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Chevrolet completes Indy 500 qualifying

Team Chevy Racing

Sébastien Bourdais, Dragon Racing

Sébastien Bourdais, Dragon Racing

Michael C. Johnson

The 33-car field is set for the 96th running of the Indianapolis 500. There will be 16 Chevrolet IndyCar V-6 powered cars in the field for the famed race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Sébastien Bourdais, Dragon Racing
Sébastien Bourdais, Dragon Racing

Photo by: Michael C. Johnson

The final four Team Chevy drivers completed their qualifying runs to solidify their staring positions for the Sunday, May 27 race. Sebastien Bourdais was the quickest of the nine cars that completed the qualifying procedure on what traditionally has been called Bump Day.

Oriol Servia, Ed Carpenter and Katherine Legge were the remaining drivers to secure their spots on the grid.

The remainder of the afternoon, all 33 teams and drivers worked on the race setup under warm and muggy conditions. Remarkably, there has been no rain throughout the 11 days that started with the Rookie Orientation Program moved to practice for all entrants and qualifying. There were no on-track incidents.

The on-track action for the IZOD IndyCar Series will resume on Friday, May 25, for the final round of practice prior to the race.

The 96th running of the Indianapolis 500 on May 27 will be broadcast live on ABC beginning at 12:00 p.m. (ET) (tape delayed at 7:00 p.m. ET in Indianapolis).

DRIVER QUOTES:

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS, NO. 7 DRAGON RACING CHEVROLET – QUALIFIED 25TH: “The run was good; I just wish it had been yesterday and we’d be quite a bit higher up on the grid. We haven’t really changed the car at all. The balance has been good. The speed varied a lot from Saturday, and we can’t quite figure out why. I’m just happy that the TrueCar-MacAfee entry is in the show. I’m glad to be with Chevrolet and looking forward to the rest of the season.”

ORIOL SERVIA, NO. 22 PANTHER/DREYER & REINBOLD RACING CHEVROLET – QUALIFIED 27TH: “We just wanted to make sure we had a solid effort to get it into the race. Obviously, to win the race, you have to be in it first. We wanted to accomplish that. Now we just work on the race car. This race, especially, has been on from the back many times. If you have a good car, you can definitely go forward. So that’s what we’re going to focus on. To win this thing, a lot of things have to go your way, no matter if you start in the front of the back. Probably more than any other race, the guy that’s on the pole doesn’t win it. We would prefer to start on the front row like we did last year. It makes your race a lot easier, especially the first half. But we’re foinng to make it interesting. We’re going to start at the back on move forward.”

ED CARPENTER, NO. 20 FUZZY’S PREMIUM ULTRA VODKA ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET – QUALIFIED 28TH: “This Fuzzy’s team did a great job getting this 20T car together for today. So I am happy were are in the race and we can work on our race setup now. We went a little consecutive with the qualifying run, just so we can get in the show. The whole crew just put their heads down began preparing the back up at around 4 p.m. Saturday. No complaining. Just a bunch of professional guys. I’m really, really proud of them. We found some things last night that were hampering us. The whole month just didn’t go as we had scripted it. I think I have been lucky for the last few years here with first day qualifying. I guess this year it was our tough one. I remember Ryan Hunter Reay was my teammate a few years back he barely made it, then last year he had to get in after qualifying but this year he is on the front row. So it goes in cycles. Things can change in a hurry here. But one thing that doesn’t change is my confidence. I think we can get a good race setup and be in the thick of things by the end of the race. We have had good race cars recently too. I know we have a good crew and we’ll work hard to have a solid car next Sunday.”

KATHERINE LEGGE, NO. 6 TRUECAR-DRAGON RACING CHEVROLET – QUALIFED 30TH: “It’s definitely a massive relief after the week or two that we’ve had. We basically qualified our race car. We haven’t had time on track to work on qualifying setup or anything like that, so we needed to find a car that was easy to drive at this stage. I am a rookie, and the team did a good job of giving me a very solid, very stable race car. I’m pretty sure that it’s pretty close to the car we will race. I finished my rookie orientation on Fast Friday, and we haven’t had any real testing time, so it’s been difficult. But, we’re here, and we’ve made the best of it. As my engineer would say, there are no ifs in racing.”

