CHEVROLET IN THE NTT INDYCAR SERIES
103RD RUNNING OF THE INDIANAPOLIS 500
INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY, INDIANAPOLIS
TEAM CHEVY POST-QUALIFYING QUOTES
MAY 19, 2019

SIMON PAGENAUD, NO. 22 MENARDS TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET (pole winner with four-lap aggregate time of 2 minutes, 36.5271 seconds; 229.992 mph average):
HOW DO YOU FEEL AFTER THAT SHOOTOUT?
“It’s a very special time. It’s just amazing. Thank you to Team Chevy and Menards. Obviously, last week was amazing but this is even more special. Team Penske has been phenomenal giving me the best equipment. I can’t thank them enough and my teammates for always pushing me. This is the biggest race in the world.

YOU SAID THE CONDITIONS WERE BETTER THAN YESTERDAY. WHAT’S IT LIKE TO HANG IT OUT FOR FOUR LAPS LIKE THAT IN THE BIGGEST RACE IN THE WORLD?
“Heart rate is really high and pressure is there. A stressful moment for everybody. The atmosphere is just amazing around this place. Waiting (for the final qualifier) was the most stressful moment of my career. We gave it everything we had. Fantastic balance in the car. The car was phenomenal.”
YOU WON ON THE ROAD COURSE TO START THE MONTH AND WON THE POLE. WHAT KIND OF MOMENTUM DO YOU HAVE RIGHT NOW TO WIN THIS RACE?
“I think we have all the momentum we need. We have the best car; obviously we showed it today. We have the best engine right now. At the end of the day there is a lot that can happen. It’s a long race, 500 miles. We just need to execute.”
Additional Pagenaud and team owner Roger Penske quotes below.
Ed Carpenter, No. 20 Preferred Freezer Services Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet (2nd; 2:36.5971; 229.889): “I was hoping one of the three of us was going to get the pole, but finishing 2-3-4 is the next best thing. I’m really proud of the whole team to give us the cars we had, which put us in the position to go out and qualify the way that we did. I’ve said every year the poles are a credit to the team and their work in the offseason in building the cars. More than anything, the consistency to have all three cars stacked together is special compared to how the other teams are more spread out. Huge thank you to Chevrolet, Preferred Freezer Services, Lineage, SMC, Direct Supply, Autogeek, WeatherTech and Scuderia Corsa with special thanks to Giacomo (Mattioli). It’s been a good month and hopefully we can have another couple days of practice to fine tune the race set up and do what we came here to do – win the Indy 500.”
Spencer Pigot, No. 21 Autogeek Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet (3rd; 2:36.6402; 229.826): “I was flat out all four laps, that’s all we could do. Still, really proud of the effort we had at Ed Carpenter Racing. To be second, third and fourth. Incredible showing again. Thanks to the whole team, Chevrolet for all their hard work. Overall, a really good day. I’m happy to be starting on the front row for the Indy 500. As a team, we were really strong today, but unfortunately we came up a little bit short for pole position. I know we have great race cars and we have a lot to be confident about heading into next weekend..”
Additional Carpenter and Pigot quotes below.
Ed Jones, No. 63 Ed Carpenter Racing Scuderia Corsa Chevrolet (4th; 2:36.7629; 229.646): “”It was a good day. I qualified fourth for the Indianapolis 500. It’s great for myself, Scuderia Corsa and Ed Carpenter Racing. Having three cars at the front is really positive. Of course, you always want to be on pole, but regardless it’s great to be up front. It will give us a great chance for the win next Sunday and that’s what it’s all abou!.”
Will Power, No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet (6th; 2:37.4490; 228.645): “No clue what happened to our speed today. It was easy to drive, but it was slow. I really could not tell you why. It’s unfortunate because we were so close to the top speed yesterday. We’ll study our data pretty hard tonight to see where the speed went. The Verizon 5G Chevrolet was amazing to drive, so much so that I was really dumbfounded when I heard what the times were. Starting sixth is not bad but I really want a pole here. It’s coming, man. It took a few years to win the race so it may take a few years to win the pole.”
