The two CFH Racing drivers ended up one-two at a rainy Verizon IndyCar Series race on the streets of Toronto. Newgarden got his second win of the 2015 season and Filippi finished on the podium for the first time in his IndyCar career, giving the first-year race team two reasons to be happy.
“It was cool to get a 1-2,” said Newgarden. “This is a new team this year and so to already be able to get a 1-2 with this group is really incredible.”
The team is co-owned by former IndyCar driver Sarah Fisher, Wink Hartman and Ed Carpenter, the only active driver/owner in the series. Carpenter takes over for Filippi on oval-track races, but has not been able to break the Top 20 this year in neither the Indianapolis 500, at the end of May, nor the Firestone 600 last weekend. He said the Toronto result is a huge lift for the team, which had
“I’ve been pretty down since the performances at Indy and at Texas. It was so disappointing,” Carpenter said. “But we knew we had strong street-course cars all year long. Just a huge day.”
Newgarden said winning an IndyCar race is special, but winning in Toronto has even greater meaning.
“I’m definitely excited because this is Toronto and this is an IndyCar town,” he said.
Filippi said he and Newgarden had a goal to put the team on the podium in Toronto, but didn’t expect to 1-2 finish. He thanked his team for preparing a car capable of running at the front of the field.
“It’s nice when you set the goal and you achieve it.” Filippi said, “The team did everything perfectly to give us the opportunity to be up front. We had a fast car and we knew we needed to be kind of in the clean air up in front and this is what we did — just kept pushing.”
Newgarden added that the team has to use the momentum and keep pushing to get strong results the remainder of the season.
“I don’t think we can let off the gas,” said Newgarden. “We’ve got to keep working because there’s a lot of good teams and it’s still difficult to do this on a regular basis. I don’t think this is going to necessarily mean we can just get more and more wins throughout the year. We’ve got to keep working on that.”
Finishing third in the race was Helio Castroneves, who, though happy to be on the podium, admitted making a couple of mistakes that nearly cost him.
“Unfortunately, I had some issues out there,” said Castroneves. “I was trying to pass Juan (Pablo Montoya) and ended up going straight and I tried to pass (Takuma) Sato and almost spun out, so we were having an adventure.”
It could be said start of the afternoon was an “adventure” for most of the drivers. The race started under wet conditions and drivers lapping the temporary street circuit on rain tires, but as conditions dried and drivers opted to change to regular racing rubber, the event proceed fairly smoothly, with only a couple of caution periods. The 85-lap race took only one hour and 40 minutes to complete.
There is no change at the top of the Verizon IndyCar Series driver standings. Montoya is first, 27 points ahead of Will Power and 45 points up on Scott Dixon.
The Verizon IndyCar Series takes a one-week break before the schedule resumes on June 27, 2015, with the MAVTV 500 goes at Auto Club Speedway, in California.
