 Angela, thank you for joining us again. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me, Kate. Congratulations. I'm so excited for you, your team, Marcus. So let's, we'll throw it back to that day. I know it's a lot of build-up, it's a lot of work that goes into it. What were you feeling like waking up that morning? To be honest, the few weeks leading up to the race are kind of a grind. We're you down because you're at the speedway so much and then race day is so early. So I think I was up at like 345 to get to the track and I was like, thank goodness it's finally race day because that's that's my element. I was, you know, I like race day the rest of it's kind of just gravy. So did anyone say anything, you know, leading up to it? I know your dad's been influential on you. Did your parents say anything? Did any other, you know, engineers or, you know, crews say anything to you that really stuck with you before the race? I think most people know better than to say anything like leading. Most people just say good luck and I think the part that stuck with me was that like all five of our CGR cars were so fast throughout the entire time we were at Indy, especially during qualifying. Four of our five were in the fast six, which was a really big deal. So our cars just had a lot of speed and I know the rest of the paddock was impressed with what we had done as a group. So that was, that part of that is like really special, something I'm holding on to. Yeah, what was it like when Chip Ganassi, you know, racing had these super fast cars? Like you said, that's pretty unheard of to have four cars in the fast six at qualifying. It puts a lot of pressure on because you know that your car is capable of winning and that you're expected to win or at least contend for a win. But it also makes you feel kind of good because you know you have a car that can and should win. So I've been on the other side of it where I kind of knew the potential of my car was maybe like, oh you know if I do everything right today I can maybe finish 10th and that is demoralizing and kind of kicks you down. So it's it's really nice going into the race thinking like man I've got a really good shot to win this. Don't screw it up. Yes, absolutely. I know you've talked about you love the pomp and circumstance of the actual race day. Did you have a favorite memory in all of the the pre-ceremony nd 500 activities? I mean I really loved the flyover. It just, I don't know that that part in particular and I'm not sure why exactly but it really stuck with me this year. I was on the timing stand and the rest of the team was out on the starting grid so I walked out kind of onto pit lane and the planes came over like directly overhead and I remember looking up and seeing this v-flight pattern thinking like man this really cool I'm really really lucky to be where I'm standing right now. Yeah oh my gosh I bet that was an awesome feeling and then to top it off you know you won that day but talk me through what was going through your mind those last maybe five laps did you know Marcus had a chance at winning like what was the whole team what was that that feeling like? Well earlier in the race based on where we were running I kind of thought well we're gonna end up around seventh if things kind of stay status quo and I was fairly happy with that that's a good result a good point stay and then as we were getting closer to the end a few other cars had issues and we were coming to the last pit stop and I remember thinking man we're gonna cycle through here to like third or better if we jump someone on the stop and as we came through the pit cycle I'm like oh my god we're gonna come out in the lead here this is awesome and then with five to go so we're leading and I just remember thinking like what is going to happen that's going to take this one away from me because I just remember thinking like something's gonna happen and we're gonna get screwed out of a win I just I couldn't I kept saying over and over like don't get too excited something's gonna happen it's like this isn't real and sure enough we had a red flag with a couple laps to go and so there goes because we had a three second lead we were basically just walking away with it and then now we have to restart after a red flag I'm worried about my electronics overheating while we're sitting there on pit lane like is everything gonna boot back up the way that it should and then on top of that you know is Marcus gonna be able to defend his position on the restart and so that was nerve-wracking and I don't even think I believed that it was really gonna happen until after the checkered flag flew and I remember his chip was sitting to my left and our other engineer Brad was sitting in my right and we take the checkered flag and I kind of just looked and I looked over at chip I was like holy cow we just won the indy 500 was everyone in disbelief or what was were half of you like you know cheering and freaking out in half of you were still kind of stunned uh I think it was like 75 percent we're freaking out excited and a few of us were still like holy cow did that just really happen oh my gosh what what was going you know were people talking before during the restart or was it just kind of like really serious silence because you only had a couple laps left it was it was really serious but there was I was on the radio to our crew chief telling him the sequence for you know what needed to stay powered up we needed to get fans on you know x y and z um please don't turn the car off and um and kind of just talking him through like what needed to happen at the car um