Indianapolis 500
Marlboro Team Penske Transcript
  Marlboro Team Penske Transcript |
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05-08-2003 11:00 PM |
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 Marlboro Team Penske Transcript MODERATOR: Welcome back to the MCI Media Center. Team Penske is here with us. Kind of interesting, Roger Penske has won the Indianapolis 500 12 times, going for the baker's dozen, 12 times. He has two drivers responsible for half that total here: Rick Mears, obviously, who is a consultant with the team, now also with the Infiniti Pro Series. Helio Castroneves, the two-time defending champion, and joining those three, Gil de Ferran, great gentleman and driver in his own right, and president of Penske Racing, Tim Cindric. Great to have you with us. Roger, a comment from you about the month of May up to this point. Both of your drivers have been very fast. I don't think we've seen them out of the top five all month long.ROGER PENSKE: I think this has certainly been a different month for us, if you compare to it 2001 and 2002. Certainly 2001, we were coming here, you know, with the shadow overhanging us of not qualifying in 1995. We got in the race, obviously had a great finish, 1-2. Last year, you know, as we saw the Infinitis, saw the power of some of the engines, we were a little concerned. Were we going to get in the first day? Obviously we did. We didn't qualify up front where we would have liked to. I think this year with our Toyota motor program, the consistency of that product and our ability to work with them right from the beginning has really worked. We're building our own engines this year, so this is the first time in a number of years since prior to going to Honda that we've built our own engines here at the Speedway. The last time really was in '94 when we won. We know the consistency of the motors. Our guys back at the shop have done just an outstanding job in execution, knock on wood, our reliability has been good. The power looks, you know, very favorable based on what we know. I think that the competition for qualifying, you know, we weren't a competitor for qualifying on the pole the last two years. We have been, obviously, in previous years, and I think we're back in the hunt. I would not say here today that the two drivers here are assured the front row. I think we have a great chance for it. As you can see from the times, I think I looked yesterday, 21 cars were within one second. That's a very, very tight field on a two-and-a-half-mile racetrack. So the competition is going to be tough. It's going to mean what's the weather, what's the draw, and do you have your car set up based on those conditions? To me, there's probably eight or nine people that can be on the pole. So that's a different scenario for us. Good news is, you know, we've had the opportunity to run, had some good weather here the last several days. We didn't quite have that last year, so we've had a chance to evaluate the chassis. We've made the decision, Helio will stick with the Dallara, which he's run in all the races so far this year, and Gil will run the (Panoz) G Force. So I guess we're kind of splitting the deck. There wasn't any clear distinction that would have made both drivers go in the same direction. That probably is a pretty good validation that you have two solid car manufacturers supplying vehicles to the teams that are very, very competitive. I can assure you one thing: If we thought one was a lot better than the other, you know, we would have gone ahead and kept the drivers in the same vehicle. Also, you know, the reason we did that back in early testing at California, it looked like the G Force was much faster on the big ovals. As it turned out, it wasn't. There's a much closer tolerance between the two vehicles. So we have the opportunity to evaluate that. We had a good session. You might want to talk to the drivers about that. But, you know, month to date has been favorable for the team. It's great to be back here. It's great to see guys like Andretti and that team back. You can see how strong they were. Certainly Kanaan and Dixon, people that kind of have been under the weather, along with Gil back here, are 100 percent, so we're going to see a terrific race. Read Full Story 
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