Q: If the weather on any of the first three days restricts attempts to less than 11, will that day carry over to the next day before you start the next day's official qualifying, or how will that work?
"We're capable of making a good decision with the officials of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I think we need to take into consideration that there are so many factors in that hypothetical. Have we had a break in the line yet? Have we not had a break in the line? The easiest way to say it is, if we've had a good-weather day and we've qualified for six hours from noon to 6 p.m. and we did not have 11 cars accept times, say we only had nine cars took a checkered-flag run, then two spots would carry over into the next day, and we'd qualify 13 cars on that day instead of 11. The other scenarios are difficult to get into. If you've had a full day of qualifying, for six hours, you'll be hard-pressed to not have 11 guys complete runs."
TIM CINDRIC (President, Marlboro Team Penske):
Q: Does the new format allow you to really focus on a pole run on Pole Day now?
"I think it is pretty dynamic. The whole thing has four or five variables, some of them were here before, some of them weren't here before. The draw is something that definitely plays into your strategy depending on where your car is for a particular draw. The weather can have a lot to do with what to do in terms of qualifying days like it has in the past. What the teams are going to be faced with come Friday night is what is realistic for your individual situation. Are you going for the front row? Or are you going for the elite 11? Those are decisions that we are going to have to make on Friday night and Saturday morning. As Tom (Anderson) said, egos always get involved in this game. If you look back to the year that Tom Sneva had run a 200-mph lap, you saw that some guys made the right choice. (Jim) McGee will tell you how he went for too much and had to go the next day. You have seen things play out where a team withdraws a car and goes for the pole at the end of the day. That same situation can happen and is probably more likely to happen than in the past. It has a lot to do with being practical to what your individual situation is."
