“The Gulfstream/PKV Racing team's race was about like we qualified. I qualified behind my teammate and finished behind my teammate, but the crew did a great job in the pits, which helped us pick up some positions,”
“The PKV Racing team played a little funny game waiting. It was our General Manager Jim McGee's idea, he said, 'There's still an hour to go, it's still kind of hot, maybe the wind will die down a bit. We need everything we can get for qualifying.' So we waited it out a bit and I think it paid off. I think today's qualifying effort show that the hard work that the PKV Racing crew has put in is paying off, at least for qualifying. Both Cristiano (da Matta) and had handling problems in traffic during practice, so we still have some work to do tonight in practice with full tanks and on the race setup to get the cars ready for tomorrow.”
“It was great. I think we already in practice showed that we were probably going to be up there. No surprises. The car was very good even with the wind. We knew that no other team was going to beat us, with or without wind strategy, ... We went out there with the big wind. It was very good.”
“We played a little funny game waiting because we figured, it was Jim McGee's idea, Jim McGee, our general manager said, 'There's still an hour to go, it's still kind of hot, maybe the wind will die down a bit. We need everything we can get for qualifying.' So we waited it out a bit.”
“I think it shows in PKV, with myself and my teammate Cristiano da Matta on the second row, it shows a lot of hard work has paid off, at least for qualifying. I do know also we need to do a lot of work for our race setups tonight. We weren't all that happy in today's afternoon session. But, you know, all credit to the guys in the shop, they did a great job.”
“The car felt really good on new tires, ... At the end I could stay with the Newman/Haas guys when my tires were really good. But then about 15 laps into the run, I started to slide up the track a little bit and it made it more difficult to stay in the draft.”
“Surfers Paradise has a great atmosphere and the circuit is very challenging. It's incredible that we have gone 14 years without a two-time winner, but I guess that is testimony to how tough the place really is.”
