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VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES: ABC SUPPLY WISCONSIN 250July 11, 2015Josef NewgardenSimon PagenaudWEST ALLIS, WISCONSIN THE MODERATOR: We'll go ahead and get started with today's Verizon IndyCar Series post practice press conference. We're pleased to be joined by Josef Newgarden. A big weekend for Josef. One of his leading sponsors Direct Supply is based here in Milwaukee. Also ended up fastest in practice today. Josef, obviously a good weekend so far. A great start for you. JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Yeah, it started well. Hopefully we can keep that up. It's always nice when you roll off the truck and the car's good. It just makes it a lot easier during the weekend. So I think we've got a good car. We've had good cars in the past here. We were really strong here last year. We were a top three car, ended up finishing fifth. I was excited to come here. We got to keep it up for qualifying. Qualifying is going to be the big key for us. If we can qualify up front, I think we've got a good shot at having a good weekend. THE MODERATOR: You said in your prerace quote that because of your road racing background, this track was particularly special for you. It is an oval, however because of the nature of it, it may drive like a road course. What are your thoughts on that? JOSEF NEWGARDEN: I just remember something. I may get fined if I don't get weighed in right now. My engineer was just calling me. I don't know how that works. If I get that waved. Do we have witnesses? They will seriously dock me in qualifying or something. Okay, yeah. I'm sorry. I wasn't even listening to you because that's a big issue if you don't get weighed after the session. I saw him calling, I knew immediately why he was calling me. I didn't fully hear you. THE MODERATOR: No worries at all. You've mentioned in your prerace quote that the nature of this track drives like a road course and that plays into your favor because of your background on road courses. What are your thoughts on the nature of the track? JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Yeah, I think so, for sure. The great thing about this place is it's an oval but it's so much like a road course to a young karting kid. You really feel like it's more road course styled. You get used to that I think a little bit better as a road course guy. But it's an oval. It's definitely an oval track, just a little bit different. But it's fast. It's fun. You know, it's flat out. But it is a fantastic track. I think it's special if you win a race here. You kind of win an oval and road course event at the same time. I'm going to come back because I don't want to get yelled at. THE MODERATOR: We're joined also by Simon Pagenaud. It's been a busy weekend already for you, as well, doing an event with Racing for Kids. Doing an event with Celebrity Shelf Malcolm Mitchell. Seems like you're always on the roll. With first practice happening, a good result. SIMON PAGENAUD: Yeah, I mean, this place, like Josef said, is a lot of fun. It requires for you to have a lot of confidence in the car and really, really push it hard. So we worked with my engineer. Obviously coming into the team, there are a few things that I might need differently to win than Helio and Juan Pablo. We're trying to understand the package and adjust it to my liking. So far, since Fontana, it's been working pretty well. I was pretty excited today. I think the Penske car is pretty strong. Strong baseline to start. We still have a few things to work on. THE MODERATOR: Questions for Simon. Q. With the additional downforce this year, how close are you guys to being flat out all the way around and what do you think qualifying might be like? SIMON PAGENAUD: Yeah, I think qualifying will be flat out. You can always trim. That's the advantage. You can always take downforce away to the point where you're going to have to lift. So I expect qualifying times to be really, really fast. The car was very nice to drive. It's very enjoyable. It's very difficult in traffic. It's quite different to last year. When you're behind one car, then two cars, then three cars, it becomes very difficult. We managed to see that today. Also tire wear is going to be more important when you're back in the pack. It's going to make your day difficult. That's why pole position tomorrow is going to be a big achievement. Q. You talked about the tire wear. Is there anything you can do to save the tires a little better by changing your line? When you run the really high line, there's more grip up there, but can that help save any tire wear? SIMON PAGENAUD: Yeah, if you run higher, if you try to steer the car, you can save the tires. There's a fine balance between how much do you want to damage your front tires or your rear tires. It depends on your comfort level. Personally I like to have a strong rear-end of the car.  So it's a fine adjustment. It's a fine line to walk on. Obviously when you leave the pits on your tires, you want to run knowing that you're probably going to use the rear tires a bit more, then how do you want to be balanced at the end of your stint.  