CHEVROLET RACING IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES
HONDA INDY 200
MID-OHIO SPORTS CAR COURSE
LEXINGTON, OHIO
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER
POST QUALIFYING RECAP
JULY 28, 2018

LEXINGTON, OHIO – For the eighth time this season, Will Power will start a Verizon IndyCar Series (VICS) race from the front row. The winner of the 2018 Indianapolis 500 and 2014 Series’ champion secured the second starting position for the 13th race of the season at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course following three rounds of Firestone Fast Six qualifying on Saturday.

Behind the wheel of his familiar No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet, Power led the three-car Chevrolet 2.2 liter V6 IndyCar contingent in the final round of six cars battling for the Verizon P1 award.

Defending VICS champion Josef Newgarden claimed fourth in the final order of the top six behind the wheel of the No. 1 Hitachi Team Penske Chevrolet. Max Chilton powered his No. 59 Gallagher Carlin Chevrolet to the six starting position on the 24-car grid.

Other Team Chevy drivers qualified as follows:
Conor Daly, No. 88 Chevrolet 14th
Charlie Kimball, No. 23 Chevrolet 15th
Jordan King, No. 20 Chevrolet 16th
Simon Pagenaud, No. 22 Chevrolet 17th
Spencer Pigot, No. 21 Chevrolet 18th
Tony Kanaan, No. 14 Chevrolet 19th
Matheus Leist, No. 4 Chevrolet 21st
Rene Binder, No. 32 Chevrolet 23rd

Alexander Rossi won the pole. Remainder of Firestone Fast Six were Ryan Hunter-Reay and Robert Wickens (all Honda).
The race will start at 3:30 p.m., Sunday, July 29. CNBC will telecast the 90-lap (203.22-mile) race on the 2.258-mile, 13-turn road course live at 3 p.m. July 29, with a taped telecast at 6:30 p.m. on NBCSN. The race will also be broadcast on INDYCAR Radio Network affiliates, RaceControl.IndyCar.com, indycarradio.com, the INDYCAR Mobile app, Sirius 214, and XM209.

IndyCar Media Conference
Saturday July 28, 2018
Will Power
Josef Newgarden
Max Chilton
Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: We are joined now by Will Power of Team Penske, who will be starting second tomorrow. As we mentioned yesterday, Will is making his 200th start at the race. He has three poles here, but not race wins yet.

Will, you mentioned that yesterday in your press conference, but also that you have some championship ground to make up, you will have to make some fairly aggressive moves to stay up front. Do you feel like this qualifying position puts you in a great place to start the race?

WILL POWER: Yeah, it does. Very track position race. I’m sick of starting on the front row and not being on pole. Probably a record for the season.

Want to get back in the game, you know. Nothing worse than turning up to the last race of the season not being in contention. Yep, need to be aggressive.

THE MODERATOR: You’ve seen your share of front row starts here, whether from pole or the position you’re starting in tomorrow. How important is track position at a track like this?

WILL POWER: Yeah, it is. It’s important in IndyCar every weekend now because everyone is good. Like, there’s no bad drivers. You have to start up front if you want a chance.

THE MODERATOR: Questions for Will.

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: Yes, that would help a lot. Just want to have a race where I finish without some issue. I mean, we should be way up there in the championship. We had, like, four or five DNF’s. Just a pain considering how fast we’ve been, how well we’ve qualified.

500 definitely makes that feel better, but that’s on me. A couple little mistakes from me, engine issue one point, radio communication issue, just those little niggling things.

I want five solid, good races here on out to have a good shot at the championship.

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: Man, that’s the biggest issue. Rarely works if you’re up front and running along. Pit lane kills you at moments like this. You have to keep an eye on that, keep an eye on the guys you’re racing to see when they pit. If they start back a bit, they’re going to go on a different strategy.

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: Yeah, that’s the one thing that IndyCar has done such a great job with everything. The car is great. The way the series is run, the parity, the competition. The competition manipulates results. The guy who doesn’t win when the pit closes under yellow, they have the technology to fix that. I hope they do that next year.

Every weekend on road and street courses, that’s an issue.

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: Yeah, that’s a good question, something I was thinking of. With all the mistakes, I just think in the race, everyone backs it up a little bit. Sometimes you see practice, and there’s people having issues, running off. You get to the race and everyone has it out of their system in a way, backs it off.

It’s just the series is so competitive now, people just got to find the edge of everything. That’s why you make mistakes, and a lot of people are. But the race is a different story. Tire conservation. Yeah, we’ll see, that could be the case.

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: Yeah, if you just get a little bit offline, there’s just no grip. That gets a lot worse in the race when you add marbles. Once you get the marbles on your tires, you spend like two laps getting them off. People are attacking you. Yeah, that’s happened. That happens at a lot of tracks actually.

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: I think they could do something with the speed limiter, so for a yellow, everyone goes to the end of the speed limiter. Everyone stays where they are, then they back up after pit stops. It’s a normal restart, everything is the same, except the pit doesn’t close under yellow because it just ruins races. Unless there’s a bad driver, once the pits close under yellow…

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: It’s going to be interesting because we don’t have a warmup. We don’t really know too much how the tires are going to degrade. Through the race, they degrade a lot. But I’m not sure how it’s going to play out.

