Enrique Bernoldi (No. 36 Sangari Conquest Racing): “It was good to get a whole practice session in today even if the weather wasn’t ideal, but like I said yesterday, you have to be ready to face whatever Mother Nature sends our way. We were able to try different things in preparation for qualifying this weekend. There is still some speed to find, but we will look over the data we collected today and take advantage of our last full practice session tomorrow before qualifying on Saturday.”
Ryan Briscoe (No. 6 Team Penske): “Tomorrow might be different, and we may run just as much (downforce), so we might have to change the car. We’ll see what it looks like on Race Day and try to put to use what we have learned over these couple of days.” (On dealing with traffic today): “As Will (Power) mentioned, a lot of those guys are probably already doing race preparation and not running all the time in qualifying setup in short runs. We also want to be careful around the guys that aren’t qualified because you never know, and they might be doing a low-fuel run and could run out of fuel in a corner. I think when we started really running close, I was probably looking more for the guys who were already qualified, but still we were able to run pretty confidently with the guys who weren’t qualified.” Mario Dominguez (No. 96 Visit Mexico City/Pacific Coast Motorsports): “Today was a great day for us. The rain stayed away, and we turned a lot of laps. We had the opportunity to really work with the car - almost like a test in that we tried so many different combinations. Now that we have some knowledge about the car under our belts, we will develop our qualifying setup tomorrow. It’s tough to get the car stable, but I’ve got great engineers who are doing a very good job. I am really looking forward to another big day of running tomorrow. It should be sunny and warmer, so I look forward to seeing how the characteristic of the car changes in that weather. There are so many factors here. It is really quite challenging, but I am excited about our progress today.”
Graham Rahal (No. 06 Hole in the Wall Camps): “It was pretty nice to be able to get some work done today. I think everybody woke up expecting to be drenched today, so it was nice to get some laps in and run a race setup on the car, which is something we hadn’t done here. We ran around 90 laps and made pretty big strides. It was tough because it was extremely windy, and that hurts you pretty bad. For the race setup, you really want to run with a whole bunch of guys, so from that standpoint it was good to run. But once the wind started to pick up and it started to get a lot cooler, it wasn’t all that fun. I feel fine in traffic now. I was having a lot of fun with Tony (Kanaan). Obviously, the more laps we get, the better we’re going to be.”
Jeff Simmons (No. 41 AJ Foyt Racing): “We’ve been making progress all day. The car is much better from yesterday, but it was great to get out then so we could figure out what needed to be changed. We made adjustments all day. The car is more consistent, and I’m confident we’ll find more speed.”
Will Power (No. 8 Aussie Vineyard-Team Australia): “I guess we made a little bit of progress from Saturday. Now our focus has gone more toward the race because I’m pretty confident that we’ll get in that 22 somewhere, that we’ll qualify. Now we’re focusing on long runs and figuring out what kind of downforce we can run and how close behind people. I haven’t had much experience running in traffic. So that’s where the focus is, and hopefully we can make some headway over the next couple of days. It was very blustery today. You definitely felt that. It was very inconsistent lap to lap, but who knows, maybe Race Day might be like this or qualifying Saturday might be like this, so it’s always important to run and get good ideas of wind directions and get a good idea about how the car operates.” (Impressions of Indy): “It’s been interesting. It’s good for us because we get so much running time, and we need that on the ovals. It gives the team a chance to develop the car a little bit more. Especially during the race. To finish the race would be great for me because I’d get a lot of experience running in traffic. As far as an event goes, it’s second to none. It’s huge. I was really surprised the first day how many people turned out and also on qualifying days. For me, I’m really impressed, and it’s a very unique track and I’ve enjoyed every moment of it so far.”
Ed Carpenter (No. 20 Menards/Vision Racing): “It was a full day of track time today. We could have gotten in more laps, but we started the day in the T-car and did 40-some laps before we decided to go back to the primary car. We were trying different things with each car. We had a productive day as a team. We got through some test runs that we needed to do, and I don’t think we’re too far from where we need to be for a race pace and speed. We have a little more work to do, but we’re feeling pretty positive about it.”
A.J. Foyt IV (No. 2 Vision Racing): “This is the most we’ve run in a day, and it was pretty productive. We definitely found some stuff with the car that we can move forward with tomorrow to get ready for the race. We have definitely made progress from start to finish of the day. We’re very, very happy to have a full day of running.”
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