Stater Bros. 300 - Rookie Practice Quotes

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER PRACTICE DAY QUOTES FOR THE STATER BROS. 300 NASCAR BUSCH SERIES RACE AT CALIFORNIA SPEEDWAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2006.

ANTHONY FOYT IV, No. 38 GREAT CLIPS DODGE: “We came here and had never been here before in one of these cars and to be 12th is pretty good. We know we’ve got some more that we can gain. We have a new crew chief this weekend with Ken Davis. We’re still working at it. Everything is still new to everybody right now. I think as the weekend goes on, we’ll keep progressing. I’ve been here in an Indy Car. It’s totally different and that’s why I said I pretty much haven’t been here. You drive it totally different with the Indy Car rather than one of these stock cars. I’m pretty much starting new.” WHAT WOULD BE A GOOD FINISH FOR THIS TEAM? “If we could run in the top-15 I’d be pretty happy. We had the most laps out of anyone in that first practice session with 31 so we ran on old tires quite a bit. The car is pretty good so we’ll keep on making it better and we’ll be fine.” COULD YOU TELL A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BEGINNING OF A RUN AND TOWARD THE END? “The times fell off pretty big. Your grip goes away like normal. Our car seemed to handle pretty good, just lose a little bit of time.” YOU WILL QUALIFY AND RACE ON THE SAME DAY. “I haven’t done that much. You’ve just got to be sure to take care of your car in qualifying. There is not that big of a time difference between the race and qualifying so just take care of your car and just put a good solid lap down. I look forward to the race.”

BURNEY LAMAR, No. 77 DOLLAR GENERAL CHEVROLET: YOU FINISHED SECOND AT DAYTONA LAST WEEK. HAS THAT SUNK IN YET? “It sure has. I got back to the shop and that’s when it really sinks in, just to see the smiles on everybody’s faces that have been working so hard to prepare these cars. We had to have cars ready for Daytona, Mexico City, California and the Las Vegas test. They’ve been putting in a lot of hours so to see the guys happy makes it all pay off.” THE DRIVER CAN MAKE A LOT OF DIFFERENCE HERE, UNLIKE LAST WEEK AT DAYTONA. IS THAT A BETTER SITUATION FOR YOU? “Yes and no. The thing about it, you go to Daytona with no experience in a plate Busch race in that big of a pack, so we went into that sort of blind. I want to say we lucked into it but we didn’t. The car and team are top notch. Once I get myself up to speed, we’ll have some success. But we’re sort of going into this thing [race at California] blind too. It’s a whole different animal. We were 15th in the first practice and I think we had a little bit more so I’m looking forward to it.” HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO MAKE A LONG RUN IN PRACTICE? “We haven’t done that yet. We’re going to do that in the Raybestos Rookie practice. There’s not a lot of cars out there so we know that we’ll get a good consistent run. On a long run is the place where a person like me, a Raybestos Rookie, gets the feel of where everything is at. I’ve been here one time and that’s it. For the veterans, when they come back it’s easy for them to hit their marks but I really haven’t found those marks yet. That’s one thing we’re looking to do in this next practice.” YOU ARE A WEST COAST GUY. HOW SPECIAL IS IT TO COME BACK TO YOUR HOME STATE AFTER A GOOD RUN AT DAYTONA? “Especially coming off a good week. We’ve had a lot of PR and things have been going pretty good. Any time you go back to your home state and come off a good weekend, people are going to be tuning in to see what’s going on. We want to run good here.” HOW SPECIAL WOULD IT BE TO RUN WELL HERE AND AT LAS VEGAS IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS? “I’m also really looking forward to running next week at Mexico City. I like to road race and we had a good test at Vegas. To be able to run good the next three weeks would be good. The car has it. The team has it. It’s like I’ve been saying, if I can get to that point we can do it.” DOES IT MAKE YOUR JOB EASIER KNOWING THAT YOU HAVE GOOD EQUIPMENT OR DOES IT PUT MORE PRESSURE ON YOU? “It makes it a lot easier. Like my crew chief Gene Knead tells me, if you’re out there and the car is too loose, you’re just hanging on for dear life and you don’t learn anything. But if you can step into a car and it’s comfortable, that’s when you start learning.” HOW MUCH ROAD RACING EXPERIENCE DO YOU HAVE? “We raced Sears Point I think for five years [Southwest Series car] plus we tested VIR for two days [in a Busch car] with Ron Fellows and Ron Hornaday. Both of them coached me and helped me out a lot. And we went to Sebring and did the same. The Southwest Series car is a lot lighter car but you still have the shifting, down shifting, the passing and late braking, the road racing kind of thing. I almost feel that the Busch car is almost more comfortable to drive than my Southwest Series car because with the truck arms the thing doesn’t move around a lot. You can get away with getting it more out of shape than you can my Southwest Series car. I think it will be more comfortable.”

TRACY HINES, No. 14 JANI-KING DODGE: HOW WAS YOUR FIRST PRACTICE SESSION TODAY? “It was short. We actually had a little issue getting through tech so we didn’t get as many laps as we needed. We went out and thought we were going to get our run on our first laps and there was a yellow for David Green. We didn’t even get a lap in. We went back out and got about a lap in and there was a yellow for the 5 car. We actually ran a pretty good time and that was about the third or fourth lap on those tires which was actually my first up to speed. I don’t think 19th on the speed chart reflects how fast we are. I think we’re pretty good. I’m really happy with the car so far. We’re not going to put new tires on for Raybestos Rookie practice. We may not be the strongest in rookie practice. We don’t need to qualify in, we need to race good and that’s what we’re trying to do. It’s more important now to get runs in the afternoon because that’s when we’re going to race. The early morning practice might do you some good maybe for qualifying tomorrow but it doesn’t do you any good for what you need in race conditions.” SO THE AFTERNOON PRACTICE IS MORE IMPORTANT? “I think it’s going to mean a lot more to you. You’ve got to tune for the track conditions you’re going to have. The race will be at the same time as the end of the second practice.”