Photo Credit: Chris Jones/IndyCar
LONG BEACH, Calif. (April 17, 2015) – Will Power and Team Penske teammate Simon Pagenaud recorded lap times in the second Verizon IndyCar Series practice session for the 41st Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach that were quicker than the 2014 Verizon P1 Award-winning time of Ryan Hunter-Reay. Next up is Sebastien Bourdais’ nine-year-old track record.
Power, driving the No. 1 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet, led the 23-driver field with a lap of 1 minute, 7.5485 seconds. Pagenaud was 0.0370 of a second back in the No. 22 Penske Truck Rental Chevrolet. Eighteen drivers were within a second of Power’s quick lap on the 11-turn street circuit.
Sebastien Bourdais set the track lap record at the 1.968-mile configuration at 1:06.882 in 2006. He went on to win — the middle victory of three in a row at Long Beach. Hunter-Reay earned the Verizon P1 Award last year with a lap of 1:07.8219 in the No. 28 DHL Honda for Andretti Autosport.
The two other Team Penske drivers, Helio Castroneves (1:07.9132) and Juan Pablo Montoya (1:08.0539), also were in the top five. Scott Dixon, who was quickest in the first session (1:08.6458) in the No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet, was fourth (1:07.9671) in the late-afternoon practice.
A 45-minute session at 1 p.m. (ET) April 18 precedes the three rounds of qualifications (live-streamed 5 p.m. ET on racecontrol.indycar.com and tape-delayed at 6:30 p.m. ETon NBCSN) for the 80-lap race April 19 (4 p.m. ET on NBCSN).
POST-PRACTICE QUOTES:
WILL POWER (No. 1 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet, fastest of the day): “It was pretty good. A lot of cars were running and laying rubber, but with the new aero kits and everything, the cars were just faster. It’s always super tight around here when it gets to qualifying. The top six are usually separated by about a tenth and a half (of a second) or something. … (How do the aero kits change the way you drive this track?) “The braking zones are a little shorter and you carry more speed through the fast stuff. It’s little gains on tracks like this. It’s high-speed tracks where you get the biggest gains. The faster you go, the more benefit you get from the (additional) downforce.”
SIMON PAGENAUD (No. 22 Penske Truck Rental Chevrolet, second fastest of the day): (Is INDYCAR’s proactive, ongoing review of aero kits a good thing?) “Frankly, it’s really not my decision, it’s INDYCAR’s. For the safety of the fans, it’s great, but you’ve got to make it fair for the manufacturers as well. As long as it doesn’t slow down one manufacturer or accelerate the other one, then it just has to be fair.”
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA (No. 2 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet): “I was really happy with the No. 2 Verizon Chevy in the first practice. It had a lot of speed. We made a few changes for the second practice and it just didn’t respond like we hoped, but we have a pretty good car and we have something we can work with. Qualifying is going to be very important for us. We’ve made a lot of strides in that area this year and I’m confident that we can get a good starting spot tomorrow afternoon.”
HELIO CASTRONEVES (No. 3 Auto Club of Southern California Chevrolet):“Obviously all of the Chevrolet teams were thrown a little bit of a curveball this morning with the changes to the aero kits. We are all in the same boat on that and we will make the best of it. The four Team Penske Chevrolets are still very fast, at the top of the speed charts. We collected a lot of information in the first practice about how the downforce changed and we made some really good changes for the second session. We are still improving it and have another session tomorrow to make the No. 3 Automobile Club of Southern California Chevy better before qualifying.”
SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS (No. 11 Team Hydroxycut-KVSH Chevrolet): “Obviously I’m disappointed. We are not where we want to be or thought we would be. The Hydroxycut – KVSH Racing team has a lot of work to do. We have to sit down and review all the dates, keep our noses to the grindstone and keep working hard. The good news is we have another practice session tomorrow before qualifying and I am confident we will come up with something to make the car faster.”
GRAHAM RAHAL (No. 15 Steak ‘n Shake Honda) : “I thought the crowd today was great but with this weather, why wouldn’t it be? We had a mechanical issue this morning and only got to run a handful of laps. The second practice was more of what I expected. Our car was good this morning but we just didn’t get to see it through before we had the issue. We are the fastest Honda but we have a little work to do to catch the Penske’s. I was on a lap that was about a tenth (of a second) and a half quicker but I just screwed it up, ate too much curb off in Turn 8 and lost it. I feel like there is a lot of potential. But we’re pretty close and if you put Will, Simon and a few others aside, we’re kind of the best of the rest but we’ll keep fighting hard to improve the Steak ‘n Shake car tomorrow. We’re in the hunt.”
FRANCESCO DRACONE (No. 19 Dale Coyne Racing Honda): “After a very difficult weekend in New Orleans it has been pretty hard to be back with the team and get my head straight with the tricky circumstances. It is taking a bit longer than my expectations to get back up to speed and be consistent coming into the pits. I have to admit that I’m a bit over concerned after what happened. On top of that, this track is very tricky being here for the first time. It is very narrow compared to what I’m used to. It is very bumpy and pretty technical. There are a lot of places where you can make mistakes. It seems to be especially important to have a good setup and have the shocks set up perfectly because of the bumps. I’m going to give it my best tomorrow and see what happens.”
LUCA FILIPPI (No. 20 Fuzzy’s Vodka CFH Racing Chevrolet): “It was a tough day for us. We had a lot to learn. Myself- I had to learn the circuit. From the set up point of view, we’re still exploring this new aero kit and working towards the best drivability for me. We are not where we wanted to be in terms of lap times, but Josef (Newgarden) proved that our car can be fast. The pack is so tight, tomorrow is going to be very tough qualifying. It will be important to have a fast lap to be able start at the front.”
MARCO ANDRETTI (No. 27 Snapple Honda): “I think as a team we kind of attacked it a couple different ways. It’s interesting because we are within a hundredth of a second, so we’re not really sure which way to go. But I’m quite pleased with the car. Unfortunately there’s still a gap to the Chevys and that’s frustrating but we’re chipping away at it.”
RYAN HUNTER-REAY (No. 28 DHL Honda): “We had a pretty good day going. We didn’t get a lap on our last new set of tires so hopefully we’ll be saving that for tomorrow. We’re making some strides. This is the position we were in last year after day one of practice.”
JOSEF NEWGARDEN (No. 67 Hartman Oil CFH Racing Chevrolet): “I think we’re finding our way. We started a little rough and were a little lost in the first session. We’re one of the best groups at recovering and I had a lot of faith in my guys. They’re very good at figuring it out and we recovered well in the second session. We’re a still a little on the back foot. When you roll off and you’re not great in session one you have a lot of catching up to do. We are still battling that right now and we’re much better, but we still need to find more.”
