The IndyCar drivers who qualified first through sixth at Long Beach on Saturday — Alexander Rossi, Scott Dixon, Will Power, Josef Newgarden, Simon Pagenaud and Graham Rahal — held a smile-filled news conference after the session, cracking jokes and laughing through several exchanges.
Here are five of the best quotes from the Fast 6:
Josef Newgarden, on how impossibly close to the wall the drivers get at Long Beach:
“It’s kind of like when you’re pulling out of a parking spot and it’s tight on both sides and you back up and you start to turn and you’re like, ‘Man, am I going to miss that car in front of me?’ And your nose is like right there.
“Like 50 percent of the time, I’m just like, ‘Well, I think I’m going to make it. If I don’t, I hit him.’ (Shrugs)
“That’s kind of what it feels like. All the time on every lap, you’re just like, ‘Argh, I could hit — or maybe not.’ Most of the time you don’t. That’s what it’s like for me. It’s kind of fun.”
Graham Rahal and Simon Pagenaud on starting alongside each other Sunday despite their incident at the start of last year’s Long Beach Grand Prix:
Rahal: “(Last year) was like a very minor love tap.”
Pagenaud: (Scoffs in disagreement.)
Rahal: “It’s going to be a lot harder to hit him when he’s next to me. So if I’m going to do it again, I’m going to try really hard to do it.’
Pagenaud: “I think you were next to me…”
Rahal: “No, I was behind you and…”
Alexander Rossi: “It was like a torpedo.”
Pagenaud: “Yeah, a torpedo!”
Rahal: “That’s Power’s issue now, right?”
Will Power: “You behind me?”
Rahal: “Yeah.”
Power: “The difference is I’m from Toowoomba, see, and we fight.”
Rahal: “I’m really not worried about you. I’ve got like 50 pounds on you.”
Pagenaud: “I might not brake in Turn 1 just to make sure I don’t get hit.”
Rahal: “Actually, I would be perfectly fine with that. If you want to do that, that would help. You could like take out everybody and I’ll be good.”
Simon Pagenaud, off to a poor start this season, on proclaiming he was “never gone” after he made the final round of qualifying:
Pagenaud (deadpan): “It’s just my ego coming out. I’m a pretentious person, so I just said these things. Why not say it, right?”
Reporter: “I was wondering if you’re feeling unloved or ignored or if there’s something going on…”
Will Power, his teammate: “I have been ignoring him a little bit.”
Pagenaud: “Actually I have plenty of love, mostly from Will, a lot from Josef (Newgarden), too much sometimes. But no, I feel confident, so I think ego comes out when you’re confident. I think that’s what’s going on maybe.”
Reporter: “Do you have a chip on your shoulder?”
Pagenaud: “A chip? Chips are for dogs, I think. So I don’t have a chip, no. It’s all good. I’m pretty focused, 100 percent. Yeah, might have shown some aggressiveness, fire — and that’s not a bad thing.”
Alexander Rossi, responding to a reporter who said it was tough to pass at Long Beach:
“I don’t know how true that is. I don’t think it’s that hard to pass.”
Graham Rahal on why the drivers seemed so happy after making the Fast Six (final round of qualifying) but not winning the pole:
Rahal: “It’s not even the top six anymore. You feel like if you’re in the top 10, you’ve been solid. Didn’t used to be that way. Obviously, we’d all like to be on pole. It would be even better. But I think you really have to feel a sense of like accomplishment as a team. You can see it across all our mechanics, too; everybody is happy. You make it to the Fast Six, you’ve really done something.
“In my first years in this, if you made it to the Fast Six then you were like decent. And nowadays it’s just like the gap — like this morning, 1.1 seconds across from 1st to 25th over a street course this long (almost two miles) with all the bumps and curves and this and that — nowhere else in the world will you find racing that competitive, period. So I think you should feel proud if you had a good day.”