SPEEDWAY, Ind. (May 18, 2016) – Indy 500 Practice Daily Report

JR HILDEBRAND, NO. 6 PREFERRED FREEZER SERVICES CHEVROLET: “It was good to get a full day in. With Monday having refresher practice and that kind of stuff it was a little choppy. So we’re just getting with the program. I felt like we made a lot of progress with the car. Ed, Josef and I were all trying a bunch of different stuff. I think at this point we’ve just got to be able to go back and see what we’ve got so we can take the best from everything and get with the program again tomorrow. Qualifying will be here before we know it. I think we all made progress today.”

ED CARPENTER, No. 20 FUZZY’S ULTRA PREMIUM VODKA CHEVROLET: “It was a pretty good day. We got through quite a few changes. It wasn’t the flashiest day but we got a lot of work done. We definitely made the car better in traffic which is something that we still needed to do. I feel a lot better about it. We do need to start getting some speed out of the car but Josef showed he had some speed so we’ll just put our heads down and see what we have tomorrow.”

JOSEF NEWGARDEN, NO. 21 PREFERRED FREEZER SERVICES CHEVROLET: “Practice here at Indy is so interesting. Everyone’s up and down on the time sheets and it’s kind of hard to put any stock into what you see on practice days. Everyone’s getting tow laps, some people are in qualifying trim and some aren’t. For us today I think we made the car better in traffic. That’s why we were able to get a better tow lap and go towards the top of the sheets. I still feel like we’ve got a little bit more to go. I think we’re feeling good. Compared to last year I think we’ve made progress with our car and had a good starting package. We’ve had to work on it. It’s been a little different with some of the safety advancements that we’ve had to put on the car but overall I think we’ve got great cars. I think we’re quick, I really think our ECR cars are going to be fast. It’d be great to have the Fuzzy’s car with Ed fast and JR and I in the Preferred Freezer cars want to be up there too. I feel like we’re going to be quick on qualifying day; hopefully that’s true. The most important thing for us is just trying to make the traffic running good. I feel like we’re going to be in a big pack all race, which is great for the show, but makes it difficult to drive in so we’ve just been working on making that the best as possible.”