USG Durock 300 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

Where the Raybestos Rookie finished at Chicagoland:
Edwards 4th
Sorenson 10th
Hamlin 15th
Sherman 24th
Robertson 34th
Wood 37th

UNOFFICIAL Raybestos Rookie standings (top-five):
Sorenson 247
Edwards 246
Hamlin 179
Wood 143
Jourdain 110

CARL EDWARDS IN THE No. 60 CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS FORD WAS THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE RACE AT CHICAGOLAND. Notes: Edwards finished fourth, his seventh top-five in 20 career Busch Series starts. Unofficially, Edwards is fourth in the NASCAR Busch Series championship standings, 205 points behind leader Martin Truex Jr.

EDWARDS: THE LAST RESTART DIDN’T WORK IN YOUR FAVOR. “I just made a mistake there. I thought I had a flat tire and I didn’t have my rear tires cleaned off well enough or else the 39 was under my bumper or something. I was wiggling a little bit and I thought ‘Man, I’m going to take it easy’ and I didn’t have a flat tire. I have to say thanks to my guys, the whole Charter crew. And I have to thank Mark Martin. I kind of put him in a bad spot out there off turn 4 once and he gave it to me and that meant a lot.” THERE WAS A LOT OF STUFF GOING ON AT THE END OF THE RACE. “Yeah, it was wild. We looked at the right rear tire and there was a big chunk missing out of it. We just did our best. We got very fortunate today with our Charter Ford. I thought I had a tire coming apart early and we pitted early and luckily it cycled all the way through. If it wasn’t for that we would have really been out to lunch. I just have to thank my whole crew for working so hard. I have to thank Mark Martin. I kind of committed a little bit to the outside [off turn 4] and he gave me the lane and that was nice of him. We had a good day. I feel like we won the Busch race. We just didn’t win the Cup race here.” MARK MARTIN CAME OVER AND TALKED WITH YOU AFTER THE RACE. “He said ‘Now I know how stupid you can be’ [laughs]. It wasn’t very smart. It wasn’t smart racing and I shouldn’t have done that. We’re friends and he’s a great guy, and he told me that I’m entitled to that mistake and that he’ll let me go on that one and that’s awfully nice of him.” TODAY WAS A GOOD POINTS DAY. “A great points day. I don’t think we led a lap. We drove real hard and we got very fortunate with some wild pit stop sequence stuff going on. That was crazy. I thought I had a right rear tire coming apart so we pitted early and then luckily it cycled through. We would have been out to lunch if it hadn’t cycled through and then we got a caution right when we needed it. One of the other right rears was coming apart for real. It was just a wild race. It was a lot fun. I just screwed up at the end there and didn’t get a very good restart.” DID THAT DOOM YOUR CHANCES TO WIN THE RACE? “I think so. I don’t know if we would have been able to pass Kevin but we would have had a lot better shot. I think we would have been second, maybe first, but you never know. Everybody is so close and you’re almost wide open all the way around there so it’s very tough to pass.”

REED SORENSON, No. 41 DISCOUNT TIRE COMPANY DODGE: Notes: Sorenson was the only Raybestos Rookie to lead a lap at Chicagoland, holding the top spot twice for 30 laps.

“I think we had a fuel problem or something early in the race. On the restart there, shifting from third to fourth, it just kind of died. The fuel light kept coming on the whole race. It was just real weak off the corner and it was fine by the end of the straightaway so I don’t know what the deal was with that. It just took our car five laps to get going. Those yellows were not helping me at all.” DID THE YELLOWS AT THE END OF THE RACE DOOM YOUR CHANCE TO WIN? “Yeah, because we were running okay. On that long run I think we were the fastest car on that green flag run where everybody had to pit. Even after they pitted and came out in front of me they weren’t a lot faster than me and I was on my old tires. I was better on old tires than I was on new tires, which is not good; especially when you’re coming down to try to win the race at the end. I’ve got to try to get better the first 10 or 15 laps.” THE FINAL LAPS OF THE RACE LOOKED WILD. “We didn’t have the car to go two or three wide. I needed to be single file so that didn’t help.”

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 20 ROCKWELL AUTOMATION CHEVROLET: Notes: Hamlin is unofficially listed sixth in NASCAR Busch Series points, 93 behind fifth-place Kenny Wallace.

“I think 15th is about the best we had all day. We just can’t get a hold of these mile and a half racetracks it seems like. We had one run there that the car was pretty decent. We had times that could compete fifth through tenth, but that was a best-case scenario. Track position was a lot of it. Seems like wherever we restarted we could just maintain there. We’ll get better. We’ll go testing and come back to these big tracks with a little better package.” DID YOU NEED FOR THE RACE TO STAY GREEN? “Short runs or long runs, I don’t think it would have made any difference. We had about a 15th-place car.”

BRENT SHERMAN, No. 15 CONSORT FOR MEN FORD: DID AN UNTIMELY CAUTION FLAG DOOM YOU? “It didn’t doom us. Like my crew chief told me over the radio, when we went into the pits early and stayed out all that time to gain track position, we were hoping for a caution. It was a gamble and it didn’t pay off. We went a lap down but position-wise; we didn’t lose too many positions over it. At the end, the car was good enough to run with some of the leaders. I’m just getting used to this car and some of the setups that these guys use and it was really good, just a little tight. But I told them that I wanted it tight so they gave me exactly what I asked for and now we can slowly start freeing it up and get me more comfortable hanging it out. I think we finished 23rd and it’s something to build on, at least. We didn’t wreck the car and there was a strong field here, 19 or 20 Cup drivers, so I can’t complain with our effort. We can move on and get better every week.”

JERRY ROBERTSON, No. 78 FURNITURE ROW CHEVROLET: “On a scale of 1-10 and 10 being bad, it was an 11. it was terrible. We de-wedged it, we raised the track bar up, changed air pressure, but we did it four or five times on every one of those things and it still pushed. I had a run on the outside of Tim Fedewa and his spotter must not have told him that I was high and he put me up in the wall. We pulled off the track at the finish and the right rear tire was about half flat so that attributed to a lot of the tightness. This is our backup car because I crashed the primary car in practice. We had to bring in this car and we’ve had trouble with this car being too tight from the get-go. Pikes Peak is not looking pretty right now because it’s the only we have that we can run. Barney Visser [car owner] has given us everything that he could. We started late this season and we’re only running a part time schedule. We just don’t have enough cars that are prepared that are good cars. We’re struggling but we’re working on it. When we get good cars we’ll be a lot better.”

EDWARDS PRESS CONFERENCE

ARE YOU PLEASED WITH A FOURTH-PLACE FINISH? “I’m very pleased with a fourth-place finish. I feel like it was a great points day. We finished in front of all the Busch Series regulars so that was an awesome day. We had an unscheduled pit stop because I thought we had a tire coming apart and it was my mistake, we didn’t. It was just getting real loose. We made an unscheduled stop and if it hadn’t cycled all the way through we would have been in trouble because it was looking pretty bad. We were almost two laps down. After that, Brad [Parrott, his crew chief] did a good job. We had a couple of cautions at the right time and other than that last restart I felt like it went perfectly. I think if we had maybe a better restart, I think we maybe could have had something for Greg but it wasn’t meant to be. I was too free or had stuff on my tires or something.”

WHERE ARE YOU GOING TONIGHT? “We’re going Elko, Minnesota. I think Kasey Kahne, Jamie McMurray, Jason Leffler and myself are all going to go up there and run a late model show. I’m pretty excited about it. I think we’re going to race each other. I don’t know if we’re going to race the regular guys up there. It’s an exhibition. We’re going to have fun.”