Pocono INDYCAR 400 Fueled by Sunoco – Pocono Raceway
IZOD IndyCar Series
QUALIFYING NOTES/QUOTES – July 6, 2013
JAKES AND RAHAL QUALIFIED 14TH AND 17TH RESPECTIVELY FOR THE POCONO INDYCAR 400 FUELED BY SUNOCO
POLE: Marco Andretti 2-lap avg. speed of 221.273 mph (L1: 40.6926, L2: 40.6547)
14th: James Jakes 2-lap avg. speed of 218.240 mph (L1: 41.2435, L2: 41.2345)
17th: Graham Rahal 2-lap avg. speed of 217.457 mph (L1: 41.4483, L2: 41.3266)
GRAHAM RAHAL, No. 15 Midas / Big O Tires Dallara/Honda/Firestone: “I’m proud of our Midas guys, they’ve been working awfully hard. Handling-wise we made a lot of gains. To be honest, I thought the balance in qualifying was pretty good but we hit the hard limiter on the front straight, which all but ends your run, and unfortunately that killed our first lap. I think we probably could have run a mid-18 (second lap) if that had happened but unfortunately we didn’t. Our race car is pretty good but our qualifying car seemed to be our weakness here but we will go out there and pound around tomorrow and hopefully make up some spots. It’s going to be tough to pass here tomorrow with the aerodynamic setup that we have and with the tire grip that we have available to us.”
JAMES JAKES, No. 16 Acorn Stairlifts Dallara/Honda/Firestone: “We struggled a little bit generally to find the balance. Its strange because when we came here for the test day we were pretty happy but obviously with the track temperature and the air temperature creeping up, its changed the car. We will work on the race car in the final practice and hopefully that will put us in good shape for tomorrow. This morning Turn 3 was giving us trouble but in qualifying it was Turn 1 but that’s the nature of this place. I guess that’s why they call it the Tricky Triangle, because it’s always changing and its fun to be out there with the three different corners. No corner is the same so trying to get the car sorted out for all three is pretty tough.”
RLL RACING AT POCONO RACEWAY: This will be the first event for RLL at Pocono Raceway but team co-owner Bobby Rahal competed at Pocono Raceway eight times between 1982-1989 and earned one win (1988), three podiums (3rd – 1982, 1984) and six top-five’s in addition to leading 131 laps.
NEXT UP: ABC will begin their live broadcast of Sunday’s race at noon ET and the 160-lap event will take the Green Flag at 12:15 p.m. It will also be broadcast by the IMS Radio Network on Sirius XM (XM 94 and Sirius 212). Timing and Scoring information is available for all sessions from www.indycar.com.
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