our strategist Michael Garrow was on the radio with Marcus um basically just trying to keep him calm uh get him refocused on uh restarting the race and thinking about how he was going to defend his position and uh between those two things that took up all the available time sure so can you walk us through a little bit you know I know you've talked about a lot of its you know with some races it's luck and if there's a yellow flag or you know if the fuel strategy didn't work out and especially with the indy 500 with the fuel what what was the kind of mixture for the success between you know Marcus is driving you know the fuel strategy and the car itself and your teams kind of work on all of that well I think part of what really helped us was our running position earlier in the race because we were um back in the pack a little bit and your fuel mileage is extremely dependent on where you're at in the field so if you're out leading you're getting considerably worse fuel mileage uh than if you were running like seven through eight like we were um or even you know third or fourth that first person line really takes a big hit on the fuel mileage and that kind of stacks up during the race and so Marcus is a smart driver and he's um really got his head into the game all the time so you know if he wasn't passing anyone or he knew he couldn't get by them because of you know the the air wash on his car he was saving fuel all the time during the race so at the end of the race what that means is you don't have to put as much fuel in the car which means that you can take a shorter pit stop and only put in just enough fuel to get to the end you don't have to fill it all the way up so that was definitely something fuel wise that helped us win um part of it's just luck of circumstance um and the other part is just being prepared to take advantage of the circumstances how much of it do you think you know i i believe he uh qualified and started in position four marcus did um what you know ideally do you want to start in p1 at the indy 500 or was his position kind of a sweet spot depending on that fuel strategy that you talked about well ideally you're on pole um when it pays a big bonus which is nice uh and you can you can always choose to fall back if you want it's just a risk if you can you know if you can get back up there and you also have the person behind you has to be willing to take that position so you may slow down but the person behind you may also slow down to avoid taking the lead for fuel purposes um so i mean ideally you have the pole but in this case i think it probably worked to our advantage that we didn't sure okay that's interesting okay so marcus wins the checkered flags out what happens next there's a lot of high fiving in the pit box um a short celebration there and then so we were all the way at the front of pit lane and so most of us just took off i took off running like as fast as i could down pit lane and i was just thinking so my my husband craig works for the 60 team as an engine calibrator and so i was just thinking oh my god i like i have to see craig like i can't believe we just did this and so i took off running thinking i don't know why that like i should have been running to victory lane but i was running to get to his pit box so i could see him and i actually momentarily ran past victory lane and i was like wait a minute i'm here so uh we all ran down to victory lane and by the time i got there the car you know had just pulled in and so um you know we we greeted marcus as he got out of the car and high fives all around and hugs and all of that was marcus kind of an in disbelief or did he fully know that he just won the indy 500 did had it sunk in yet you think uh it still may not have um it's just it's such a big deal to win that race that i'm not sure that uh that you even really appreciate it or like believe that it happened until long after it's happened sure okay so you first thing you had it you had to see your husband is there anyone else that you called or contacted after the race um so my sister a lot my father in law were there and so that was really cool that i got to um you know give them hugs that for you know we went up to uh the the victory circle at indy motor speedway is really cool because it's raised up so you go up an elevator or you go on the stairs up behind so you're on this big platform and we took pictures and all that stuff and then um on the way back down they were standing in this like sea of people waiting to tell me congratulations so that was really cool that i got to celebrate with them and then um i think my first text i had a selfie with marcus with the board Warner trophy and i texted that to my dad and my brother because they were kind of the the people in my family growing up that we bonded over racing and that's kind of what really started my passion for motorsport so they were the first people that weren't there that i shared with amazing that's awesome okay so what was victory lane like you know you've won other races but what was it like after winning the indy 500 so yeah the victory circle at indy is a totally different experience it's way bigger there's tons of people there um normally it's just like spray champagne everybody gets a swig you take a picture and you know celebrate a little bit and then you know you head back to your time you stand and tear down and get ready to go um indy is like i was prepared to be in victory lane all night if they would allow us um it's an extended celebration and one of the really cool things were just how many fans had come to that area to celebrate with you and um