CHEVROLET RACING NTT INDYCAR SERIES
INDIANAPOLIS 500
INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEEDWAY
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA
TEAM CHEVY PRACTICE DAY TWO RECAP WITH DRIVER QUOTES
AUGUST 13, 2020
INDIANAPOLIS

INDIANAPOLIS – Day two of practice for the 104th running of the Indianapolis 500 has been competed as the 17 Chevy powered cars worked on their race asetups. With Fast Friday next on the schedule, the focus will turn to qualifying as the boost is upped to the level utilized on Saturday and Sunday qualifying to set the starting line-up.

Unfortunately, there was one on-track single car incident. Fernando Alonso made contact with the wall with less that two hours left in practice. The team will have a car prepped and ready to go on Friday for the two-time Formula One champion. Until the incident, Alonso was the fastest Chevy for the second consecutive day.

Practice continues from 11 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Friday for all drivers, with live coverage on INDYCAR Pass on NBC Sports Gold. Cars will receive increased turbocharger boost – generating extra horsepower and higher speeds – on “Fast Friday” practice in preparation for Crown Armed Forces Qualifying Weekend on Saturday and Sunday, which will set the field for the race Sunday, Aug. 23.

DRIVER QUOTES:
NO. 1 JOSEF NEWGARDEN, SHELL V-POWER TEAM PENSKE” CHEVROLET:
“”It was another good day. No drama, which is good. This place is all about keeping up with the schedule. It is very easy to get lost running so many miles, so many sets of tires. The Shell car is pretty fast. Team Chevy has done a great job for us o far. I am excited to turn up the boost tomorrow. To see how fast we can go. That’s where we have to shift our focus. These first two days were about the race. Tomorrow is about qualifying. We will see how we are there.”

NO. 3 HELLIO CASTRONEVES, PENNZOIL TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET:
“It was another great day of developing the No. 3 Pennzoil Chevy. We worked again on the race setup and running a bit more in traffic. We feel great. We feel really strong. We know tomorrow there’s going to be a lot more horsepower and so we will turn our focus to that so when we get to Saturday we are ready.”

NO. 4 CHARLIE KIMBALL, TRESIBA AJ FOYT RACING CHEVROLET:
“Solid day of work here at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I think we still have some things to work on on the race car as well as getting ready for qualifying. Tomorrow we get more horsepower, more boost and get ready for Fast Friday and qualifying, but the first two days have gone really well. Really pleased with the Tresiba Chevy crew for AJ Foyt Racing. These guys have done a great job preparing the car and continuing to keep it up to spec, so I feel really positive going into the weekend as well as next weekend.”

NO. 5 PATO O’WARD, ARROW MCLAREN SP CHEVROLET:
“I think today we made some really good strides. We’ve been really working on the race car, and we have made some very good, positive improvements. I think it was a good day knowledge-wise for me and setup-development for race day. Tomorrow is Fast Friday, so time to turn up the engines and see how fast Arrow McLaren SP and Team Chevy can go.”

NO. 7 OLIVER ASKEW, ARROW MCLAREN SP CHEVROLET:
“We are still building up to it. We ended up top 10 on the timing board, but that doesn’t really mean anything to us. Those are just tow laps that people get. The most important thing is that the car feels good in traffic. I think we have a good baseline now. I’m looking forward to qualifying trim tomorrow, the extra boost. We are completely in qualifying mode now. We can look back on the experience today when we put the race setup back on Sunday afternoon. Ultimately on Friday, I think it is a really important day to put finishing touches on the car. I’m very confident that Arrow McLaren SP and everyone on the engineering staff is going to look at all the data and make sure we have the best possible package on race day.”

NO. 12 WILL POWER , VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET:
“We went through a few different philosphies and changes. I think we’re in a good spot. I look forward to getting out there tomorrow and seeing how we are speed-wise for qualifying to see where we stack up. We’re going to run qualifying runs tomorrow for the Verizon 5G Edge Chevy and will just keep working at it to find more speed.”

NO. 14 TONY KANAAN, ABC SUPPLY AJ FOYT RACING CHEVROLET:
“It was a good day. I mean we were trying to find the perfect balance for the perfect race car which – finding perfection – it’s tough sometimes, so we made big changes. Changes that take an hour, an hour and a half to go back and forth and if they go right, it’s good but if they go wrong, you don’t have time to go back and it’s one of those days. But I was pretty pleased with our basic setup. We’re just trying to reach the next level so that’s in the books now. We’re going concentrate for qualifying tomorrow and Saturday then we’ll go back and revisit on Sunday. SO now it’s turning on to qualifying mode and see what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

NO. 20 ED CARPENTER, U.S. SPACE FORCE ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET:
“All in all, it was a much better day than yesterday! It was one of those day where you almost need to ignore the speed charts when everyone is getting a big tow to put up a number. We made a lot of progress on race running with how I feel in traffic and doing long runs. That was productive. Still not totally sure what speed we have in the U.S. Space Force Chevrolet, but we’ll sort that out tomorrow! There’s room for improvement, but overall I’m pleased with the progress from yesterday to today. We’re heading in the right direction!”

