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MEIJER INDY 300 POST-RACE NOTES:
· This is Ryan Briscoe’s second win of the season and the fourth of his IndyCar Series career. His last win came at St. Petersburg earlier this year.
· The margin of victory was .0162 of a second, the closest IndyCar Series finish at Kentucky Speedway and the 11th closest finish in series history
· The average speed was 200.893 mph, the fastest race at Kentucky Speedway and second-fastest race in IndyCar Series history.
MEIJER INDY 300 POST-RACE QUOTES:
RYAN BRISCOE (No. 6 Team Penske, winner Meijer Indy 300 presented by Red Baron and Edy’s): “Now I know how Sam Hornish Jr., used to feel when he would win all of those races on the outside. I’m pretty happy to get another one for Team Penske. I just wanted to keep doing what I had been doing. Ed (Carpenter) would get a little bit in front of me in the middle of Turns 3 and 4 but with my momentum on the outside I was able to edge him down the backstraight. I would time my push to pass button so I would get the extra power through Turns 3 and 4. It was getting tougher and tougher, and I was just jumping in my seat trying to get in front of him across the finish line. It just worked out perfectly.”
ED CARPENTER (No. 20 Menards/Vision Racing, finished second): “Once we cycled through the lead on that last stop I was ready for rain or whatever. Just trying to run as hard as I could and stay in front. I’ve got to thank my mom and Tony for giving me the opportunity, and Menards, Johns Manville, Lilly and Cardio Check, William Rast. It’s been a tough year. I was hoping this was going to be a break-out race, try to get our team turned around for the rest of the season and we did that.”
TONY KANAAN (No. 11 Team 7-Eleven, finished third): “It was a good one, it was a helluva race. It was pretty much raced clean. The people came here to see a photo finish and we did it. I got to thank the (Indy Racing) League, Brian Barnhart and all the officials and the guys that came up with this package, and for the push to pass, and Firestone did a great job to. I can still hear the fans, so I want to thank them for coming. The old IRL is back. We’ll have some exciting races on the superspeedways again.”
HELIO CASTRONEVES (No. 3 Team Penske, finished fourth): “Unbelievable. I have to say, great package. That push to pass, at the beginning we didn’t really feel anything but then all of the sudden, man! It was incredible. I got a little greedy towards the end, tried to help my teammate so we could do a 1-2 finish and man, I went way high and then I started coming back again and it was awesome, awesome. I had a lot of fun.” (You weren’t trying to get around Briscoe, you were just going to push him to the win?): “I was just pushing him so he could be over Ed and then I would be on the outside and it would be a fantastic finish. I still had, push to pass, quite a lot left.” (When you came off the push to pass, could you really feel it, slowing down?): “No, they (Honda) did quite a good job. It was like a degradation, very slow. It worked really well, I think everyone liked it.” (The people that paid money tonight certainly liked it): “It was fun. It was a great race. It’s a shame we couldn’t be 1-2 but I’m really happy for Ryan.”
GRAHAM RAHAL (No. 02 McDonald’s Racing Team, finished fifth): “I just don’t think that oval racing can get any more exciting than that. The McDonald’s car was really good tonight. And if people aren’t impressed with that race I don’t know what will impress them. Chicago will be better because you can run three wide but the amount that we ran three wide in the last two stints of this race I think I passed more guys - both ways, forward and back - than I have in my whole oval racing career so I think that says a lot. The cars were very comfortable to run side by side so I think they’ve done a very good job with the technical changes. People can say what they want about Push to Pass but I was on it the last 10 laps and I came from a second back of those guys to get past the Ganassi guys so I would have to say that it works somewhat. They were dicing it out up front but certainly the McDonald’s car was very good tonight and when we were on the button we were catching up so it works.”
