Vitor Meira Car Quotations

Wow, this place is physical. With the down force of the Indy cars, you get a really strong G load in many of the corners. It is almost as much as some of the high-banked ovals we race. But it is different since we turning left and right. But that is why we train so hard off the track. (Meira is a tri-athlete). You need to be in as good shape as possible. Overall, we learned a lot with the car today. We'll be stronger on Saturday and be prepared for the race. Eighty laps is going to be long at a track like this place.

We had a vibration with the car after the second practice today. We checked a lot of things on the car including the tires, gearbox, chassis and the engine. Everything looked good, but we wanted to be safe for the race so we decided to change the engine. That way we are ready for warm-up and the race. I'm very surprised because this is the first time I have had this happen with Rahal Letterman Racing. We can work out some more things in warm-up and the car will be set to go. The car felt very good in traffic in the practice. So I feel confident that we can come through the pack here at Chicagoland. Some other tracks you couldn't do, that but here it is possible.

I have always enjoyed racing at Chicagoland, ... Yes, it is a basic 1.5-mile oval, but it seems to have a different personality. It is wider than most of the other tracks and the grip level is good everywhere. So you see a lot more drivers using the high groove. I think that is why there have been so many close finishes there. I think there will be another close one this year. I just want to have the front of my car cross the line first this time.

We worked on our race settings during practice, ... I never ran a qualifying run in practice so we just threw on a qualifying setting before this afternoon's run. The race is the important thing here. Sure, we would like to qualify on the pole but it doesn't matter here. You can win the race from anywhere on the grid. We think we have a good race car and that is the key for Sunday. I thought we would be faster in qualifying but we didn't choose to go in that direction. We'll be ready for the race.

We had to go out second and that is a little bit of a question mark since the weather changed so much. You never know what will happen with the cool temperatures and the wind, but I was flat on the throttle. It felt pretty good. We did some race setups this morning and the car seems to be very good for the race. Rahal Letterman Racing had enough data coming into qualifying that we were not too surprised by the conditions. I got some information from Buddy after the last practice when the wind was really strong. Overall we had a strong run. Of course, we would obviously like to be faster.

The team did a great job putting the car together to the new Chevy Gen IV engine and we were very fast. That's the way it goes sometimes. I was really trying hard mostly because the team and engine company deserves it. That's the way it goes I crashed. I got loose. We were trying to free up the car and that was my first qualifying simulation. Maybe the tires weren't ready and maybe I pushed too hard. The fact is I got loose and crashed.