Power Takes Opening Round of Belle Isle Doubleheader
DETROIT (Saturday, May 31, 2014) – Will Power overtook race leader Ryan Briscoe on a Lap 60 restart and then held off Graham Rahal over a 10-lap sprint to win Chevrolet Indy Dual in Detroit presented by Quicken Loans Dual 1.
“(Rahal) was really pushing me at the end and it was a great victory for Roger, the (crew) guys and Verizon,” said Power, who started 16th in the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske car and tied Tommy Milton for 18th all time with his 23rd Indy car victory.
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Rahal, driving the No. 15 National Guard car for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, started a season-best ninth and recorded his best finish since placing second at Long Beach in April 2013. Rahal closed to within .3308 of a second behind the race winner, but had to settle for a runner-up finish.
“We’ve been fighting awfully hard to just finish where we have been finishing and so to finally get a result like this it means more than words,” said Rahal, who was the first to retire from the Indianapolis 500 six days earlier. “As we look forward to (Dual 2 on June 1), I think we can do one better and we really learned a lot today and a lot that is going to help us.”
Tony Kanaan finished third — his 66th career podium and best street/road course finish since Baltimore in 2011 – to post his best finish of the season, as did Justin Wilson in fourth. Verizon P1 Award winner Helio Castroneves, who led a field-high 30 laps, finished fifth.
Qualifications for Race 2 — split into two groups of 12 minutes of track time each – are at 10 a.m. (ET) June 1 and will set the starting lineup for the 70-lap race at 3:30 p.m. (ET) on ABC.
Both races on the 2.36-mile, 13-turn street circuit carry full points. Power moved to within three points of front-runner and Indianapolis 500 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay, who finished 16th, in the championship standings.
CHEVROLET INDY DUAL IN DETROIT PRESENTED BY QUICKEN LOANS POST-RACE QUOTES:
WILL POWER (No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet): “Just a great job by the team, putting me in a position to use our speed. That was hard work, very hard work. I’m very exhausted. It’s a massive win. It’s a massive win for me, massive win for the team and especially for Roger (Penske) and for Chevy. They’ve been trying to win here for a long time and we finally did it with a Honda trying to charge by.” (About the late challenge from Graham Rahal): “(Rahal) was really pushing me at the end and it was a great victory for Roger, the (crew) guys and Verizon.”
GRAHAM RAHAL (No. 15 National Guard Honda): “For us this entire National Guard team to get a result like this, you don’t know what it means. We’ve been fighting awfully hard to just finish where we have been finishing and so to finally get a result like this it means more than words. As we look forward to tomorrow, I think we can do one better. I really do. And we’ve really learned a lot today and a lot that is going to help us tomorrow.” (About the end of the race) “I was just trying to give him a run for his money. You know, I was just trying to get close enough where I could challenge him. We were pretty close. Didn’t quite get there but I’m very proud of this team. The car was phenomenal. We’re going to tweak it a little bit for tomorrow and we’ll be better…I thought if I can just force him into a little mistake, this is mine. And that’s all I was trying to do.”
TONY KANAAN (No. 10 Energizer Chevrolet): “The team did a great job. I’ve got to thank the Energizer Target guys. But you can’t be happy finishing third. We want to win so we’re working towards that. It was a great race for us. We got great restarts, great pit stops, plus the strategy played out in our favor big time. So we have tonight to work on it and tomorrow I want to put that thing in P1. That’s for sure. You know the Energizer car has a pretty good history of winning with Dixon and Dario, so I’ve got to keep it up.”
SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS (No. 11 Mistic KVSH Racing Chevrolet): “It was a tough day for the Mistic E-Cigs team. We did couple of things that obviously didn’t work out. First of all the fuel mileage was not the same on my dash as on the timing stand, so I thought I was doing the mileage and on the timing stand I wasn’t, so I had to do extra stops. After the second stop there was just nothing under me when I was supposed to be able to go fast in clean air. It felt like the car was broken and something was wrong with it. That pretty much ruined the race. I don’t know because at the end of the race the car came back half decent, so I have no idea what happened. The car was very up and down all race. We kept trying, but it has been a tough day for the team.”
MIKE CONWAY (No. 20 Fuzzy’s Vodka/Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet): “It is a tough deal. I was saving fuel like we wanted early in the race. I was on the black tires and the three in front of me were on reds. I wanted to pressure them into a mistake. I could see James was sliding and caught it a couple of times. I felt I could pressure him into a mistake. I got into turn 12 a little late and the car couldn’t turn. I clipped the outside wall pretty hard. The boys are working hard to fix and get us back out. I’d like to check out the car before tomorrow’s qualifying. I feel bad for the Fuzzy’s team. I was trying too hard there.”
CARLOS HUERTAS (No. 18 Dale Coyne Racing Honda): “I am happy to get another top ten finish this year. The end was really tough because I had to save fuel and defend positions. I had to keep turning the engine down all of the time for less power and more fuel mileage and I was still not getting the numbers. It was difficult because I was running in the top five but that is what it is. I am hopeful we can improve on eighth place tomorrow. We can still improve the car and try to get better balance on both tires and overall just gain a bit more grip. The red tires were actually surprisingly good for me. I think I managed to hold the tires pretty well but the balance wasn’t perfect.”