RYAN BRISCOE, NO. 2 IZOD TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET: ON PRACTICE: "We did a few race runs in the IZOD car today - a bit of fine tuning on our race set-up. It was hot and slick out there today. We feel pretty good about where we are at as we were able to do a long run with Rahal (Graham) and we banked some good data there. We have a good idea where we sit and are looking forward to the race."

WILL POWER, NO. 12 VERIZON TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET: ON PRACTICE: "We ran a lot of laps today, and the Verizon car was good. We worked on our race set-up experimented with down-force levels and we feel pretty good about what we have. It was good out there today as running in traffic especially with the various people that we will be racing with come next Sunday. Overall it was good - we feel like we know what we have and what we will need in the race."

HELIO CASTRONEVES, NO. 3 SHELL V-POWER/PENNZOIL ULTRA TEAM PENSKE CHEVROLET: ON PRACTICE: "Today was a good day, we were able to practice in traffic. I think today, if not yesterday was the hottest day we have had and it was perfect conditions to practice for the race and the Shell Pennzoil Ultra car is very, very strong, I'm very happy. I know the car very well and for me that's the best car I can have."

RYAN HUNTER-REAY, NO. 28 TEAM DHL/SUN DROP CITRUS SODA ANDRETTI AUTOSPORT CHEVROLET: ON PRACTICE: "We're pretty good. It was trickier today with the heat. It makes it slick and everybody was doing a lot more sliding around. The good news is I could set-up anyone for a pass. We need to look at all the data - and all of the data from our teammates - and find the best combination of everything. You don't want too much downforce or you'll be slow in the straights, but if you don't have enough you might struggle in the turns. But Indy is like that- it's always a compromise. We tried a lot of things and it's beneficial to work with so many teammates. We've all shared a lot this month."

MARCO ANDRETTI, NO. 26 TEAM RC COLA ANDRETTI AUTOSPORT CHEVROLET: ON PRACTICE: "It was a lotta fun. We're pretty dialed-in, and I think this is one of the best shots I've ever had to win this race. The teamwork has been great. It's hard to stage those kind of runs with three to five cars, but we were able to do it (with five Andretti Autosport entries). Overall, the team did a great job and we're confident for the 500."

JAMES HINCHCLIFFE, NO. 27 TEAM GODADDY.COM ANDRETTI AUTOSPORT CHEVROLET: ON PRACTICE: “Obviously today was back to the race setup program and unfortunately we hit the track a little bit late and didn’t get near the running we would have liked. We were doing race simulations earlier in the week as well, but the track has changed so much – there’s a little bit more rubber on it now and the conditions are quite a bit hotter than they were on Wednesday which was the last time we were doing this sort of work. Definitely not as good of a car as we put away on Wednesday night, but we definitely made some progress and we just need to look at data over the next couple of days. We have a couple of days off now to just sort of sift through it all and try to get the right (setup) on the car for Carb Day.”

ANA BEATRIZ, NO. 25 TEAM IPIRANGA ANDRETTI AUTOSPORT / CONQUEST RACING CHEVROLET: ON PRACTICE: “We had some issues with the 25 car today; something wasn’t working right so we just checked it out today so we can fix it before Carb Day. Unfortunately, we ran out of track time and didn’t get to do race simulations with my teammates – but luckily they got the experience today and have something to tell us… and maybe we can get something here and there and be more prepared for Friday. Actually, I’m glad this happened today so we have time this week before the race to sort it out and have the Ipiranga Andretti / Conquest car ready to do our best on Race Day.”

TONY KANAAN, NO. 11 ITAIPAVA | GEICO | MOUSER ELECTRONICS – KV RACING TECHNOLOGY CHEVROLET: ON PRACTICE: “We spent today setting the car up for the race. I was able to do a lot of running in traffic and see how the car felt so overall it was a good day.”

RUBENS BARRICHELLO, NO. 8 BMC | EMBRASE – KV RACING TECHNOLOGY CHEVROLET: ON PRACTICE: “I spent today working on how the car would feel in traffic. There were a lot of cars on track and I am still trying to get used to how that feels. The race will be extremely busy so it was nice to be able to practice in that situation.”

E .J. VISO, NO. 5 CITGO | PDVSA – KV RACING TECHNOLOGY CHEVROLET: ON PRACTICE: “Today, after having a very satisfying qualifying, we worked on race setup. We had plenty of things we needed to adjust and now we believe we are in a more comfortable position to race.”

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