Shane van Gisbergen, No. 97 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet – Pole Win Quotes
From your perspective, talk a little bit about your lap and really just how the track’s developed from yesterday to today and what you expect tomorrow.“Amazing to get the first pole here (at San Diego). Really cool. It’s tough, I’ve said it a couple of times. It’s your first lap of the day and there’s three, four, five corners you’re probably going through for the first time of the day as your qualifying lap starts. And yeah, I made a meal of it, but I guess the rest of the lap was pretty decent and made the time back. I’m sure everyone has the same story that there’s a lot of time left, but it’s cool to make the least mistakes, I guess (laughs).” Yesterday, I asked you about the level of risk-reward you were going to take in qualifying being in the first group. How hard did you push on that lap? And as you mentioned, it sounds like there’s still a little bit more to gain…“Yeah, it was hard. Normally, you get like a little indication of what people are going to do if you’re brave enough to wait. But it got to 10 minutes to go or eight minutes to go and no one had really done a lap, so I didn’t really know what level of grip there was going to be. That was quite difficult. I actually got behind Connor (Zilisch) and followed him, sort of referenced to him, and that gave me an indication of how I was going., I just tried to see where he braked and I just went a little bit deeper.” After what you said yesterday about feeling like the rest of the field was being disrespected by everyone kind of saying you’re the guy, I asked the rest of the field and they said, ‘no, no, no, you’re the guy and it’s okay for him to admit that’. Are you the favorite? Is it okay for you to be the favorite?“My long runs weren’t that great yesterday. The Nos. 5, 33 and 54 were faster than me yesterday, I believe. But my car is better today than yesterday, so who knows. We’re definitely in a good place to start and tomorrow will be a bit of a gamble and a lottery, I think, with the tires. It’s going to be hard for the crew chiefs and strategists to get it right tomorrow, for sure.” I asked you yesterday about some of the other sketchy racetracks that you’ve ran at. Now that you’ve had a full day and multiple sessions now, is this going to be the most challenging place, in terms of like the tire deg., the marbles, how narrow it is, or are there still worse?“Yeah, it’s different. It’s a lot lower grip than I expected, which means you’re not really hanging it out the whole time and pushing. I thought it would be more hitting the fences and pushing a lot more, but you’re really driving, especially on race runs, pretty slow and managing the tires. So that was a bit of a surprise. It was a lot slower than I thought it was going to be. I thought we’d be in the low teens, not high teens, in the race lap times, so that was a bit interesting. But yeah, I didn’t expect the tires to last four laps. We’ve got to do at least 10 tomorrow to make the stages and make the tires last, so it’s going to be very difficult.” I think Carson said yesterday that you guys had been racing a little bit leading up to this, and now he’s starting alongside you. He is a little bit of a risk taker, but do you feel like you have a good enough relationship that you could trust him coming into those first couple corners? “I mean, he took me out a couple of times in racing on the sim, so I hope he doesn’t do it tomorrow (laughs). But yeah, I know that he’s smart when he wants to be and in the right situations. I think he’s smarter than he makes out that he is. So yeah, as long as it’s a clean first lap. I’m sure at the end of the race, anything goes. But hopefully at the start of the race, he’s smart enough to settle in and then we just get going. But yeah, we’re certainly in the best place to start.” With all the excitement today and all the excitement that’s going to happen tomorrow, we know there’s more to come. Are you looking forward to Sonoma?“Yeah, that’s a good race. It’ll be a bit quieter, which will be nice. I like that track. It’s one of my favorite places to race. So yeah, it should be a good couple of weeks of racing for us.” Given how the Truck race played out yesterday, did that change your thought process of what you maybe were expecting going into tomorrow. And with what you may see today, will that change how you approach tomorrow, as well?“No, that played out how I thought it was going to be. You know, a calm first-two stages and then pretty rough and aggressive at the end. That’s probably what will happen tomorrow. It’ll start slowly and everyone will sort of ramp up the aggressiveness. I think it played out how we thought it was going to.” You said it’s a very difficult track. What’s most difficult about it? “I think because there’s so much compromise. Each section of corners seems to have two or three. You know, very rarely that there’s one corner just on its own. They all lead into one another, so there’s a lot of compromise to try and set yourself up for that section. There was no one out there today who did a perfect lap.’ Tomorrow’s race is twice as long as the Truck race, and Trucks were two hours 48 minutes. Are you ready for that? Is there anything that you do differently or have to pace yourself for it if it is a four-hour affair on a road course?“I have the perfect sponsor with Red Bull.” Trackhouse did the picture with you and the whole team. Kevin (Magnussen) qualified 21st. Did you have a chance to really chat with him about practice yesterday and maybe his run?“Not really. This week is kind of a rare one that’s flat-out, so it’s been pretty separate. Thankfully, he did a little better today. I think he struggled a lot yesterday. It was a surprise for him how our cars handled and drove. I think it was pretty eye-opening for him. But, yeah, I’ll try and catch up with him after qualifying and hopefully he enjoyed it a little more.” When he came into the media center yesterday, I asked him, hey, is there any form of racing that you would be interested in maybe trying next and he didn’t really give any straight answers. But the first thing that people were saying in my comments Supercars. Would you like to see him behind the wheel of a Supercar?“Yeah, I’m sure he would have enjoyed it, especially the old cars. They were epic. You know, they were some of the best cars I’ve ever driven. So, yeah, I mean, anyone would want to drive those. They were really cool.” |