Josef Newgarden, No. 2 Shell V-Power Nitro Plus Team Penske Chevrolet (8th; 2:37.6208; 228.396): “Well, I’m glad we got to run today. I really wanted to because I thought that would be a great opportunity. I’m super pumped for Team Penske, winning the pole with Simon (Pagenaud) is great. I’m not sure what happened with the 2 car, but we just lost speed. It was still great to get a run in and I can’t wait to get the Shell V-Power Chevrolet into race conditions. I have all the faith in everybody that we are going to have a great racecar. I’m excited for next weekend and now we will focus on that.”
Helio Castroneves, No. 3 Pennzoil Team Penske Chevrolet (12th; 2:37.5337; 228.523): “It was a solid run, but we didn’t have the speed we thought we would. The gears that we expected to cool down didn’t and we were surprised by that. We went back out and tried it again, but ran about the same lap times. That’s OK, we can focus on the race car now. We are solidly in the show and have a car that is starting in the first four rows, which is pretty good.”
Tony Kanaan, No. 14 ABC Supply AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet (16th; 2:37.8116; 228.120): “We expected a little bit quicker, but I don’t know, I mean the car felt good. We had to guess a couple of the gears and the speed. It was a very atypical day – extremely windy and hot – which we haven’t had any of these (practice) days so it was more of a guessing (game) than anything else. It is what it is, we’ve done it and hopefully we’ll have a good race car.”
Charlie Kimball, No. 23 Fiasp Carlin Chevrolet (20th; 2:37.9535; 227.915): “I think qualifying day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, it’s fun because it’s typically the fastest you go all month long. It’s terrifying because 10 miles trimmed out in an Indy car around IMS is extremely challenging. It is the longest day, the longest weekend of the year because you’re always watching the weather. You’re always looking at conditions. You’re always looking at what other people do. It is a day that it is the absolute easiest for common sense to become completely uncommon. But I’m really proud of the 23 crew for Carlin yesterday. We executed when we needed to. We got the one run in the books. It was good enough to put us in the show. We’ll continue our work on making our race car the best it can possibly be.”
JR Hildebrand, No. 48 DRR Salesforce Chevrolet (21st; 2:37.9584; 227.908): “We knew we had the speed in the car from the other runs in qualifying. It was a matter of sticking it all together. I’m really happy for the Salesforce team and we’ll get back to the garage looking to do whatever we can do to get the No. 24 car in the race on Sunday.”
Matheus Leist, No. 4 ABC Supply AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet (24th; 2:38.0911; 227.717): “The second run in qualifying was way better than the first run. We debriefed a little bit with the team and Eric (Cowdin, technical director) and Tony (Kanaan) and we just improved the car and managed to be way more consistent through the run. This puts us in a better, safer spot for qualifying. I think we’re going to be good so I’m looking forward to the race now.”
Ben Hanley, No. 81 10 Star DragonSpeed Chevrolet (27th; 2:38.2542; 227.482): “Everyone has been pretty calm. Like I have said, we know we are new and we know we don’t have the experience as probably any other team out there, but we are a tight group. We work hard and really trust each other.” (About looking at all the adversity they’ve been through over the season): “Yeah, it has been difficult, but we have a great group of people. And one of the reasons we have made it is because of guys who aren’t here. It is a massive team involvement, and we all understand it, and we want the same result, which is to perform the best we can. That was a pretty good run, the car felt the best it has been all week. Maybe I took a little risk on the last lap. I saw the run was pretty consistent, and I really needed to nail that last lap to pull it together.”
