CHEVROLET RACING IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES
INDYCAR GRAND PRIX OF SONOMA
SONOMA RACEWAY
SONOMA, CALIFORNIA IN SONOMA, CALIFORNIA
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
SEPTEMBER 14, 2018
JOSEF NEWGARDEN, NO. 1 VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, met with the media at Sonoma Raceway after recording the second-quickest lap time over the two practice sessions:
THE MODERATOR: We’ll welcome in Josef Newgarden, driving the No. 1 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet, second fastest overall on the time sheets this morning and afternoon. I know you didn’t get any practice time, actually, in practice 1 today. It seems like you guys were able to work past that issue and actually set a pretty fast lap in practice 2.
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Yeah, I think we were okay. We tested here last week, so we were pretty ready to go. It was difficult this afternoon to be honest. When I first went out I wasn’t very happy the first run, and then we made really good progress the second run, and seemed pretty decent compared to last week. We were happy with our cars when we tested here last Thursday, so we felt optimistic coming into the weekend, and now we’re just trying to go through the motions and make the right steps all the way up through the end of Sunday. That’s kind of what you do on a race weekend. You try and make the right decisions every day.
So it was a pretty decent start. Now we’ve just got to put it together tomorrow and Sunday on race day.
Q. What about the wind? Do you almost need a meteorologist here because that changes this racetrack considerably?
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Yeah, I think compared to other tracks, it’s a big variable here with just the wind direction. It really changes the balance of the car here dramatically compared to other racetracks. You’re always watching it. It normally flips on you halfway through the race, and then sometimes in qualifying it does that, too, so you need to pay attention because it can catch you out if you don’t catch it when it does change, it can cause a problem for you. So you’re always watching it. The team is trying to keep you up to date on it, too, just to make sure you get it right.
Q. Josef, what was the problem this morning?
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Some sort of fueling issue. I don’t know specifically, but we weren’t able to get our fueling sorted out. We didn’t even realize it because we were going to run pretty late, so we didn’t have a lot of time to work on it I think was the big deal. I think when we were going to run there was 20 minutes to go, and then we realized we had a problem. Not a huge setback in my opinion just because we were able to test, and that makes a world of a difference. You sort of already know what you have and what you want to do. So I felt like getting back on it this afternoon wasn’t really a big deal.
Q. I also heard you’re ill. Those two events of you not starting —
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: It’s funny, so I had food poisoning last night for sure and have been up all night, and my girlfriend texted me as soon as the end of the first session, she goes — because she thought I was too ill to drive, and I go, it’s just a coincidence, like it just looks funny. But no, it wasn’t because of the sickness, it was more because of a car problem. Just a coincidence, yeah.