CHEVROLET IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES
HONDA INDY 200
MID-OHIO SPORTS CAR COURSE
LEXINGTON, OHIO
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER POST QUALIFYING NOTES AND QUOTES
SCOTT DIXON, NO. 9 TARGET CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, POLE WINNER: “It’s the Target car! The Target car obviously has had strong runs here with 10 wins for Chip Ganassi and five with myself driving the No. 9. So it is a combination. Even that lap I messed up in (turns) 12 and two. There is definitely a bit of speed and we waved off the last lap as well and Will (Power) came pretty close so good thing we have a little buffer there.
“We are starting in the right position, but as we saw last year, anything can happen. We started 22nd and won from there with obviously a pretty big break in strategy. Team Target has done a heck of a job all weekend. The car rolled off fantastically. It is always great to be here at Mid-Ohio with so many fans. When the weather is just like this, turns four and five is packed already. It is fantastic to see.”
“We can’t really race for the championship right now. We have to race for wins. It is hard with that mind set when you get close. Even at Milwaukee and Iowa we were fairly good and we thought we had the two in the hole there and both of those races turned around and didn’t capture the points that we needed. I think we are 47 points back. There are still a lot of points to go. There are 200 and something points on the table. We’ve been strong all year, but we haven’t got the results that we wanted. We’ll see what we can do!
“The Verizon IndyCar Series is very, very strong. And Chevy, man, just keeps dominating. Big thanks to Chevy!
“It is always hard to know, you have to manage the tires and see how they wear, but the Firestones have been unbelievable this weekend as far as consistency and grip and everything. The second run I knew I hadn’t really had a clean run on the reds as far as getting a lap together. Even on that last lap there I messed up (turn) two pretty big and that last (turn 12). We were definitely up off on the last lap, so we just had to wave it off. I’m glad that we’ve had a ton of time and have a ton of speed in the Target car, but as we saw last year you can see how strategies can be and what teams try with us winning from the back.”
WILL POWER, NO. 1 VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 2ND: “(Scott) Dixon’s really good around here, but it would be nice to have a win. If everything falls our way, we can definitely win. No question we need to for the championship. That’s our goal.”
SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS, NO. 11 TEAM HYDROYCUT – KVSH RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 3RD:
“A good day for the Hydroxycut team, but not good enough to get Dixie (Scott Dixon) and Will (Power). I was a little surprised at the gap. I don’t understand how they can pull stronger laps in the Firestone Fast Six, but it is what it is. We just have to keep digging. I think we made a huge improvement on the Firestone red (alternate) tires, which is very satisfying. If you are going to have a good race at Mid-Ohio you are going to have to be strong on the reds. Starting third we are in the running to win tomorrow. Chevy has given us reliable power and if things pan out right, the car is very strong on the black (primary) tires, so we can make it happen.”
HELIO CASTRONEVES, NO. 3 HITACHI TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 4TH: “As you have seen over the weekend, we were never able to get a clear lap, which actually was good. It kind of held us a little bit back, but in the end of the day it was a great effort from my engineer, Jonathan Diuguid. He was on it and cool and relaxed. When you have the people around you with that kind of coolness, it just makes you better. For me, it was perfect to put down good two laps there. It was tough, very tough, but we’re going to get ready for tomorrow and have a good result. I have no doubt it’s going to be another tough race, not only mentally but especially physically because we’re going pretty fast out there.”
JOSEF NEWGARDEN, NO. 67 HARTMAN OIL CFH RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 5TH: “We’re doing a good job executing. We might not have had the ultimate speed today, I definitely did not have (Scott) Dixon’s speed. We were maybe a little better, third quick may have been possible. We had another tenth or two in it, I just didn’t get it out of it. Dixon’s lap was out of reach for us. We’re there, we’re in that top group. We make sure to execute very well every weekend, we find ourselves in the top five pr top six and we do a good job on race day. That’s really all we are doing, we’re just trying to be there and capitalize on good opportunities.”
CHARLIE KIMBALL, NO. 83 NOVOLONG FLEXPEN CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 6TH: “The No. 83 NovoLog FlexPen Chevrolet was just fast today. The team worked really hard to consistently make the car better after each session we had this weekend. It obviously doesn’t hurt to have Dixon to learn from here at Mid-Ohio. He’s so good here and his data has been really helpful. It’s nice to see a couple of Chip Ganassi Racing Teams’ cars up front in the top 10.”
TONY KANAAN, NO. 10 NTT DATA CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 8TH: “I think we had a really fast car today for qualifying – we just weren’t able to make it into the top six. The competition was so tight and everyone was putting up such close lap times that even a little bit of understeer was enough to keep us out of the final round of quals. We’ll just have to make sure we have the right strategy in place and hope we can move up through the field early.”
LUCA FILIPPI, NO. 20 FUZZY’S VODKA CFH RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 9TH: “We knew qualifying was going to be very, very close. It was very important to do everything correctly, which we did in Round 1. In the very last lap of the Top 12, I was on a lap that could have been good enough for the Firestone Fast 6, but I made a small mistake. In this very tight field, that mistake ended up costing us the opportunity to advance. We were fast and it’s good to have both cars in the Top 10. We have a lot of potential for tomorrow.”
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, NO. 2 HAWKI PERFORMANCE TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 10TH: “To be honest with you it’s taken a lot of hard work by everyone on the Verizon Chevy team to get to where we are. We had a problem with the engine yesterday and lost almost an entire practice session. Since then we have just been behind. We’ve been trying to catch up and we improved a lot this morning. We were seventh in the morning session and qualified 10th. I just had a too much understeer in the first round and we didn’t adjust enough in the second round.”
SIMON PAGENAUD, NO. 22 PPG AUTOMOTIVE REFINISH TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 15TH: “It’s been a rough day for PPG Automotive Refinish Chevy. Now it’s all back to normal. We had some technical issues yesterday and especially today in practice as we didn’t run any laps because of that. Unfortunately, we lost a lot of valuable track time. But quite frankly I am satisfied with my performance in qualifying, but I just needed a little more time to find the limit of the new aero kits. That’s what cost us today. We are starting P15 which is interesting because there’s a lot of strategy that we could do and maybe our luck could around come tomorrow’s race.”
STEFANO COLETTI, NO. 4 KV RACING TECHNOLOGY CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 18TH: “I am disappointed about qualifying today. I had a good car and we had the possibility to advance to the next round. Unfortunately I made a mistake on the final lap, which would have put me P4 in the group. I have to thank my crew and Chevy for giving me a good car and will now focus on the race tomorrow and see what we can do!”
SAGE KARAM, NO. 8 COMFORT REVOLUTION/BIG MACHINE RECORDS CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 19TH: “It wasn’t the way we wanted qualifying to go for the No. 8 team. It was a tough session and the COMFORT REVOLUTION/Big Machine Records car was fast overall. I got blocked a few times and tried to recover to get a good lap in to advance, but I went off in the end and couldn’t put it together unfortunately
