Dollar General 300 - Rookie Thursday Quotes

Raybestos Rookie Kyle Krisiloff has been instrumental in the creation and development of the No. 14 Lilly/Walgreens Racing Team. Krisiloff took time after the first practice session today to discuss his role with the organization.

KYLE KRISILOFF, No. 14 LILLY/WALGREENS FORD: “To be honest, it probably stared back in August [2006] when all the talk started and we actually started building cars in November. Up until probably the fifth or sixth race we really didn’t know if it was going to go or not so a lot of the responsibility that we had as a team and preparing ourselves for the whole year, we were pretty late on. We really didn’t hire all the people we needed until probably the middle part of the year so that was tough. You know, I think we did a pretty good job. The beginning part of the year we didn’t have very many cars and we had to get to the track and do what we could. Towards the end of the year we’ve been able to build more cars and it’s helped. Like at Dover we had a pretty good car and last week in one of the practices we were top-20. Every week there’s like one or two things that are getting better and hopefully soon we’ll put the whole weekend together. It was tough at the beginning part of the year and not have all the things that even a single-car team wants to get. It’s not like we want things that are going to make us a championship winning team right now. We just want things to help us be in the top-30 and compete and at the beginning of the year it was hard to get those things. But now we’ve been able to do more than we did early one.”

YOU ARE AT THE BEGINNING OF YOUR CAREER AND YOU’RE PUTTING THE TEAM TOGETHER. MOST OTHER DRIVERS YOUR AGE JUST BRING A HELMET TO THE TRACK. “I’ve been on both sides of the fence. This is the first time that I’ve felt that I’ve been a real integral part of the team. When I drove for Hendrick last year in Billy Ballew’s truck I just kind of showed up. Not only does it make me a better driver but it makes me a better person to understand how much effort goes into these cars. A couple of times when I got out of these things and I’d crash the thing I’d think ‘No big deal, we’ll have another one next week.’ Now to see all the blood, sweat and tears, it takes us about a month to build a car, a month of about 20 guys working 40 hours a week. It’s a lot of time; it’s a lot of effort. It’s made me a better person, I think and it’s made me appreciate when I get to the track the race car that I have and try to do the best I can with it. I’ve still crashed some cars this year but it makes you understand more about how important it is not to do that.”

WHAT HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE THIS YEAR? “Probably the biggest challenge lately has been we’re just getting to that point where our cars are starting to drive pretty good and I see some gains it’s like once you get that little small gain and you feel something and you try to bite off a huge chunk and try to really take advantage of it and that’s kind of what happened at Dover. I kind of got a little too aggressive. Constantly understanding how hard I need to try and not overstepping the ability of the car and what it’s capable of and always understanding how our team’s progressing and trying not to get too far ahead of myself, I guess.”

HOW CHALLENGING IS PEOPLE MANAGEMENT? “From the beginning of the year not even knowing if we were going to be a full year to now we’re trying to get a commitment for the next couple of years, it’s really hard to get people to come and want to work for you unless you’ve got multiple cars. You go to work for Roush and you know he’s going to be there for 15 years so it’s hard to get people. But we do have a lot of good people that do see the potential in this race team and what it can be. We’ve had some really good runs this year. We have two top-10s, which at the beginning of the year I would have thought that would have been pretty impossible. There have been weekends where everybody had something to brag about and there’s been weekends where we’ve kind of been embarrassed about what happened. I think any team in our situation is going to have those weekends and it’s just how you rebound. Towards the end of the year we’re really stepping up our game and trying to get our team in the situation where we’re really ready going into next year.”

