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Tag: Bryan Clauson

  • Gustavo Yacaman Leads First Practice For New Hampshire 100

    In practice at New Hampshire Motor Speedway for the Firestone Indy Lights New Hampshire 100, Gustavo Yacaman topped the charts with a lap of 25.0034 seconds.

    “The car felt good today and the track is a lot of fun and it reminds me of Milwaukee,” he said. “I really hope that qualifying doesn’t look like it did in Milwaukee after I topped both practice sessions, I qualified fourth. I hope that this weekend we have the speed to keep our pace up during qualifying and the race. Hopefully we can get a pole and maybe a win. I wouldn’t mind having a perfect weekend. It isn’t easy to pass at this track. It really depends on when you come up on a car that is slower than you, you lose all of your front grip. This is why I feel that qualifying will be so crucial. Whoever is on the pole, unless their car is really off, they will keep the lead. We can still make our car better and go faster so we will see what happens Saturday when everyone puts their little tricks on.”

    Sam Schmidt Motorsports trio Josef Newgarden (25.0242), Bryan Clauson (25.3175) and Esteban Guerrieri (25.4634) followed while Anders Krohn was fifth.

    “It was OK,” Newgarden said. “Obviously it was our first day here and it’s new for everybody like a couple of places on the calendar this year. I think we had a good day. It was definitely productive for what we needed to get done and tested on the car for qualifying and race day. I think we’re looking good here for Saturday and hopefully  we qualify well here because I think that it’s going to be very difficult to pass here with the track configuration and the areo push you pick up here. It’s almost worse than Milwaukee. Qualifying could be crucial for the race and hopefully we can put it together for that session.”

    “It’s (NHMS) a lot of fun,” Clauson said. “It’s a tricky little one mile with a lot of grip and a lot of speed. With the progressive banking, you can use multiple lanes to help your car in several different ways. The Sam Schmidt Motorsports guys gave me a great Mazda Road to Indy/NOS Energy Drink No. 77. It’s been a good day of practice here, and I feel really good about the car we have going into this weekend’s race. When you’re fast right off the trailer, it gives you a lot of confidence. It allows you to start working on the little details that are probably going to win you the race. These guys unloaded a great race car for me today, and we’ve just been fine-tuning it all day long.”

    “I think it was a good learning process coming back to the ovals,” Guerrieri said. “The track is a bit tricky, so my approach was to gradually be more aggressive. I think it was a good day. We found the pace and worked on the car. We have good information to analyze Friday. Overall it was good and I’m confident.”

  • Josef Newgarden Scores Third Firestone Indy Lights Win of The Season at Iowa

    Josef Newgarden Scores Third Firestone Indy Lights Win of The Season at Iowa

    For the third time this year, it was Josef Newgarden going to victory lane as he took the victory in the Sukup 100 at Iowa Speedway.

    “We put a really good, strong car together for that race,” Newgarden, drove of the No. 11 Copart/Score Big/Robo-Pong/SSM car, said. “It felt so good I could go anywhere on the track, and that’s just a tribute to the team. I was so disappointed that we didn’t qualify a little bit better. At least we didn’t put ourselves too far back. We just came in with a conservative approach but still aggressive enough to get in the lead early on and just hold it all the way through.  Great job by the Sam Schmidt Motorsports guys and everyone else that supports us.”

    Newgarden was able to take the lead on lap 26 and never looked back as he scored the win, 5.4724 seconds over Gustavo Yacaman. The second place finish marks his best finish in his career.

    “For the (Lap 6) restart, I just didn’t have the pace to keep up with Esteban and Newgarden was attacking me so he was able to get by,” Yacaman said. “I stuck with Newgarden when he overtook Esteban, and he pulled me through. Then it basically was a battle for second with Bryan.

    “We’ve worked so hard and we’ve had a good car so many times, so it’s good to capitalize on the equipment Mark Moore has given me.”

    Meanwhile, it was Bryan Clauson finishing third for his best finish of the three starts that he’s made this year.

    “We didn’t give each other an inch and it was just good, hard racing,” Clauson said of racing with Yacaman.  “We just didn’t have quite a good enough car to slip underneath (Yacaman).  We were a little bit tight.  We just didn’t have enough to finish the corner on the outside.

    “It was a lot of fun. I threw everything I had at him, and I just didn’t have quite enough.  I spent the last 40 laps trying to get a run and doing something.  I tried high, I tried low, I tried diving under.  I tried throwing everything I could at him, but just never got quite the run I needed to beat him off the corner and take the spot.”

    With the victory, Newgarden expands his points lead from 13 to 46 over Esteban Guerrieri. Guerrieri finished in 12th place after having mechanical issues.

    Victor Garcia and Duarte Ferreira rounded out the top 10.

    “The team won this race last year (with Sebastian Saavedra), and I knew in coming here that we would have a good car,” Ferreira said. “The start was a little crazy but I was able to make up the positions that I lost. I want to thank everyone at BHA for the great job and my sponsors for supporting me.”

