MILWAUKEE 225 POST-RACE NOTES:
This is Dario Franchitti’s third win of 2011 and the 29th win of his Indy car career. He also won at St. Petersburg and Texas1 earlier this year.
Graham Rahal finished second, matching his season-best finish at Sao Paulo. Rahal has finished on the podium three times this season. Rahal’s father, Bobby, finished second three times at Milwaukee in his Indy car career.
Oriol Servia finished third, his best finish of the season. Servia score his first Indy car podium at Milwaukee with Newman/Haas Racing in 2005.
Will Power finished fourth, his sixth top-five finish of the season.
Danica Patrick finished fifth, her first top-five of the season and first top-five since she finished second at last season’s finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
James Hinchcliffe finished sixth and was the highest-finishing Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidate.
MILWAUKEE 225 POST- RACE QUOTES:
DARIO FRANCHITTI (No. 10 Target Chip Ganassi Racing, Milwaukee 225 winner):
“That was a hell of a run today. The first part of the race I thought I had a bit of an advantage on everybody. Very tough, as usual here. Tough on your own just balancing the car, but then you get in traffic and it gets really difficult. It’s the same for everyone. Then Tony (Kanaan) came marching along and he looked really, really strong, and he gave me a hard time as usual. Racing with Tony is a pleasure. An absolute pleasure. Just inches apart, giving each other room and respect, and then Helio joins the party and does his usual blocking crap. I don’t know what it’s going to take to understand blocking is not a part of what we do in the IndyCar Series. Great day. To win here at Milwaukee is always special. It’s such hard work and a such a hard race. It’s a delight for the Target Team and we got the Downy colors in Victory Lane.”
GRAHAM RAHAL (No. 38 Service Central, finished second):
“A great job for the Service Central team today. To come from 12th and move up like that. We passed a lot of cars. I thought passing was going to be tough today and it was, but we were able to do it. I’m really proud of my guys. They gave me a great car, and yet again, qualifying is our weak link, but time and time again we’re proving we can compete and this is one of the toughest ovals we go to, so to have that finish is great. We’re knocking on the door (of Victory Lane). It’s our second second-place finish of the year and third podium. We’re getting closer. It’s going to come one of these days.”
ORIOL SERVIA (No. 2 Telemundo/Newman Haas Racing, finished third):
“It’s awesome. We’ve been close to the podium so many times and things just don’t come easy. We just have to work at it just like we did today. I was in a podium position and then we had a bad stop and went back to 12th and had to go through the field again. The car was just amazing. The restarts were a lot of fun and I’m just so happy to give a podium to the team. My first podium was here with them in ‘05. And we started on the fifth row then. It all came back around.
WILL POWER (No. 12 Verizon Team Penske, finished fourth):
“I guess we’re equal on points so you just have to keep fighting away, keep having good days like this and make no mistakes and we’ll be good. I was just fighting like a dog to get those positions.”
DANICA PATRICK (No. 7Team GoDaddy finished fifth):
“Unfortunately, there were so many yellows that came out about halfway through a stint in the last half of the race or so. More green flag running would have been good for me, but we still got a top five.”
JAMES HINCHCLIFFE (No. 06 Sprott/Newman Haas Racing, finished sixth):
“The race was a lot of fun! Honestly, the Sprott car was so good and the team did such a good job in the pits. Huge props to the boys and a big thanks to Oriol. I didn’t test here and in practice I was getting us going in the wrong direction so we really leaned on him in qualifying and for the race setup and the car was great. We were able to drive around some people, had some great, great pit stops; the crew was unbelievable. To get a top-six at a track like this on your first crack at it is something we can be pretty happy with. Congratulations to Oriol. The team told me he went to the back after a bad stop and then on the restart he blew by me. He had a great race and a well-deserved podium.”
SCOTT DIXON (No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing, finished seventh):
“We never had the balance of the No. 9 Target car right all day. It was worse off of (Turns) 3 and 4 then we had the incident with the No. 5 car in the pits. It was one of those days.”
