Golden Corral 500 - Dodge Post-Race Quotes

KASEY KAHNE (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge) – Finished third, giving the Raybestos Rookie Leader finishes of second, second and third in the past three races. Kahne stands fourth in the series standings after the first four races.

“It was a good day for the Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge. This should help us keep our momentum going. We’ve got to be more consistent through the race. The last two weeks we’ve dropped off during the middle of the race. We fight back at the end and get everything going, but that’s the only thing that’s going to make us better. To get that win, I think we’ve got to run a little better through the middle part of the race.

“I wasn’t part of last year. I was part of watching it and watching what Bill and Jeremy did at the end of the year. I just jumped in a great situation, and I’ve got a lot of great people to work with. Tommy Baldwin (crew chief), I get help from Jeremy and Bill and Ray Evernham. We have a great race team, and I just jumped into a great situation. I can’t wait until Darlington.

“I knew our car was better than that. We had been really, really good all day long. We just got so loose I couldn’t go to the throttle and I couldn’t race anybody. It’s the same thing that happened at Vegas. We got too loose and couldn’t race anybody in the center part of the race. I wanted to move up and race with Jeremy and Dale Jr. at the end. Tommy Baldwin made some good choices at the end of the race and the pit crew made a great stop. We got four spots on pit road that final stop. It was an awesome stop.

“I scraped (the wall) twice, once off four early in the race and towards the end once off turn two. I think I was between Jimmie Johnson, about three or four of us were battling and I hit it again. I didn’t hit it too hard, luckily. I was a little nervous a few times hitting the wall. You don’t want to do that.

“It’s really a big boost, not just my confidence but the whole team’s. We all had a lot of high expectations of things we were going to do this year, but nobody knew if we could actually do it or not. I think it keeps building confidence for all of us, and mine is as high as it’s ever been in stock cars.

“Yesterday during practice, I battled for five or six laps with Rusty Wallace. Bill was watching from the top of the trailer, and he helped me. He said I would have been able to pass Rusty sooner yesterday and also today. Things happened all day long that Bill told me about yesterday, different situations we got in that helped me pass cars. Bill has always got something to say that if you listen it will stick in your head.

JEREMY MAYFIELD (No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge) – Finished second, third straight runner-up finish for an Evernham Motorsports Dodge

“We carried over our momentum from last season. We had a lot of things going for us at the end of last season. The team did an outstanding job on pit road today getting me out of the pits. It seemed like as the race went on, the tighter we got. I guess Junior and them made more aggressive adjustments. We’ve had some decent runs the last couple of weeks, but it hasn’t been what we wanted. To come back and have a finish like this is awesome. The guys are pretty pumped up. They work hard week in and week out. To have a good run like this after the last few weeks we’ve had, they’ll be pumped right back up again. Finishing second will pump them up, and that’s a lot easier than having to go back up there and try to pump ‘em up.

“We came back this week and didn’t make any mistakes, and I feel like we’re right back where we were at the end of last season. Kasey started off that way, well, not really started off that way because he had trouble at Daytona, but he’s had things going his way, and he’s done a great job.

“Tommy moved into that team as crew chief, and Kasey came in as the driver and they’ve had their own adjustments to make during the winter. I think both of them have done a great job of picking up where Bill and Mike Ford and those guys left off. I think they’ve done an awesome job.

“It doesn’t seem any better or worse for me. It seems like we carried on with the same balance we had last year. I think that’s helped us as a group, Evernham Motorsports in general. Some of the same setups and same notes are still working for us. We’ve changed them a little bit, but not much. It seems like it’s more of a fine line. If you’re tight and free it up a little bit then you’re too loose. You’re back and forth. That’s what we’ve noticed, and I think that’s what Kasey is seeing, too. Today is seemed like for us we didn’t go enough. We were kind of gun shy from the last couple of weeks.

“Early in the race, Kasey got a little loose and we got a little tight. We freed it up past midway and took off. We thought we were headed in the right direction, and all of a sudden we started getting tight again. It definitely changed from run to run, and that makes it tough when you don’t have a lot of cautions and you have a lot of green flag runs. You have to really stay up on the wheel all day no matter what to stay on the lead lap, and that’s something we were able to do. Junior definitely had the best car at the end, but times during the race he wasn’t that good.

“We run hard every week, so I don’t think it had anything to do with the new rules. I think all the drivers will tell you right now that the cars are sliding a little more. You just get up there and run on the edge or and get up there and run in the marbles or run in the wall. There’s a lot of stuff going on out there that’s a little different. The aero rules are different, so maybe that’s got something to do with it.”

RYAN NEWMAN (No. 12 ALLTEL Dodge) – Finished Fifth

“The team did a great job. We just lost it on the last pit stop there. We came in running pretty good, but we lost some time coming out. The ALLTEL Dodge was strong. We’ll get ‘em next week. It was a good run for us, especially after last week. We didn’t even think about trying to make it on fuel without stopping. We had a really fast car at the end, no doubt, but that last pit stop got us behind and I’m not sure what happened.”x

JAMIE McMURRAY (No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge)

“We were on the engine shop to make more power. They made more power, but now we’re turning so many rpm’s we didn’t really know. These motors haven’t made a 500-mile race. There were issues. The engine guys kept telling me to baby it before the race ever started. It was probably my fault because I wanted to run more gear. I thought the racetrack would slow down more than it did. That’s just the way it goes. We blew a motor up here last year. I was running 36th. It was kind of a blessing. We’ve had a shot to win the last three races with the same car. We’ll just go to Darlington with the same car again and see what we can do. I was underneath Casey (Mears) and let off the gas going into the corner and boom. All the parts went up into the carburetor and made the throttle stick wide open. I’d say it’s done. I’d rather run well and break than to run bad and break. It’s a good racecar, and we struggled here last year. We struggled this whole weekend until just now. I think we had one of the best cars. This is bad, but it’s not like what Dale Jr. went through last week. I’ve been there. What are you going to do? There’s no point getting upset about it.”

CASEY MEARS (No. 41 Target Dodge)

“We didn’t get a lot of points today with the finish, but we led some laps and that felt great. I worked my way through the field, and it felt awesome. I’m so proud of my guys. Our engine guys and Ernie Elliott are giving us some awesome horsepower this year. Hopefully we can learn from today and move on and continue to get better. Those guys have been putting out some good power for us, but this was a big test. We knew Atlanta was going to be a big test and we were running pretty high in the rpm range. It’s disappointing because we ran so good, and we had a chance to move up in the points. I’m really looking forward to next weekend. I don’t know what happened, but for some reason the pit stop was slow and we got behind. Other than that they did a great job all day. They kept me in the top five or right near it. Something happened on the left side. I didn’t notice the pinched nerve until the first caution, and my right shoulder was killing me. I loosened my belt a little bit. It hurt the whole time, but it started feeling better when we got out front and the race went on.”

RUSTY WALLACE (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge)

“We broke a fourth gear in the transmission. I’ve never had a transmission do that. The car was flying. I was just making my lap times, running a little faster than the leader. We still have some problems on our pit stops, but we were running in the top 10 most of the race. We were headed for a real good finish.”

STERLING MARLIN (No. 40 Coors Light Dodge)

“We tried a little bit of everything, but we just couldn’t get the handle on it. We were loose and then we were tight and we tried a lot of things to fix it but nothing seemed to work. We’ll try to figure it out and get ‘em next weekend at Darlington. I really like that track, and it’ll be interesting to see if the safety walls throw a new wrinkle into it.”