IZOD IndyCar Series: Indianapolis 500

Topics:  Indianapolis 500

Ed Carpenter
May 21, 2011

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA

Q. Ed, this has been a great week for you, obviously, and your team. You had a really good first lap. I don't know if the warm-up lap was too quick or there was a problem on 2, but you know what happened.
ED CARPENTER: Yeah, I was kind of surprised the warm-up lap was that quick. You know, in the moment I was a little frustrated just because you never want to lose spots from the first round. We were sixth going into the Shootout. But we hardly made any change to the car at all and we just lot the balance, picked up a lot of under-steer, the opposite of what I had in the first round.
Once again, the car had more speed, but between myself and as a group we missed a little bit on the balance, but still really happy for the team. There's a lot of guys, especially a lot of big guys, that aren't in the Shootout today. We're not here to win the Shootout, we're here to win the race. You know, we'll get back to work tomorrow and get the car out on the track if it's dry and keep working on our race setup.

Q. What are we to make of the fact that we don't have the usual Power teams up here in the fast nine, Andretti didn't do much, Penske only had one team. What are we to read from that, if anything?
ED CARPENTER: I don't know. I think it's just a testament to all the teams in the series are working really hard to get better. It's probably -- it has a lot to do with the fact of how long we've been running this car. You know, it's gotten tighter every year. You know, as mechanics move around to different teams and engineers move around to different teams, information gets spread out, and there's all sorts of things. But teams have to work hard to catch up, and I think those guys have kind of reached a point with the car where they couldn't get any further, and other people caught up, and in some cases, at least today, did a better job.

Q. Can we talk about the second lap? I think that was the one real tight with the wall.
ED CARPENTER: I felt like it was too tight with it on all of them. I don't remember specifically. But like I said, the front of the car just didn't want to turn. I was trying to keep my foot in it because I knew when we did the warm-up lap that the car was well capable of going over 227, just missed on the balance a little bit.

Q. Talk about the rain delay.
ED CARPENTER: I wanted a chance to go out and do it again. If we had to do it again, I would still want to go try again. That's the competitor in me. I think you always think you can go better and go faster. If I had a chance right now to go jump in and do it again, I'd be out in the car.

Q. You're now in a great position to make a run to win the Indianapolis 500.
ED CARPENTER: Yeah, starting eighth for the second year in a row, and last year I felt like we put ourselves in really good position and just had a bad break under yellow and had to pit with a close pit. Other than that I felt like we were in the hunt. I know we can position ourselves from the eighth spot, so we'll see how it goes.