Firestone Indy Lights: St. Pete 100, Race 2

Topics:  St. Pete 100

JR Hildebrand
Logan Gomez
April 6, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA

THE MODERATOR: J.R., second place finish. Talk about your run out there today.
J.R. HILDEBRAND: It was almost one of those, you start in the Top 10 and you get on the podium by default. But there was a lot of attrition there, a lot of accidents, and I was able to make my way through them.
We had a pretty good car right at the beginning and couldn't really do much with it, just with all the yellows and stuff. And towards the end just couldn't get through out of the hairpin very well, so just having a tough time just playing defense, really.
Really happy for the team. Everyone has done a great job this whole weekend; we've been right up in the front, and I'm happy to end up on the podium.
THE MODERATOR: Logan, third place finish, your best-ever finish on a road course. Talk about your run out there today.
LOGAN GOMEZ: The finish wasn't exactly what I expected. Going into the race we were going to be happy with a Top 10 finish and it turned out there were a lot more incidents in the race than we expected, and we moved up 11 spots starting the race, starting dead last.
It worked out. We had a good car at the end. You know, the track was a lot slipperier than it's been. I didn't run yesterday's race because we had gearbox issues. It's definitely good for the team and the sponsors to finish up third.

Q. Can you address just how dirty the driving was? It seemed like farther back it got real ugly.
J.R. HILDEBRAND: I guess I'd say yesterday was a really good race for street cars from that regard, from my experience racing the Atlantic Series, and you watch all the Champ Car races that were out there on street courses, and that's really par for the course as far as I'm concerned. There was a lot of really defensive driving out there, and there's been nothing probably disqualification-worthy. But from the incidents that I saw, it was just a lot of racing incidents, guys really pushing it to the limit and running out of grip.
LOGAN GOMEZ: I agree with him. The racing went with the track. You know, you've got concrete walls on both sides and the only passing zones are really braking zones. People getting aggressive, trying to make something happen where it's not available.
THE MODERATOR: Guys, we appreciate your time.