there were a few like younger girls that were standing along the staircase and you know i gave them a high five on the way down i just thought that was really cool and um so somebody in the in the massive people offered me a beer which that was funny and uh did you accept or no it's just uh i i may have i may have i love it yeah so it yeah it's it's a it's a much bigger celebration okay okay and it was your family was your father-in-law and sister-in-law and your husband able to come in to victory lane with you or how or were they watching you uh so my husband craig did um i don't know how he got up there but he found his way up there and he came he came up and gave me a big hug and that was really awesome so yeah he was up up in victory lane with me and we took a few pictures together and yeah that was really cool so i didn't get to see um my extended family until you know after after we had finished with a lot of the photos and stuff and had drank our milk but um yeah that was really cool that he was able to get up there and celebrate with me just like right after it happened and remind me so what is his role with with an nd car and the nd 500 so craig is an engine calibrator and he works for um hpd and uh so he's assigned to the 60 team and he works you know he travels the same schedule i do um and just kind of he works on engine calibration and i work on you know um the data systems so okay okay awesome okay so there's been a lot of different articles you're you're all over when i google you now but you made history as the first female crew member to win the nd 500 within the nd car like i mean what does that mean to you that's that's amazing something had asked me that um in victory lane actually and they like are you the first woman to do this and i was like i have no idea i'm really not sure uh and actually um marshal prude who does a lot of motorsports writing um he did a lot of the background research and got in touch with some nd motor speedway historians and um basically like tracked down uh this this fact-finding mission to see if i was or wasn't and it turned out that um as far as they know that i that i am and i i thought that was really cool um part of what made that so special was that when i was in nascar which is what i dreamed about doing as a as a kid um my goal was to be the first female crew chief in nascar that's what i wanted to do that's what i wanted to be and it was really important me to be the first one um and a few years ago when i decided to leave nascar um i kind of had to give up on that dream because you know if i was going to be a nascar then you know i couldn't be the first female crew chief obviously so um i think this is an adequate replacement more than adequate replacement for for that goal of mine and something that um i can hang on to as you know i i still was able to achieve something in my field that no other woman had done yet oh absolutely yes and it's so funny because i remember i talked to marcus um at a test day at ims that was really cool i've obviously spoken to you a couple times and you guys just kept saying the indy 500 is the pinnacle like of course this is like the biggest dream of ours and then it happened and it's just so amazing to see that um and i'm sure you guys just had of course the best day yes uh so you know chips chips set these goals for us and we talk about them every week in our pre-race meeting you know we have two goals for the season number one is when the indy 500 and in some respects that's an even bigger goal than winning the championship and goal number two which i just alluded to is to win the championship um and every single week we talk about those um so it's obviously a difficult thing to do um to win either of those so it was yeah it's a big achievement to to be able to do it yeah and so right now we're talking as mid june marcus just came in second at road america he's leading in the points in the series what what would that mean to you is that is it has there been other drivers i'm sure there's been other drivers but who have won both and you know that's got to be a huge milestone to you know win the indy 500 in the series i assume uh actually i was reading something at lunch and i think and i may be mistaken but i think that it's only been done two other times in recent history and both of them have been chip ganassi racing drivers um scott dixon and dario franckini in 2008 in 2010 so um it's been done but not recently and uh it's a pretty huge deal if you can check both off you know especially one season absolutely and when we talk about other chip ganassi drivers you know obviously there's competition everyone's competitive this is you know a professional sport but what is it like you know are the teammates happy that that marcus won i'm sure that everyone wants to win it but what is it like within that culture of chip ganassi racing you know we really take the one team mentality to heart and i think that's something that the people of cgr do really well and what makes us so competitive because we're all pushing in the same direction and not you know obviously we're all competing against one another but we're not hiding anything from one another either so you know i think one of the one of the things that the 500 was you know alex was leading early in the race and uh he caught a yellow at the exact wrong time and had to take emergency fuel and then go to the back of the field that basically took him out of contention and scott dixon was right there at the front of the field to take a spot when you know when he caught some bad luck and then late in the race after scott had