A Conversation With ... Marco Andretti, Michael Andretti
May 22, 2011 | By
MODERATOR: Well, just another day at the track, eh, Marco?
MARCO ANDRETTI: Not exactly. That was new for me.
MODERATOR: Wow, talk about it. Watching, I was surprised that Lloyd put up the time he did. He went out and did it, and all of a sudden the pressure was on you.
MARCO ANDRETTI: I wonder if the track just got better, or what. I knew we were going to be hanging it out at the end there. Our approach was we're going home anyway. Really, I mean, the way we went out, it was either stick it in the fence or stick it in the show. So luckily we were on the upside of that.
MODERATOR: I should hope so. What a weird day. You're in a situation where it's your own teammate, as well, which has to be brutal.
MARCO ANDRETTI: Yeah, I'm feel for Mike, as well. But I think the pair of them are two of the best in the business. Ryan has had terrible luck this year. Fortunately, Mike got a win, but Ryan has been in a position to win a lot of races this year and came short for whatever reason. I was just so fortunate to be on the upside of the circumstances. We were at Mother Nature's mercy for a while there. It was a roller coaster day. When I woke up today, I was ready. I was just ready for it, and I was expecting to be -- luckily we were in line at the right place at the right time. But I was expecting it to come down to the wire because I knew we didn't have the speed. We came up with it at the end there, but we were really risking it.
MODERATOR: I've just got to as more, VERSUS coverage, what our coverage was on, did you wink at one of your people before you went out?
MARCO ANDRETTI: I don't know, maybe.
MODERATOR: Looked pretty confident.
MARCO ANDRETTI: Yeah, but I don't want to come across cocky, either. To be honest, I was happier that we got bumped, you know, because that justifies us going out again. You hate to withdraw your time and then you have to lift, or you crash the thing and you're out of it. So many things could have gone wrong. Somebody was looking over me today. I was lucky.
MODERATOR: Questions.
Q: Marco, what did No-No [?] have to say?
MARCO ANDRETTI: He told me I was leaving too much track at the exit. So I had to trim it out more and just hang on to it, and that's what we did.
Q: Marco, how excruciating was it to be in that cockpit when Jakes went out there and you knew there was no chance that he was not going to be able to be fast enough, and all that was doing was ticking away the time that could have kept you from making a run?
MARCO ANDRETTI: Exactly, but at the same time it was almost like a common courtesy. If I went out and did that speed, I would call it just to let somebody have another go. But I was fortunate things worked out, like I said.
MODERATOR: Other questions?
Q: What's it like to get shot at, but what's it like to just sit in the cockpit that long waiting?
MARCO ANDRETTI: That's my favorite place to be, man. (Laughter)
Q: But were you sweating? What was it like?
MARCO ANDRETTI: You know what? I was in the mindset whatever is going to happen is going to happen. I think coming into like my first run of the month, I knew we were going to be in this position, unfortunately. If we didn't find that big jump in speed that we were down, even my teammate Danica, I knew we were going to be in this position. So I think we were just kind of prepared for it, and we showed up when we had to.
MODERATOR: When Danica came in, she said that she couldn't figure out any rhyme or reason for when you were faster or slower, and that's got to be really disconcerting to a driver.
MARCO ANDRETTI: Yeah, I mean I knew if I could keep it off the wall we were going to have a shot at it because we went pretty risky there at the end, b