Juan Pablo Montoya Scores Second Consecutive Victory on Streets of St. Petersburg
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (March 13, 2016) – Juan Pablo Montoya has a pattern that works on the Streets of St. Petersburg. Starting fourth for the second consecutive year brought the driver of the No. 2 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet to a repeat appearance at the top of the victory podium for the opening round of the 2016 Verizon IndyCar Series season.
Montoya took the lead for the final time on the 85th lap of the 110-lap/198-mile race around the 1.8-mile, 14 turn street circuit through downtown St. Petersburg.
Teammate Simon Pagenaud started and finished second to give Chevrolet a one-two finish in the first of 16 races on the 2016 schedule.
“Juan Pablo Montoya and his No. 2 Verizon Chevrolet team executed flawlessly to capture their second consecutive win on the Streets of St. Petersburg,” said Jim Campbell, U.S. Vice President Performance Vehicles and Motorsports. “It was great to see Simon Pagenaud take the checkered flag behind his teammate resulting in a 1-2 finish for Chevy in the season’s opening race.
“Preparation for the start of the 2016 season began immediately after the checkered flag at Sonoma. The Chevrolet engineering team, our technical partners, teams and drivers worked tirelessly to identify opportunities for continued improvement to both the Chevy IndyCar V6 engine and the Chevrolet Aero Kit to maximize power, durability and aerodynamic balance. While there is more work to do, that teamwork contributed to a strong start to the season.”
Montoya’s victory was the fifth time a Chevrolet IndyCar driver has won the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg since the Bowtie brand returned to Verizon IndyCar Series competition in 2012.
Helio Castroneves brought the No. 3 Hitachi Team Penske Chevrolet to the finish in fourth position giving the Chevrolet Aero Kit IndyCar with fully integrated 2.2 liter direct injected twin turbo charged V6 engine three of the top-four finishers.
Defending and four-time Verizon IndyCar Series champion Scott Dixon, No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet finished in seventh position. Dixon’s teammates Tony Kanaan, No. 10 NTT Data Chevrolet and Charlie Kimball, No. 83 Novo Nordisk Chevrolet finished ninth and 10th respectively.
The race day didn’t start smoothly for Team Chevy. Pole-sitter Will Power, No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet, was withdrawn from competition to due illness, and veteran Oriol Servia was tapped to take over the controls for today’s race. Servia had to drop to the back of the field for the start and had worked his way close to the top-10 in running order, but was caught up in a multi-car melee that relegated him to the 18th finishing position.
Further updates on Power’s condition and status for upcoming races will be furnished by the Verizon IndyCar Series.
Next on schedule for Chevrolet in the Verizon IndyCar Series will be the Series’ return to the Valley of the Sun, Phoenix International Raceway on April 2, 2016.
Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg
Streets of St. Petersburg, Fla.
Saturday, March 13, 2016
Press Conference with Juan Pablo Montoya and Simon Pagenaud
THE MODERATOR: We’re are joined by second-place finisher, Simon Pagenaud.
Simon, 48 laps led to start the race, talk about your day.
SIMON PAGENAUD: Overall it was a great day. If you compare to last year, it’s been a massive improvement on the whole 22 crew. I’m super proud to represent HPE in our first race and be here on the podium in second place, leading the race for a while.
But, yeah, I mean, Montoya is an old dog. He found a little good trick on me. Fortunately I had a lot of wheel spin compared to last year. I decided to be aggressive on the restarts. Maybe I was too close to T.K. I think it took quite a bit of aerodynamics out of my car. Had a lot of wheel spin, didn’t go forward. Great job on him to get me.
It’s a big advantage to be up front. Once you’re up front, with the turbulence behind, it’s very difficult, hard to keep the tires in good shape. If there was going to be another restart, it would have been difficult to get it back.
Overall you have to look at the big picture. Big picture, it’s a great start of the season. The evolution of the whole team, I hope you guys see it now, that you stop saying bad stuff about my team (laughter).
But it’s been awesome. We had so much fun this weekend. We’re just going to keep pushing and I think we’ll be strong this year.
THE MODERATOR: You’ve had the full year with the team, the full off-season. Do you feel more a part of the Team Penske team?
SIMON PAGENAUD: I was part of it last year. A lot of people don’t understand it takes time to build a team. It’s not overnight. You don’t beat these guys overnight. It’s not possible. It’s the elite.
When you win a race in IndyCar, it’s when you’ve done everything perfect. I made one tiny little mistake today and it lost me the race. It’s like a football team. I’ve been saying that all weekend. You get your football team, assemble the team together, it takes time for everybody to communicate well, understand each other, like each other to work better. That’s where we at now. It’s quite enjoyable.
