Hot quotes from the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

On the early pass for the lead on Takuma Sato
Will Power: “Cindric pitted me early. It was actually a very good call. I was able to pump out some good lap times. Sato came out on blacks, I think, just like I was. I felt our car was definitely stronger on blacks and was able to hunt him down and pull the move on him that I’ve had pulled on me two years in a row. I learned my lesson and finally pulled it off myself.”

On mentality after a long winless streak
Will Power: “Can you have fun not winning? Do I have fun? No. You know what, you come here to win. Good, hard racing is fun. You start at the back of the grid, you finish up third — that’s fun. There’s nothing worse than just struggling, though, not having the car or equipment to do well. That gives you a good hit — your self-confidence, you start to question yourself. I just remind myself that everyone is human. You’re capable of doing everything everyone else is if you work hard. … I hate attention. I just loved last year, too — no one paid attention. I could just do my thing. Yup, I hope it continues. I don’t want people to talk about me. I like to be low-key. I don’t like to be in the limelight. I just like to do my job, enjoy it, race hard, and that’s it. … It happened last year. I didn’t have to do appearances. It was great. No one cared. It was awesome. If I could get wins and not be hassled, I’d be stoked. … You definitely start to look pretty hard when you have a long period of not winning. You just can’t get complacent. You’ve got to keep working hard, especially in this series. There are so many good teams, good drivers. It’s just a good thing. It’s a good kick in the arse to have some bad runs — not actually lack of pace but just to have some bad runs, be in the back of the field. You just reset, just realize that you can’t leave anything on the table. You just can’t. It’s funny. I was speaking to Mark Webber at some point. I asked, did you lose a little bit of motivation in your 30s? He said, yeah. He said, you can’t kid yourself. You’ve got to work hard. It’s just the way it is. If you’re not, someone else is. That’s true. You got to get everything right in this business or you won’t win.”

On whether the engines are getting more powerful as they evolve
Will Power: “Yeah, it actually is getting to the Champ Car level now where you’re starting to shift a gear and it still spins. Definitely getting harder to drive. Got good horsepower. They’re definitely getting up there where they used to be.”

On the penalty for not packing up with the field
Sebastien Bourdais: “We were going to have a really good result because we had a rocket ship for a car. Then just as I was going to make my third stop the track went yellow, so I had to stay out. When I finally pitted I was out of fuel and the car stalled, but we were still in a good position and I knew I had a fast car. Then I was penalized for not packing up fast enough, which was pretty rough because I was packed up before the pits opened and no one was harmed.”

On the penalty for passing the pace car
Mike Conway: “I didn’t hear a radio communication to come into the pits then. I thought the safety car waved me by, but they were waving (James) Hinchcliffe by instead. I don’t know if there was a communication problem there, too. I didn’t know if they were waving at me or both of us. Then they said it was only for Hinch. And that was it.  It screwed up our whole day.”