Hildebrand Finishes 8th, Newgarden in 9th; Carpenter’s Day Ends Early Following Contact

(SPEEDWAY, Ind.) May 24, 2015 – Indianapolis 500 Race Reca

– CFH Racing placed two cars in the Top 10 of today’s 500-mile race around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. JR Hildebrand, who joined the team for the two May races, led the team’s Indianapolis 500 charge with an 8th place result. Full-time driver Josef Newgarden followed right behind in 9th position, while team co-owner Ed Carpenter was credited with a 30th place finish after contact ended his day.

– Sausalito, Calif.-native Hildebrand started today’s race from the 10th position. Hildebrand had competed in the Angie’s List Grand Prix of Indianapolis at the beginning of the month, but had raced in no other Verizon IndyCar Series events since last year’s Indianapolis 500. He finished 10th in the 2014 event and improved on that today, bringing the No. 6 Preferred Freezer Services Chevrolet home in 8th.

– Newgarden’s previous best finish in the Indianapolis 500 was 25th in 2012. He bettered that dramatically today with his 9th place finish. Starting the race from the 9th position, he stayed in the top half of the field for much of the event. It was the 24-year-old’s fourth start in the Memorial Day weekend classic. Newgarden rebounded from a difficult start to the month after a May 14 practice crash resulted in his No. 21 CENTURY 21 car becoming airborne, mandating an overnight switch to his backup car.

– Hometown favorite Carpenter was involved in a Lap 120 accident with Oriol Servia. The two cars made contact in Turn 1, sending both drivers into the wall. Carpenter was uninjured, but his race in the No. 20 Fuzzy’s Award Winning Vodka car was over. It was the conclusion of a tough month for the Indianapolis native, who, like teammate Newgarden, had a crash that resulted in the car landing upside down on May 17. Carpenter’s team switched to his backup car in a matter of hours to have it ready for Indianapolis 500 Qualifications. Carpenter qualified the car 12th, where he started today’s race.

– Preferred Freezer Services returned to Hildebrand’s No. 6 car for the Month of May. The company partnered with what was previously Ed Carpenter Racing to field a car for the 27-year-old in the 2014 Indianapolis 500. Preferred Freezer Services offers the most modern, state-of-the-art, full service temperature-controlled warehouses in the United States.

– CENTURY 21® Real Estate joined CFHR for both events at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway this year as the primary partner for Newgarden, changing the car to the No. 21 and a black and gold livery. With approximately 6,900 independent offices worldwide, CENTURY 21 has the largest global network in the residential real estate industry. CENTURY 21 will return to CFHR as an associate sponsor for the season finale at Sonoma Raceway in August.

– The Indianapolis 500 was Carpenter’s first race of the season in the Fuzzy’s Award Winning Vodka car. Carpenter only races the oval events on the Verizon IndyCar Series calendar, handling the car over to Italian Luca Filippi for the road and street course events. Carpenter will return to the cockpit at Texas Motor Speedway for a night race on Saturday, June 6.

– CFH Racing will move into its eighth straight weekend of on-track activity when the team heads to the Chevrolet Dual in Detroit. Newgarden and Filippi will race in the twin events, with one full race taking place on Saturday, May 30 and the next on Sunday, May 31.

JR HILDEBRAND, NO. 6 PREFERRED FREEZER SERVICES CHEVROLET, FINISHED 8TH: “It just says everything about this team and our sponsor, Preferred Freezer Services, for bringing us out here and being able to finish well. The CFH Racing boys have been busting their rear ends to get everything sorted out. The conditions could not have been trickier today, the cars were all over today the place. The track got away from us quickly, as expected, with the sun being out.  I, along with a lot of other guys, was just hanging on for the first couple of stints.  We had some dicing around in the pits, the stops kind of went both ways for us as we got through the race.  We caught some timely yellows, caught some guys off strategy, and we ended up with a top ten.  I can’t thank all of the guys here enough, Preferred Freezer and the CFH team for giving me a shot again this year.  I’m bummed for Ed (Carpenter) that he didn’t get to finish the race out, but all-in-all, given how tough it was out there, I think we can be pleased with where we finished.”

JOSEF NEWGARDEN, NO. 21 CENTURY 21 CHEVROLET, FINISHED 9TH: “Relative to everything that was going on, it was nice to get a solid finish for Century 21. We had them here in 2013 and it just wasn’t the race that we all wanted to have. A top ten is a solid day. We were in the mix there at the end and that’s exciting for us as a group, with everything that we had to go through during the week. I can’t say enough about having teammates like JR (Hildebrand) and Ed (Carpenter), they have really been top notch with helping push the program forward. We struggled a little bit with the conditions. It was hot, greasy, really hard to keep the car underneath you, and we battled that. I can’t ask for a better group than CFH Racing, they’re the hardest working boys out here. We sure showed a lot of heart today and we were at least able to battle all the guys up the top. A top ten is pretty rewarding.”

ED CARPENTER, NO. 20 FUZZY’S AWARD WINNING VODKA CHEVROLET, FINISHED 30TH: “My guess is that there is some fault both ways. Oriol (Servia) blocked me a little too heavy for that point in the race, he had gotten by me earlier and I certainly didn’t block him as aggressively as that. Once I saw what he was going to do, I was hard on the brakes trying to get out of that situation and not cause a crash for either of us. It doesn’t really matter who’s fault it was, at the end of the day both of our races are over. That was the end of a bad month for me.”