NO. 21 RINUS VEEKAY, SONAX ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET:
“We had a really good second day of practice! We got in a lot of real traffic running before Fast Friday. I’m looking forward to that! Extra power! The SONAX Chevy felt really good. Yesterday, I was fast on my own but struggled a little bit in traffic. Today, we ended the day on a high. It felt amazing. I could really pass people and move my way through the pack. The ECR team made incredible progress. We’re strong, we’ll see how tomorrow goes!”

NO. 22 SIMON PAGENAUD, MENARDS TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET:
“It was a great day. We went through a roller coaster of emotions when we couldn’t get the balance the way we wanted. We reset ourselves to where we were happy and then made a slight adjustment with it and I am extremely happy now. We had a great run in traffic – a good run and it feels like it should feel. So I am very excited for race day. I know other people will catch up, but we are ahead of the program right now. That is a big positive. I am super happy to represent the team well with the equipment I have. That is where I wanted to be today.”

NO. 24 SAGE KARAM, WIX FILTERS DRYER REINBOLD RACING CHEVROLET:
“We tried some changes overnight and some things worked but others didn’t. We had a good car Wednesday when we finished up. And we went back to those settings in the middle of the day. And then made more changes in the right direction. The WIX Filters Chevy felt good at the end today. We didn’t get to do everything we wanted to today, but the car felt strong on that last run. We weren’t concerned about lap times today. We didn’t get in big drafts, just got comfortable in the race car. On Friday, we’ll crank in more boost and power for qualifying. It will be interesting on Friday with the extra horsepower. Fast Friday is a day that a lot of the drivers aren’t too sure about with their cars. Since we started today with certain settings, we didn’t get to complete all of the changes we wanted. We’ll probably work on those changes on Friday morning and then move onto qualifying setups. Overall, I’m happy with the direction of the race car.”

NO.41 DALTON KELLETT, K-LINE USA AJ FOYT RACING CHEVROLET:
“We had a great day working on our race setup. We’ve just been chipping away slowly at how we want the balance and downforce level to be for race running. At the end we did a couple long runs and keeping with the pack. The car feels pretty racy, feels pretty quick. I think across the three teams everyone’s pretty happy so all in all I’m pleased with how the day went. We didn’t do any qualifying runs, we’re saving that for tomorrow so we’ll have to see how it goes when we crank up the boost and trim things out tomorrow. It’s going to be exciting. Looking forward to my first Fast Friday!”

NO. 47 CONOR DALY,U.S. AIR FORCE ED CARPENTER RACING CHEEVROLET:
“Today was another step forward for us. Cole (Pearn, engineer) and I are figuring out what I need and what he wants to do. We’re definitely close to where we want to be, but that becomes a difficult area to work in. Cole doesn’t have the experience yet and I really don’t have the experience to know exactly what we need. We’re trying to mess around with some things and figure out what we can do next to make it even better. I like where the U.S. Air Force Chevy is at. It’s fast. We don’t want to out-engineer ourselves, we’re going to keep our heads on straight and keep on trucking.”

NO. 59 MAX CHILTON,GALLAGHER CARLIN CHEVROLET:
“We started out our second day of testing for the Indianapolis 500 fairly strong. We were one of the first cars out on track when practice opened this morning and we had some really solid no-tow times, but we had an engine issue after about an hour of running that greatly reduced our time on track. We went back to the garage and had to change the engine, but the guys did a great job getting the No. 59 Gallagher Carlin Chevrolet back out this afternoon before the session ended. Even with the issues today, the car felt really good when we went back out at the end of the day and I’m actually feeling pretty good about where we are heading into Fast Friday.”

NO. 66 FERNANDO ALONSO, RUOFF ARROW MCLAREN SP CHEVROLET:
ALONSO WAS INVOLVED IN A SINGLE CAR INCIDENT LATE IN PRACTICE: “We just lost the grip of the car and at this place, the walls are very close. Just the way it is, unfortunately it happened again today. Hopefully it just happens today and not on Sunday, August 23. You learn every lap you do around this track and we will learn from this one. Hopefully tomorrow we can start again. It has been going okay, more or less, so far this week so hopefully we can keep it up the good work and have no more issues. I didn’t check but it shouldn’t be too bad. I will rely on the Arrow McLaren SP team and we will be fine.”

NO. 67 JR HILDEBRAND, SALESFORCE DRYER REINBOLD RACING CHEVROLET:
“There was a lot of stuff for us to get through in just one day. We might check back in on a couple of things in the morning before moving towards our qualifying setups. Additional added turbo boost will throw some wrinkles in the items for Friday. I think if the conditions are good, cooler, I think the speeds will be really high. The weather looks a little dodgy for Friday. All in all, I feel really good about the way the guys have the car going. It’s not easy with our little two-car draft compared to Andretti with six or seven cars together. But we knew we needed to be smart today with the proper things we worked on. We know we have a little bit more to work on and there were not many cars that could drive around people today. That might be the expectation for the race too. The strategies might be go fast early on a stint and then hold on or take a consistent run through a whole stint. I’m not sure how you handle it right now. With the August heat conditions, the new aeroscreen and the new Firestone compounds, there are a lot of variables right now. But we’ll learn more throughout the weekend. I feel pretty good right now with the race settings.”

NO. 81 BEN HANLEY,DRAGON SPEED USA CHEVROLET