CHEVY INDYCAR AT INDIANAPOLIS 500: Carb Day Recap – Castroneves Quickest in Practice; Power Wins Pit Stop Competition

CHEVROLET RACING IN THE VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES

101ST RUNNING OF THE INDIANAPOLIS 500

INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY

TEAM CHEVY CARB DAY RECAP

MAY 26, 2017

Helio Castroneves recorded the quickest lap during “Carb Day” practice as 15 Chevrolet drivers made final on-track preparations to their race cars for the 101st Indianapolis 500.

Castroneves, driving the No. 3 Shell Fuel Rewards Team Penske Chevrolet, posted a lap of 227.377 mph/39.5819 seconds on the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval to top the speed chart of the 33 drivers that logged a total of 960 laps during the one-hour session.

Josef Newgarden, No. 2 hum by Verizon team Penske Chevrolet, and two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Juan Pablo Montoya, No. 22 Fitzgerald Glider Kits Team Penske Chevrolet, also were in the top 10.

Castroneves is seeking to capture his record-tying fourth Indianapolis 500 victory and first since 2009. He will start from the 19th position for the 200-lap race that will be telecast by ABC at noon ET Sunday.

“I think today it was just a great way to finish practice like this, show that we have a good car, a good-balanced car, and we’re going for the big one on Sunday,” Castroneves said.

Verizon IndyCar Series team owner/driver Ed Carpenter, driving the No. 20 Fuzzy’s Vodka Chevrolet, will lead Team Chevy drivers to the green flag of the 500 Mile Race from the middle of the front row.

Will Power and his Team Penske crew on the No. 12 Verizon Chevrolet won the Tag Heuer Pit Stop Competition. It is the 17th win for Team Penske.

 

SELECTED TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTES:

CONOR DALY, NO. 4 ABC SUPPLY AJ FOYT RACING CHEVROLET: “Probably our best day on track so far. The car was really good, really stable in traffic. Had a lap going that probably would have put us P1 but we just caught the cars too fast in front of us in Turn 4, so I’m really happy with the car going into the race for sure.”

SAGE KARAM, NO. 24 DRR MECUM AUCTIONS CHEVROLET: “Good practice week. Good month overall so far. It’s good going into the race with no damages or crashes in the month. That’s a big plus. I’m feeling good about the car. It feels the same as it did when we unloaded, so that’s good. Practice felt good today. For some reason, I had less grip than usual. I’m not sure if it’s because of the rain or the tire wear from the Indy Lights cars. A lot of people seemed to struggle with that today as well. But I’m looking forward to Sunday.”

ED CARPENTER, NO. 20 FUZZY’S VODKA ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET): “It was a typical Carb Day for us, it’s a one-hour session so it’s hard to get much done. It’s easier to mess things up then anything, but I still feel good about the car – there are always things here or there that could be better. Last Monday’s practice, I felt like we were race ready and I still feel that way. We just need things to fall our way and be the type of race we need it to be to have a successful day come Sunday.”

JR HILDEBRAND, NO. 21 PERFERRED FREEZER SERVICES ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET): “Today, we are trying to make some little improvements on what you already have. With a whole week of practice and then a few days off, there are always going to be things that linger and you think about the things that could be a little different. Carb Day is the final chance to feel out how you feel about where you stack up with the cars you think will be around. It was hectic and crazy how it usually is, but we feel pretty good and we are looking forward to race day, where we know anything can happen then.”

CARLOS MUNOZ, NO. 14 ABC SUPPLY AJ FOYT RACING CHEVROLET: ““I’m really happy with the car today, but it’s Indy, you know so one day you feel really good and the next day may not be as good. Hopefully the car stays for us in the race. I’m really happy with my car. I think we made a lot of changes compared to Monday when I wasn’t happy with the car. The feeling of the car was great – my engineers Will and Danieli worked really good. We made some good changes so hopefully we stay like this on Sunday. We just need a little bit more speed, but my sensation is good from Carb Day so we’ll see how we go for the race.”

GABBY CHAVES, NO. 88 HARDING RACING CHEVROLET: “That was our last practice before the Indy 500. The No. 88 Harding Racing car felt okay, there are definitely things that we can improve upon. Now we just sit down and figure out what we can do to put together a winning car for the race.”

ZACH VEACH, NO. 40 INDY WOMEN IN TECH CHAMPIONSHIP AJ FOYT RACING CHEVROLET: “Wow, that was our last practice session before race day. These last couple weeks have gone by insanely fast. I think that was our best session yet-just focusing on our race car. We finally got everything pretty much covered from our incident last Friday. We just made a lot of progress and I think we have a really good starting point moving forward for the race. That will continue to change as we getting later into the race. We will continue making adjustments every stop. I think we have a great starting point and a great race car. We’ll just have to make a few minor tweaks from here on out.”

SPENCER PIGOT, NO. 11 JUNCOS RACING CHEVROLET: “We’re still looking for some speed. We need to keep working on the balance and trying to get it just right in traffic which is very difficult, but I think we made a little bit of progress today.  Obviously, we have more to go so we’ll be studying a lot over the next few days and try to make some good changes for the race. As far as expectations for the race, we just want to hopefully start marching our way up the field a little bit. We want to finish the race and hopefully the last 30 laps we can find ourselves somewhere around the top 10. We’ll see what we have.”

BUDDY LAZIER, NO. 44 LAZIER RACING CHEVROLET: “We have a good race car given we started on Friday and only had about 30 laps going into qualifying. We are happy with where we are but I think we are a lot faster than the time we posted. We were able to do a lot of work today on the no. 44 Chevy and I think we’ll be good. During that run, I had to be a little cautious running behind guys because I had an issue with my brakes. Other than that, I think we are pretty damn good actually.”

SEBASTIAN SAAVEDRA, NO. 17 AFS/JUNCOS RACING CHEVROLET: “The No. 17 AFS/Juncos Racing car feels like it took a little bit to get back to where we were Tuesday. I don’t know what happened these last four days. However, we ended the session in a very positive way and getting back to a very comfortable stage. We shall see what’s going to happen Sunday of course. The weather is going to change on us, but so far I feel very good with traffic and there’s going to be plenty of that throughout the race. We’re just going to continue looking through the data from today and go from there.”