THE MODERATOR: Questions.
Q. I’m curious about the difference between the black primary tires and the red alternates in terms of how long they last and whether you see a difference with the package. Do the changes made over the off-season affect the tires?
SIMON PAGENAUD: Yeah, it didn’t seem to degrade as much this year. I thought we could keep the rear tires in better shape. Our package is just more stable in general.
Like Ryan (Hunter-Reay) said, we had a lot of instability, especially braking, last year. The car was a lot more on the nose. So now it really helps to save the tires.
Yeah, I thought the shift between black Firestone tires and reds were what you would expect. But the degradation was pretty mild, I thought.
Q. You found out pretty late Will was not going to go. How does that affect the entire mentality of the team? Is each individual driver so focused on his own race that you have to put it out of your mind a little bit?
SIMON PAGENAUD: It’s a shame. I’ve known him for 10 years. So when something happens like that, it’s not like he’s my best friend, but still I care about him. I care about him. I care about all the guys in the series because we’re pretty much together for all year long, so you have to care for them. There’s a pretty good atmosphere with the drivers.
Like Ryan said, when that happens, you wonder what’s going on. You kind of worry. At the end of the day, I mean, you still have to perform in your job. We’re here for a reason. You got to be able to block that out and just focus on your job, like you said. I think that’s what we did.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Congratulations.
SIMON PAGENAUD: Thank you.
THE MODERATOR: We will continue with our post race press conference. We’re joined now by Juan Pablo Montoya. His second consecutive win here at St. Petersburg, 15th of his career.
Juan, tell us about your day.
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: I thought it was good, it was. We had a problem with the steering. I hit the wall. I made a mistake this morning on the warmup. I was trying to post a lap on really old tires. I went a little too deep in turn eight.
To be honest, I went straight. I took my hands off the wheel thinking I was going to hit the wall. It stopped so fast, I put my hands back on, I barely clipped it. Got my hands all bruised up. Pretty stupid. Being honest (smiling).
We started the race really good. Halfway through the race, the steering dropped to the left. Every time I braked, went straight. Something broke there, but that’s okay
I mean, affected the car a little bit, but it wasn’t too bad until I passed Hawksworth. When I passed Hawksworth, it got really bad. Something let go completely. Before, there was a little bit of play, but not bad.
I backed off. I had a five-second lead, so just take it easy and bring it to the end.
The car had a lot of speed today. It’s funny, because if you look at this morning in warmup, we’re like P11 or 14 or something. I was like, Wow, doesn’t feel that bad.
It’s hard when the warmup is so early because the track conditions are very different to what you’re going to race, so you have to keep that in mind. I thought we did a fairly good job with that. We knew exactly where we needed to change. I was happy with the car, to be honest.
THE MODERATOR: Early in the race, you were biding your time behind Simon?
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: I was behind Helio. Helio started having a problem. I passed him. To be honest, when I started running behind Simon, I didn’t really even bother trying to close the gap. It’s a long race, just save fuel.
We were trying to save a lot of fuel. I was making really good fuel numbers. I was so proud of myself, to be honest. I couldn’t believe how good of numbers I was getting, and I was keeping up, so it was good.
With the first exchange, did a really good job on cold tires. I closed the gap. I went from like six seconds to two seconds. In traffic I got even closer. We seemed to have a very similar pace at that point.
I think on black tires, I would say he probably had an even better pace than me. On red tires, I definitely had the upper hand.
THE MODERATOR: Let’s open it up for questions.
Q. Juan, you mentioned saving fuel. Was that part of the reason you spent a long time on black tires during the middle portion of the race?
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: To tell you the truth, I think we could have gone a lot longer. I don’t know how much longer. When we pitted, I never even got a low fuel alarm at all. I was actually surprised we went in that early. I think it was part of the strategy to make sure people didn’t put red tires on and close the gap or something.
To be honest, with years of experience, you learn about it’s not how fast you are over a lap, it’s how fast you are over, here, 110 laps. I felt we did a really good job.
Last year we had a really fast car. It was hard on rear tires. Today I could get on the gas really hard all day long, and the tires were 100% behind me. That was really nice.
Q. What about your move when you took the lead?
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: It was good, both of them, when I went around Simon and Daly. I’m surprised Simon took that big jump to try to come back. I thought I had him pretty much clear. Oh, no you’re not.
I gave him room. I did push him wide a little. But I felt it was pretty fair. Then he did the same thing. But it’s okay. We both gave each other room. Close. Left a little mark, but it’s okay.
