Power wins Verizon P1 pole award for Milwaukee

ABC Supply Wisconsin 250 at Milwaukee IndyFest Post-Qualifying Quote Sheet:

TAKUMA SATO (No. 14 ABC Supply A.J. Foyt Racing Honda): “Milwaukee is always fun to drive and very challenging for the drivers. It demands a lot because you’re not able to go flat here unless the conditions are superb. Today we had warmer conditions so it’s been really tricky in practice. We continued some of the test items we didn’t get to in June and tried to improve the car. In qualifying we proved we made good progress–just not fast enough to go to the very front. We tried to get a consistent balance and I think we found that so that is good.”

GRAHAM RAHAL (No. 15 National Guard Honda): “On the very last run in practice, I thought we found some good stuff and I think that carried over into qualifying. I was really struggling with the rear of the car and I think we improved it significantly. We had an issue with a tire so we had to change to our second set early so we didn’t really get a fair shake on our qualifying simulation but on old tires we were running low 23’s at the end of the session which was pretty good compared to what I’ve seen. It’s tough though, there is no grip for anyone. Everyone is in the same boat and sliding around. I think the tires are going to be a key factor in this race. To follow in traffic is difficult but we’ll see what happens. This place is extremely hard because it’s a flat one-mile track and we typically don’t run on flat places other than street and road courses so it is different, but I feel good about the National Guard car. We have a lot of very smart people on this team and I think you guys have all seen that lately. It’s starting to come together. It didn’t right away, but I think we have honed in on what we need to work on and we’re starting to get there. We didn’t have a very good test here, but we’re coming off what should be four top 10s and a couple of top fives in a row had we not had the gearbox issue in Toronto too. We’re on a bit of a hot streak and we definitely feel pretty good about where we’re at. The National Guard guys are working really hard and we’ve just got to keep our head down and have a really good day tomorrow.”

JAMES HINCHCLIFFE (No. 27 United Fiber & Data Honda): “Honestly, mechanically the car was fine. Nothing in our qualifying performance comes from the any ill effects from the crash. The UFD guys did a great job getting the car fixed, so huge thanks to them for that. We just missed it. The track changed quite a bit, we had a little problem in (Turns) 3 and 4 on the first flier and it just got worse in the second lap so we did what we could. I think the race car is still pretty good, we as a team just missed it a little bit today.”

MARCO ANDRETTI (No. 25 Snapple Honda): “We hit the deck, we bottomed, which really made me have to come off the gas. The good thing is we have 250 laps on our side. Obviously we wanted a Verizon P1 trophy but we’ve been having problems since we rolled off, so we have to be happy with a top 10 start. We can get the job done from there, hopefully.”

RYAN HUNTER-REAY (No. 28 DHL Honda): “We just missed the balance entirely today in qualifying – it wasn’t even close. Unfortunately, we are going to have to pay for it tomorrow. I just hope we get out of the first couple of stints on the lead lap the way things are going right now. We’ve had great cars here in the past, but just missed it here in qualifying. It’s pretty frustrating but we can rebound tomorrow.”

CARLOS MUNOZ (No. 34 Cinsay AndrettiTV.com HVM Honda): “I was really disappointed by qualifying I didn’t expect to be so far back. This team has always been dominate here at this track, but today just wasn’t our day in general. We will see tomorrow. This track it is important where you start to have the track position, but anything could happen. We have to work hopefully to have a good car in traffic and on the long runs.”

RYAN BRISCOE (No. 8 NTT DATA Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet): “After recording my best lap in practice on my first timed lap out and then that qualifying effort, I think it’s apparent that testing here a month ago really helped us out. We were able to come into this weekend really confident with the car we had and go right out with some really fast times. We had some gearbox issues in the second practice and weren’t able to get a qualifying run in, but we did make some changes that we can use in the race tomorrow. After that second practice, we just decided to go back to our original setup and I think it worked out pretty well for us. It was a good solid run and it’s going to be really helpful tomorrow in the race that we’ll be starting up near the front.”

CHARLIE KIMBALL (No. 83 NovoLog FlexPen Chevrolet): “That qualifying run felt really good. Two weeks ago at Mid-Ohio I came out of qualifying just completely crushed with the results. Since then we’ve focused on making sure we get a good qualifying run out of the No. 83 NovoLog FlexPen Chevrolet here in Milwaukee. We spent a lot of time today in practice getting the car ready for the race tomorrow, and trying a couple different things. We still need to make a few changes before green flag, but I feel like we got about 95% out of the car today and I’m just really happy with the result.”

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