"I got caught up with John Andretti, and I'm not sure if he knew where I was. I was in the grey coming out of [turn] four, and his car just kept coming. Eventually, I got to the point where I had to turn left, but I know I was in the grey a lot because the rear got loose and I think I hit him. That was pretty hairy.

"It was one of those races where you had to be patient. Everybody seemed pretty good for the first 10-15 laps, then they started to tail off. When I had new tyres, my car was really, really loose for the first four, five laps on them, so I was so glad [the team] kept me out [at the fourth caution] because, on the restarts, I knew I'd be good [on warm tyres] because, whenever I had new tyres, I was terrible. Chip's not here so, if they'd have called me in, I might have pretended I didn't hear and stayed out....

"Staying out was important. [Kanaan's accident] looked a pretty big accident just from the debris and I knew that, if I saved as much [fuel] as I could that I should be okay. The team told me that, but they wanted to make sure we had some spare - I don't think they wanted to cut it too close - so we saved fuel for a little bit. I think they knew the problems I was having on restarts, so they really worked at giving me a little bit of time to heat the tyres up. That certainly worked. The more laps I did, the better it was for me."