IndyCar Road America

Qualifying report

Road America IndyCar: Fast 6 quotes after qualifying

Helio Castroneves reaches elite level with 50th career pole position

Jun 24, 2017, 11:41 PM

Upd: Jun 25, 2017, 1:32 AM

Polesitter Helio Castroneves, Team Penske Chevrolet celebrates his 50th pole position with the P1 flag

Polesitter Helio Castroneves, Team Penske Chevrolet celebrates his 50th pole position

Polesitter Helio Castroneves, Team Penske Chevrolet celebrates his 50th pole position with Steven Williams of Verizon

Will Power, Team Penske Chevrolet

Josef Newgarden, Team Penske Chevrolet

Simon Pagenaud, Team Penske Chevrolet

Scott Dixon, Chip Ganassi Racing Honda

Graham Rahal, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda

Graham Rahal, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda

Cla	#	Driver	Laps	Time	Gap	Interval	Mph
1	3	Helio Castroneves	2	1'41.3007			142.649
(About if he had a feeling going into qualifying that he could beat his teammates and competitors) "It's interesting, because we knew we were ahead of the competitors. You guys heard me saying it two hours earlier, I'm not sure if they're hiding, holding a little bit on the engine. So even through that, I didn't know. As soon as the first session went out, we were in Group 2, we realize, 'Okay, we're still on the same direction.' Then we just tried to set our plan in what to do, hopefully saving the best towards to the end. That's exactly what we did. It worked out pretty well."
2	12	Will Power	2	1'41.3611	0.0604	0.0604	142.564
"(It's) definitely important to start up front. It will be an interesting race. If it's all green, there will be a lot of fuel saved. Really happy to be on the front row. Obviously to be clipped by the old guy (Helio Castroneves) just there on the line - six one-hundredths. He gets faster as he gets older, like wine, matured. Good day for the team. Very, very good day. We just got to be good in the race tomorrow and collect some points."
3	2	Josef Newgarden	2	1'41.6608	0.3601	0.2997	142.143
"You'd rather be surrounded by your teammates than other people you might not be able to trust as much. We'll try to take care of each other as best as we can, then race each other. We're still going to race, which is great. We've all been fast all weekend. We knew it was going to be tough to beat us top four. What is good, we've kind of had the top four spots with all of us all weekend. We wanted to make sure we continued that in qualifying and the race. Luckily, we didn't really drop in performance, so that was good. I was happy for the whole group. Happy for Helio (Castroneves). I wanted to beat him, but I'm happy for him, getting his 50th pole. It's good for the team. It's good that we're surrounded by people we know and can trust. We can work from there to try to win the race."
4	1	Simon Pagenaud	3	1'42.0385	0.7378	0.3777	141.617
"It's a great day for the team. I think it's Helio's (Castroneves) 50th pole. Congratulations to him. We seemed to have missed it in the (Firestone) Fast Six. I was pretty happy with the car in Round 1 and Round 2, but on the new set of red Firestone (alternate) tires, in the Firestone Fast Six we had no grip. Not quite sure what happened there, but we tried. I feel like we have a very good race car. Not what I expected, quite frankly, thought we had a lot more pace. But I don't know. The tires didn't work. I wanted them to work. It did what it did. It's a long race. Lots of time management tomorrow in the race so a lot can happen. We'll see."
5	9	Scott Dixon	1	1'42.9308	1.6301	0.8923	140.389
"The car was decent, especially in Round 1. When we went to the reds (Firestone alternate tires) in Round 2, there was a drastic difference in balance. So we're not really sure, because when we went back to Round 1 tires from the reds, we tried to compensate and it was very loose. We definitely had a dud set, so we'll need to try to find out why. It is going to be difficult at this place because we know the other manufacturer kit and we know exactly where we stand against it. We're down a ton on downforce here if you try to run the same amount of drag."
6	15	Graham Rahal	2	1'45.0464	3.7457	2.1156	137.562
"I'm pleased that we got a good starting spot and pleased with how the GEHL car performed in qualifying. This team has worked awfully hard to get the No. 15 car a little further up there this weekend. It hasn't come easy for us for sure. It's been quite a challenge from a setup standpoint, but I'm proud to get in the top six, proud to take the fight to the Ganassi boys as well. We've been struggling with a loose condition in the car all weekend, so to make the top six was a great accomplishment for us. Obviously Penske is on a different planet, but we'll take the fight to them tomorrow. I'm a race-minded guy and I didn't want to use the reds (Firestone alternate tires) in Round 3. I think (Scott) Dixon did his second run on reds and I just wanted to keep them fresh. Do I think I could have gone in the two's (1:42's) on reds again? Yes, but I didn't want to. I need those for the race and wanted to keep them in as good of shape as I can. We were in the top six, so we just wanted to get a lap in Round 3, more actually to learn for the race tomorrow than anything. We're going to have to save some fuel in the race. I wish it was longer, like 60 laps, so it (length) would take the fuel mileage issue out of the window, but it's not, so we will have to try to overcome that and get the fuel number that we can. The Honda seems fast every time now so if we can get the mileage, we should be pretty strong."

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