TAKUMA SATO (No. 5 KV Racing Technology - Lotus, finished eighth):
“It was a tough, long race. I was able to run a comfortable pace at the start of the race. In the middle of the stint I started struggled with the balance and it was difficult to maintain the pace. Then during the pit stop it was very crowded and I got tangled up getting into the pit box. So I got a drive through penalty which put me at the back of the field and down a lap, but over the next two caution yellows we managed to get our lap back and I fought my way back into the top-10. I want to give a big thank you to my crew. They did a great job. It was a difficult day for the team, but I had a good experience in my first Milwaukee race.”
JUSTIN WILSON (No. 22 Dad’s Root Beer/Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, finished 10th):
“The Dad’s Root Beer car was pretty good. We were able to get out there and pass people. I was really happy and with the changes that we made all through the race. I was hoping that we could finish a little bit higher with the car that good, but that’s just how it goes. You get boxed in on those re-starts and you have a good car, but there is nothing you can do when you have nowhere to go. It’s just part of it when you have someone ahead of you that checks up and you get held out. Other than that, I think that it’s been a pretty good day.”
ANA BEATRIZ (No. 24 Team Ipiranga/Dreyer & Reinbold):
“We had a great start and we got up to ninth or something. The Ipiranga car seemed to be good, but it was a little bit tough to stay in traffic and to work on passing people. I definitely couldn’t work on passing people and that really destroyed our race today. We had people slow in front of us and we never could pass them and we lost momentum. I was trying to keep my lap because Dario Franchitti was behind me and as soon as I went a little bit higher I got in the dirty part of the track and brushed the wall. It hurt the suspension a little bit and we lost two laps because of that. It was really frustrating that we couldn’t put it all together. I felt that some people were really blocking hard today which really screwed us up. We just need to keep working hard and move onto Iowa.”
MARCO ANDRETTI (No. 26 Team Venom Energy):
“We didn’t get the results we were hoping for with the Venom car today. When it came down to the full field of traffic, we just didn’t have the speed we needed. We’ll keep working at it and aim for better results next weekend in Iowa.”
MIKE CONWAY (No. 27 Team DHL/Sun Drop Citrus Soda):
“It was tough, but we managed to stay on the lead lap, which was a positive. We stayed out of trouble and made a few good calls, which also helped us pick off the field bit-by-bit. The DHL/Sun Drop car was pretty good; we just tried to dial it in as the day went on, although we could have used a bit more. Hopefully, we’ll build on that next weekend at Iowa.”
ED CARPENTER (No. 67 Direct Supply/Sarah Fisher Racing):
“The way this weekend went, I guess we’re lucky just to put the car in the trailer in one piece. Every once in a while we thought we were going to have something figured out, but we just stunk all weekend. I feel terrible for Direct Supply and Sarah and Andy. We should have been better here; we tested and we had a three-day race weekend, but didn’t really improve. It’s just really frustrating, and it’s as much my fault as anyone’s.”
ALEX TAGLIANI (No. 77 Bowers & Wilkins/Sam Schmidt Motorsports):
“There’s no point in trying to make things worse than what they are. The car was very, very nervous. We struggled all weekend with the set-up. I think in qualifying, we made an improvement, but we were not 100 percent sure we were going in the right direction. We tried something different in the race, but it was just a guess we took. We got it wrong. Unfortunately, it made it a very difficult car to drive. We started the race in an aggressive mode to try and make some positions up really quick, but the car was very, very loose. On a short track like this, it makes for a very long race. Because it is a short track, you don’t want to be in anyone’s way and yet keep it off the wall. The team never gave up. We made a big change in the pits (changed rear springs), and that was the right thing to do because I don’t think I never would have made it to the finish.”
RYAN HUNTER-REAY (No. 28 Team GoDaddy.com):
“It’s extremely unfortunate. The car just broke loose on the way in and I just couldn’t save it. I feel bad for the guys. We had a good car here this weekend. We qualified seventh, which was our highest oval qualifying result yet, so we were really looking forward to it. But, that’s racing. It happens. We’ll just keep our heads up and move on to Iowa. We were looking to really represent GoDaddy, DHL and Sun Drop really well here this weekend, but it wasn’t meant to be and I’m just disappointed for them.”
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