Pippa Mann, No. 39 Driven2SaveLives Clauson-Marshall Racing Chevrolet (30th; 2:38.4203; 227.244): “I think the big thing for us is that the Clauson-Marshall Driven 2 Save Lives Chevrolet has actually been pretty good all week long. We felt we were going to slot in somewhere between 23rd and 26th-ish today, which happened, and then we kind of miscalculated how much better the track conditions were going to get at the end of the day. And by the time we realized how much better they were and how much quicker we’d have been able to run, there were too many cars in the line to pull our time to go. So, I literally had to sit there sweating it out, and all that was going through my head was not again, please not again, please, please not again.”
Sage Karam, No. 24 DRR WIX Filters Chevrolet (31st; 2:38.0747; 227.740): “Man, I never want to do that again. I feel like I won the Indy 500 and I only qualified. This place just means so much. I can’t even put into words. We haven’t had a lot of good days this week. And the team has stuck with me and they have picked me up when I was down. And visa versa. I had a wrestling coach tell me that it doesn’t matter who you are wrestling, the rank, the bracket or anything. It’s all about who’s better in those six minutes at that time. We didn’t have it yesterday. But I knew that we just needed to be better than the guys who we were up against today for four laps. We’re a strong one-off race team. And we knew it was not going to be an easy task. I wish I could have run those four laps yesterday. We would be well up the field. But that how Indy works. There are so many doubts at this place. When you can do something special, it really feels great. I had some doubts in the last couple of days. But today really shows that the DRR WIX Filters team has produce when things are on the line. Now, we’ll continue our race setup program on Monday. The race setup is very good. I am confident for next Sunday.”
Additional Karam quotes below.
Kyle Kaiser, No. 32 Juncos Racing Chevrolet (33rd; 2:38.3311; 227.372): “I can’t wrap my mind around it. All credit goes to the team. They’ve been working non-stop trying to get this car ready and they did everything they could to get in this field. I’m so proud of that and proud of everybody who made this happen.”
Additional Kaiser quotes below.
Fernando Alonso, No. 66 McLaren Racing Chevrolet (did not qualify): “Any time you go out to qualify at this place you have to be brave. The car felt good and the conditions felt much better, cooler so you feel more downforce. You know, once you are not anymore in, you try to, yeah, start relaxing a little bit. It has been a very long qualifying, nearly 56 hours of qualifying from yesterday morning. So yeah, we were just one place all the time out. Yesterday 31st instead of 30. Today 34th instead of 33 by a very small margin, and yeah, unfortunately not fast enough in any or both days. Yeah, disappointed now. Obviously, it would be nice to be in the race next Sunday. We came here to race and to challenge ourselves, and we were not quick enough. You know, I congratulate all the other guys that did a better job, and hopefully we’ll see a nice show next Sunday, everyone safe, and enjoying from the TV unfortunately.”
Max Chilton, No. 59 Gallagher Carlin Chevrolet (did not qualify): “It was challenging; it was harder than this morning. I did everything I could. I had a one gust of wind in (Turn) 3 that caught me out. We just didn’t have the speed today. I couldn’t have given it any more.”
An interview with pole winner Simon Pagenaud and team owner Roger Penske.
ROGER, WHAT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT FOR THE TEAM.
“Well, I think when you look at Simon’s run today, it was amazing to see the consistency over 230 (mph), which looked like (Rick) Mears was qualifying there back in the old days. But I just want to congratulate him in front of all of you. We had four good cars. He was strong all month, and I think when we had to execute, there was certainly one guy that was going to get on the pole, and that was Simon. All month they’ve been on the ball, and of course, the momentum coming off the road course win, you’ve got to think about that, too. A combined couple of weeks here has been terrific. Now we have to go on and get the big one.”
SIMON, YOU’RE THE FIRST FRENCHMAN TO WIN THE POLE SINCE RENE THOMAS IN 1919. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN TO YOU?
