Race 2 Win: Carquest Auto Parts 300 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

NASCAR Busch Series

Carquest Auto Parts 300 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

Where the Raybestos Rookies finished at Charlotte:
Kluever 9th
Andretti 17th
O’Quinn Jr. 22nd
Lamar 26th
McFarland 33rd

UNOFFICIAL Raybestos Rookie standings (top-five):
Lamar 132
Andretti 116
Kluever 114
McFarland 112
O’Quinn Jr. 106

TODD KLUEVER IN THE No. 06 3M FORD WAS THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE RACE AT CHARLOTTE.
Notes:

Kluever scored a ninth-place finish, his second top-10 of the 2006 season and second in 13 career Busch Series starts.

Kluever took Raybestos Rookie of the Race honors for the third time this season.

Burney Lamar continues to UNOFFICIALLY lead the Raybestos Rookie standings. He holds a 16-point edge over John Andretti (132-116).

KLUEVER: “That was really good for us. This was really a strong field and it’s hometown for everybody. I’m glad to see Carl win. Our Busch shop has needed a win but we’ve really needed a good run ourselves. There’s just a little too much damage to the car [smiles]. We got a little bit too tight there at the end. I feel really bad for Regan Smith. I jacked him all up on that one wreck. I just couldn’t get slowed down in time. I know he needed a good run about as bad as we did and that’s the last thing that I wanted to do. He and I get along pretty well. I felt really bad about that but it was a good day for our 3M car.” ARE YOU SURPRISED HOW WELL YOU RAN CONSIDERING THE DAMAGE TO BOTH ENDS OF THE CAR? “We had a really good car. I obviously couldn’t see the damage. I knew I got in the back of Regan pretty hard, and my first thought was that I killed the radiator in it, but it held together. Looking at it now, yeah, I’m surprised it ran as good as it did. It was just a good day for us, man. We needed one.” HOW IMPORTANT IS IT FOR YOU AND THE TEAM TO GET SOME MOMENTUM? “It’s really big. I’ve been telling everybody when we get some new cars and we get the same stuff that our teammates have had we’re going to be just fine. People give up on you really quick in this sport, especially when you’re in a Busch car against 25 NEXTEL Cup guys. I’ve been waiting for the day when I get to run my Cup car starting at Chicago because I think it’s going to speed our Busch program up two times what it is now. We just really needed a good run and it was nice to do it here in Charlotte with a lot of guys from the shop here.” A LOT OF DRIVERS HAD PROBLEMS IN TURN 4. WHAT WAS THE PROBLEM? “I don’t know, man. I asked a lot of people for a lot of good luck charms. If this would have been any other race this year we would have drove into about every single wreck on the racetrack. I don’t know, maybe some of that stuff is starting to pay off.”

JOHN ANDRETTI, No. 10 FREEDOM ROADS/CAMPING WORLD FORD: “It would have been good but I didn’t get going on the restarts for whatever reason. I’d get mowed over. I could go through 1 and 2 and then get mowed over. We never got the lucky dog. I ran up and behind Matt and when I did that David Green got around me and that was probably my last good chance because then Harvick came back up there and he had a much faster car. We had a pretty good car and it’s a shame that we didn’t get on that lead lap. That would have obviously made a big difference because I think we were a lot quicker than some of the cars that were on the back end of that.”

DANNY O’QUINN JR., No. 50 STONEBRIDGE LIFE FORD: “We’re pretty happy with our run tonight, compared to where we’ve been running on the mile-and-a-halfs you could say that we had a good night. I think we came out of here 22nd and didn’t tear anything up. I learned a lot. We were actually really competitive at times. We tried some different stuff. It seemed like on a really long run I could start passing really good cars. Those little short runs right there at the end were killing me out. By qualifying bad I lost us a lap early on there and it really hurt us from then on out but we managed to stay there. There wasn’t that many really on the lead lap. All in all, our Stonebridge Fusion ran pretty well tonight and I think that was big gains for us on the mile-and-a-half-program.”

MARK MCFARLAND, No. 88 NAVY CHEVROLET: “Terrible [smiles]. We couldn’t miss anything. It started of real tight and once we got it freed up enough where it would turn then it was way too loose. We just beat all around the perfect deal tonight. We just couldn’t get it right and then I spun out and backed it in the fence and that didn’t help either. It was just a tough night here.” DID YOU LEARN ANYTHING TONIGHT? “We learned a good bit. We made so many adjustments during those pit stops it was crazy what we were doing, really. As far as these big tracks, this is where we need our help. We’ve got a few directions we can go. We’re taking a different car to Nashville so we’ll see.”

KLUEVER PRESS CONFERENCE

“We had a really good car. I just got too tight on the long run. That was kind of our downfall. I’ve done a lot of racing this year where I started off way too loose at the beginning and then get really good on the long run. Unfortunately at the end of the race that kind of bites you because these things don’t seem to run green in the last 50 laps. There seems to be a lot of short runs. We were good, like I said, right off the restart and then about halfway through a run I just got too tight. We really needed a solid finish. We’ve had some absolutely horrid luck this year. I’ve got to thank Mike Kelly [crew chief] and all my guys for working really hard and thank Jack Roush. We got three new cars in the last couple of weeks that haven’t been to the racetrack yet that I’m really excited about. We’ve really struggled with some cars that were kind of hand-me-down stuff that weren’t as good as what some of my teammates had and I finally got what I need to be competitive and I think it showed tonight.”