Carquest Auto Parts 300 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

Where the Raybestos Rookies finished at Charlotte:
Sorenson 5th
Walker 14th
Jourdain Jr. 15th
Hamlin 20th
Wood 33rd
Sherman 34th
Edwards 35th
Davis 37th

UNOFFICIAL Raybestos Rookie standings (top-5)
Edwards 193
Sorenson 169
Hamlin 130
Wood 115
Jourdain Jr. 91

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER QUOTES FOR THE CARQUEST AUTO PARTS 300 NASCAR BUSCH SERIES RACE AT LOWE’S MOTOR SPEEDWAY, MAY 28, 2005.

REED SORENSON IN THE No. 41 DISCOUNT TIRE COMPANY DODGE WAS THE TOP RAYBESTOS ROOKIE AT CHARLOTTE. Notes: Sorenson placed fifth, his fifth top-five finish of the 2005 season and sixth of his 18-race Busch Series career. His most recent top-five finish prior to tonight came at Texas Motor Speedway in April where he finished third.

STREAK STAYS ALIVE: A Raybestos® Rookie has finished in the top 10 in every Busch Series race this season.

Sorenson, Carl Edwards, and Jon Wood are the only Raybestos® Rookies to score a top-five finish this season.

A Raybestos® Rookie has now finished in the top-five in the last two May Busch Series races at Charlotte. Kyle Busch won the 2004 CARQUEST 300 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

REED SORENSON: “That was a good run for us. I guess we should have taken two tires at the end instead of four. We had our car setup for green flag, too. Those cautions didn’t help. I wish we could have had a long green-flag run, I think we could have been pretty good. It was a good day for us after the past four weeks. We needed to get back in the rhythm of where we should be so that was a good run for us. We were getting into a flow pretty good. I think I was running second behind [Ryan] Newman there and we were getting into a pretty good rhythm right there and the car was running really good. We had a good rhythm going. We messed up a little bit, but it’s still a good day.” TWO TIRES OR FOUR TIRES WAS THE GAMBLE. “We could easily say that if we had taken two we would have been better off but who knows. I think since they ground the track and especially running here at night, I don’t think tires matter as much on the left sides. You definitely have to have the right sides. But you can’t go back on your call. When you make the call you have to go with it. I think if we had more green flag racing we would have been pretty good also. We were planning on more green flag runs than that and we’d stay under caution for five laps just to clean up debris. I’m not sure why we were under caution so long. It was a good day for us, especially after the past four weeks we needed to get back in the top-five.” GREG BIFFLE SAID THAT IT WAS EASY TO CATCH A GUY BUT REAL HARD TO PASS. “The air is really rough out there. You could get inside of somebody and it’d take the air off your spoiler and you’d get really loose. You just had to be real careful around people, even on the outside; you had to be careful around them. If you were going to pass somebody, you had to almost completely pass them before you went off into the corner.” YOU GAINED SOME POINTS TONIGHT. “That’s nice, instead of losing them [laughs]. We finally gained a little bit.” YOU FINISHED IN THE TOP-FIVE IN A RACE THAT HAD A LOT OF CUP DRIVERS. “I guess we were the first Busch regular so it was a good run for us. Those Cup guys are always hard to beat and we’ve got another race here so we’ve got another shot to win. It was a good night for us all night. We were pretty much roaming around the top-five all night. We got up to second there and some people made some different pit calls there at the end and got them up toward the front. It worked out for a couple of them. I think we made the right calls all night. I don’t think we made any mistakes. It was a good night for us.” DID YOU KEEP UP WITH THE TRACK WHEN THE RACE WENT FROM DAYLIGHT INTO DARKNESS? “I think we did. We kept up with it really well. We freed the car up there at the end and I think it was the right adjustments. We didn’t have to adjust too much. I think that test here helped us really well, prepared us for this race.” DID THE CAUTIONS AT THE END OF THE RACE HURT YOU? “They hurt us a little bit. We needed some green flags. We had the pressures pretty low because we thought we were going to have to run 60 laps. The pressures were down pretty far. The first caution helped us a little bit to get back up through the field but then we had two or three more and that definitely didn’t help.” IS YOUR SEASON NOW BACK ON TRACK? “We hope so. We’ve been trying to get back on track every week. This is where I feel like we should be and we’re just going to keep attacking it from here. We’ve got 15 more in a row and hopefully get a lot more of these good finishes.”

MICHEL JOURDAIN JR., NO. 10 BEAR CREEK SOUP FORD: “This track is very, very temperature sensitive. Today that was the last of our problems. We had a pretty fast car there at the end. I’m very proud of my guys because they did a very good job fixing it for me and making it much better. It’s a shame we lost our primary car yesterday because I think we had something really good. That’s the way racing is, I guess.” WERE YOU SURPRISED HOW WELL YOU RAN? “I was surprised how bad we were at the beginning and I was surprised how good it was at the end.”