“Well, I mean, it’s not just me. Obviously, it’s my whole team behind me that prepared me to here. It’s a team effort, but obviously super happy for France. I think this sport is a sport that I know France would really enjoy, and they do. So this can only help gain the recognition over there and in Europe. So obviously also having (Fernando) Alonso here was great for that. But it’s a team effort. I can’t take this for myself. This is truly what Team Penske does, and they give us the best equipment. Quite frankly I’m at the very, very end of it all, so I’m just very honored to drive this 22 Chevy Menards, which honestly was incredible today.”
SIMON, CAN YOU TAKE US THROUGH THE COMPETITIVENESS OF THE FIELD?
“Yeah, I think it’s — INDYCAR has done a great job with the universal aero kit. I think all the cars are so close these days, and it’s very difficult to make a difference. Personally, on our side, Team Penske, we focus, No. 1 priority is Indianapolis. So we focus on that. The goal is to win the race, and that’s where we put all the effort, as much effort as we can, and then the rest of the year is also a big focus. But you can see that all the teams are raising the game, all the drivers are raising their game, as well. It’s honestly tremendous to be in this era of the sport because you get better and better every weekend, and it never stops.”
ROGER, IT WAS MENTIONED THAT MCLAREN GOT DATA SHEETS FROM YOU AND TEAM ANDRETTI FOR SOME TECHNICAL HELP. DID YOU GO TO THEM?
“No, they had no data sheets from us. Not at all. I talked to Gil and to Zak this morning on a completely different subject, but they told me they had gotten a setup last night and put it on the car. So we had nothing to do with their setup.”
SIMON, IF A FORMULA ONE TEAM WOULD KNOCK AT YOUR DOOR, WHAT WOULD BE YOUR REACTION?
“I’m sorry to tell you I’m really happy with Roger, and I love what I do here. I’ve got a lot more things to accomplish here. My goal is to win Indianapolis. I’m here to win Indy, and that’s what I’m focused on.”
ROGER, IT LOOKS LIKE YOUR TEAM REALLY TURNED THINGS AROUND.
“Well, winning the Indy Grand Prix is obviously a precursor to the momentum which we’ve done here for three or four years now, and Simon was committed — you watch him run in that road race and in the water there, I’ve never seen a run like that in my life. Then to come out here and win the pole, I think he’s got great momentum. Kyle (Moyer) said to me, looks like Pagenaud has showed up.”
ROGER, WHEN YOU CAME HERE 50-SOME UYEARS AGO, DID YOU EVER DREAM THAT ALL THIS TIME HERE YOU’D BE SITTING UP ON THE PODIUM AGAIN AFTER WINNING YOUR 18TH POLE?
“Not many of us were here then, were we? No, look, when I came here with my dad probably, when you think about ’51, that’s when I really came for the first time. I remember we sat down off the fourth turn and could hardly see the cars go by, and I guess at that point I was injected with motor racing and really wanted to drive here, and as you know, I couldn’t take my test and Andretti took it. So you think 50 years for each of us, and to come here and have the record that we have is tremendous. But as Simon said, my name might be on the side of the car, but it’s hundreds of people. I think this year we counted 774 people in the garage that are working on these four cars’ experience with us, and I think that continuity has made the difference. But I’ve said it before, it’s a brand builder for us. I mean, we build our brand around the country with a success at Indy. There’s no place like it. Everybody wants to win here, and to me, something that I want to do as long as I can. I don’t want to sit up in the suite during a race. I want to be on the ground, and I think that’s how we run our business.”
ROGER, DO YOU THINK THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE IN FORMULA 1 TONIGHT LOOKING AT INDY AND SAYING MAYBE THAT SERIES IS A LOT STRONGER THAN WE THOUGHT?