  • Bryan Clauson Wins Firestone Freedom 100 Pole as Qualifying is Rained Out

    2010 USAC National Drivers Championship title holder Bryan Clauson may be making his first ever Firestone Indy Lights start, but the pressure will be on as he will start pole.

    Clauson won the Sonoco Pole Award and its $5,000 prize for tomorrow’s Firestone Freedom 100 as a result of qualifying being rained out and the starting grid being set by points. The 21-year old from Noblesville, Indiana won the pole as the No. 77 Mazda Road to Indy car sat first in points, thanks to Conor Daly, who drove the first three events of the year.

    “We didn’t get to qualify and get the pole but that’s part of being a part of a great team and having great teammates like Conor Daly to put us up front,” Clauson said. “Starting from the front kind of heightens your expectations a little bit. Now you don’t have to work traffic. I’ve got a couple teammates in the lead pack. We watched a lot of race tape with Wade (Cunningham) and saw how teammates can make things happen. Obviously, I want to win but the big key is being there at the end. The first few laps are going to be key.”

    Clauson has only been able to turn eight laps on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway due to the rain-shortened practice this weekend, though did test on May 13th to prepare for the event.

    “We felt a lot better after practice today than we did after our test earlier,” Clauson said. “We worked really hard on the test day and never quite got it right. The guys brought back a great race car for us. We didn’t get to qualify and get the pole, but that’s part of being a part of a great team and having great teammates like Conor Daly to put us up front. Starting from the front kind of heightens your expectations a little bit. Now you don’t have to work traffic. I’ve got a couple teammates in the lead pack. We watched a lot of race tape with Wade (Cunningham) and saw how teammates can make things happen. Obviously, I want to win, but the big key is being there at the end. The first few laps are going to be key.”

    While competiting in the Firestone Freedom 100 during the afternoon, Clauson will also be running the Hoosier Hundred that night.

    “It’s exciting,” he said. “They are both prestigious races in the state of Indiana. I look at the Hoosier Hundred as the second most prestigious race in Indiana after the Indy 500. It’s a race that has a lot of history, and a lot of dirt track heroes ran that race and were winners there. Doing both the Freedom 100 and the Hoosier Hundred in the same night is going to be cool. I think it’s great that the Speedway and the Fairgrounds have built a ‘BC’s Bandwagon’ ticket package around it. It’s an added bonus for an already-special day in my career.”

    His Sam Schmidt Motorsports teammate Josef Newgarden will line up on the front row beside him as this continues a successful couple of weeks at Indianapolis for Sam Schmidst as he won the pole for the Indianapolis 500 last weekend with driver Alex Tagliani.

    “I think we’re going to be in a strong position tomorrow, but we really wanted to qualify,” Newgarden said. “I think everyone wanted a shot at the pole and we didn’t get that opportunity. We proved in testing that we had a strong car. Sam Schmidt Motorsports is a good Indy Lights team and they have a lot of history in the series and a lot of experience and knowledge to draw from. The (IZOD) IndyCar Series side did a phenomenal job last weekend, and I’m confident that we can handle the job on our end.”

    Sam Schmidt Motorsports’ success reins no surprise as they’ve enlisted driver coaching help from former Indy Lights champion Alex Lloyd and Wade Cunningham to serve as driver coaches to help their young drivers.

    “Now that I’m racing ovals (for Dale Coyne), I can’t spend as much time with him as I’d like, but today is a good day since we have no track activity (for IZOD IndyCar Series.)” Loyd said. “I’m here to give them tips and tricks of the trade of racing at Indianapolis, how the race goes down, how to deal with traffic, things like that. The guys all know how to drive a race car. You don’t have to teach them how to drive. It’s more about remembering the experiences you had and trying to relate it to the nuances they are experiencing on the track.”

     Andretti Autorsport’s Stefan Wilson and Team Moore Racing’s Victor Garcia will start third and fourth. Sam Schmidt Motorsports’ Esteban Guerrieri and O2 Racing Technology’s Peter Demsey wil make up the third row.

    The race is set to be 40-laps in length tomorrow and will be shown on VERSUS at 12:30pm EST. It can also be listened to through the IMS Radio Network broadcast on indycar.com, Sirius 212 and XM 94.

    Going into the event, teams only got 10 minutes of practice before the rains fell. Wilson led the brief practice sesson, turning a lap at more than 189mph.

    “Kind of mixed feelings about how today went,” Wilson said. “Happy to be starting P3, but we were pretty quick on the test day, and I felt we had a decent chance to start on the front row and a shot at battling for the pole. But at the same time, I am happy to be starting at the sharp end of the grid.”

    Wilson was followed in practice by Duarte Ferreira, Newgarden, Clauson and James Winslow.

     Before the event begins tomorrow, teams will be given a 30-minute practice at 9 a.m.