Daytona 500 - Rookie Saturday Practice 1 Quotes

TRAVIS KVAPIL IN THE No. 77 KODAK/JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS DODGE WAS THE FASTEST RAYBESTOS ROOKIE FOLLOWING THE FIRST PRACTICE SESSION FOR THE DAYTONA 500. “I’m content. It’s nice to see all the Penske cars all basically within a tenth or two. It’s definitely faster than what we ran here last month testing so I’m happy. The guys did a bunch of hard work over the last month or so in the engine shop and picked us up a little horsepower so everything is going all right.” THIS TEAM SEEMS TO HAVE A LOT OF QUIET CONFIDENCE AT THE BEGINNING OF SPEEDWEEKS. “We’re actually running a little bit better in qualifying mode than we had expected so we’re excited about that. We’re really excited about getting in the race. I feel like our car is going to drive really good. That’s what we worked on last month, is 30-lap runs and make sure the car would keep running good through the whole run. Everything is going good, going according to plan.” WHAT AREAS HAVE YOU FOCUSED ON TO MAKE THE CAR BETTER IN QUALIFYING TRIM? “I think the biggest thing is the guys back at the engine shop went back and they found us a few more horsepower. Any time you can get a couple more horsepower at a restrictor plate track is a pretty big deal. They definitely worked hard and got us a little bit more.” WHAT CAN YOU LEARN WATCHING THE BUDWEISER SHOOTOUT? “More than anything I was scanning both Ryan and Rusty and just trying to listen to what their spotters are saying, how they were communicating with the team. Obviously you can see the moves they make and sticking it in and out of line and that sort of thing. But more than anything I was trying to hear how the veteran drivers communicate with their spotters.” HOW MUCH OF A DIFFERNCE HAVE YOU FELT BETWEEN THE CUP CAR VERSUS THE TRUCK? “When we are out here by ourselves right now it’s kind of about the same thing, really. It’s pretty uneventful, pretty easy really. When we get out there in the big pack, business is going to pick up. It’s harder to draft with the Cup cars. The trucks punch such a big hole it’s easier to get in line, easier to draft. You’ve got to be on your toes and try to be patient and stay in line. The Cup car is a little tougher to do that.”

KYLE BUSCH, No. 5 KELLOGG’S CHEVROLET: “It’s pretty good. We weren’t too bad. We were just kind of doing the normal deal that everybody does down here, just trying to work on making the car go faster. We’ll try some more stuff when lunch is over.” HAVE YOU NOTICED A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BUSCH CAR AND THE CUP CAR? “A huge difference here because of the wicker package that you have on the Busch cars obviously they produce more of a turbulence where you can suck up a lot better and stuff like that, kind of slingshot past guys like the old days. But here in the Cup stuff when we were drafting in practice and stuff it takes a while. You’ve got to plan something and you’ve got to have a partner and all that stuff to get by.” WHAT CAN YOU LEARN FROM WATCHING THE BUDWEISER SHOOTOUT AND SCANNING YOUR TEAMMATES? “Basically, you can watch and see how they plan out their moves. It would be better if you could just review it on tape and ask them what they were thinking and what they were doing and stuff like that, it would be a lot easier for us to learn that way. Just being able to watch them and hear what they say on the radio you can learn some stuff. Obviously I’ve got great teammates and I’ve got my brother who’s taught me a tremendous amount about drafting and stuff so he’s pretty good here as well.” WHAT WOULD BE A GOOD QUALIFYING SPEED FOR YOU HERE ON SUNDAY? “For me, if we’re not on the front row, I don’t care. We’re in the show and it doesn’t matter. As far as coming out of the 150s, that’s where it matters. Hopefully we can have a good run and somebody will play with me there. I’ve got Jeff and I’ve got Kurt so hopefully I can have some help in order to stay up front in the 150s.” HOW HUGE IS IT, MENTALLY, TO KNOW THAT YOU ARE IN THE 500? “Definitely because it doesn’t matter where you finish you’re in, you’re secure. I hope, knock on wood, it doesn’t happen, but you go out there in the 150 and you finish 30th or however many cars are in there, it doesn’t matter. You’re still in. Obviously, you start further back that you want to but still it’s a long race. It’s 500 miles and you can work your way up.”

ERIC MCCLURE, No. 73 ARC DEHOOKER CHEVROLET: “We’re struggling right now. We’ve lost a bit of time from when we tested and I’m not sure [why]. We were supposed to come back a lot better. At the same time we had a really good run going, we had made some changes and had a really good run going and they threw a caution during our good lap so I think we’re a lot better than we’re showing. I’m really encouraged by the way Tim Brewer and the guys are working to make the car better. There’s still a lot of potential. We’ll see where we stack up after this next session and then go from there.” HOW DIFFICULT HAS IT BEEN TO GET A GOOD CLEAN LAP? “It’s really not been difficult here on the Cup side. It’s been a little harder in the ARCA Series than it is here. Up until the last few minutes everybody was being real gentleman like in letting guys go and there at the end a few of them tried to cram some runs in but we had a clean run every time. Like I said, I think we have a pretty good car so we’ll see where we stack up here. We’re pretty excited about it.”