HELIO CASTRONEVES (No. 3 Team Penske):
“It’s great to be back. I was extremely excited to start my season at Long Beach, and I’m ready to race here at Kansas. There have been so many close calls to win a race here, and Team Penske has always been right there. You can see that the competition this year is really high. We are going to continue working hard. Hopefully, we’re going to have a good weekend. I want to thank the fans again for sending prayers, good wishes and positive thinking throughout my whole six-month ordeal. I’m extremely happy to be here.”
(About new generation of racers): “After racing at Long Beach, I can see that this year is one of those years that everyone has some experience. Everyone knows what they’re doing. They’ve shown great potential in St. Petersburg and Long Beach. It shows that other teams are coming up, and that means that the competition is getting tougher. And with younger drivers like Graham (Rahal) and others, there’s no question that it makes our lives a little bit tougher. On the ovals, I think it takes a lot of experience as well. I remember racing against Al Unser Jr. and even (Graham’s) dad (Bobby Rahal). On ovals, you’ve got to have experience and you have to take it easy and let the race come to you. So I think guys with experience are going to continue doing well. But no question that the kids are coming on strong.”
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MILKA DUNO (No. 23 CITGO/Dreyer & Reinbold Racing):
(About high winds today): “I think it will be the same conditions for everybody. Windy or not, we have to do the best that we can in any conditions. It will be a hard job for our engineers, because we have to find a good car for whatever the conditions are on the track.”
GRAHAM RAHAL (No. 02 McDonald’s Racing Team):
(About returning to Kansas): “We’re starting off on a bit of a different foot this year. We’ve had an offseason to develop the car. Last year, Kansas was my first oval race. We’re a year on now, so we’re looking forward to being back. I think we had some minor glimpses of brilliance last year at the end of the year on the ovals. We got up to the top five at Chicago before things went wrong for us. For us, it’s nice to have an offseason to develop the cars a bit more. I’ve only done the Homestead Open Test, so I think no one has had much testing time on ovals, so it will be interesting to see how everybody comes out this weekend.”
(About high winds today): “Obviously the weather, if it rains, plays a huge part in our schedule because we don’t run in the rain. For us, the wind is certainly something that at certain tracks it affects the car more than others. I remember running in the wind at some ovals last year where it didn’t really seem to affect us at all, and then we went to Indianapolis and seemed like a whole different thing from corner to corner depending on the wind. It will be interesting to see what happens, but it’ll be the same for everybody. Everybody will be fighting the same thing.”
(About learning from last year’s race): “Last year’s race was actually a pretty good race for me. Even though it was my first (on an oval), it was one of those things where it was a pretty routine race. We kind of ran around, got used to the traffic, got more comfortable with it, but we really didn’t make any mistakes. We qualified pretty far back and ended up 12th, so it was a pretty good day for us. This year, we’ve got higher expectations. Kansas will always be a special place for me because it was my first oval race in the IndyCar Series.”
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