RYAN BRISCOE (No. 8 NTT DATA Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet): “Today was just a really disappointing day for NTT DATA Chip Ganassi Racing. We had a good qualifying session this morning and were able to get into fifth to start the race. We worked our way all the way up to first and our gap was big enough that we figured I’d be able to come back out in third. We were literally about to pit when that last yellow came out. Once that happened and the field bunched up again, there was no way I was going to be able to come back out in the top three. We have a great car in the No. 8 NTT DATA Chevrolet, we just seem to keep running into bad luck. We’ll be ready tomorrow though, especially since we know how good we can be here.”
CHARLIE KIMBALL (No. 83 Novo Nordisk Ganassi Racing Chevrolet): “It’s a great result for the No. 83 NovoLog FlexPen Chevrolet. The Novo Nordisk Chip Ganassi Racing team did a great in the pits and calling the strategy. They really gave me the opportunity to get it done out there on the track. The last few laps were definitely a bit frantic, but it was great to come away from the first race of the Chevrolet Indy Dual in Detroit with a ninth place finish. We learned a lot in today’s race and our momentum should be really strong going into the second race tomorrow.”
SCOTT DIXON (No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet): “I guess we never really ended up in the right position. It was just one of those days for the Target team unfortunately. We had a decent car but that long yellow toward the end of the race just killed us. I’m not sure why it took so long to get back to green. At the end my tires were falling off really bad so we had to pit for tires just to have a chance. We’ll talk about it tonight and be ready for qualifying tomorrow.”
SEBASTIAN SAAVEDRA (No. 17 KV AFS Racing Chevrolet): “It was a disappointing result to be honest. The race was long with a lot of battles and apart from when we were on reds, the KV AFS car was strong. Unfortunately we had to save a lot of fuel and eventually ran out on the last lap which cost us three positions. We need to move on and focus on tomorrow and lets hope for a good result tomorrow.”
MARCO ANDRETTI (No. 25 Snapple Honda): “The car was handling good, it just became a fuel race. I wanted to be turned loose so bad because we had the pace when we were able to go, but the (Firestone) Reds were tough, the (Firestone) Blacks were okay. I feel bad what happened with Ryan at the end – I’m not really even sure what happened – I hope he knew I was saving fuel, I couldn’t brake any deeper or I would have ran out of fuel.”
JAMES HINCHCLIFFE (No. 27 United Fiber & Data Honda): “The car was great. The guys did an awesome job in the pit stops – we just didn’t have the cautions fall our way. At the end of the day, Helio (Castroneves) and I were on the same strategy. In my mind, that was the race for the win. If it had gone green, or if the yellows had fallen a bit differently, that was the guy we were racing. We definitely had a top three car….we just didn’t have the luck of the yellows to capitalize on it. Again, we take comfort in the fact that the car was quick. The United Fiber & Data guys did a great job in the stops, and we’ll try to come back stronger tomorrow.”
CARLOS MUNOZ (No. 34 Cinsay AndrettiTV.com HVM Honda): “We finished the race seventh; I think it was great points for the championship especially after we had to come in to change the front wing. I think I improved a lot, line-wise, too. Hopefully we’ll have better luck with the yellow flags and the safety cars during Race Two. I’m really happy with the good points, especially with the rookie championship, so tomorrow is another day.”
JOSEF NEWGARDEN (No. 67 Hartman Oil/Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing Honda): “It’s my fault really I just messed up. I locked up the rear brakes and I couldn’t catch the thing into the corner. It caught me off guard I didn’t lock up before that and then all the sudden I got a big one from the rear side and I was sliding all the way through the corner. It’s on me it’s a silly mistake that cost us today. We had a great car and were doing a great job. We didn’t really have any complications so days like that you want to finish strong and do a good job overall. I feel like I let everyone down, I feel bad for everyone on our team. They’ve done a great job this weekend, especially coming off of Indy with the long stretch that they’ve had. They’ve been working flat out. I hope we have a good day tomorrow. We get another chance to qualify and race so hopefully we can do a better job there and I’ll try and do better for the boys.”
RYAN HUNTER-REAY (No. 28 DHL Honda): “We had a rough day overall. Strategy wasn’t working for us and we kept losing spots on pit lane, losing spots on track.. and it was just a tough day. At the end, I’m not really sure what happened. Marco (Andretti) seemed to be struggling on fuel and I got inside of him and just lost the rear of the car.”
JUSTIN WILSON (No. 19 Dale Coyne Racing Honda): “Great strategy by the team. We just had to be quick where we needed to be, save fuel when we needed to save fuel. Tough day. But you’ve got to play it how you’ve got to play it. From 19th to 4th, something was going on in that race. We were up and back and then up and back. The guys did great pit stops. We did quite a few of them. That gives us something to work with and we’ll come back tomorrow and try and qualify a little bit better and start close to the front.”
TAKUMA SATO (No. 14 ABC Supply A.J. Foyt Racing Honda): “Really tough race today. In the early part of the race we had an issue with the drivetrain so we had to replace the gearbox, fortunately we were able to fix it but we lost four laps. We used it as a test session because we have tomorrow’s race. The car was pretty good in quite limited circumstances. On the primary tire, the car worked well especially when the track rubbered up in the middle part of the race. At one stage the car came altogether and it was pretty strong so that was encouraging. We still have some work to do.”
VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES POINT STANDINGS:
1 Ryan Hunter-Reay 288
2 Will Power 285
3 Helio Castroneves 254
4 Simon Pagenaud 219
5 Marco Andretti 213
6 Carlos Munoz (R) 186
7 Juan Pablo Montoya 170
8 Sebastien Bourdais 160
9 Justin Wilson 155
10 Scott Dixon 152
Sources: Mike Kitchel, INDYCAR