88 HARDING GROUP HARDING RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 13TH: “I just want to thank Harding Racing and Chevy for this opportunity, it’s so nice to be back in a car. There’s something about this car that we need to sort out mechanically on heavy fuel loads, the car was really beating me up. I think we had good race pace. I got shoved into the wall a few times, which I didn’t really like, but it is what it is. I could have used a bit more cooperation from the #18 car as he was a few laps down. But anyways, I’m just so thankful to be back out here and we made a lot of progress technically this weekend, so hopefully that helps the team in the future.”
MATHEUS LEIST, NO. 4 ABC SUPPLY AJ FOYT RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 15TH: “I’m a bit disappointed with the result we had today. I got hit on lap 20 and got hit again after a restart so we had to do two extra pit stops. From then on my day was over—not much we could do. It’s a pity because I think we could have finished in the top 10.”
RENE BINDER, NO. 32 BINDERHOLZ TIPTOP TIMBER JUNCOS RACING CHEVROLET, FINISHED 17TH: “The first stint of the race on Firestone red tires went pretty well. We had good pace and were running as high P11 at one point in the race. Unfortunately I lost positions after one of the restarts and my tires got dirty in the marbles. I was not able to recover the positions and had to settle for 17th. I am ready to move past this event and focus on Mid-Ohio in two weeks.”
WILL POWER, NO. 12 HITACHI TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, FINISHED 18TH: “That was definitely a very physical race. In the last corner I brushed the wall and bent a rear tow link so the car was a little bit out of whack. I didn’t even know that Rossi and I touched. I was just kind of trying to hang on until we got a yellow and could pit. I’ve never had so many DNFs; not DNF for this race but like a DNF in a season. Still it’s kind of how this sport can go. We’re just going to keep pushing away with the No. 12 Verizon Chevy and focus on the double points in Sonoma, that can be a 100 point swing so we’re still in the game.”
SPENCER PIGOT, NO. 21 PREFERRED FREEZER SERVICE ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET – SIDELINED ON LAP 76, FINISHED 20TH
WHAT HAPPENED?
“My right front got on a lot of marbles and it just kind of took off and I was along for the ride. But, that was a shame. I thought we were moving up pretty well. The Preferred Freezer car was handling pretty well, so it’s frustrating. But it is what it is.”
MAX CHILTON, NO. 59 GALLAGHER CARLIN CHEVROLET, FINISHED 23RD: “It was just a really unfortunate day for the No. 59 Gallagher Chevrolet and the whole Carlin Gallagher Racing crew. We were given a penalty under yellow that I’m not sure I completely agreed with and then when we did go back green everyone’s tires were still so dirty from driving through the caution zone that the contact was somewhat inevitable. A car spun out in front and then we were hit from behind causing quite a considerable amount of damage. We were able to limp back around to pit lane, but once we got there the team decided the damage was too extensive to continue. Just a tough break for the team, especially with how much I love racing here in Toronto.”