“Well, I don’t think we can say anything about the series. I think that Zak (Brown) and Gil (DeFerran) and certainly Fernando go home very disappointed. I’ve had the same thing, remember, with two drivers in ’95 after we had sat on the pole, I think we led every lap but two in ’94 and didn’t make the race with two cars. When you walk down to pit lane with your driver after that, it really injects something else into you, how you’ve got to come back and be stronger. But I would never count them out. With Formula 1, we had, I guess, the last American team win a race was John Watson in Austria. But we saw it as a business. It was not in the U.S., we wouldn’t get the benefit out of it, so we focused on solely INDYCAR and sports cars, and obviously NASCAR. But I think a lot of people were anxious to see Alonso run. That’s the only disappointment I have certainly is that the whole of Formula 1 world would have been tuned in for this race, so that’s a shame, obviously, for the fans, but more important I’m sorry to see those guys not make it.”
An interview with Ed Carpenter and Spencer Pigot:
ED, HOW EXCITED ARE YOU TO GET BACK IN THE CAR AND MAKE A STATEMENT?
“I think first and foremost, the strength of the team is what I’m most excited about. To have Ed Carpenter Racing cars starting second, third and fourth I think just speaks volumes to the organization and all our people and effort that they put into building our cars and the consistency of all the equipment is something I’m really personally proud of. I know it’s a little bittersweet for us. I was able to pass some cars today, which is good and puts us in a good position for the start of the race. Spencer was doing a rain dance, I was wanting to run. I really wish one of us would have ended up on pole, but I’m still really happy to be 2, 3 and 4. I think it’s amazing, and Simon just put in a really excellent run with his car, so consistent. I couldn’t believe how consistent it was. So congrats to him.”
SPENCER, HOW SWEET IS THIS FRONT-ROW START FOR YOU?
“Yeah, it’s sweet. Starting front row in the Indy 500 is a real honor, and like Ed said, a testament to our team. I wouldn’t say I was doing the rain dance all day. I think as race car drivers we love driving Indy cars at the limit, and you definitely get a chance to do that here in qualifying. Any chance we get to put four laps of qualifying together here is exciting in the car. So, unfortunately, it was a little short, but like Ed said, great day for the team. 2, 3, 4, and I think all of us were pretty happy with our race cars Wednesday and Thursday, so we have a lot to look forward to and a lot to be confident about heading into next weekend.”
ED, YOU KEEP STARTING ON THE POLE OR THE FRONT ROW. WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT YOUR CAREER?
“I’ll let you all decide that. I’m proud of the effort and the consistency we’ve had. I’m really maintaining focus on figuring out a way to win this race. That’s the most important thing to me. One of the blessings of qualifying well here is we get a good starting spot. The negative is people ask me all the time, hey, are you going to win the pole again this year? And it’s like, well, that would be nice, but I really want to win the race. That’s the goal. I don’t want people to think all I come to do here is qualify because that’s definitely not the focus. And that’s why I’m so proud of the team because I really think that obviously we have to go out and do a good job and put in four good laps, but the speed comes from the work the team does and the preparation, especially to have all of our cars so close. That’s for them, and hopefully, the race will be for one of us.”
ED, DID YOU FEEL ANY CHANGES IN THE TRACK CONDITIONS?
“I thought the track was really good. I think compared to when — even though I ran early yesterday, I think with it being a little more cloudy and the track temp was lower, the wind was up a little bit, but I felt like there was probably more grip than yesterday. I was surprised that it wasn’t a little quicker, but I think that was just due to the gusty winds and everything else, but the conditions seemed fine.”
ED, HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK ABOUT ALL THESE VICTORIES THAT YOU COULD HAVE HAD AND STILL HAVEN’T GOTTEN YET?
“I try not to look back too much other than to learn from mistakes and figure out how to do things better. Really just looking forward and trying to make the best decisions we can and prepare the best we can. I think that’s the important thing, in how you get better, if you just reflect on all your misses and get discouraged by that, it’s probably not the best mindset. We’ve got a lot of great experience and we’ve been getting closer and better, and hopefully, we’ll be able to put it together on Sunday for one of our cars.”
