CHEVROLET RACING IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES
HONDA INDY 200
MID OHIO SPORTS CAR COURSE
QUALIFYING RECAP
SATURDAY JULY 30, 2016
Simon Pagenaud Wins Verizon P1 Pole Award at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course
· Pagenaud’s lap of one minute, 03.8700 seconds/127.271 mph eclipsed the track record set last year by Team Chevy driver Scott Dixon of 1:04.5814/125.869 mph.
· Sixth pole of the season for the current Verizon IndyCar Series points leader
· Will Power makes it all-Chevrolet front row for Sunday’s 90-lap/203.22-mile race on the 13-turn, 2.258-mile permanent road course in Lexington, Ohio
· Four Chevrolet Aero Kit IndyCar with 2.2 liter V6 engine made a run at number one qualifying spot in Firestone Fast Six
· Top-three and six of top-eight starters are Team Chevy drivers
· Pole is the 11th for Chevrolet in the Verizon IndyCar Series in 2016
LEXINGTON, Ohio (July 30, 2016) – Simon Pagenaud grabbed his sixth Verizon P1 Pole Award of the 2016 Verizon IndyCar Series season with a track-record breaking effort today at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.
The current Series’ points leader laid down a blistering lap of 1:03.8700/127.271 mph behind the wheel of his No. 22 PPG Automotive Refinish Team Penske Chevrolet to claim the eighth number one starting position of his career.
Pagenaud’s teammate, Will Power, will start alongside on row one. Power held the top spot with a lap of 1:03:9381/127.135 mph in the No. 12 Verizon Chevrolet until Pagenaud made his final flyer effort as the clock ran out to end the Firestone Fast Six qualifying round.
Josef Newgarden, No. 21 Fuzzy’s Ultra Premium Vodka Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet, posted the third fastest time to give Team Chevy 1-2-3 in the final qualifying standings.
Charlie Kimball, No. 83 Tresiba Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet was fifth in the final order to give the Chevrolet Aero Kit IndyCar with integrated 2.2 liter V6 engine, four of the top-six of the starting field for tomorrow’s 90-lap race.
Helio Castroneves, No. 3 Hitachi Team Penske Chevrolet and Juan Pablo Montoya, No. 2 Hawk Performance Team Penske Chevrolet, will start seventh and eighth respectively to give Chevrolet six of the top-eight starters in the Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio.
A total of 11 Chevrolet drivers qualified for Sunday’s race, Round 12 of the 2016 season. Scott Dixon, No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet – 11th; Max Chilton, No. 8 Gallagher Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet – 13th; Tony Kanaan, No. 10 NTT Data Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet – 14th; Sebastien Bourdais, No. 11 Team Hydroxycut-KVSH Racing Chevrolet – 16th and Spencer Pigot, No. 20 Fuzzy’s Ultra Premium Vodka Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet – 19th.
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Ryan Hunter-Reay (Honda) and Graham Rahal (Honda) completed the Firestone Fast Six participants.
CNBC/Sportsnet 360 will telecast the 90-lap Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio live at 2 p.m. ET Sunday. Also, the INDYCAR Radio Network broadcast is available on network affiliates, indycarradio.com, RaceControl.indycar.com, the INDYCAR Mobile app, Sirius 212, and XM 209.
INDYCAR POST QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
Simon Pagenaud
Will Power
Josef Newgarden
Charlie Kimball
THE MODERATOR: We’ll get started with our Verizon P1 award press conference. Start with Charlie Kimball, driver of the No. 83 Tresiba Chevrolet for Chip Ganassi Racing, who will start fifth in tomorrow’s race with a lap in the Firestone Fast Six of 1:04.3644 seconds. Charlie, talk us through the whole qualifying sequence. Obviously everybody is concerned about rain, the weather, changing conditions. Take us through your day.
CHARLIE KIMBALL: Yeah, I think everybody was looking at radar, crystal balls and Ouija boards as much as possible. Ment there was quite a lot going on. The nice thing — well, one of the challenges for us being in group 1 is we’re going on a track that’s pretty green as far as Firestone rubber, having just had an F2000 race, so we went out, and it took a long time for the tires to come in and for the grip to come and lap time to come out of the Firestone alternates towards the end of group 1 there. And then we watched the second group, group 2 in round 1 go, and everyone went straight away on alternates, and some of them, a lot of them did two runs, two sets of alternates.