It's long stints as well. We're doing 60 laps on tires. You have to be really smart in looking ahead with your tire balance basically. THE MODERATOR: Other questions for Simon Pagenaud or the returned Josef Newgarden. Q. What is it like when you're behind one car, two car, three cars? And, Josef, what does it feel like in whatever traffic you've seen today with the aero kit? JOSEF NEWGARDEN: What does it feel like, Simon? What did I miss? SIMON PAGENAUD: I've seen you in traffic, so... JOSEF NEWGARDEN: For me, I think the biggest thing that's going to help racing here, if it happens, I don't think we all know yet how the race is going to unfold, but if we can open up the lanes a little bit more. Generally you're pinned in one lane, which is lane two or maybe in between lane one and two. That's where most guys ran last year. It was hard to get by because you were just pinned in that spot. With the new aero kit that can open up and you can run in the bottom lane and lane two. If that's the case, I think you'll see more passing than last year. I feel at the beginning of tires, it will be more racy. It felt more racy on new tires. I don't know how long into the stint they will be racy or if they will be racy. It seem it is like the car is still affected by aero quite a bit. When you get directly behind another car, it's hard to follow, at least for me. I don't know what Simon said, but... We'll see. I think you might have a better race for the first 10, 15 laps of the tires than last year. SIMON PAGENAUD: Yeah, definitely. What was your question? Sorry. Q. Being behind two cars, three cars, four cars, how does it feel different? SIMON PAGENAUD: You know, what really surprised me is actually when you cross completely a car, when you cross a car completely, you get in the wake fully, so you don't have your wing out or something, you lose complete grip of the car. You can actually spin pretty easily. So it's very tricky. JOSEF NEWGARDEN: That's actually cool you're saying that. SIMON PAGENAUD: It's a tricky gain of positioning. The more cars you have ahead of you, the harder it is to position yourself because you don't know what the others are going to do up front. It's a chess game, once again. You need to be able to run the car in different lanes, you need to be able to turn early if you want to or late if you need to, depending on the guy ahead of you. But it certainly feels a lot more abrupt than it did last year when you cross someone's wake. JOSEF NEWGARDEN: I got loose. SIMON PAGENAUD: Big-time. JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Last year you generally get understeer behind someone, you couldn't get close. This year I think you could lose the rear. You might actually see guys spin when they get behind someone. Probably not, because everyone is very, very good at what they do, but it could happen. Seems a little harder this year. Q. Did the gnomes move with you when you moved from your shop? JOSEF NEWGARDEN: They did. But I think they were rude to our gnomes. I think they're in a closet somewhere. Those poor things, they had like great sites in our old shop. They were in the scaffolding. Now they're packed away in a closet. They probably hate us now (laughter). THE MODERATOR: They're evil gnomes now. Q. Did you weigh? JOSEF NEWGARDEN: I did weigh. I was four minutes early without being late. You have 15 minutes generally. Roger would be pissed. I feel like he would nail me. You know, he wouldn't even say anything. Roger would be like this royal envelope from Roger Penske. He'd be like, I heard about what happened in Milwaukee. We're really disappointed here at Team Penske in your performance. Would he do something like that? I don't know how Roger is. SIMON PAGENAUD: He doesn't need to talk (laughter). JOSEF NEWGARDEN: You just know. You just know you messed up with him. That's great. Q. Obviously there's been a little bit of bad luck for the Carpenter Fisher Hartman team this year on ovals. Do you think Milwaukee is the sort of place where you can turn it around? JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Yeah, for sure. I mean, we've had good cars at a lot of places this year. We've had some bad luck. But we've also had good luck this year. I think in Toronto we were in the right position at the right time. We had some luck on our side. It helped us get a win. It's gone both ways. We would have liked to have had more lucky think over more events this year. But Milwaukee's definitely a place we can turn it around. Having finished last with both cars at Fontana, it would be nice to get a result here and at least get Ed and me back up in the top 10. I think that would be solid for our group and we can definitely do it. Q. Your last practice is tomorrow morning at 9:00, then you qualify mid afternoon. Talk about the setup between tomorrow morning and race time. SIMON PAGENAUD: You know, I don't know what the others did, but I would say most people worked on race package today because we had a long session. Obviously with the Chevy aero kit, we have to change quite a few bits and pieces for the qualifying run. I would expect tomorrow morning would be qualifying mock-up basically. That's the plan on the 22 car, that's for sure. I don't know what the others are doing. JOSEF NEWGARDEN: Yeah, I think so. Probably similar to Simon. I think you'll see a mixed bag. But it looked like there was a lot of race work that happened today. People basically did qual sims. What's great about Milwaukee is you don't destroy tires on a qual sim. You can get into one and not wreck your program. I think that will happen tomorrow again. People will roll out, do qual sims immediately, then do some more race running after that. That's my guess. I think that's probably what we'll do tomorrow. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Good luck tomorrow. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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