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VERIZON INDYCAR SERIES: GOPRO GRAND PRIX OF SONOMA

August 30, 2015

SONOMA, CALIFORNIA

THE MODERATOR: We're joined on my far left by Jim Campbell, who is the U.S. Vice President of Performance Vehicles and Motorsports for Chevrolet and next to him is Chris Berube, the Chevrolet racing program manager. Gentlemen, we'll go through a few of these facts and figures first. Chevrolet actually clinched the championship even going into the race today, fourth consecutive manufacturer's championship for Chevrolet, swept it since you guys came back into IndyCar racing in 2012, 10 race victories this year, swept the podium six times this year, won every possible Verizon P1 Award for pole position in 2015, top two qualifiers in 15 of the 16 races this year, and this is the first time since there's been the manufacturer competition resumed in 2012 that a manufacturer has swept the manufacturer's championship, the driver's championship and won the Indianapolis 500. Some pretty incredible numbers.
JIM CAMPBELL: Thank you for summarizing that. This is a true team effort like it always is in motorsports. It's about preparation, it's about great strategy and great execution, and on top of that, you must have great teams, and we in fact do, and I want to thank Chris Berube for the job he's done working with our four major teams that really contributed those valuable manufacturer points all season long that enabled us to get our fourth manufacturer's championship. And it was a special year in the fact, as you said, the driver's championship today with Scott Dixon, obviously Juan Pablo Montoya and the Penske team won the Indy 500 and then our fourth manufacturer's championship, so that was pretty special. It's one of the goals you have every year when you come into the series is to win each of those, and it hasn't happened since we reentered in 2012, so this was a special year. Also special thanks to our partners at our Chevrolet powertrain team, and I have Dan Nicholson here, who's our vice president of global powertrains for our company. Dan, thank you for your team's effort along with all the great work from he Elmore and Pratt & Miller and Hitachi. It's been a true team effort.
THE MODERATOR: Chris, maybe you can address in addition to putting out tremendous power plants, you took on the task of adding the aero kits this year and how that program developed and the success of that as well.
CHRIS BERUBE: Yeah, absolutely, as Jim said, it's a team effort there, as well. It's a culmination of multiple years of development and execution. You have the start of the year from a part supply standpoint was a little rocky but we outran the bear and never had to park a car, but really proud of that team that put that aero kit together. It's about setting goals. It's about getting the right people in place to achieve them and it's about execution and you can pretty much apply that model to the driver's championship, the manufacturer's championship, and that's how we get things done at Chevrolet.
JIM CAMPBELL: If I could add one item to that, obviously the aero kits were scheduled to come into the series a little bit earlier. They got delayed a couple times and I'm really proud of Chris and his team, they did not yield one minute. Every time there was a delay, they stayed on the gas, they stayed developing, they did not skip a beat over two delays of the introduction, and so we finally did get to introduce the kit, and we did that introduction in terms of to the press at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. We talked about delivering the best combination of downforce, drag and engine performance, and that's what it took to put those kind of results on the board this year, so I want to thank Chris and the entire team. And really the fact is that when we had the delays in the introduction to the series we stayed on the gas in development and we did not miss a beat.

Q. Chris, obviously the full season you've tried your aero kits on a lot of different types of racetracks. Can you kind of elaborate on what the rules are for next year, and I know you can't tell me specifics, but what kind of changes you want to make?
CHRIS BERUBE: Well, the aero kits, the aero kit regulations of record would allow us to change three volume boxes, so that's our focus at the moment. Can't tell you which ones we're changing at the moment, but there will be some changes. You'll see the difference. As Jim alluded to, we don't stop developing. We've learned throughout the season what our strengths and weaknesses are with the aero kit and we apply those volume boxes to where we think we can further increase performance.

Q. Jim, when you've won the manufacturer's championship just with engines the last couple of years, to be able to not win it with just engines again, but with the aero kits, what does that mean to have both of those all in one?
JIM CAMPBELL: Yeah, it's very special, and at the end of last season, we gathered as an entire team with our engine partners and our engineers that were working on the aero kit and said, hey, going into next year it's both of us, it's a team, we have to fully integrate the aero kit and engine performance and that's really what we said at Indy when we introduced the kit about delivering the optimal combination of downforce, drag and engine performance, and that's really what the team did. They looked at the integrated system, not unlike what we do in our development of our production cars and powertrains for the showroom. It's about total integration. You can't look and develop one system independent to the other. It's very special and a lot of credit to our teams. I said this earlier in terms of the race teams: We have some of the best in the business, and they helped us on the development all the way through, and obviously once you get into the race season, that accelerates even quicker because you have only a certain amount of time between big events. So I want to thank them for the great job they did, and again, back to the manufacturer's championship for putting valuable manufacturer's points up on the board every week we raced.

Q. After your big success now, do you think it's a realistic possibility you can supply more teams or have you reached already the limit with supplying teams with aero kits and with engines?
CHRIS BERUBE: What I would say is when there's two manufacturers in the series, we have a minimum that we have to supply for the season, and so we're prepared to do that. Whether we go beyond that or not, at this point we haven't made a decision, but we'll certainly meet our obligations to IndyCar and our obligations via the contract, and we've done that each year and we'll continue to do that. When it comes to races like the Indy 500 we obviously pick up a lot of one‑race entries. I think we had a little bit more than half the field last year, but between us and Honda we typically split the field, which is kind of how we like to see it.
THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, congratulations on a terrific season.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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