We knew if it stayed dry, we had a set of stickers to try and make it into the Fast Six.
I thought we’d shot ourselves in the foot two or three different times in that second round because we went out on used reds, used alternates, and then came in after two laps and hadn’t really done a solid lap time, had done a decent time but not a good enough time. I think we were 10th or 11th at that point, and put stickers on.
Well, the challenge was I went back out and trying to get the stickers up to temperature, it was raining harder and harder, so I wasn’t sure that we’d made the right call, but the last lap there in round 2, I think it was a 64.40, was spectacular. To me, it was not a perfect lap, not even close, but it was a big push, and they said, all right, we made it through to the Fast Six, and then at the end there, we kind of misjudged timing. In fact, we’d planned on four laps, and the fifth lap turned out to be my fastest. We were lucky to get that last lap and made the most of it, and pretty happy with fifth.
THE MODERATOR: We’ll welcome Josef Newgarden, driver of car No. 21, the Fuzzy’s Ultra Premium Vodka ECR Chevrolet, qualified third today, 1:04.1200. Charlie was talking about the changing conditions, the possibility of weather moving in. Talk us through your whole qualifying day.
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Yeah, it was really exciting actually. I was nervous in the second round because we were debating new or used reds. I think everyone was when we went out for that second group, and no one really knew what the rain was going to do. It looked like it was going to rain and then it didn’t, and then it kind of did.
So we ended up going out on scuffs because it looked like everyone did that. I struggled on the scuffs on that round. I couldn’t really get a lap time that well. And then we came in, we put on new tires, and it started raining in Turn 4, and I was like, well, we just shot ourselves in the foot. I thought it was over after that, and then it dried up. The next lap it dried up. I kept going. We got a good time, we got in the Fast Six, and then we did a pretty decent job of getting to third. I feel good about where we’re starting now.
That’s a great spot for us, and we should have a great view to try and challenge the two Penske guys for the whole race. They’re going to be tough to beat. I mean, they’re really, really good around here on their tires, and I think that’s what it’s going to take, kind of like Barber. You have to have good longevity on your tires to be able to race those guys really hard for a full stint. That’s where we got beat in Barber, so we’ve got to work on that tomorrow morning, but if we can do that, then I think we should have a pretty good day with Fuzzy’s Vodka.
Q. Josef, you didn’t test. What was J.R.’s baseline and did you need to make the car much different than when he tested here a couple weeks ago?
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: You know, actually it was Spencer’s baseline. J.R. was full tilt on kind of the aero development assistance for IndyCar kind of experimentation stuff, so he didn’t make any changes, he just ran the car with different aero configs.
I was mainly here with Spencer trying to figure out what he needed, getting him up to speed, and you know, I was kind of — we actually got through our test run that I would have gone through if I was here last week just with Spencer, so it was nice to have him in the car and experimenting with — he gave us good direction to start with, and then we just kind of built on that this weekend.
I don’t think it was too bad of a hindrance. I think we were able to get through what we needed to. I would even say Spencer was a huge help this weekend. He didn’t get the qualifying I think he wanted today, but he’s been getting faster each weekend. He’s got the car control, he’s just got to figure out what he needs from the car and what points, but he helped me a lot this weekend just with a couple different areas of the track. He was really quick, and I think he’s doing a really good job.
You know, a lot — I guess just to answer your question, he was the big help last week for test day.
Q. Scott Dixon is normally Mr. Mid-Ohio here. He didn’t make the Fast Six. He’s going to be starting back in 12th. Is that a big surprise to any of you?
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Well, I saw him coming out of the pits like super late. I think they just misjudged it from what it looked like. Charlie might know better, but it looked like he just came out late and missed it.
CHARLIE KIMBALL: I was shocked. We were sitting there, and it’s like, okay, who’s in the Fast Six Dixon, I was like, Dixon…they’re like, no, no, Dix didn’t make it, and I was like, to me it just doesn’t — around here, it’s abnormal, which makes me really nervous for tomorrow because when Scott drives angry, he drives really fast.
Q. Can you add your expertise to that question?
WILL POWER: What, Dixon? Yeah, he just went out too late, basically.
