CHEVY INDYCAR AT THE GLEN: Team Chevy Driver Post Qualifying Quotes

CHEVROLET RACING IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES

GRAND PRIX AT THE GLEN

WATKINS GLEN INTERNATIONAL

TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUALIFYING QUOTES

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 3, 2016

 

SCOTT DIXON, NO. 9 TARGET CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, POLE WINNER: 

 

ON HIS QUALIFYING EFFORT: “I’ve got to thank the whole Target crew, the car rolled off extremely fast. We’ve been at the top of the time sheets, at least a good percentage of them this weekend. We’ve had a bit of a rough year, so it is nice to come back here and perform like this. Tomorrow is going to be a heck of a race. Hopefully we can keep this No. 9 Target Chevrolet up front.”

 

ON ALMOST NOT TRANSFERRING TO FIRESTONE FAST SIX: “I made a couple of mistakes and we had a bit of a miss-shift thing going on especially on the backstretch. That last lap there I had actually lost three tenths. The speed was kind of there but it didn’t hang on as well as we would have hoped.  With these cool conditions, we thought the reds were going to be good.  Just happy we scraped through on that one. There was definitely a lot of chaos during qualifying with people getting pulled back out of the group that they had transferred into.

 

“It was hairy man. It was definitely one of those sessions, and seems like we’ve had that a little bit this year. We had that in Toronto as well in group one and two.  Group two was a nail biter for us. We had a bit of a miss-shift going on out of one and lost about three tenths on the back straight and I thought we were really going to miss it.  It was a crazy session for all with people getting tossed out and stuff. I can’t say thank you enough to Team Target, Verizon, everybody in this series. It has been a great weekend so far. Thank you to everybody at The Glen for having us back. And everyone in IndyCar made this happen. I hope we can comeback many more times.”

 

WILL POWER, NO. 12 VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 2ND:  “It’s very important to start up front, definitely, considering the championship situation. I felt pretty comfortable around here. Really enjoy the track. Obviously I was really grateful to get in the Fast Six there and have a shot at it. On the last lap, I had anissue that definitely cost us some time, but starting on the front row is definitely better than where we were.”

 

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS, NO. 11 TEAM HYDROXYCUT – KVSH RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 3RD: “It was a pretty exciting session for the Hydroxycut – KVSH Racing Team. It started off about as bad as it could. It was the bad red surprise, which is becoming annoyingly familiar for us unfortunately. It is always the same process. You set your car up with what you’re given, which is the black (primary) Firestone tires and they’re great. We can always make them work. Then for qualifying you get the “candy surprise” (the red alternate tires). We can’t extract any performance out of them. We just get movement, understeer, it disconnects the car…it’s a mess. So, I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow in the race, to be honest, but for sure the Hydroxycut/Chevy machine is quick on black tires. It’s too bad we didn’t put the car on pole, but my bad. I made a mistake and then ran out of gas because we did an extra lap which was not accounted for. So it is what it is. Nevertheless, when you are close to Scott (Dixon) and Will (Power) at these kind of tracks you know you’ve done a good job. It’s our best qualifying position of the season, so we’ll take it.”

 

HELIO CASTRONEVES, NO. 3 HITACHI TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 4TH:  Well, good car, good team. Obviously everyone in our team share a lot of information we’re able to collect and able to put it together. It was great with this situation about the red tires and the black tires. It’s always interesting, and, well, at the least we’re able to do good lap times on the reds, and sounds like the blacks were the way to go. Sometimes when you were — just got to take a chance, and our group decided to go with the reds, and that’s the best we could do.

 

TONY KANAAN, NO. 10 NTT DATA CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 5TH“Great effort by the team today – three cars in the Firestone Fast Six isn’t bad at all. With how competitive the series is this year, getting up front in qualifying definitely isn’t an easy task. We split the strategy a little bit in the last round. We went out on scuffed reds and the other two Ganassi cars went on blacks. It didn’t pay off quite as well as we would’ve liked, but we’re happy with the No. 10 NTT DATA being up front in the top five.”

 

MAX CHILTON, NO. 8 GALLAGHER CHIP GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 6TH:  “I’m over the moon for Gallagher Chip Ganassi Racing with a Firestone Fast 6 start. I qualified a bit better in Iowa, but this is my first appearance in the Firestone Fast 6. I’d say I had to put a lot more effort into this qualifying effort than I did Iowa though with how physical of a circuit this is. It’s literally pushing as hard as you can from green flag to checkered flag. I’m just really proud of the team and happy with our result.”

 

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, NO. 2 PPG AUTOMOTIVE REFINISH TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 8TH:  “We missed by a little bit, but the PPG Automotive Refinish Chevy has been good all weekend so far. All of the cars are so close and the margin for error is really small. The conditions for the race should be great tomorrowand we’re looking forward to it.”

 

SIMON PAGENAUD, NO. 22 HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 7TH: “The Hewlett Packard Enterprise Chevy has consistently picked up speed and we’re really happy with it. We missed the Fast Six by just a little, but that’s how competitive the Verizon IndyCar Series is. If everything is not practically perfect, then someone else will be a little faster. I like our prospects for the race tomorrow, though. We’re in good shape.”

 

JOSEF NEWGARDEN, NO. 21 FUZZY’S ULTRA PREMIUM VODKA CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 12TH: “We have the best in the business here – great cars and great mechanics. I’m really grateful for the work the Fuzzy’s Vodka guys for getting us back out after this morning. In qualifying, we just struggled. Everyone’s kind of scratching their heads a little bit, it might be a temperature thing but the black tires seem to be more favorable now. It was tough in the first run, we made it by the skin of our teeth which was good. We were hoping we could have made the Fast 6 but it just didn’t happen.”

 

CHARLIE KIMBALL, NO. 83 TRESIBA CHI14TH: P GANASSI RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 14TH: “I’m really disappointed with how our qualifying ended today. The No. 83 Tresiba® Chevrolet was really fast, but that red flag on our fast lap really messed up our chances to move on. That lap was shaping up to be a pretty good one and I’m just upset we weren’t able to finish it. I feel really bad for the 83 guys – they gave me such a good car this weekend and we didn’t get a chance to show what it could do. The silver lining is that we’ll have an extra set of tires that some of the faster guys won’t have, but we’ll definitely have our work cut out for us. I’m confident that the car will be fast again tomorrow and we can move through the field quickly.”

 

SPENCER PIGOT, NO. 2O SAMSUNG ED CAPRENTER RACING CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 21ST:  “The day started off really well. I thought third practice was the best session we’ve had. We were really close to the front and the car was feeling really good. This afternoon in qualifying, we put the reds on and it was a little trickier. I made a pretty big mistake on my clean lap at the end of the session and never got a chance to put one together. It’s unfortunate, the guys gave me a great car. I know we’re fast, but a mistake prevented us from showing that in qualifying.”