ANDRETTI: “I really thought that we had a shot at Junior and did jump on the outside of him that one time. I thought ‘If the 57 goes with me, it over with. If he doesn’t, then it’s over with [smiles].’ And it was over with. He didn’t go with me and Junior was able to make it stick. His car was awful fast but I know that if I’d have got the lead, my car did run awful good. I just couldn’t get turned behind him. We did a two-tire stop. You’re so afraid to adjust anything because if you’re wrong, it can be really bad and we knew that we needed track position. We were in the top-10 but if we got up to the front of it. We made all the right calls.” YOU WERE RUNNING THE HIGH LINE. IT APPEARED THAT YOU HAD ENOUGH MOMENTUM AFTER A COUPLE OF LAPS TO MAKE A RUN FOR THE LEAD. “That’s how I got to second. Like I said, I needed to run up there. Every call was the right call. We were racing to win. We weren’t racing for a finish. I told them ‘I’ll give you everything I got but I may lose more than I gain.’ And that’s what happens in this kind of racing. I think maybe if I was behind running third I’d probably be afraid not to pick Junior, too.” WOULD FOUR TIRES HAVE MADE A DIFFERENCE THERE AT THE END? “The balance of the car was really good and it would have kept that balance. But I don’t know that it would have made a difference in the finishing result because we would have had to pass the cars that we passed on pit road. You can say that it would have but it wouldn’t be right to say that.” THIS TEAM HAS COME A LONG WAY SINCE FEBRUARY. “We ran in the top-five in February and we fell back because we had a tire going down and eventually we went out because of it. I just think that Rick [Gay, crew chief] are starting to really hit. Our team is really jelling together. We’ll fight for one another and as Greg Zipadelli and Tony Stewart will attest to, that makes all the difference in the world. When you believe in a guy and they believe in you, that’s what matters.” THE RACE GOT STRUNG OUT EARLY TONIGHT. WERE YOU SURPRISED AT THAT? “No. The tires are very, very difficult. They’ve got Talladega tires at Daytona. That’s why they call them Talladega tires.” WAS THE TRACK SLICK? “The racetrack was very, very good. I thought the racetrack was in much better shape than I expected it. I remember a slicker racetrack.”

RICK GAY, CREW CHIEF, No. 10 RVs.COM/FREEDOM ROADS/GANDER MOUNTAIN FORD: “We’re chugging away. Like John said the other day, it’s really hard to put a group of guys together that are all new working together. Even though the people at ppc have been there for quite a while, John is new to the team, I’m new to the team and it taken us a little bit to get going. I think in July and August, we’re going to turn some heads.” YOU TOOK RIGHT-SIDE TIRES ON THE LAST STOP. “Yeah, we’ve talked about that a couple times this year. Two tires and track position is a whole lot better than four tires and being way back in the pack there, especially at a speedway race. We decided to take two tires and it worked out for us. The only thing was that we needed to free it up just a little bit more.” DID YOU NEED MORE DRAFTING HELP AT THE END OF THE RACE? “I looked down at the screen at one point when they went to a commercial and there was two Chevys in front of us and two Chevys behind us. There was not a Ford to be found except for us. Our RVs.com Fusion was pretty good tonight. If we had a little bit of help there at the end I think we would have been able to get up there and contend for the win.”

ANDRETTI PRESS CONFERENCE

“I want to address the tire test. I did the tire test and when we did the tire test we were testing for right-side tires. We never tested a left side tire and when they came back, they came back with Talladega lefts and rights and we didn’t know anything about it. I don’t know what happened there. I know that the reason we went to a harder tire and had the tire test was because there were some problems in February and so they’re always looking to cure those and that’s what they were doing. I felt like the lefts were fine but the rights were an issue. As far as my run, I was going to keep trying. It cost me a bunch of spots to keep trying but when you get that close to the front, you might as well go ahead and do it. This was a good run for us and thanks to Brian’s help and I think Kevin was behind Brian we pushed up there. I got up to second place and really wanted to make a run on Junior. I asked Brian why he didn’t go with me and if I had Junior to pick and me I’d probably go with Junior, too, at Daytona. I think that makes a lot of sense. If I had got out front, I ended up getting too tight behind because I took two tires on the last stop. On two tires your balance of the car was very hard to get here, almost impossible. You had to be loose and if you weren’t loose, you were really slow. We got just a little bit too tight.” ARE YOU FINDING YOUR WAY AROUND THIS PLACE AS A RAYBESTOS ROOKIE? “I used to know where the old victory lane was. I’ve been there a couple of times [laughs]. I like Daytona a lot. I think it’s a lot of fun. Restrictor plate racing can be a lot of fun and it can also be the worst thing you do. Tonight it was a lot of fun. The guys with torn up racecars in February, I think everybody had a torn up racecar except for the car that Kevin owned and a few other ones, the guys that were right at the front. I had a good time tonight. I was racing with the Cup guys and racing with guys in the past and it’s a lot of fun. But yeah, I’m learning [smiles].”