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 20 ROCKWELL AUTOMATION CHEVROLET: “I got beside the 11 [Paul Menard] and I made sure that I had plenty of room on him. He just came down and deliberately took the air off my spoiler and we about had the same mess that we had at Richmond. I decided to go ahead and take myself out so maybe I just don’t need to do that. We had a good car, a top-10 car I felt like. We were battling right there for 10th when that happened. We’ve got a whole car left and that’s a good thing.” WERE YOU SURPRISED HOW WELL YOU RAN IN THE RACE? “Well, yeah because we didn’t have but one lap of practice on this car. It kind of surprised me that we were as good as we were as soon as we were. We had a good top-10 run going and ended up messing up at the end.”

CARL EDWARDS, No. 60 NATIONAL GUARD/CHARTER FORD: “It started out really bad and we were doing a good job of rebounding and coming back. The crew did a great job. The car was awesome. I just got down in there into 3, made a really aggressive move coming off 2 and everybody stacked up. I got on the outside of Ashton Lewis Jr. and went down into the corner and he just got me just enough in the left rear and I got into the wall. Ashton is gentleman. He came over after the race and made sure that I knew that it wasn’t intentional. It was just a mistake, racing stuff. That’s how it happens, just racing.” YOU SLID BACK AT THE BEGINNING OF THE RACE. “Extremely, extremely loose. That’s the loosest racecar that I’ve had in a long time. But the guys did a great job. They took that car and turned it into one that was really competitive. Another pit stop or two and we would have been right back where we were in practice, one of the top two or three cars. I felt good about it, just bad luck.” WERE YOU DUE FOR A TOUGH RACE? “You’re going to have bad days. We’re still 171 points in the lead, which is acceptable after a day like this. It’s just racing. We’ll go race at Dover and we’ll just race hard.” WHAT DID YOU LEARN FOR THE 600? “A little bit about the racetrack, about how sensitive the cars are to changes and how the track changes from day to night. I think this is a valuable, valuable race for me.”

KERTUS DAVIS, No. 0 RACEGIRL CHEVROLET: “We had a shock come apart. There wasn’t anything left but the bolts. I don’t know how that happened but that caused us to blow out a tire. The tire got the fender, the shock got into the tire and cut it down and we got into the wall. We came in and the guys worked extremely hard. Some of the Reese’s guys came over and gave us a hand and we got it back out there and we finished. We gained four positions and some valuable points. We’ll get the car fixed up and go to Dover and do it again. We didn’t bring it back in a basket, didn’t knock the clip off of it, just cosmetic stuff, and mainly body damage. We can get it fixed pretty easy but I doubt we’ll be able to take this car to Dover. We’ll have to run our backup that we brought to Charlotte. We’ll get it all switched around and hopefully we’ll be even better at Dover.”

SORENSON PRESS CONFERENCE
“We started fifth and finished fifth so I guess that’s a pretty solid night for us. We were in the top-five all night and had a really good racecar at one point there. We got up to second. I think we had a pretty good car. We had a top-five car and we finished fifth. I think we could have got a couple more there but a couple guys took two tires and then those cautions weren’t helping us. It was really easy to catch somebody. You could get up to them and once you get about a car length away it was hard to get around them. Then once you did get beside them, if you got underneath somebody, it would make the car real loose. It was real tough to pass. You almost had to complete the pass before you got into the corner or you weren’t going to get by them.” ALL THE GUYS THAT FINISHED IN FRONT OF YOU WERE CUP GUYS. DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU GOT BEAT BY EXPERIENCE? “Well, yeah, obviously a little bit. These guys are definitely good. They know what they’re doing, otherwise they wouldn’t be in the NEXTEL Cup Series but it’s a lot of fun racing against those guys. The Busch Series guys are really good, also. You don’t really think about it too much until after you’re done. You just kind of race everybody the same.” YOUGAINED POINTS TONIGHT ON CARL EDWARDS AND CLINT BOWYER. YOU NEEDED THIS RUN GOING INTO THIS LONG STRETCH OF RACES. “I need a couple more [smiles]. Those races where we got wrecked or got into a wreck. At Talladega it was one of those deals. We didn’t have a slow car, so I look at it like the team was struggling. It’s just kind of we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s nice to get back into the rhythm of things. I feel like this is where this team should be, a top five team. It’s definitely nice to try to gain some points. We were so far behind there it’s definitely nice to get a little gain there.” AT THE END OF THE RACE YOU NEEDED LONG GREEN FLAG RUNS. DID YOU CAR GET BETTER AS THE RACE WENT ON? “We took four tires and those other guys took two. I guess we had like 55 laps to go or so and we had the pressures pretty low because I was hoping that we were going to run some green flag laps there. The air pressures were different than we had all night for the long run. That caution kind of helped us to catch back up to the field there and then the other ones definitely didn’t help. I felt our car was going to be better and better as we went so those cautions there didn’t help us. And then it would take them five laps to clean up debris. That definitely didn’t help, either.”