Pole-winner Rossi says he’ll take more risks than title contenders

The Andretti Autosport-Honda driver denied Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon a second straight pole at the charismatic road course in New York state, beating him and Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden by half a tenth. This pair, 31 points apart in the championship, were separated by only 0.0001sec on track today.

Asked if he might take advantage of Dixon and Newgarden being a little more cautious given the title implications, Rossi replied: “Yeah, no doubt. That's for sure in my mind.

“At the same time, you know, I would never put someone in position to hurt their championship.

“I'm also fighting [for sixth in the championship] and I have those guys behind me. We need to capitalize and get good points tomorrow.

“But if it's a move for the win at the end, I'm going to be a able to take more of a risk than [Dixon and Newgarden] can.”

Rossi laid a lot of credit for his first pole at the feet of his team. Last year at this track, Rossi was again fastest of the Andretti Autosport cars – but on that occasion he was 15^th. For tomorrow’s race, AA teammates Takuma Sato and Ryan Hunter-Reay will line up fourth and seventh respectively.

“There's a lot of positivity amongst the whole team,” he said. “I talked about all the gains we made in the offseason, and we've been kind of ticking forward with the gains… I think this is a representation of that, to have Takuma right there, as well, and Ryan just missed out on advancing to the Fast Six by a hundredth or whatever.

“It just shows how strong our cars are. That's a huge difference from last year. Huge credit to the whole team.”

Like all drivers who reached the Firestone Fast Six, Rossi set his flyer on the harder compound black tires, and in the cold temperatures, Rossi said they got better rather than lose their edge as is typical of the softer-compound red tires.

“Each lap was faster,” he remarked. “We've seen that on the black tires. Each lap, they get better and better.

“The penultimate lap I did was quick, but it was a little bit sloppy. I knew that as grip came up, if I just cleaned up a couple of areas, I would be faster. It's just the way that those tires work.

“The golden lap is really Lap 5 but Lap 4 is always going to be better than Lap 3.”

With much speculation that tomorrow’s race will be wet, given the weather forecasts, Rossi said he was fine with that given his GP2 experience two years ago with the Racing Engineering team.

“My last pole was 2015 in Monaco in the wet,” he said, “so I love the wet. I would be really jacked if it rained tomorrow. Bring it on!”

Rossi also admitted that he felt that a rise to prominence by Newgarden and himself could be a good thing for IndyCar racing.

He said: “I imagine [Newgarden] will be in this series for a very long time, and if everything goes the way I'm planning it, I will be, too. It's great to have the kind of future, if you will, between Americans. That's a wonderful thing for the Verizon IndyCar Series, for our fan base, for us as racing drivers.

“As much as we love the Scotts and Helios and Tonys of the world, to have Americans in front is an important thing.”