Detroit Grand Prix: Dual 1
James Hinchcliffe
No. 5 Arrow Electronics Schmidt Peterson Motorsports Honda
“That one was on me… pretty disappointing result. We got hosed in qualifying by a slow car – just a wrong place, wrong time sort of thing – so we started behind where we should have. We had kind of committed to an alternate strategy, the three-stopper. Unfortunately on that first stop, I just had a pit lane violation – 100% on me. Very frustrating, because after that, the Arrow Electronics car was really good – we were taking a lot of time out of the guys on the two-stop strategy. Then that yellow sort of closed it up, but the race had gone yellow free for so long, I used a lot of push-to-pass trying to get around guys and get that open track we needed. I was kind of a sitting duck on those restarts, didn’t have much to play with. Really disappointed in myself with the pit lane violation. The SPM guys deserve better, they were great on pit lane as always. The car is quick and we get a chance to try and qualify where we belong tomorrow, and hopefully race up front.”
Robert Wickens
No. 6 Lucas Oil Schmidt Peterson Motorsports/AFS Racing Honda
“Honestly it was a tough day… I felt that we had a great car. For sure there are some areas we need to work on, but we fell off massively on the reds [Firestone alternate tires] out of nowhere. We had to commit to the three-stop strategy pretty early on and then we lost track position, and it was kind of a battle from there. We were able to climb back up to eighth, but I think we could have gotten the Lucas Oil car up in the top five. The good thing is we have another shot at just that tomorrow.”