Indy Racing League Series: Firestone Indy 200

Topics:  Firestone Indy 200

Alex Barron
Larry Blair
Tom Gloy
July 20, 2002

GLADEVILLE, TENNESSEE

THE MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much on behalf of Nashville Superspeedway for covering this event. We'll have a couple of brief questions and then you are welcome to question our drivers. Congratulations. Gil, let's go back very quickly, caution flag, last two. What if scenario -- would have been in the running?

GIL de FERRAN: Certainly those restarts are tough. Sometimes you get the timing right, sometimes you don't. Restart before last one, Sam great restart, got by me. And then on the last restart, I managed to time it just right and got a run. And Scott, was able to make it by him. And, you know, I have to give it to Alex. I thought maybe he would take it easy on that first turn, but he kept it wide open, through that white flag lap. He really gave me no chance whatsoever. For us it was great run overall. We had to come from the middle of the grid, went all the way forward. Running right up there with Sam and then we had a puncture had to come in on the green, lost the whole lap, went all the way to the back again, managed to come all the way forward there at the end. My car was very good. The guys did a great job. And overall, it was a good day. It is a shame we didn't win, but it was a very good day for us.

SAM HORNISH, JR.: We were very happy with the car. Our team did an awesome job on the green flag run. We were probably two, three mile an hour faster than everybody else. Came from behind quite a few times. Just didn't lead that very important lap. Had a little bit of an incident on the yellow. The team recovered very well. We were winning there, kept our heads about it and did the best we could. Coming out with a third place finish after thinking the race was over for a couple of seconds. First you are disappointed that you didn't win and then you are happy again that you did finish third.

SAM HORNISH, JR.: I thought I was in Texas again. I saw the yellow come out, slowed down a little bit, got hit and thought, "I can't believe it is happening." Because the car is flying towards the wall but somehow the car managed not to hit the wall. Really kind of a tribute to the team. I make mistakes, we get caught in other people's mistakes, we always continue to keep working, try to work harder, come back for the next race. Lost a couple of points on Gil tonight, got a couple on Helio. Keep trading points, sooner or later we are going to catch up hopefully.

SAM HORNISH, JR.: We had a couple of pretty big holes in the side. Knocked a couple of fins off. Flattened the tire, one of the ramps that pushes air up over the rear tire and also creates downforce for the car got ripped off. Quite a few little things, but all in all, that is an expense for the team, but not as big as what it could have been.

SAM HORNISH, JR.: I am a little bit happier about this one. We definitely had the car to beat. It is tough not to win a race when you have the car to beat. It tough not to win when you have a dominate car. But I am happy because we gained some points. We lost a couple here. It is -- I don't know I can't really find the words to describe it, but I am happy we finished third. Disappointed a little bit that we didn't win. Overall, it was a good weekend. We showed again, lead a lot of laps, we showed that we are capable of winning races. We are going to keep trying harder every time that we lose one that one doesn't go our way, we try to come back a little harder to maybe take one that wasn't ours.

SAM HORNISH, JR.: As long as you were on the lower line, it was very good. If you tried to move up, it was a little tougher. A couple of times I tried to get a run on people on the outside, the car pushed up. I had a hard time keeping it down. Quite a few cars weren't handling very well. Those guys were trying to stay down on the bottom of the track all the time. It was just a matter of rubber build up on the outside groove. It wasn't that there wasn't any grip there, it was that it wasn't cleaned up. There were a lot of pieces of rubble, marble.

GIL de FERRAN: Earlier in the race I had a little bit more success running higher than later in the race. A couple times I almost whacked the wall; it wasn't too good. Pretty much like Sam said, it just got dirtier and dirtier as the race wore on.

GIL de FERRAN: We seem to qualify really well on the little ovals. And on the bigger ovals, mile and a half, two mile oval, we just can't seem to find the ultimate speed. Our car handles really well, that is why we are able to come through in the race. We can't seem to find the last few ten -- or few hundreds of a second here, that is going to get us up there. In Kansas, what happened, we just went wild with the set up and really just misjudged completely the race track and I nearly crashed. That is why I started so far back. Here the car was handling fine. I was wide open in qualifying. That is as fast as I can go -- fine, great, no problem. We look forward to tomorrow. I don't know, in this type of track, we can't seem to find the last few hundreds of a second.

GIL de FERRAN: No, I think Alex -- I always watch him. Even in CART when we are racing together -- he, you know, never battled that much together. So I really didn't have, how can I say, a refined judgment about him. I am also certainly very aware of his success in go-carts from his career. And he had a few runs in CART that were very promising, I thought so. I never discounted him as a bad driver. I think he is proving that this year. He is running very competitive this year. He knocked on the door a few times. Sure enough, he came up with the win on this one. He really drove well at the end of the race.

SAM HORNISH, JR.: About that far. He had me about that far in the -- I had about that much room between his tire. He gave me probably a little bit less than a car length of room. I figured it was better to finish fourth than to crash the car, especially after everything else that we went through. I backed off and I figured I will get him on the next lap, next lap he moved around again. Instead of having to pass him on the racetrack, Brian took care of him for me.

GIL de FERRAN: If I am not mistaken, five to go or something. I do think it is wide open. As we move towards the end of the season, it narrows, it gets harder and harder for the guys that are further back to catch up. I think we have to wait, judging race by race, but for sure Sam and ^ Andrew and myself, we seem to finish first, second, third; third, first and second; fourth, third and second, you know, but we are always around each other. It is like disease almost, terrible. I look in my mirror and I go, "here he is again." I look in my mirror and say, "oh, no, I want to see a different car." It seems to be always the same guys around.

SAM HORNISH, JR.: It definitely is like that. Again, Helio as I said -- back and forth it is up and down just need to finish on the lead lap. Every time we finish on the lead lap, we are in the top three. That is the biggest part about it, to keep from going out there and finishing. I had three bad races, we kind of stuck back on a little bit, got it going in the right direction. Head to Michigan and see what we can win there.