Meyer Shank Racing’s Simon Pagenaud in the No.60 AutoNation Sirius XM Honda came from 15th place on the grid in XPEL 375 at Texas Motor Speedway to finish the race inside the top ten in eighth place and speaking following the race he said:
“It was an awesome race and I feel like the whole team had such a great performance on all levels. I’m really happy about my driving and my restarts and it was a really, really good day for everyone. At the end the car got really loose, there was more wind and I just couldn’t hold on to fifth position. Overall it was really fun out there – there were a lot of passes and a lot of dicing with the competition. I was really proud to bring the AutoNation / SiriusXM Honda to eighth place. This was a really good foundation for the rest of the season and especially for the Indy 500. From here we are going to go up and we look forward to Long Beach.”
It was a disappointing race for defending Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves in the No.06 Sirius XM Honda as he retired from the race after contact with Graham Rahal and Devlin DeFrancesco and speaking following the race he said:
“I had no idea what happened. It went three-wide and I made sure to give space to Graham [Rahal]. Then I saw him spinning out and I had nowhere to go. We got the worst of it. Whatever happened is unnecessary. We still had half of the race, 100 laps, to go, and it’s unnecessary to take a risk like that. If it was 10 laps, 15 laps to go, I understand, but half of the race is frustrating. We were just taking it easy, we were just taking our pace. Obviously, the car was really good, and we knew exactly what we needed to do. It’s a shame that happens. I’m not happy, obviously, but we’ll move on to the next race at Long Beach.”