Stater Bros. 300 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

Where the Raybestos Rookies finished at California:
Kluever 12th
Andretti 19th
Lamar 21st
Kaufmann 27th
McFarland 30th
O’Quinn Jr. 31st
Hines 33rd
Foyt IV 38th

UNOFFICIAL Raybestos Rookie standings:
Lamar 29
Kluever 25
Andretti 16
O’Quinn Jr. 15
McFarland 14
Hines 13
Foyt IV 9
Kaufmann 8
Wimmer 2
Gilliland 1

TODD KLUEVER IN THE No. 06 3M FORD WAS THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE RACE AT CALIFORNIA. Notes: Kluever finished 12th and took top rookie honors for the first time in 2006. He is the second different driver to claim Raybestos Rookie of the Race honors this season. YOU MUST BE HAPPY WITH YOUR GOOD FINISH TODAY. “I guess I am. I’m never happy with 12th but it was a good day for us with the 3M car. You’ve got to come through that learning curve. I need to be a little bit smarter on where I need the car to be at the end of practice so it will start the race good. I need to be smarter on how much of a change I need on a pit stop. I know what one turn on the track bar does on my truck. I just don’t know what it does on a Busch car. I was a little timid today on making enough adjustment to get us where we needed to be. I’m really excited, though. Mike Kelly [crew chief] and all my 3M guys are proving they’re pretty awesome. Mike is a rookie crew chief and I'm a Raybestos Rookie driver. We were just outside the top-10 today. We’ve all got a learning curve, but I think it’s a good base. And when we all figure out what we’ve got to figure out we don’t have that far to go.” HOW MUCH DOES QUALIFYING THROW YOU BEHIND IN THE RACE? YOU DON’T HAVE A GUARANTEED STARTING SPOT. “It’s pretty exhausting, mentally. We were good enough here right off the truck so it wasn’t a real big concern of ours. We knew we were going to be pretty decent. Last week at Daytona, it destroyed us starting the race in qualifying trim basically. You’ve got to be so trimmed out to make the show. We were terrible and my guys worked really and got us a solid finish out of that. I’m nervous about Mexico because there are unknowns there, too. If I make a mistake and drop the thing off the track or into the kitty litter…it’s tough. It’s frustrating, too, as a driver when you’re watching time trials and a guy that’s a second and a half off the pace is going to get to start the race and you’re three or fourth tenths off the pace and you get to go home. It’s frustrating that way. As far as these bigger tracks, we’ll be all right.” IT MUST BE FRUSTRATING BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHEN YOU START THE RACE YOU’RE ONE ADJUSTMENT BEHIND. “Absolutely. Like I said, for us it’s not so bad here. It won’t be so bad here or Vegas or Atlanta, just because I think we’ll be good off the truck. But who knows? But you’re one adjustment behind all the time because you have to do what you have to do to make the race. You can be great in race trim but if you’re not in the race it doesn’t really help you. It’s definitely tough but we’re building a solid base so after five races we don’t have to worry about that.” DO YOU HAVE ANY ROAD RACING EXPERIENCE? “None at all, but I’ve spent two days at VIR with Boris Said and I’m going back up there Tuesday with one of the Cup cars from the 26 team. We’re just trying to get as much laps as we can. I think we’ll be okay but you never know. Road racing is a tough deal. It’s a lot of fun but right now I’m concentrating on making the race.”

JOHN ANDRETTI, No. 10 FREEDOM ROADS/CAMPING WORLD FORD: “We never figured that we’d start out loose and we were loose for most of the race. We got it tightened up a little bit but not enough. That’s the first time that I ever drove a Busch car in traffic anywhere other than Daytona. The Busch drivers drive a little bit different than the Cup guys, especially the lap down guys.” YOU MADE A PIT STOP, GOT A LAP DOWN BUT THEN GOT THE LUCKY DOG AND MADE IT BACK UP. “We stayed out longer than everybody else so that got us a lap that we led but when you do that, you lose all that track time. Either way you’re wrong. You just hope that everything shines on you and for us it didn’t work out but then it did because we got the lucky dog.” WOULD IT HAVE MATTERED IF YOU GOT THE LEAD AND THEN THE CAUTION CAME OUT? “Well, but then I would have gone to the back of that line because nobody else was going to pit. It actually ended up about the same. The only difference is that I had to go behind all those other cars and the first lap I must have lost a half-straightaway to them, just trying to get through the three cars that started battling, the last three cars in that line. So it’s a little different than Cup. I’ll learn.”

BURNEY LAMAR, No. 77 DOLLAR GENERAL CHEVROLET: “It was great. The car was handling great. The Dollar General crew did a great job. The biggest thing was that I learned that I need to get on to pit road a lot better than I do now. That’s where we lost a lap. The guys did a great job. The car was good at the end of the race. We’ll take that experience and apply it to Las Vegas and I know we’ll be a lot better in Mexico.” AT ONE POINT YOU APPEARED TO BE CLOSE TO GETTING THE LUCKY DOG. “Yeah, that’s a sore subject [smiles]. We were gunning for it. The car was really good. I just can’t say enough about the guys. It was my fault that we lost the lap. It was really my first green flag pit stop ever so we’ll work on that and get it a lot better.” AND NOW YOU GO ROAD COURSE RACING. “I love it. I’m looking forward to it. I’m really fired up about it.

JOEL KAUFFMAN, No. 12 SUPERCUTS DODGE: “It looked like it was going to be pretty good right off the bat. We had some issues with the radiator. We had some overheating problems and that didn’t help us at all. We got some kind of aero problem too. We were getting really tight behind some guys. If we were out on our own we could run real decent lap times but as soon as we got behind somebody we struggled a little bit. I think it’s an aero package we can work on a little bit. We’re real happy with our Vegas car. We chose to take our best car there. We weren’t as happy with this car at the test so we’re really looking forward to going to Vegas.” DID YOU LEARN A LOT TODAY? “I did. This is only my third race here on a track over a half-mile. Aero plays a huge role. Aero is almost more important that making the thing turn suspension-wise. We’ll keep on learning. We’ve just got to complete every lap of the race and stay out of trouble. That’s the only way that we’re going to learn. We’re not happy with our performance but we’re happy with the end result.”

MARK MCFARLAND, No. 88 NAVY CHEVROLET: “We learned a lot. We barely made it in [qualifying for the race]. It was just tight the whole race. We were just glad to finish where we did. We didn’t really practice that much for long runs so we didn’t really know what it would do. It was a decent run. We had good times and bad times. The car worked good there for a while and then it went to going bad. We just tried to salvage a finish.” IS IT PRESSURE PACKED TRYING TO QUALIFY? “It is. It’s tough. You’ve got to make it on time and it will be even harder when we go to Mexico. We’re looking forward to it. We just have to get our NAVY team together and get everybody working together and we’ll be good.”

DANNY O’QUINN JR., No. 50 TRANSAMERICA FORD: “We just weren’t quick today. We thought we had a pretty good package [Friday] and as soon as the race started, we were tight and loose, going back and forth. We never could hit the happy medium. At least we came out of here in one piece. At the start of the race I thought we were going to be pretty good and it went downhill from there. I picked up a lot driving today and stuff. We’ll just have to go back to the shop and sit down and look at this day. Right now I don’t really know if we had a problem or something. We’ll just have to go back and look at and go after it next week. This is a whole new team; it’s new for me. We’ve just got to look at everything we’re doing and make it better from week to week.”