MAVTV 500, Qualifying Report

The Verizon IndyCar Series is at Auto Club Speedway for this weekend’s MAVTV 500 and today saw two practice sessions and qualifying for the field of 23 cars. The day spent under the California sun sawMarco Andretti coming away with the top seat for Andretti, as well as Team Honda. Andretti sat P1 for most of the morning session and put in a solid qualifying effort to start third for tomorrow’s 500-mile race. Back-to-back Indy Lights winner at Auto Club Speedway (2012, 2013) Carlos Muñoz showed seventh in the morning practice session and will start 11th tomorrow. An improvement over the season’s previous oval events, Ryan Hunter-Reay, who clinched the 2012 Verizon IndyCar Series Championship at the two-mile track, will grid 14th after focusing most of the track time today on the race setup on the No. 28 machine.

Live TV coverage of the MAVTV 500 can be found on NBC Sports Network at 4 p.m. ET Saturday. For radio coverage, Verizon IndyCar Series races are broadcast live on network affiliates, Sirius 212, XM 209, IndyCar.com, indycarradio.com and on the INDYCAR 15 app. Stay up to date on all things Andretti via AndrettiAutosport.com and @FollowAndretti.

MARCO ANDRETTI
NO. 27 MERCHANT FIRST / SNAPPLE HONDA

“We’ll have a pretty clean view for the start here. I’m pretty excited about the race car; I’m thrilled with where we ended up in quals — but I think my race car is really solid, and thankfully we won’t have to come from the back. Just really proud of everybody, we’re really maximizing everything.”

CARLOS MUÑOZ
NO. 26 ANDRETTITV / CINSAY HONDA

“Qualifying was a bit disappointing. Anyways, qualifying is not where it counts, tomorrow – the race – is what counts. We’ll see where we are tomorrow; it’s a long race, 500 miles, and it’s going to be really hot. We’re starting 11th, so hopefully we’ll have a good car to push to the front.”

RYAN HUNTER-REAY
NO. 28 DHL HONDA

“It was a pretty good run in the No. 28 DHL car; we had to be a little conservative with it. We didn’t go working the qualifying stuff this morning, didn’t get a good read off it… It’s a 500-mile race, we just went at it kind of conservatively and we were the first amongst our teammates (Marco Andretti, Carlos Muñoz) again, so we gave them some feedback for their runs.”