IndyCar Media Conference
Friday May 11, 2018
Conor Daly
Ryan Reed
Ashley Brewer
Press Conference
THE MODERATOR: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. This is the opening weekend for the month of May with on-track activity, and we've got a lot of excitement ahead, especially as we look to the IndyCar Grand Prix tomorrow here on the road course. Today we've got a special announcement from our friends at Lilly Diabetes, and we're also joined by two of our favorite drivers, Conor Daly and Ryan Reed, Conor on the far right, Ryan in the center, and we'll hear from them in a moment.
But today I have the pleasure of introducing the consumer brand director for Lilly Diabetes, Ashley Brewer. Ashley?
ASHLEY BREWER: Thank you, Paul, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today for this exciting announcement. Want to provide a little bit of background on our Lilly Diabetes racing program. Five years ago we stepped into the racing world with a partnership with Roush Fenway Racing with Xfinity Series driver Ryan Reed, and over the past five years we've been partnering with him as well as the Roush team and others to bring awareness about diabetes to the racing community. So we want to thank Ryan. He's been a phenomenal advocate for patients with diabetes, and he's been inspiring people within this community to take action to better manage their diabetes health. Thank you for being with us for this announcement today.
Last year we also expanded our footprint within the racing community, so Lilly Diabetes has partnered with NASCAR. This is our second year of being the official diabetes health partners of NASCAR, and we continue to work with that organization to bring health and wellness initiatives to our racing fan base. So lots of exciting things going on within our racing program.
Today I am thrilled to welcome Conor Daly to our Lilly Diabetes racing family. Like Ryan, Conor has Type I diabetes, and we're thankful that he's willing to share his story and to join Ryan and us in inspiring folks with diabetes to take action to better manage their health and their diabetes management, as well. So thank you both for being here today.
We worked with Conor back in 2016. We're inspired by him, and we saw how dedicated he was to his diabetes management, and that he was not going to let anything get in the way of him achieving his racing aspirations. We are very excited to announce today that Lilly Diabetes will be supporting Conor Daly in the 102nd running of the Indianapolis 500 here at the end of May, as well as on August 25th. Conor is going to be joining us, Ryan Reed, Roush Fenway Racing, and will be competing in the Xfinity Series race at Road America. What's very cool and unique about this experience is that Conor becomes the first person with Type I diabetes to race not only in IndyCar but also in NASCAR. So we are very excited to have Conor on board with our Lilly Diabetes racing team.
Welcome, Conor, to the group. As a part of our partnership, Conor will be working with us on our Drive Down A1C initiative, which is really focused on inspiring fans that have Type II diabetes to take action to better manage their diabetes health, and that includes encouraging them to take to their physician about the right treatment options for them, so we encourage all race fans and anyone affected by diabetes to take a look at DriveDownA1C.com. That's where we have all of our information on our program as well as information on our resources and our products that we have to offer from Lilly.
Want to thank you both for being here. It's not easy to stand up and tell your story, but they're both here to inspire and to motivate those with diabetes to take action to better manage their health. So big thanks to you guys, and welcome to the team, Conor.
CONOR DALY: Thank you. I guess we'll go ahead. Yeah, it's obviously really cool to be a part of this team, first of all, with us in the Indy 500 this year. We got to work together in 2016, which I thought was a really cool first step into a relationship, and it was a late deal. We got it done after qualifying, but now we've got this whole month of May to work with it and kind of just grow together as a team, and then obviously I'm going to go into the NASCAR realm of life, so I'm excited for that.
Obviously Ryan and the Roush Fenway guys have done an incredible job in the five-year program that they've had, winning races, being competitive all the time, so it's cool to be able to take that first step into that side of the racing world but also with a very strong organization. I'm obviously super excited not only to be here at Indy again and to continue to just strengthen our program for this month of May, but also to have something else to do in the next couple months. So that'll be really exciting, and I just can't wait. It's an incredible opportunity, and I'm just obviously really thankful for it because this has been an interesting last few months, and to have now this opportunity come about, I think it's going to be really exciting to kind of grow with the NASCAR fan base and maybe combine them a little bit, IndyCar/NASCAR world. We're all racing cars, so I think everybody loves that in general, so I'm excited to go check it out.
Q. Ryan, your thoughts about the expansion of the program with Lilly Diabetes and also your new teammate?
RYAN REED: Yeah, I think first of all, it shows the continued commitment from Lilly Diabetes, how much they care about diabetes awareness and making an impact in the diabetes community, and so many different initiatives, whether it's DriveDownA1C.com or the official health partner, diabetes health partner of NASCAR, and then everything we've done with our 15 Lilly Diabetes Ford Mustang for the last five years, I think it's just amazing.
But with Conor, he's been a friend of mine, and I've certainly been a fan of his over the last couple years, and I think one of the coolest thing about it and the first thing I thought about was we talk a lot about living with diabetes and driving race cars and chasing your dreams, not letting diabetes hold you back. But one of the things is how important it is to have people around you that can help you, and one of the best ways is to have people that actually have diabetes, whether you're driving race cars or going to school or just hanging out with your buddies, but seeing that Conor is going to be at Road America, we're going to be helping each other, we're going to be teammates, we're going to be helping each other get a win until the last lap and then we'll go after it from there, but the coolest part is I think it just shows how important it is to have that support team around you. And so me and Conor I think are going to make great teammates and hopefully help each other go contend for a win at Road America, and just really, really excited about it. It's going to be fun. I'll enjoy watching him at the Indy 500 and then go racing against him at Road America.
