Camping World 200 - Rookie Friday Quotes

Raybestos Rookie speeds (first practice):
Montoya 5th
Ambrose 6th
Santos 18th
Ragan 27th
Krisiloff 37th
Richardson Jr. 44th

Earlier this week, Brian Pattie was named crew chief for Raybestos Rookie Juan Pablo Montoya in the NASCAR Busch Series. Pattie discussed the personnel change following practice this morning at New Hampshire International Speedway.

BRIAN PATTIE, CREW CHIEF, No. 42 TEXACO/HAVOLINE DODGE: IS THIS A BIG ADJUSTMENT? “No, it’s not a big adjustment at all. This group of guys have been together for a long time. We have not changed the way we prep stuff coming to the racetrack or leaving the racetrack or anything like that. We just had a lot of bad luck. The consistency is not there, you know, really with either team. There’s a gap in points but the 41 has run well, just can’t finish there, a lot of DNFs. I just think that Chip and Felix and those guys, they want to just make a change and try to figure some stuff out. No one is on the cutting block, just trying to increase performance and run better. Juan and I, our styles are probably a little bit closer. We’re both the same age. Obviously, I haven’t won Monte Carlo [laughs] but we both see eye-to-eye. He plays golf and I play golf. We’ve got a lot of similarities. And Brad and Reed, Reed’s a young guy, he’s 21. Maybe he needs a little bit more direction like what Brad does. It’s all for the best. I’m extremely happy and I know the guys are. Reed well in practice too. People who say it’s more than that is crazy. We’re both excited for new adventures. We kind of got stagnant and inconsistent and that’s not good in our sport. Our cars are a little bit different so we’re just trying to see. Switch drivers out is the only way to figure that out.” HOW BIG OF A FACTOR IS IT TO BLEND THE PERSONALITIES OF DRIVER AND CREW CHIEF? “I’m sure it’s probably heading more that way. Donnie Wingo and I are best friends of all the Cup crew chiefs that we have. I work more closely with him than any of the others, not that I’m not best friends with all three. We all go out, we have dinner, all that stuff. But if we’re going to double date, you know, I go with Wingo and Kim and my wife and I. Him and I see eye-to-eye, we’ve know each other a long time and maybe some of the communication will help between the Busch and Cup garage, Juan being the same driver. It’s all about making the Cup cars run better and if we can use more information in the Busch car and translate it over. It’s not that we didn’t have good information before, it seemed like it lacked going over the fence so let’s try to simulate that, I guess, putting similar personalities with Juan and Jimmy and Brad maybe it will help.” IS IT INTIMIDATING FOR YOU TO HAVE JUAN PABLO MONTOYA AS THE DRIVER? “No. He seemed arrogant when he came in but arrogance is sometimes misunderstood as confidence and maybe some of us did that coming in. I watched him in F1. Right now our trailer we have F1 on on SPEED. I’m not. I challenge the fact of a guy coming in here, never seen Loudon before and get in there and be top-five in practice is quite amazing. The end result is that we’ve got to finish there. We’ve won many practices with the 41 and Reed and haven’t finished there. This is one step but 10 steps away is what we’ll see Saturday afternoon about five, six o’clock.” MONTOYA HAS SAID THAT IT’S DIFFICULT TO GO FROM THE BUSCH CAR TO THE COT. “We’re trying to. That’s what we’re working on. Donnie and I have actually talked about it before we swapped and we talked about it last night in the motorhomes. We’re going to try to adapt some of that. Anything that I can do to make the COT cars qualify better, whether we do a qualifying run late in practice right before he goes out, we’ll do whatever. Obviously the end result is about the Cup program. We’ll do whatever for the Cup team.”