Q. I mean, are you shocked he’s not —
WILL POWER: Yeah, obviously, yeah. He’s always so fast here, you would expect him to be vying for the pole. But yeah, it was a tough session because it was sprinkling, you could almost go, well, I’m going to pit because it’s not going to go any faster. But yeah, you’ve got to stay out there.
THE MODERATOR: And we’ll welcome Will Power, driver of the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevy to the podium here, qualified second, 1:03.9381. We’ve talked with everybody about the changing conditions, the possibility of rain getting out there, some sprinkles. Take us through your entire qualifying session today.
WILL POWER: Yeah, it was just like mayhem, you know, not knowing what tires to use, and everyone went out on reds so we went out and did one lap on blacks and came straight in for reds. It was just a mixed-up session, and it was tiring as hell because you had to run every single lap like — the Fast Six, I took a lap to take a breather. It was crazy.
Yeah, good to start on the front row. Going to be pretty long day, 90 laps around this joint is tough. See what I can do.
Q. For people who don’t understand how difficult it is behind the wheel of an IndyCar around this place, the level of commitment and the physical side, too, what do you think you’re doing heart rate wise?
CHARLIE KIMBALL: I think I’m 190 out there for sure. Full-on sprint. I just wish there was a way to communicate that, it would be great, because that’s the biggest thing about this place, especially with the aero configuration we’re running now.
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: And the commitment, you talked about that, through 11 and 1, it goes wrong, it’s going to go wrong big because we’re doing 150 miles an hour through Turn 1 just about, minimum.
CHARLIE KIMBALL: And nearly flat.
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Yeah.
CHARLIE KIMBALL: It’s as close to flat as I’ve ever seen.
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: No, it’s actually funny, I come into the pits and everyone gets plugged in their intercom when they get into the pits, and I’m a little embarrassed because like I’m out of breath. I can’t talk. I’m like, I’m sure everyone is the same way. I’m like, all right, give me a ticket. You honestly can’t breathe. It’s like you just ran a sprint for a mile and tried to do an interview. It’s really, really tough, and you’re just worn out. Like Charlie said, I bet my heart rate — I run a high heart rate. I bet my heart rate is 190 just pegged the entire time. You’re blistering out there.
Q. How could you show that?
WILL POWER: Your heart rate and breathing, I guess breaths per minute.
THE MODERATOR: We’ll welcome our Verizon P1 award winner for the sixth time this season, eighth time in his career, his first at Mid-Ohio, Simon Pagenaud with a track-record lap in the Firestone Fast Six, 1:03.8700 seconds. Simon, the guys have been talking about the changing conditions, the possibility of weather moving in. If you could just take us through all three of your segments of qualifying.
SIMON PAGENAUD: It was a tricky qualifying for sure, especially Q2 because we were out there and all of a sudden there were some drops in Turn 4. It got slippery, a little slippery, but not enough to really pit. There was a lot of communication with the time extension; is this going to hold or is it going to keep raining a lot. They said just stay on track and we’ll see the last two laps if you can go for it. And they said, just go for it. I didn’t see any drops, so I went. But it was a bit sketchy for sure.
Q3 was awesome with Will. What a battle. The car was just — the PPG car was really hooked up today. Thanks to Team Penske. They give us the best equipment out there, so congrats to all of you guys for being in the Fast Six.
Q. I think I heard that the drivers in general like most of the field has actually eclipsed the track record, which might have been Dixon’s from last year, and I’m just wondering what’s different this year? Is it the car, the aero kits, improvements in the engine over the season, from one season to the next? What makes this track faster now, and are you having to use different gears than you would have had last year? It seems like the level of commitment is much higher through some of the turns.
WILL POWER: Yeah, it’s just the update in the aero kits and probably a little engine, as well, they keep improving. Just amazing the speed we carry in these fast corners now. Thinking how late you braked before, and is just — like the grip here is just insane. We do need power steering (laughs). It’s just at that point where you can hardly turn the wheel. But yeah, it’s a lot of grip.
Q. Let me compare this to something else. You’re making it sound like one of the hardest qualifying sessions you’ve ever done. Is there anything else that comes to mind that kind of compares to this?
