Indy Pro Series: Corning Twin 100s

Topics:  Corning Twin 100s

Alex Lloyd
Hideki Mutoh
July 7, 2007

WATKINS GLEN, NEW YORK

MODERATOR: While we wait for our winner, we have our second and third-place finishers coming to the podium now:
Hideki Mutoh, who was our runner up today; and Alex Lloyd, who finishes third.
By way of information here, Hideki Mutoh, of course, as we said, finished second, his eighth top 5 finish in nine starts this year. And Alex Lloyd finishes third; and as remarkable as it may sound, that's his worst finish of the year. He's had a top 3 finish in all of the races so far and is the points leader.
And, provisionally, it's 425 points for Alex Lloyd. Hideki Mutoh was second with 311. And that's how we stand right now.
Gentlemen, if you want to, Hideki, we'll start with you, talk a little bit about the race itself and your efforts to run down Wade Cunningham.
HIDEKI MUTOH: I was right behind Wade. And I tried to pass him as he came every lap. But I couldn't make it. And the last lap looks like I got close to him.
So I tried again, but it didn't happen. I still have tomorrow, so I'll go for it.
MODERATOR: Alex, as we said, you finished third today. Talk a little bit about your race and efforts to run down the guy here.
ALEX LLOYD: Well, today was really a bad race, really, in terms of we made a stupid mistake on down force and that cost us any chance of winning, really.
I mean, we were just so slow down the straight that that really was it for us, I knew from the first lap.
So we had our hands full, really, on restarts and any time we went down the straight. But saying that, we had a really good car through the corners. We were rapid and we used -- when we got stuck behind Phil Giebler or got past him, had a bit of a gap to close down, and we managed to get that gap down pretty quickly. But in doing so we lost the tires in the last couple of laps, we really struggled with tires, and that was that.
But even if we got as close as we could, I don't think there was any way of getting past anybody. So today the best we could do was third. So we'll settle for that today. It was certainly a disappointing run, but we brought it home still in the top 3. So that's good. And we've got another chance tomorrow. I think we start fourth.
So I feel a lot more confident going into tomorrow's race than I do about today's race. Hopefully we'll have a good run.
MODERATOR: Alex, on one of the restarts there, Giebler made a move underneath you down in turn 1. Talk about that situation. That was pretty close.
ALEX LLOYD: I think Wade brake-checked everybody a little bit in the last corner. And we were all going flat out thinking that we were going green. He hit the brakes going into the final turn. We all checked up. And that let Phil get right with me. And then, as I said before, when I got down the straight with five mile an hour slower than where we should be, and he got a clean, easy run down the inside.
Then it was a tricky thing of trying to get back at him. That was the tough bit. But we managed to do it. It was a bit of a close move. But I knew that if I had wanted any chance of a decent result, I had to get past him as quickly as possible and attempt to catch the leaders. But, like I said, when we got there, the tires were gone and that was the best we could do.
MODERATOR: Hideki, it appeared to be a pretty clean race for you. Were there any moments that got your attention out there?
HIDEKI MUTOH: Not really, no.
MODERATOR: Do we have any questions?

Q. Hideki, what did you learn for tomorrow?
HIDEKI MUTOH: Difficult question. I learned quite a lot about the car. I'm getting used to more on the track because this is my first time. And yesterday we didn't have much sufficient time. So I was still learning in the race. So it should be good tomorrow.
MODERATOR: Gentlemen, thank you and best of luck tomorrow.