ED, YOU GOT BEAT FOR THE POLE BY .1 OF A MILE AN HOUR. HOW DO YOU SQUARE THAT?
“Simon was just more consistent. I think I had the fastest lap of qualifying and usually that’s a good sign for the pole, but I’ve also won a couple of my poles and not had the fastest lap. So he was just a little more consistent than me, and that’s why he deserves to be on the pole. That’s the way this series is now. Everything is just thousandths and hundredths of a second all the way through. The battle that you saw for guys fighting for the 30th spot yesterday, the ninth spot yesterday and now today, the strength of this series between the teams and drivers from top to bottom, you’ve got to be perfect to really put it together because if you’re not, everything is so tight you’re going to slide down, and that’s what’s great about being a part of the NTT IndyCar Series is it’s really the best competition in the world.”
An interview with Sage Karam and Kyle Kaiser:
SAGE, AFTER A DAY LIKE YESTERDAY, TO COME OUT WITH THE SPEED THAT YOU HD TODAY, DID YOU HAVE ANY IDEA THAT WAS IN THE CAR?
“I mean, I always knew that speed was there. It was just getting it out of it. You know, I had a really bad first qual attempt yesterday and skimmed the wall, and I got out and the first thing I said was, we’re fine, we’re fine, because I genuinely believe that a run like I did just now was going to be like yesterday, I would have been able to bounce back and do that yesterday. But we just kept slightly missing the balance for the weather, and then you know, ended up having to come back today to fight into the field, and that was probably one of the most — that was the most stressful 48 hours of my life, probably one of the biggest battles I’ve ever had to go through mentally. And yeah, we put a good run in. I knew the speed was there. My teammate did it, and our cars were pretty similar. We had a really good car for two laps, but we didn’t really have a good car for four, so today we bettered that drop-off, and that was the difference. If we would have fell off even more, who knows then what would have happened. But the team rallied, and it’s just been a really, really tough month. To be able to say we qualified when we were kind of backs against the ball there for a while, and I mean, the last row in general, I mean, I didn’t have as tough of a month as the other two guys, but those guys nearly going upside down and putting backup cars together and coming back is pretty freaking amazing. That’s an amazing story for both those two guys. I’m happy I got in, and in 2014 with this same crew, same car, everything, started 31st and finished ninth as a rookie. If it shapes up like that again, I’ll be quite happy. We’ll see how we can do it.”
KYLE, THE PAST FEW DAYS HAVE BEEN A WHIRLWIND FOR YOU AND THE TEAM. HOW MUCH OF A VICTORY DOES THIS FEEL LIKE?
“It felt like we qualified on pole when I came in, to be honest. It was pretty wild. I didn’t really know right away. Everybody keeps asking, when did you know. I had no idea. I had somewhat of an idea because I got to see the laps, but I heard it was really close. And I came across start finish and first thing I asked was are we in, did we make it, and I just heard screaming, so that was a good sign. But the last 48 hours, like Sage said, has been an absolute whirlwind. It’s been crazy. We had really good pace with our main car, but obviously we had an incident, and it’s been just an uphill battle since then. I have to give the team pretty much all the credit here because they’ve been working super long nights. I think they had 40 straight hours of work trying to get that car together, getting us ready to practice the next day at 8:00 a.m., just an unbelievable effort. Obviously the backup car didn’t have the same pace as our main car, but we didn’t give up. This was just an amazing battle from their end, just looking for every little thing we could do, no matter what it was, sanding the car, just changing pieces, just doing everything possible to try and get the speed out of it, and even yesterday when I don’t think we had a perfect first run, the balance wasn’t quite what we were hoping, it was very difficult conditions, we rallied, we got the balance right later in the day with our other two runs even though the speed wasn’t there, which I think paid off today. We felt like we didn’t need to go out this morning. We had the balance where we wanted it, we got the data we needed yesterday and kind of stuck with our guns, and it really paid off.”