WILL POWER: There isn’t, because this track, it just keeps getting faster. The fuel load comes down, the grip goes down. It’s not like Barber where you just do one lap. There’s other tracks that are just as tough physically, but this one you’ve got to keep going all the way to the end. That’s what kills you.
JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Yeah, physically I would say no. It just keeps going quicker and quicker and you can keep gaining lap times by committing further into the corner. It just keeps rewarding you, and then when you do that, like Will was saying earlier, you do two sets in round 1, two sets in round 2, and then the Fast Six, it’s just like you’re just constantly going after it, so it never really gives you a chance to catch up.
CHARLIE KIMBALL: And there are other places that are just as big a challenge in different ways. Running at Detroit and Toronto, as rough as it is, is a big, physical challenge, but in a different way. I think here it’s just pure commitment and pure power compared to anywhere else we go. I’m hearing Watkins Glen is going to be pretty physical, too.
Q. Pit stop strategy wise, like three years ago Charlie won by just going quicker than everyone else but stopping three times.
CHARLIE KIMBALL: It was a shorter race, though.
Q. Have you sorted it out so that you guys have to go hard all the way through or are you going to be cruising?
WILL POWER: Yeah, they basically eliminated — before you could almost do it with two stops, but now you can’t. Everyone is on the strategy that Charlie went with. I think everyone will be on the same strategy, just a matter of when you call it. The biggest problem in this series is the pits closing, and that’s the risk you take. It’s got to change, honestly.
Q. Simon, you mentioned you’re struggling with your lower back. Can you take us through that a little bit, how you’re feeling?
SIMON PAGENAUD: Yeah, I’m struggling. But this morning the pain was 10 out of 10. I didn’t know if I was going to be doing qualifying to be honest. But the doctors took good care of me, and I managed to get in the car, and once the adrenaline got in, it was better, but I’m really struggling sitting here, so we should get done pretty quickly here. I’m kidding.
Q. Simon, could you just clarify what happened with your back?
SIMON PAGENAUD: Yeah, I didn’t want to get into it, but okay. Thank you. No, I pulled — we don’t know yet what it is exactly. I was in Turn 1, the third lap in on Friday, and then all of a sudden it was like somebody jammed a knife in my back. I’ve been struggling to drive, honestly. I haven’t been doing much, letting my teammate get the car sorted, and I’ve been trying to rest as much as possible. But the doctors took good care of me and tried to have the muscle relax. We’ll see what it is on Monday. I guess I’m going to race anyway, so we’ll see.
Q. A 90-lap race tomorrow. Some races we might expect yellows to occur, but if there are no cautions tomorrow, how are you guys going to get through 90 laps?
WILL POWER: Yeah, it’s going to be tough. I mean, it was all green at Barber — where else? Actually Long Beach it was all green. Yeah, we’ve had a couple of them this year. Yeah, it’s hard. It’s funny, though, the first 20 laps is when you’re starting to think, how am I going to do the whole race, but then your body gets into a rhythm, and it seems to get easier for whatever reason. But yeah, the first — sometimes at 15 in, you’re like, how am I going to do this, this is bloody hard. That’ll be the case around here for sure.
Q. Do you have an appointment on Monday or do you just mean after this race you’ll see on Monday what’s going on with your back?
SIMON PAGENAUD: I don’t know what to say. I’d say we took care of it and we’ll see what it is on Monday. I’m not dying.
Q. You don’t really have an appointment on Monday?
SIMON PAGENAUD: No, not yet, no.
Q. Simon, you’ve pretty much tripled your career total in poles this season alone. Talk about — when you look at it in those terms, talk about what that means.
SIMON PAGENAUD: Well, I mean, it’s awesome. It’s exactly what you want to do when you join such a power team. Team Penske is incredible. They provide us the best equipment, and my engineer is awesome. We have so much history together since 2010, so we carry a lot of knowledge, and we try to fine tune it every year. We’re getting to that point where now on Friday we’re pretty much ready for Saturday qualifying, and then we work on the race car, as well, a little bit, but we know exactly what we want.
Also I’ve got to say Chevrolet is going an incredible job with the engine and the aero kit on the road course. But we have the whole package, and personally I’m certainly driving really well right now, so it’s all in the mind. It’s rough, that’s for sure.