Q.For just about every race you can ask a driver about that weekend and you can hear him say, ‘If we can’t win it, we need to get a good points finish for the championship.’ I don’t know that I’ve ever really heard anyone say that about the Indy 500. Is the focus on Indy solely on winning the race?
RYAN BRISCOE: Well, yeah. I can pretty much say we’ve put the championship on hold for a few weeks here. We’re just focused on trying to get the big trophy here this month. You can pretty surely say it’s bigger than the championship, this race. You don’t really get remembered for coming second at the Indy 500. Definitely a lot of focus on trying to win this race.
But, being my fourth start here, it’s really the first time, though, coming into it where I feel as though I’ve sort of got the confidence and the experience where I can actually have a legitimate shot at it. Just really excited that we’re carrying good momentum coming into the race this month.
Q.What’s the game plan as you come into the month? You have a couple days, obviously qualifying and pole day on Saturday. What is the game plan as you approach the month?
RYAN BRISCOE: It gets going pretty quickly. The first week is all about getting the balance into the car, getting it tuned in, and then by the end of the week feeling confident enough to start trimming out and getting ready for qualifying. Saturday we’re already going for pole. Most importantly, if you can’t get the pole, you need to try to at least get qualified on that first day so you can start working on race preparation.
But, it all happens really quickly, and there’s not a lot of time to be messing around or running into trouble. So we need to be smart about the running and hopefully just keep things simple and keep things running smoothly, get ourselves in a good position to have a good day on Saturday for qualifying.
Q.What are some of the keys that it takes to put in a good run and get up front or even win the pole?
RYAN BRISCOE: You need to be able to trim this thing out as much as possible. It’s hard. You need to get a good balance to begin with, and then step by step just keep trimming it out a little bit at a time until really the car starts sliding around too much where you can’t stay flat.
But the conditions change. The wind at Indianapolis has such an effect on the car’s performance and balance, you just really got to keep an eye on that. I think that’s where having the experience of a team like Penske behind me, that’s where they can help so much, with just keeping things on track. With Rick Mears, as well, he’s always been a great help here, where he just keeps you focused on the right things.
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