NTT INDYCAR SERIES: XPEL GRAND PRIX AT ROAD AMERICA

June 22, 2025

Santino Ferrucci

Felix Rosenqvist

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Currently joined by Felix Rosenqvist who led 2 of the 55 laps today, driver of the No. 6 Sirius XM Honda for Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian. It's his best finish of the season, his fourth top 10 here at Road America. He also climbs into a tie for fourth in the NTT INDYCAR Series championship here in 2025. And Santino Ferrucci, driver of the No. 14 Sexton Properties AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet, coming home with another podium this season, second runner-up finish of 2025, fourth top 5 of the season, third career podium as well.

Felix, we'll talk to you first. Something about you and Road America get along pretty well, huh?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: Yeah, good memories from here. I had my first win here. As you said, it's been a couple of good results here in the past. I felt the whole weekend we had good pace and in practice we were rolling well. Kind of messed up qualifying. Tried to do the carousel flat and I lost it and I started P12.

It wasn't ideal, but I knew we had good pace in the car. My Meyer Shank Sirius XM Honda was just on rails. There was a lot of strategies going on. We did two black stints in the beginning and we held on pretty good, and especially in the restarts, it seemed like the blacks were pretty good, and they faded a bit when you got up to speed. But we capitalized on all those yellows, and I think that was to our advantage.

Then at the end of the race we didn't have to save any fuel and we had two new reds, and we were just doing qually laps every lap, and that's kind of when we ended where we ended. So it was really good, and super proud of all the guys.

It's a hot day out there. It was tough for everyone, pit crew, engineering, and computers and all that kind of stuff. Everything is running hot. Happy we made it to the finish.

THE MODERATOR: A lot of expectation with the 9 and 10 saving fuel. Did you think about picking up another win here today?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: It was kind of déjà-vu from my first win here with Pato. I could see the red car, not the yellow, the Alex car was just getting bigger and bigger, and he was on blacks at the end. So I don't think he had a massive fuel target, but the blacks were worse, but I was just a little too far away, and I think he probably had something in the bag, knowing Alex; he's normally pretty quick.

But he did, like always, a really good race, and I think he didn't really have a perfect race, either. He was kind of in the midfield a couple of times. I think everyone were, though. There was three strategies going on, and at some point everyone had to kind of eat it. But yeah, good race.

THE MODERATOR: Santino, second runner-up finish here in 2025. Did you bring beer with you for the media center?

SANTINO FERRUCCI: No, I just did the one shotgun down in Turn 1. Felt great at the time.

Obviously starting 18th, not ideal. We had a really fast race car all weekend long. We didn't get to run on the red tires on Friday and one of the setup changes we made in FP2 we weren't sure about, and then obviously we were really quick on the prime tires in qualifying, and we were just way too tight for quals.

But warmup was awesome. Small changes overnight. We knew we'd come through the field, so at the start of the race, I was just unlike myself, trying to be super patient and not make mistakes, not get into too many people because it was mayhem back there, and the way the strategy unfolded, I stalled in the pits on one of the stops. Thankful for the hybrid so I could fire back up and only lose four or five spots.

We had a massive fuel target for the last two stints, so kudos to Chevrolet for giving me the tools to do that and honestly to my engineering team for giving me a car that can fuel save. Podium is -- I'm happy getting on podium for Marlene Sexton in the memorial car for her, and she's watching down on us today clearly. So pretty happy about that.

Q. Santino, did you ask for the beer or did the fan offer it to you?

SANTINO FERRUCCI: They offered, and I had asked for Spotted Cow since we're here, but they gave me, I believe it was a Miller. I've been learning my shotgunning skills from the Chili Bowl, so if I did okay I'm happy with that. Giving my dirt racing guy some credit.

Q. All in all, the satisfaction of making it work until the end, you were really happy. Even if you ran out of fuel you're out there taking bows and soaking it up with the fans?

SANTINO FERRUCCI: I'm not going to lie, I was stressed. I was really stressed out. I saw Felix come out of the pits in front of me, and they were like, yeah, there's your fuel target, lifting at like the 800-foot mark going into 5 going, hmm, this is going to be a long 15-something laps.

Then I could see on the dash the 27 car coming and know that he's quick.

Yeah, no, I just tried to put my head down and do what I do best and hold him off.

Q. Felix, shades of 2020 because when you got your first victory you had to battle Alex. How cool is it that five years later here we are again?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: Yeah, it's a great place to have a podium. I think this is one of the absolute highlights of the year. It races really well, and I think after the repave when the track is baked in for two years and kind of got a bit more gray --

SANTINO FERRUCCI: This is the best racing track.

FELIX ROSENQVIST: It's really good. You can do the high line. It doesn't accumulate a lot of marbles, and the racing was just really good out there. It was cool, as well, the fuel save seemed to be pretty effective. You could still do good pace with the fuel save; it wasn't like the people who saved falling off the cliff.

A lot of different strategies, really good racing. Both tires were kind of decent. I think the reds were definitely better, but the blacks were weirdly really good on the restarts, which made it kind of interesting. So yeah, really good race. I think it was a fun one to watch, as well.