CONOR DALY: It's really funny because we just took a photo together at the Brickyard not -- probably two years ago, and just hashtag team diabetes, and everyone seemed to really like that and now suddenly we are a team, so it's kind of cool that it actually happened.
RYAN REED: Yeah, I think Conor patented it, so we're in good shape.
CONOR DALY: You're welcome. Also, we're going to have this really cool NASCAR YouTube series, as well, which is going to document this ride to the Indy 500 because obviously the Indy 500 is the biggest race in the world and it's an incredible event, and we're going to have -- going from that to then sequencing into a NASCAR, my first-ever NASCAR race. We're going to have a lot of behind-the-scenes footage of how that's going to look, how am I going to change my training regimen, how am I going to deal with the swap over to a different cockpit, the different world.
That's going to be really cool for everyone to follow along, and I'm excited to see it myself because I've never really had kind of a cool behind-the-scenes look at my life. So that will be kind of interesting.
RYAN REED: You're going to sweat more than normal. Much warmer inside a NASCAR than an IndyCar.
Q. Conor, how are you going to prepare for transitioning driving-wise from an IndyCar to a stock car? Is there a class somewhere or --
CONOR DALY: Yeah, maybe, if they're available, yeah. For sure I'm going to try and go out there to Charlotte a lot and get on their simulator. The simulator stuff is quite effective these days. There's even a lot of simulator use both on our side and the NASCAR side, as well. Especially for a road course, I think that's going to help. Ryan said that their road course model is probably really, really accurate to actually how it is. I talked to AJ Allmendinger over the last couple weeks. He's already been helping me a lot out with some notes and some different things that I should look out for. Just going to try and use my resources that I know in that world and just try and be as prepared as best as possible because preparation is so important.
Q. Are there any other races scheduled besides the two that are mentioned?
CONOR DALY: This is all we've got at the moment, yes.
Q. A question for you as a representative of Lilly Diabetes. Besides your involvement of your company in motor racing as a financial supporter, are you also learning with the drivers with diabetes toward your research work how to prepare and how to manufacture better medical products?
ASHLEY BREWER: Great question. Currently right now we're partnering with Conor and Ryan in the capacity to be a platform to educate and inspire fans with diabetes to take action to better manage their health. That's where our current focus is, and it's where it currently remains today. So for now, that's where we're continuing to focus.
Q. Conor, rumors have been circulating for a few months now that this was something that was going to happen. What exactly made you want to do this in the first place?
CONOR DALY: I mean, I'm a racing driver, and growing up, when you look back at sort of what I did from like, I guess, 2012 to 2015, I almost drove every single car you could drive except for a NASCAR, and I drove sports cars, I drove tin tops, I drove all kinds of different things, and as a driver, I think you're always driven to want more and want to try more, and I think if you ask a lot of us here in this paddock in IndyCar, there's a lot of guys who want to get out there at Road America, mid-Ohio, Watkins Glen, stuff like that, because it is a very entertaining product. They're really good drivers, the series is really competitive, and it just looks like a really good racing environment, like a good, proper race. We have an incredible product in the IndyCar Series, obviously, but so do they, certainly, on the road course side. So I was just excited to have that opportunity. I mean, road courses are my cup of tea, and that's what I'd love to at least check out first before anything else.
Q. You've talked a lot about having diabetes, and it only seemed like a little bit a matter of time that this was a natural --
CONOR DALY: Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's an incredible relationship that we started two years ago in 2016, and they just -- everyone at Lilly Diabetes has such a passion for helping us and trying to figure out ways to just work with us and try and build our programs so we can help each other. This Drive Down A1C initiative has been so helpful for a lot of people, and I'm obviously -- as a driver, it's always tough to figure out what you're going to do next or how you're going to get into a car in certain ways, and to see this effort to help both of us out is actually really cool because it's not often that any race team wants to add cars. It's very difficult to do that. But in this situation, they're doing that for me, so it's really cool to -- very thankful for that opportunity, and I can't wait to just use it as best we can.
Q. Conor, I'm interested in why Road America. You talked about road racing and stuff, but why was Road America chosen?
CONOR DALY: Well, I think we sort of just looked at all the road course races, and obviously we had to work with Roush and what worked best for them. Road America certainly fit me. I mean, I won there in Skip Barber, won there in Pro Mazda, had a great race going there in 2016 in the IndyCar before we had a suspension failure, and I love that place. It's an incredible track, incredible environment. The Midwest is so -- they love racing, so it worked well for everyone, I think, and that's how it all came about.
Q. Can you tell us about the symptoms of diabetes? Do you have pain, or how do you feel it if you have diabetes?
RYAN REED: I mean, I think before you're diagnosed you have a lot of symptoms. I think for me, I'll let Conor speak to his symptoms, but thirst was probably the biggest thing that I had. It was like overwhelming thirst, and it was kind of unquenchable; no matter how much water I drank I was just always thirsty; weight loss, et cetera. Then once you are diagnosed, a lot of those symptoms will go away, but if you a high or low blood sugar, there's obviously ways to -- you're going to feel certain symptoms, and it helps you detect it, but I think with today's technology, with PGMs and everything, detection, you're able to treat those earlier on, whether it's a high or low blood sugar, it's gotten easier and more manageable.
CONOR DALY: Yeah, he nailed it. Same thing.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
Rev #1 by #166 at 2018-05-11 15:57:00 GMT
