Patrick Carpentier Quotations

I think the series has to use it and grab it and try to bring the people back.

I'm very impressed with these cars. The biggest thing for me will be consistency. A 24-hour race is a completely different animal, and your whole mindset needs to shift. I'm hoping that everyone can get me up to speed real fast, and hopefully, I'll be in the Rolex 24.

I'm very pleased with this result. Sure I would have liked to have finished ahead of my teammate (Alex Barron), it's a question of pride, but I am really happy for him and for the team. We had a good weekend. Qualifying wasn't that great, but we got it back during the race. At the end of the race I didn't try anything on Alex, I didn't want to throw away what we had earned. Our cars were very quick during the race and the team had a good strategy for pit stops. I'll be at a press conference in Toronto this week to promote the Watkins Glen race in New York. After that I'll head home to Las Vegas.

I'm very happy. The car was pushing too much at the end and when I stopped earlier on in the race. I didn't want to take a chance anyway. It was pretty fast. I'm very happy for Red Bull Cheever Racing. It's really amazing. For me the weekend started really badly, we didn't have any speed at all. We came up through the race, and we're fourth quickest overall. The guys did fantastic job. Toyota has been helping us quite a bit lately. We can start seeing the improvements.

It is like Motocross but on special snowmobiles. It is great training. If I can get enough speed, maybe Skidoo or perhaps Red Bull will put me on their teams.

Toyota has really improved the performance of their engine lately, ... For the first time this year, I could keep up with the leaders without relying on race cautions to maintain contact with them. We are still lacking a bit of power to go for the win on a regular basis, but we are getting there. Toyota is really working hard to catch up to Honda. We are going to Watkins Glen next week for a day of testing in order to be more competitive for the penultimate race of the 2005 season.

We had a car that was much better than a tenth place finish. Overall the weekend has been great. We had gear shifting problems the entire race. It was a lot of work, and it got a lot worse just before that last yellow. It was not going into fifth gear. I just couldn't hold on to that fourth place once all the cars were packed together. But, I am happy. You look and see where we are coming from and where we are going. There were four of five guys at the front that were clearly leading the field today and we were a part of that. So, overall it's not that bad.

Racing in Canada would be so much fun.

Going into the last race, you always want to run strong, but it's also important to be safe. I've had quite a bit of experience at Fontana, so there really shouldn't be too many surprises. I should have won there a couple of times, but circumstances didn't allow it. I really expect the #83 car to be competitive in the race. Toyota has made some big improvements, and we were able to hang with the leaders on a big track for the first time at Chicago. So, I think we should be able to finish the season on a high note.

We really struggled to find a consistent car today. Some of that might be due to the weather, but we face a challenge finding that consistency.