Q. After Texas, we head to Iowa and Richmond. You touched on that briefly a little bit. The two shortest tracks on the schedule, but tracks that race very differently from each other. Just tell us a little about preparing for and competing at each of those tracks.
RYAN HUNTER‑REAY: I had a lot of fun in Iowa last year. We went into the race, everybody was thinking it’s going to be some procession. Nobody’s going to be able to race side-by-side. For some reason we got into the racing. It was a great show. Good racetrack. Short, very short, but it made for good racing.
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Richmond, on the other hand, that’s a tough little place on your own when you’re just qualifying or whatever it may be on your own around that little bull ring in IndyCar.
You get all these cars out there. And these cars are so aero-dependent, it makes for tough passing, and that’s a bit unfortunate on an oval when you get into a tough position where you’re trying to pass, because we’re trying to put on a good show.
Richmond’s an interesting little place. It’s definitely challenging from a driving perspective I just don’t think we put on the best show there.
Q. You had hint at Watkins Glen. That’s only four races away. Almost one month exactly from today where you got your first IndyCar Series win last year. How special will it be to go back there?
RYAN HUNTER‑REAY: Well that track’s always been a special place for me, just because I grew up racing Skip Barber cars there, a beautiful, beautiful area. Spent a lot of time up there in summers when I was there with Skip Barber. And that track’s got so much history. It’s a former F1 track.
To get my first win, my first IndyCar (Series) win, there was a big deal, especially with the timing of that. My mom was just recently diagnosed with cancer at that time. And to be able to get a win under the circumstances and just how it all fell into place on July 4th weekend, it was great. Not to mention also that was our first weekend with IZOD, and they took that big billboard in Times Square. So it was a cool time period. I’m definitely looking forward to getting back to Watkins Glen.
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Q. How have you found the road course, as was evidenced by your performance at St. Pete, a lot of things are equalized. Would you put yourself up there for a chance on to pull off another win?
RYAN HUNTER‑REAY: Absolutely. We’ve got some work we need to do. We know at Long Beach we came up a little bit short. We know what to do if we went back to Long Beach. That’s what’s important. If you leave a racetrack and you’re not quite happy with your performance, five days later you say, ‘Hey, if we had another day there we would fix this and we would fix that.’ So we’re going to apply that.
I certainly know what worked last year, so we’re going to on do our best to match that. We qualified third there last year. Ran the race third and again we were second and moved up. So we had a good car that could move through, move through traffic.
And, qualifying ‑‑ that was our best qualifying of the year. So it was something we looked forward to duplicating.
Q. Talk about how you got started in racing? And what is your diet like on race day? Special foods that you kind of eat? Is it a staple for you every day on race day?
RYAN HUNTER‑REAY: Well, first, to answer the first question. I got started in racing by just racing karts, go‑karts. That’s how most of us do. Either junior sprint karts or something like that or racing karts.
I got started racing karts, my dad bought me a go-kart in the neighborhood. And getting into using it too often, too dangerously on public streets. So I ended up getting it on to a racetrack, and he fortunately made that jump for me. Getting me from the neighborhood streets to the racetrack. And it took off from there. It was a lot of work. Lot of hard work over the years, and it still is today.
For the diet, I just like to stick to a bit of carbs and protein, and nothing that’s going to upset my stomach during the race or in the race car. You can never get anything where you have a lot of spices in it or nothing complicated.
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Usually it just ends up being some pasta and chicken before the race. A little bit of red sauce or something like that. You want to keep it as simple as possible while getting the nutrients you need to work at your optimum through a two‑hour, two‑and‑a‑half‑hour race.
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