Q. Your teammate Simon said that he found it easier to be out front than to follow. Did you find that the same?
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: For me both was okay. Of course, to be honest, sometimes it’s easier to follow because you have a reference where they braking, what they doing. I mean, you can close a lot of the gap there, just brake a little light. You can kind of time it. Actually sometimes when you get to clean track, you go, Where was it?
Honestly, you start using them as reference. The first couple laps, it’s like you start braking and you end up braking a lot early to be on the safe side. Like into turn four, I could brake it nearly in the 200 behind him. When I started running up front, I was braking like 260. I never went back to 200. I could do that following them. I don’t know why.
It’s crazy because you gain a little bit, but you get it wrong and it stays over. You got to be smart about that.
Q. Could you explain if you were on the same type of tires as Simon when you passed him.
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: I think so. We went red, black, black, red, same as last year.
Q. Did the red tires hold up?
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: Yeah, they did. The first set went off a little bit, not the rears, the front. I think the pressures were too high. I had the same thing with the first set of blacks. I got a big push towards the end of the stint. We lowered the pressure for the second run and it was really good.
Q. We saw your popularity on display again here today, especially at the stage.
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: Shocking, isn’t it?
Q. We saw it last year, too. I’m sure you have it in some other places, too, but do you feed off of that here?
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: You can’t determine yourself on whether people like you or not. I rather people like me than they don’t. Either way, to be honest with you, when you’re racing, you don’t really care.
It’s great you have people come and support you, you have fans that are passionate about what you do. Every time you see more Colombian flags and people paying attention. It’s exciting.
Q. Tim Cindric said earlier this week your win last year showed that you can still do this and you can do it on a course like this. What do you think this year’s win does for you going forward?
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: It’s nice to start the year with a win. You know what I mean? To be honest with you, when you’re in Team Penske, there’s always that pressure that you got to win races. You have to win. You’re in the best car, you got to win races.
So to start the year with a win, it’s like, Oh, I got that one out of the way (laughter).
It’s fun because I felt we had a really dominant car in the race. It would have been interesting to see how good Will would have been. You compare Helio’s pace to ours, I think ours was a little better. Simon and ours was a little closer in setup than the other two. Kind of like two different groups.
Q. Simon just said that you need to have a perfect race to win in IndyCar. Did you have a perfect race today?
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: I had a pretty good race. A couple of mechanical issues. But I think the good thing was when I was running like 63.3, 63.4 on red tires. I had a one and a half second lead. He started pushing, closing the gap. I started pushing. I went from running 63.3 to 62.6. I picked up like 6/10ths or 7/10ths. I started pushing hard, opened the gap again. He realized I was quicker than him, so he started saving the tires.
Around six I opened 4/10ths, run 90, open the gap, I ran 90s, 90s, then flats, flats, just to keep opening the gap. You just got to be smart.
Q. You mentioned how your steering wheel…
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: It was pretty bad.
Q. When you pulled in after you won, you were in the car doing this. I couldn’t see the tires, but I got the feeling they weren’t changing position.
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: The left front wasn’t moving too much. The problem is something broke on the right front. When I started, I think it’s probably from this morning. So I got to blame myself for that one.
It was bad, but not terrible. When I passed Hawksworth, it went clack. I heard it. It went to turn right, all the way 90 degrees, it wouldn’t turn. After 90 degrees, it would really turn. I figured out, Go to 90, turn.
Q. Were you worried it would break all together?
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: Yeah, but I was leading. Leading, I’m not risking it. You look at my last three laps, I took it easy. I used the ‘push to pass’ to make up some time because I had like seven left with three laps to go. Just abuse it on the straight.
I was really careful. The only place that was bad was turn three, right before turn 10, that little kink where Will crashed, and the fast chicane. I just took it easy through there. That was it. It was fine.
Q. How would you say it affected the team with Will not being able to go? Have you ever been in a situation like that before where something happens like that?
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: To be honest, I was surprised he qualified. He wasn’t feeling that well before qualifying. To tell you the truth, he qualified really well. He did an amazing job, how sick he was. He did really good.
Yeah, I mean, I think over one lap he does the best job out of the four of us. In race pace, you can cover him. Not easy, but you can cover him. I’ve done it. But over one lap, it’s tough.
Q. You said since Sonoma last year that not finishing off the championship was nothing you dwell on. Is there a relief factor in winning?
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: Winning, yeah. I mean, to come back here after being down, start the season with a win again, it shows everybody, We’re here. It’s good. I feel like we can get a lot of wins this year.
THE MODERATOR: That will do it. Juan, thank you very much. Congratulations.
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA: Thank you.