Dollar General 300 - Rookie Thursday Quotes

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER FEATURE FOR THE DOLLAR GENERAL 300 NASCAR BUSCH SERIES RACE AT LOWE’S MOTOR SPEEDWAY, OCTOBER 13, 2005.

Raybestos Rookie Jon Wood posted the 10th fastest time in the first practice session for the Dollar General 300 this afternoon. Wood enters Friday’s race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway after posting a fifth-place effort Oct. 8 in the United Way 300 at Kansas Speedway, his second top-five finish in 32-career starts.

JON WOOD, No. 47 CLOROX/WISK FORD: “I think in qualifying you’re going to see some speeds that are very surprising. In race trim we are able to run close to the 29-flat range and that’s how fast the Cup cars are. I think when we tape up and go out for qualifying runs it’s going to be ridiculous fast.” WILL THOSE SPEEDS MAKE IT DIFFICULT TO PASS? “It’s going to be a difficult race to pass at. There are so many grooves here and then the aero thing does play a huge role in it. Given the two I think there will be a lot of side-by-side racing but not a lot of passing going on.” YOU QUALIFIED WELL AND RACED WELL AT KANSAS AND HERE TODAY YOU ARE FAST RIGHT OFF THE TRUCK. THAT MUST BUILD UP YOUR CONFIDENCE. “It does. This just reflects the way that we ran at the beginning of the year before our 17-week stretch. At that point of the season I don’t think we were quite caught up given the fact that I was a Raybestos Rookie and given the fact that it was a second year start-up team for that type demand on a race team and a driver. Now that we’ve had a couple of weeks to get caught up I think that you are going to start seeing a lot more of the trend like we followed at the beginning of the year where we were able to run up front.” WHY DID YOU STRUGGLE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR? WAS IT JUST BAD RACING LUCK? “We got off to a bad roll right at the beginning of summer and we just could never break free of it. It seems like our trend follows seasons. In the spring we were fast, in the summer we were slow and now in fall we’re fast. Hopefully that will keep going through the rest of the remaining races and carry some momentum for the beginning of next year.” IF YOU COULD ENTER THIS YEAR AGAIN AS A RAYBESTOS ROOKIE, WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY? “Learn patience, learn that these races are twice as long as the truck series races. It’s not about going to the front as fast as you can at the beginning. It’s about maintaining a position to be able to race at the end. I found myself in a lot of predicaments throughout the year where I compromised a good finish by being over-impatient.” WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT TO THIS TEAM: A WIN OR CONSISTENT TOP-FIVE OR TOP-10 FINISHES? “We’re looking for momentum. A lot of people can luck up and win one, fuel mileage or whatever the case may be, but being in contention to win every week, sooner or later, it’ll happen. The way we ran at Kansas we were nothing short of that.”

JAY GUY, CREW CHIEF, No. 47 CLOROX/WISK FORD: HAVE YOU TURNED THIS PROGRAM AROUND? “It’s not so much turning the program around. We’ve tested a lot here in the last 3 or 4 weeks. I saved a lot of tests for the end of the year. I figured we’d be up higher in the points that what we are. I was hoping that we’d be in the top-10 fighting and clawing our way higher up and I purposely saved four or five tests. We’ve been testing a lot and the guys have been digging hard, updating some new cars for us. It’s starting to pay off and build momentum for next year.” HAVE YOUR UPS AND DOWNS THIS YEAR BEEN A MATTER OF BAD RACING LUCK? “You make your own luck. We’ve put ourselves in some bad positions this year with some pit stops and some other things. We’ve had fast cars but sometimes it takes a little while to get ‘em dialed in. Jon and I are both learning to work together. It’s a learning curve but at the same time we’ve had two top-fives. It’s not been a great year but it’s been a decent year.” ARE YOU STARTING TO SEE SOME RESULTS FROM THE ALLIANCE WITH THE WOOD BROTHERS? “We’ve been working with Fatback and Hoyt all year. It wasn’t announced, but Eddie Wood was kind enough to say ‘Hey, anything I’ve got you guys just come over and get.’ I’ve been using Fatback and Hoyt, just bouncing ideas off them. Fatback will come over and sit on the pit box with me sometimes and give me different ideas and suggestions and stuff. Anytime you get more information it’s a plus. You can sit there and be closed-minded and stuff because you’ll get anywhere in the sport. You have to be pretty open minded and luckily have someone that thinks outside the box a little bit different and it helps out.” WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT TO THIS TEAM: A WIN OR CONSISTENT TOP-FIVE OR TOP-10 FINISHES? “I think consistency is the name of the game. It would be huge if we could get a pole but what I’m looking for is consistency to build on for next year. I don’t want to be a flash in the pan, come out and win this weekend and next week run 20th. If we can kind of go out there and run top-five, top-10 and people know that S-T Motorsports and Jon Wood and the Clorox team are here every week, that’s something that I’m striving for. If we can get a win or anything like that, that’d be great.” WHAT DO YOU NEED TO WORK ON TO MAKE THE TEAM BETTER? “I really can’t sit there and think ‘Man, we’ve got to do this or do that.’ We’ve got a good bunch of guys. We’ve got a young group of guys an just being together a little bit more will help out.”