O'Reilly Challenge - Rookie Qualifying Quotes

Where the Raybestos Rookies qualified at Texas:
Ragan 9th
Keselowski 10th
Ambrose 27th
Krisiloff 36th
Richardson Jr. 45th

DAVID RAGAN, No. 6 DISCOUNT TIRE FORD: “We’re pretty happy with that. Our Discount Tire Ford Fusion was okay in race runs. We feel like we’ve got a pretty good racecar. Man, it’s good to be up in the top-five. That’s where we belong. Starting dead last last weekend makes it exciting but it’s a lot more fun and easier on myself to start up in the front so hopefully that’ll wind up in the top-five somewhere and we’ll go race ‘em tomorrow.” TEXAS HAS BEEN GOOD TO DAVID RAGAN. YOU WON THE POLE AND RAN WELL HERE IN THE SPRING RACE. “Yeah and even in the truck, got two top-10s in the truck and seemed to run well here. It all depends on what kind of racecar you have. I feel like the Roush truck and the Roush Busch cars have been really good and just made my job a lot easier. I didn’t get to run many laps on the Cup car but maybe we can get us another top-10 there. This is a good racetrack, a lot of fun, a lot of grip, fast racetrack. We look forward to having a good day on Saturday.” IS TIRE WEAR A BIG ISSUE HERE? “I don’t think so, not as much as Atlanta was last weekend with the trucks and Cup cars. We’re usually pretty conservative on that. We knew we have to be around at the end of these races and some of these guys coming in that don’t race every week, they might be a little more aggressive and you see those guys have some problems. But for the most part we’ve been on the safe side with our tires.”

MARCOS AMBROSE, No. 59 KINGSFORD FORD: “I got everything I could. I thought it was going to be on for a 28-flat and it wasn’t [smiles]. It’s just a fast place, you’ve got to be comfortable here and we were just a little free coming off the corners, just couldn’t quite carry the momentum.” IS THIS THE SAME CAR YOU RAN AT LOWE’S MOTOR SPEEDWAY A FEW WEEKS AGO? “Yes it is. We repaired it [laughs].” HAVE YOU NOTICED ANY EXCESSIVE TIRE WEAR THIS WEEKEND? “No, we’re good on all that. The Busch Series is impound. We really have to work on getting a good racecar and some days it hurts you in qualifying and I think today might have been an example of that.” WHAT WOULD BE A GOOD DAY FOR YOU IN THE RACE TOMORROW? “A top-10. If I get out of here with a top-10 I’ll be really happy.”

KYLE KRISILOFF, No. 14 LILLY/WALGREENS FORD: “We blew a motor in practice like right off the truck. We left a water line loose and just really limited our practice. It was a new car so we had some bugs to get out of it. I was really, really discouraged after practice. I thought the car was going to be awful. We changed a bunch of stuff and I feel like we close the gap a little bit. I mean, I run a .20 and that’s about what I ran in the spring and for the practice time we had and not hardly any laps I’m content. I’m not pleasantly surprised or really mad. Everybody worked really hard today. It was just one of those days where everything went wrong. They rebounded nicely. We got out a little bit in final practice, kind of saw what our car was going to do. I wanted to give them a good, honest feel for what the car was doing so I wanted to run pretty good but I also didn’t want to do anything dumb.”

BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 88 U.S. NAVY CHEVROLET: “That’s the best qualifying effort of the year and my best qualifying effort. You always want that pole but to bring home a top-10 in qualifying is an improvement for us, certainly, and we’ll just try to do that in the race.” DID YOU THINK YOU MIGHT HAVE A CHANCE TO QUALIFY EVEN BETTER BECAUSE YOU WERE THE LAST CAR OUT? “Everything definitely worked in our favor. We weren’t off much, you know, just a little bit. I don’t feel like I left anything out there. We’re just setup a little bit more to race. We’ll take what we can get right there. You know, I ran about a perfect lap. It was smooth as could be. That was just all she had with the U.S. NAVY Chevrolet. To qualify as well as we have is a good sign [for the race]. We always seem to race way better than we qualify. I think we’ll be one to watch out for. We’re just going to go hard and see what she’ll run.” WILL YOU HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF THE TIRES IN THE RACE? “It seems like every time you try to take care of the tires you get short runs and it never pays dividends. We’re just going to run hard and hope that the race plays in our favor.” HOW BIG IS IT TO START TOWARD THE FRONT? “Oh, it’s huge on these tracks to get the air. When you get back behind the pack you have no air and it really hurts your car. It’s really huge.” IF YOU GET BEHIND DURING THE RACE, IS THIS TRACK WHERE YOU CAN PASS? “I think so. After about 15 to 20 laps you can pass. When the tires start to fall off and you start to push a little bit then you can move around on the racetrack a little bit.”

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