THE MODERATOR: (No microphone.)

MAX CHILTON: Yeah, I’m over the moon. It’s amazing for a new team. Having a test day makes a world of difference. Luckily we were here last week testing. The test went pretty decent. Not everyone is here, so you don’t know how to exactly compare to yourselves.

The car was decent. Yesterday we thought we lost something. This morning we felt we weren’t a million miles away. I literally focused on getting everything out of the car. We didn’t change much between sessions, just fine-tuning it.

I kept Marco at bay in P1. I think Hinch’s accident was the rain cloud. Then we got through to obviously our first-ever — not only our first Fast 12, but our first Fast Six. That was amazing.

My lap time at the end, that was on the 13th lap of the red tires. They were hanging on for dear life, should we say.

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Josef Newgarden.

Josef, it seemed like the last few laps there was some quick speed. Do you feel you got the most out of your car today?

JOSEF NEWGARDEN: I think we were close. We knew Rossi and Wickens were going to have the best tires of everybody. We figured they would be the strongest.

You never know. We were going to have a go for sure and do what we could. I think where Will qualified is probably about what my maximum was. I think we were a 10th or two shy in our potential. I don’t think we had enough to beat Rossi’s time. The tire makes a difference, the track evolution. When you run, you have to be the last guy on track.

Fourth is relatively good. We can work with that. The Hitachi car has been a little bit inconsistent. That’s our biggest thing for tomorrow. I think if we can figure out that consistency, we can have a good racecar under us.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Josef and Ryan, talk about tomorrow in terms of the championship. Seems like it’s getting down to the point where guys that are chasing need wins.
RYAN HUNTER-REAY: Josef, Alex and I were talking about breaking into Dixon’s garage, doing something to his car. That’s about what we need to do right now for points.

No doubt he’s going to have a good day tomorrow. You have to concentrate on yourself, put out the strongest effort you can forward. I don’t know what you can do more than that.

Shoot for race wins. I think all of us are looking at race wins at the moment. We’re not looking at banking sixths, fourths, thirds to try to beat Scott. It’s all about winning races.

JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Yeah, I think it’s always a tough question. This championship evolves crazy fast. I mean, within two races it could be a totally different outlook. So I don’t know. I think we just need to focus on what we normally do.

The only thing that does change is you have to be aware and mindful of how people race as they get towards the end of the season, who has more to lose, who has more to gain. That does change a little bit.

Our overall thought process is just maximize what we can for the weekend. If it’s not good enough at the end of the day for championship points compared to our competitors, then it’s not good enough. We can only try and maximize our performance. That’s all we can really focus on.

Q. Max, a little bit more about the evolution of the team. You made a big jump clearly. Do you feel like you’re getting there? Test day was a big deal. Where would you place the team on a scale of 1 to 10?
MAX CHILTON: I think for a new team coming into the series, I think we’re 8 out of 10. I think we’re doing a great job. The thing that really hurts is we’ve got no engineering staff which have done IndyCar before. We have no factory-based team. We very rarely get to test at a track we race on. This was one of the first tracks we got to test at. The good thing with the four remaining races of the year, I think it’s Pocono we’re not testing at.

I feel like I’m driving the best I have. I out-qualified my teammates pretty much every race apart from two. I feel like I’m driving well. In the races it hasn’t been going my way. I know I’ve got things to work on myself.

Tomorrow is the best time for me to show that. We’ll try to get the best result we can for the team.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
Rev #1 by #168 at 2018-07-28 19:32:00 GMT

DRIVER QUOTES:
WILL POWER, NO. 12 VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 2ND: SECOND PLACE NOT TOO BAD:
“Yeah, pretty good, yeah happy with front row. Obviously, it’s a real track position track, it’s difficult to pass and everyone is fast these days, so qualifying means a lot. Yeah, Alex (Rossi) just pumped out one really good lap there. I thought my lap was really good and then I came in and saw what he did and that was a solid lap.”

YOU HAVE QUALIFIED IN THE TOP SIX EVERY RACE THIS SEASON. WHEN YOU FINISH, YOU FINISH UP FRONT. HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THAT KNOWING THAT YOU COULD REALLY BE LEADING THE CHAMPIONSHIP WITH SOME LUCK?
“Oh yeah, we are very aware of that. Every time we finish it’s a great finish. We always qualify at the front, we are always quick, just got to minimize the DNF’s. I mean that has just killed us this year. We should be way up there in the championship, not 90 points behind. But, going to be real aggressive. I want to get back in the fight. Nothing worse than turning up to the last race without being in contention. So, I’m going to go for it.”