led most of the race and was on a good path to victory um couldn't get slowed down enough and spent on pit lane and so same thing then now he's got a penalty he goes you know basically to the back of the field and you know there's another cgr car there that's just as fast that's ready to take that spot and carry the torch for the team so you know if if one car can't do it we want the next car to do it and if that car can't do it the next car is right there ready to do it um so we're all always backing each other up and um it was one of the really nice things i know it was really heartbreaking for scott because um he had led so much of the race and you know his car was obviously really fast and you know he came to victory lane and congratulated marcus and i know that it was really heartfelt congratulations because he knows from his own experience what a big deal it is to win that race so um we're competitive but we're still a family yeah i love that i think that's really unique with you guys too because i can tell just from articles i've read and things i've seen on social media i think that's that's awesome what does all this support mean to you you know from your husband who's a fellow boiler maker your parents your family how does that um kind of fuel fuel you for the next race and you know as you keep going in your career um well obviously i you know i can't work in a vacuum and um you know i have especially my husband i you know when i decided that i really wanted to be in racing you know we picked up we both picked up our lives and he left his career uh at chrysler so that i could go and pursue my dream and that's not a trivial thing that he did for me um and when i decided that i wanted to leave mass car and come do any car we picked up our lives a second time and you know that was not a trivial thing for him to do now twice um i have a lot of late nights long days that you know um i'm away from home a lot and i work really long hours and you know he always is picking up the slack for me and so yeah i couldn't do it without him frankly because that's you have to have a support system and you know he's he's right behind me and he totally supports the racing lifestyle because he's got the racing bug too so you know um hopefully he feels the same for me you know when he gets really busy and needs you know extra time or has a test or whatever i try and pick up the slack on the other end yeah absolutely that's really special what was it like seeing yourself in Purdue's nd 500 commercial um i didn't i don't know if i realized that i was going to be in it and i started watching it and i was like oh how cool that is so awesome so um i was surprised but happily surprised and uh yeah the commercial gave me all the feels because just the music in the background and all the sights and sounds like of nd motor speedway and that place is just so special and all these little things that make it special it's like Purdue's really ingrained and all those things so i'm just honored to even be you know a part of that even if it's a small part but you know i'm honored to represent my school absolutely no it's not a small part it's a big part um did any other boiler makers reach out to you after your win you know did our i hope our podcast helped show the world that a boiler maker won the nd 500 too uh yeah i got i got an inordinate number of messages after the race and i am still struggling to respond to them all even in june uh a lot of people did reach out and just say you know congratulations a lot of old classmates who i hadn't talked to in a long time um reached out and said like oh my gosh i think that's so cool i remember you being so into motors for it's even when we were at Purdue together and so yeah it was it was really cool to connect with some people from from my past and some people honestly that i had never met um that are just you know part of the Purdue family and wanted to reach out and congratulate me and felt like they were part of the win because of that tie that was really cool that's awesome we love hearing that um okay last question are we you know we touched on the women in motorsports program um with pnc bank and chip ganasty racing uh i saw there's a Purdue officially a Purdue student working within this initiative yeah have you gotten to work with her at all tell us a little bit about how that's going um yeah so we have i think five five interns and one of them is from Purdue and so they've been um at the track with us um since india i guess india was the uh the first event that they got to you know start getting integrated with our team so um man they probably came in and thought wow it's like pretty easy to win like first try came in like here here you are victory lane um i'm hoping i am impressing on them how difficult it is and um setting a good example for work ethic and the amount of attention to detail that it really takes to to get the job done um but it's it's cool to see some other people uh getting their foot in the door and just starting out their career where you know um they're seeing things for the first time that uh it's maybe not is not well to me anymore it's kind of fun to see that through a different pair of eyes yeah oh absolutely well we can't thank you enough for sharing sharing this update with us and and sharing your experience with us again so we're rooting for you and marcus and the number 18 for sure thanks yeah we've got nine races to go in the season and um maybe we'll talk again in october with a championship under my belt hopefully yes next giant leap championship yes yes okay thanks so much angela all right thanks