HAS THIS BEEN AS CHALLENGING AS YOU THOUGHT IT WOULD BE? “Going into next year is another situation. You always wonder how many Cup guys and how many Cup teams are going to come run. Like this weekend, there’s got to be close to 30 and going into the season, it’s all kind of dependent on that. I relate myself to people like Kelly Bires, who is in sort of a Cup team. They’ve got a Cup car but me and him sort of have the same experience, maybe someone like Steven Wallace, and I feel like on a consistent basis I run comparable to those guys. We’d never go out and we’d never beat Kevin Harvick straight up. We’re not ready to do that but I think if you compare us to people that honestly have the same resources or closer to, I think we’re doing a pretty good job. It’ll be interesting to see how many Cup guys run next year and if that helps our success. But it really doesn’t matter because no matter who runs we need to go out there and run with the best of them. It helps us get better the more good people that are in the series so we’ll just have to adapt.”

Tony Eury Sr. was recently named crew chief for Raybestos Rookie Brad Keselowski. Eury Sr. took time this afternoon to discuss the personnel change.

TONY EURY SR., CREW CHIEF, No. 88 U.S. NAVY CHEVROLET: “I really don’t know how it happened. Whenever I went to work over there that was the first thing that Dale Jr. said: ‘I’m not hiring you for a crew chief. That’s not what you’re going to be. I need somebody to get out here and run this company for me and I ain’t hiring you to be a crew chief.’ I said ‘Okay, that’s fine. That’s what I’ll do then.’ Brad [Keselowski] wasn’t really happy with what was going on and we have real high hopes for Brad. We’re in the talks of signing him for a three-year deal for the NAVY car and I think he wanted a change. So it was time to renew Wes’ contract if we were going to. Wes is a good guy, a good friend of mine, been a friend of mine for a long time, and a friend of everybody there. He’s a good guy and everybody liked him. Instead of leaving him out in the cold all winter long, we decided to go ahead and tell him that we weren’t going to renew his contract and give him the option to go and do whatever he wanted to do. We just decided to do it that way instead of just dropping him dead cold at Thanksgiving and the holiday season. We’ve had two or three people in mind to do this job and everyone that we’ve talked do that we wanted to do it doesn’t want to leave where they’re at. They want to finish the year out. We had one more option left and that was me [smiles]. Dale Jr. sat there Monday and told me ‘I told you you wasn’t going to do this and we need to find somebody this week’ and I said ‘No, we’re not going to rush this deal. We’re going to get the person that you want and Brad wants and that’s going to be good for this company.’ It’s just a friendly separation and I’m sure that Wes will pick up something and be good for whoever he gets.”

HOW DIFFICULT WAS THAT DECISION? “It’s difficult when you do it with anybody. It was harder this time because I do consider Wes a good friend of mine and known him for a long time, way back in the Dale Jarrett and Tommy Houston days. It was hard to do and we made the decision to do it the way we did because of that. I’m sure he’ll have something picked up here before the end of the year and be set.”

IF YOU AND BRAD HAVE SUCCESS TOGETHER IN THE LAST FEW RACES, COULD YOU BE THE CREW CHIEF HERE NEXT YEAR? “I hope not [laughs]. Some of the people we had in mind, we had a whole bunch of people in line and we wanted to talk to all of them, and two of them that we were really high on have already told us no and it’s because they’ve got offers from the other garage. That’s how good a people they were. That’s the problem we have in the Busch garage is when somebody gets good the Cup garage takes ‘em, just like drivers, crew chiefs, crewmembers, the whole deal. It’s really hard to keep good people, good drivers in line in the Busch garage because that Cup garage is always hunting good help. We’ll just keep searching. We had a lot of phone calls. Dale Jr. put it on the air last week to send your resume. The fax machine is about wore out.”

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR IN A CREW CHIEF? “We’re looking for a guy that’s got some experience because Brad is a Raybestos Rookie. He’s been racing all year long but he’s not been in our car all year long but he’s been in a car all year long with somebody. He’s a rookie and we think we need somebody who’s been here for a while and has a little experience to help Brad over those humps when he runs into them. I’m always here to help that guy. If the person we get runs into a stump, I always here and can help him through that, too. We’re looking for somebody with a little racing experience and that can help Brad along.”