CHEVROLET RACING IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES
ABC SUPPLY 500
POCONO RACEWAY
LONG POND, PA
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER
POST QUALIFYING QUOTES
AUGUST 18, 2018

DRIVER QUOTES:
WILL POWER, NO. 12 VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, POLE WINNER: THIS IS YOUR 53RD CAREER POLE AND IT TIES A.J. FOYT FOR ALL-TIME POLES. HOW COOL IS THAT? “Very cool to be up there with A.J. Foyt, a legend like that. I couldn’t have imagined that starting my career. So, it’s over the moon. It’s great to start at the front here. I think it will be a bit of a track position race and that’s what we need to get our championship back on track.”

YOU ARE A TWO-TIME WINNER HERE, TWO IN A ROW. YOU’VE GOT TO GO FOR THREE IN A ROW, BUT TO WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP ARE WE GOING TO SEE THE OLD WILL POWER ON MAXIMUM ATTACK ALL THE TIME? “Yeah, I will be. I’ll be doing everything I can. Obviously it’s a big points deficit. The last race is double points, so we’ll see if we can close within 30 of something we’ll have a good shot.”

THIS IS YOUR FIRST POLE AT POCONO. YOU GET TO START UP FRONT BUT HOW ARE YOU GOING TO KEEP IT THERE? WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO WORK ON IN PRACTICE? “It’s always hard to tell in the first practice session because the track has a low-grip level and this track really takes rubber well. I think we have a good car. It’s obviously very good in qualifying trim, but we’ll work on it and hopefully get another practice session and we can try some things on a full tank of fuel.”

JOSEF NEWGARDEN, NO. 1 HITACHI TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 2ND: ON HIS QUALIFYING “I think we did a good job with the set up, it’s just that’s about what we had, speed-wise. The guys did a good job. We get a one-two lock-out on the front row. That’s good. We can’t be disappointed. We’ll have the Verizon car and the Hitachi car up there. I think that’s what we had. I’m pretty happy with our run. That was our speed.”

SIMON PAGENAUD, NO. 22 SHELL/CHEVROLET MARKETPLACE TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 5TH: “I think it was good. We had a decent performance. I was the first of our cars so it was good I was able to give a lot of information to my teammates. I think it helped secure the pole for Team Penske, and one-two for Will and Josef. So far, so good. We are working through our process. With only one hour of practice, it is a lot to gather in an hour. With the rain now (right as final practice was scheduled to start), going to go into the race like that. But the Shell Chevy Marketplace car was pretty good, and I can’t wait to go racing!”

TONY KANAAN, NO. 14 ABC SUPPLY AJ FOYT RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 14TH: “Could have been a little bit better. I think I was expecting to be inside the top 10, especially with the speedway car that we had in Indy – this is a similar track – but all in all I think we’ll be very competitive and I’m looking for to it be a turnaround point of the season for us. This race and the next one are races that the team has a history of doing pretty good and that I have a history of doing pretty good, so hopefully this will be the weekend in front of the 1900 employees that are coming to cheer us, we’re probably gonna take care of half of the racetrack!”

ED CARPENTER, NO. 20 FUZZY’S VODKA ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 15TH: “We’ve made improvements throughout the day. We weren’t extremely happy when we got here. It’s quite a bit different this year, I think you’re seeing some of the guys that did tests have a little bit of an advantage. We’re working through it, we were definitely better there than we were at the end of practice 1 so hopefully it stays dry and we can keep working on it. We definitely have a little work to do to get to where the Andretti (Autosport) cars are.”

SPENCER PIGOT, NO. 21 FUZZY’S VODKA ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 16TH: “We had a little bit too much understeer in Turn 1 which really hurt our speed through the other two turns. Hopefully we can solve that for tomorrow and have a good race car. I know the Fuzzy’s Vodka Chevrolet team will be working hard and we’ll keep pounding away at it!”

CHARLIE KIMBALL, NO. 23 TRESIBA CARLIN CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 19TH: “We didn’t get the chance to test here until this morning’s practice session, so we were really just trying to get on the same level as everyone else in a short period of time. Overall the balance was great and the No. 23 Tresiba Chevrolet has been rock solid since we unloaded, so I feel good about the Carlin team heading into tomorrow. If we get the opportunity to practice this afternoon, we’ll be even better. We ran pretty well in Indy, as well as in Texas with a top-10 finish that we were pretty happy with, so I think we’ll be pretty quick tomorrow. The good thing about this race is that we’ll have 500 miles to figure it out.”

MATHEUS LEIST, NO. 4 ABC SUPPLY AJ FOYT RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 20TH: “Qualifying is done here at Pocono – it’s a tricky place, but every time I go to the track I’m getting more used to the car – to everything – and I think I’m feeling more comfortable and looking forward to the race now. Just have to do a good job and finish in the top 10.”

MAX CHILTON, NO. 59 GALLAGHER CARLIN CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 21ST: “You could definitely feel the wind out there, but that was part of the challenge. It’s not easy conditions right now and the wind just keeps building. We ran quite a few laps this morning just to get as much track time as we could, but at the end of the day it’s just difficult for a new team only running one hour of practice and then heading straight out into qualifying. Plenty of people have won here from one lap down, so we’ll just try to keep the No. 59 Gallagher Chevrolet in the race and hopefully be there at the finish.”

CONOR DALY, NO. 88 HARDING GROUP HARDING RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 22ND: “We had an issue this morning that we ended up finding during Practice 1 that restricted our time on track, which is a shame because we really didn’t have a lot of practice time before qualifying. Luckily we fixed the issue before practice ended. So we used qualifying as a test session and I tried to get the best out of it that I could, we did pick up a lot of speed on ourselves from practice 1. It’s just another box ticked to trying to work on more grip and hopefully we can run this afternoon to find more speed.”