Firestone Indy Lights: Chicagoland 100

Topics:  Chicagoland 100

Daniel Herrington
August 29, 2009

JOLIET, ILLINOIS

THE MODERATOR: We're also joined by our race winner Daniel Herrington, a list of firsts for Daniel here, his first-ever Firestone Indy Lights win, first laps led this season for Herrington and the Bryan Herta Autosport team. It marks the first win ever for Bryan Herta Autosport, and this is Daniel's first full season driving for Herta Autosport, so talk about your run out there today and your win.
DANIEL HERRINGTON: Well, at the start it was quite eventful. You're in a huge pack of 10 or 15 cars, and it seems like everyone has their own ideas about where there's room to race. So I was happy just to survive that first 20 laps or so.
Then we started realizing our car was working really well up on the high side and we had a good racecar and could drive to the front. So we slowly picked people off, had some bumps and bruises along the way and then finally on that last restart I got a big run on my teammate here and Wade. I was able to make it three wide around the outside of turn 3 and 4 and make it around them.
Then I had a ton of help from James in the last 20 laps to bring me home and get us our first win.

Q. Daniel, how quickly did you know that you could run high on the outside, and how harrowing was it when everybody else was coming by that way, too?
DANIEL HERRINGTON: From lap 1 I kind of knew that we could do it. I had a lot of confidence in the car from practice and knew that that was where our car worked really well. So I tried to get up there as soon as I could.
But it was definitely hairy. That was one of the tightest races I've ever been in, so I was just fortunate to survive in some cases.

Q. Daniel, it's always been said that that first race is the one you have to crack because quite often these things go in spurts. Do you believe that and do you subscribe to it?
DANIEL HERRINGTON: Well, I hope it starts a spurt of winning for us. That's been a tough season so far. We've had some rotten luck along the way and kind of struggled with speed, struggled getting the car up to where it needs to be. But these guys have worked their butts off all year now, and now we're in a really strong position, had a car that I was comfortable with in practice and finally got that first win.

Q. What was the most difficult of the turns for you today, or were they all equally difficult?
DANIEL HERRINGTON: The turns aren't the difficult part, it's other cars. The turns are kind of easy by themselves, and once I got out front, I was like, man, this is easy; I wish we could do this all the time. But when you've got other cars two stacked to the outside of you, it gets interesting.
There was some wind out there, but I didn't really feel it. We had a little bit more downforce than earlier. So the turns weren't an issue, it was the other cars.
THE MODERATOR: Guys, we appreciate your time. Thank you very much.