Q. Felix, did you have any interesting fan interactions, offering you beers or to buy you dinner?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: No beer yet, but maybe after the press conference. There seems to be a lot of Swedish -- people that have Swedish ancestors here. There's a lot of Swedish that their grandfathers came over here in the 1900s or 1800s. They kind of came over like in all the northern states, so everyone is like, hey, I'm Swedish, and I start to speak Swedish to them, and they're like, oh, I mean my grandmother.

But yeah, really good interaction always here. It's always a hit, man. It's one of the really cool races, and to do well here is super special.

Q. Best weekend for Meyer Shank Racing, especially with this new Ganassi relationship between yourself and Marcus. Seems like this has been growing and building. What's going on?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: Yeah, it's all in the details, and then I think we had really good pace all year, especially in the races. Today the car was just on fire in the race. It was so good. Qualifying has been pretty good, as well. Not as good as last year maybe, but enough to do good results and to be consistently in the top 10 in qualifying.

It just comes down to execution, strategy, pit stops. I think today we probably had the best strategy in the field. The pit stops were really good, and it's really -- that's pretty much it. You need to do restarts, in laps, out laps, pit stops, strategy. That's kind of the low-hanging fruit. Like everyone is quick out there. If everyone is in the same situation on fuel and tires it's hard to make the difference.

But yeah, the team has just been on fire. I really feel like they deserve this result. It's been kind of an unlucky couple of races for us. We haven't really been able to string it together.

Really happy for Mike and Jim and everyone in the team fighting out there in the heat today. It's a good one.

Q. Santino, can you talk a little bit more about Marlene? Obviously we've seen Sexton Properties on the car for a while, but this wasn't a company, this was really her being a huge engine behind the team. Knowing her daughter is obviously grieving, as well, this is a pretty heavy time and an amazing result?

SANTINO FERRUCCI: Yeah, I didn't know her late husband, but also was a very big AJ fan and helped AJ back in the day. Marlene has been on the car since I've been driving for AJ Foyt and for Larry, and obviously I would not have had a full season ride without Larry and her support, and what they've accomplished last year is where we've brought this team all the way from barely making leadership circle to winning the 500, top 10 in the points, fighting for top 5s consistently.

It's her support that's been behind us. So I'm very honored to be running that car with her riding along this weekend. To have the daughters here this weekend, as well, Tracy and Nicole, was pretty amazing on the grid. It was hard not to be emotional about it. It's someone that was family to the team had passed away last week.

Looking forward to her memorial next week and celebration of life, and I'm just happy she was riding on board with us today to witness some greatness.

Q. Last season P10, strong year. You and James Schnabel form a really great union. You start over this year with Michael Armbrester, and the two of you seem like you're finding a groove as well. Talk about the bond the two of you are building.

SANTINO FERRUCCI: Yeah, so me and Michael were working together all the way through to about Detroit, so Michael got promoted to technical director and he's still on my stand and calls my races, and now my new race engineer is Adam Kolesar, so a little bit weird to have an engineering switch in the middle of the season, but we went fifth, second, fifth, third, so I'd say it's going pretty good.

Obviously James is a brilliant guy and a great talent, and I think he's proved himself very well with myself and with Malukas, and then my bond with Mike and Adam, C.J. and all of our stand has gone really well. It was just about catching our stride.

I think we've found some really good baselines, and I'm looking forward to the second half of the season together.

Q. Considering we weren't really quite sure what the red tires were going to do before we got into the race, and for the heat today, did you expect as much passing before the race started?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: Yeah, I think we kind of nailed a prediction on the tire. We thought it was going to be a red race, and as I said, both of them were good enough for a stint. I think the red was just a bit quicker, and you could also save a bit of fuel on the red without really losing the pace. With the black you kind of had to push it a bit more.

As I said, I don't know what Firestone has done, but I think the fact that we don't have a lot of marbles really helps the racing. You can go off line on the straight and there's not a bunch of crap out there. You can just run wherever and have a really good braking off line anywhere, and that's super cool.

I think that's what really makes the racing good. Whenever you have one of those races where it's just a bunch of marbles, you can't really do anything because you're sacrificing your whole race when you go out there. Really good done by Firestone for this race. I think they nailed it.

SANTINO FERRUCCI: Same thing. We thought it was going to be a red race. To be honest, we thought we'd get further in qualifying, so to show up this morning and have three sets of sticker reds -- we started on the prime tire, and we had a ton of pace on it compared to everybody around us because that was the tire that we've been running on all weekend.

We just stayed committed to triple reds and it still paid off. Tough running a very long stint the way we did. I didn't exactly get to run Q laps like I would have liked, like you did. But no, all in all, I think Firestone did a great job this weekend, and I think this is a track that they should kind of make a bit of a benchmark for.

Q. We saw some tempers flare and some paybacks out there. Did you have a good front row seat for any of it?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: There was one, I don't remember who it was, but someone went off in front of me. But my race was actually pretty calm. I didn't have a bunch of --

SANTINO FERRUCCI: I noticed that a little bit. Although, my favorite part of this race, your teammate Marcus, I pushed him past two cars down the straight, go-karting style. He lined it up for me and pulled out and I think he knew that I was going to push him because we've become a little bit more friendly sitting next to each other at autograph session, and I full on pushed him all the way down the frontstretch past two cars. It was great. We both cleared them, too.

Q. There was also some concern about the hybrid with the heat, maybe having some failures. Did you notice any issues over the weekend?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: Ran like a dream.

SANTINO FERRUCCI: No issues for me either.