JOSEF NEWGARDEN, NO. 1 HITACHI TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 4TH: IT WAS KIND OF A TOUGH DAY AT THE OFFICE BECAUSE YOU HAVE QUALIFIED ON THE POLE IN THREE OF THE LAST FIVE RACES:
“Yeah, it was a very mixed up day for sure. We didn’t know how it was going to shake out. I actually thought maybe we got knocked out in the second round because when a red flag happens like that, you just don’t know exactly where you line into the equation. Fortunately, we were still sixth, so we got that Fast Six opportunity. I think we had a Fast Six car, potentially a pole car, but just didn’t get it all put together. Fourth is a good start for us, it’s not a bad thing, I’m not going to complain, but we did want to be a little bit higher. Now that we’ve got a good view though we will work on our race car. I think the Hitachi car has been fast. We need to make it a little more consistent, but if we find that for tomorrow we are going to be just fine.”

MAX CHILTON, NO. 59 GALLAGHER CARLIN CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 6TH: “It’s been a good weekend for us so far. Luckily we got to test here last week. We’ve been pretty confident wiyth having tested. It is so tight in IndyCar. I was so close to not getting through, and since we only had scuffed reds, so we went early. With Hinchcliffe’s crash, we made it through to the Firestone Fast Six. It is amazing how qualifying can change your whole weekend. Qualifying on 13 lap old red tires, I’m pretty happy with that. While where you start certainly doesn’t guarantee where you are going to finish, but qualifying well can help you end with a similar circumstance as where you start. If we can just keep it clean tomorrow, I will take care of the car the best I can and hopefully we will come through with a great result for Carlin and Gallagher.”

CONOR DALY, NO. 88 HARDING GROUP HARDING RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 14TH: “I think we should be super happy with today. We started this weekend from the back because we were trying some things that just didn’t work, but thankfully we were able to go back to the information we were able to gather from the test last week. That just goes to show how important this information gathering experiment is. It would have been really fun to make it into the top-twelve, but it was a really stout group. I’m obviously happy to be where we are, considering where we started. Excited for tomorrow!”

CHARLIE KIMBALL, NO. 23 TRESIBA CARLIN CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 15TH:
ON HIS QUALIFYING SESSION:
“Yeah, really good job by the No. 59 (Max Chilton) to make it into the top 12 there. We were just a couple of tenths off, but having come and tested here last week, had we not done that we would have been so much further off after how choppy yesterday’s sessions were with all the reds, all the yellows. Even this morning, just with traffic and I think driver respect has been a topic of conversation at least publicly and probably privately over the last day and a half, getting gaps and things. So, overall, I’m disappointed with that, but pleased for the No. 59 crew. It does show the progress that Carlin has been making and continuing to step up each and every time we get to the race track.”

JORDAN KING, NO. 20 FUZZY’S VODKA ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 16TH: “It’s a little bit frustrating, only being two-tenths away from advancing! Right from the start of the weekend, I’ve been playing catch up. I’ve not driven here before, some of the other teams have been here testing, so it’s been quite a steep learning curve to get into the car and get fast. Spencer’s been down a good job this weekend so I’ve been learning from him. We put it together in qualifying, maybe there was a little bit of the time left on the table from me just not knowing the circuit that well. It’s a but annoying, but it is what it is!”

SIMON PAGENAUD, NO. 22 MENARDS TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 17TH: “WHAT HAPPENED ON YOUR HOT LAP?
“We are struggling with the…I’m not comfortable with the rear of the car. So, I can’t get in the corner myself and I keep making mistakes, so, that is my problem. That is what I’m dealing with at the moment. It is very challenging, which is a good thing, but we haven’t been able to find my comfort zone here. It’s unfortunate it’s not the performance we want to have at Team Penske, but we are going to make the car better for me, I mean downforce more or less it’s just added grip, but at the end of the day it’s about getting into the corner and coming out as quick as possible and unfortunately, we didn’t do that today.”

SPENCER PIGOT, NO. 21 FUZZY’S VODKA ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 18TH: “I had some difficulty with traffic, having to kind of abort a few laps early in the run. I had to try and get it done on the third lap, which is not ideal on reds. At the end of the day, I think we just had too much understeer to get a solid lap time out of it anyway. We were quick yesterday, so hopefully the Fuzzy’s Vodka Chevrolet can be fast again tomorrow.”

TONY KANAAN, NO. 14 ABC SUPPLY AJ FOYT RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 19TH: “We tried something different. I think we made an improvement, we went quicker than we’ve ever been but it wasn’t quick enough. I think we had a car to start in the top 14 but we missed that by a tenth. We made more than 12 changes to the car between the last session to this session, so it was kind of unknown. Now it’s time to try to figure out what we’re going to do for the race.”

MATHEUS LEIST, NO. 4 ABC SUPPLY AJ FOYT RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 21ST: “It was a tough qualifying. We need to do better for the race.”

RENE BINDER, NO. 32 HD BELLETS JUNCOS RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 23RD: “The qualifying started pretty well for us. I was quickly up to pace. Unfortunately we were not able to improve much throughout the rest of the session. One car went off track slightly and kicked up some dust on the track. I was the first car through and picked up some dirt on the tires, which happened during my last lap. We will focus on the race now and move forward tomorrow.”