Coca-Cola 600 - Dodge Thursday Quotes

RYAN NEWMAN (No. 12 alltel Dodge Charger)

COMMENT ON NASCAR NEXTEL ALL-STAR RACE “I just got loose for the first time, too loose to correct it and save it. It was unfortunate. We had a car that was very, very capable of winning it. We were fast off the truck, fast all night and fast when it counted. We just couldn’t make it to the end.”

COMMENT ON THE TRACK “Obviously the low line is not as grpipy or isn’t the preferred line getting in any more. You get underneath somebody in three and four and don’t complete the pass by turn one, you’re pretty much in trouble. That’s what I did. I kinda put myself in the wrong position. Gordon didn’t get going on that restart, and that hurt us. We’ll learn from our mistakes. It didn’t cost us any points last week.”

HAD YOU PLANNED TO BRING BACK THE SAME DODGE CHARGER? “We planned on it, but this one might be a little bit better. It won Dover last year. We’ll see how it comes out after 600 miles. If it’s OK, we might take it back to Dover next week.”

WILL THE TRACK CHANGE MUCH IN 400 LAPS SUNDAY? “It’ll change some, but I don’t think it’ll change as much as it usually does. The new surface doesn’t really matter to me. I think the old surface was great, but this is different.”

HOW MANY CARS WILL BREAK THE TRACK RECORD TONIGHT? “Maybe five. We’ve got three poles so far, and we’re going to try to get another one tonight. We’ve got a good shot at it.”

A THIRD OF THE SEASON WILL BE IN THE BOOKS AFTER THIS WEEK. IS YOUR TEAM WHERE IT NEEDS TO BE? “We’re OK. We wish we were better than seventh, but seventh is OK considering where we’ve been at this point in the past. We’ll just keep doing our best. I’m not satisfied. I wish we could have been in victory lane by now, but our qualifying effort has been excellent. I think we’re pretty strong right now.”

DID NOT WINNING AT DARLINGTON HURT TEAM MORALE? “It didn’t do us any favors, but it didn’t take any air out of our sails. We’ve had two top fives in the past two races, and I hope we can keep that up. I’m pretty excited about it.”

WHY DO YOU THINK YOU HAVEN’T WON YET? “Because Mark Martin spun at Darlington, because I wrecked the primary car at Richmond and because we’ve made some wrong adjustments. We’ve made good adjustments, too. It just hasn’t been our time yet, but I think Sunday night would be a great time.”

KASEY KAHNE (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

ARE YOU STILL PUMPED UP AFTER THE RICHMOND WIN? “Yes, and I think at any time we can do it again. I think our team is as good as any team out there. We’ve just got to keep running up front, keep qualifying up front, racing up front, finishing up front and staying out of other people’s wrecks and definitely not cause my own wreck.”

YOU’VE WON TWO STRAIGHT POLES. CAN YOU MAKE IT THREE STRAIGHT TONIGHT? “We should be able to put a lap down that’s close to Newman. He’s usually the guy to beat. We had to bring a different car back after last week. We brought our Darlington Dodge. We won the pole with it there and finished third, so it should be a really good car. We’re excited to have it here.”

IS THE TRACK TOTALLY DIFFERENT NOW? “It’s way different. Hopefully it’ll be better this week. Hopefully it’ll be a racy racetrack because I didn’t feel like it was that racy last week. I think there was a big different from the first place car to the third place car to the seventh place car to the 15th place car. Everybody was so far different in speed. Hopefully that was because it was the first race on the track.”

COMMENT ON YOUR CHANCES OF MAKING THE CHASE “As close as we are to 10th, we already are in the Chase at the end of the day. With four DNFs, that’s pretty good I think. If we run good here this weekend and good at Dover, another one of my favorite tracks, we can be back in the top 10s in two weeks.”

WHY IS DOVER ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE TRACKS? “I just love that track. We were really, really good in the first race there last year. The second race we broke on the sixth lap and didn’t get to show anything, but we had a good car there, too. I really like that track. I’d say 400 miles at Dover is tougher than 400 laps at Charlotte, especially if it’s hot. That place is tough.”

JEREMY MAYFIELD (No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

DO YOU APPROACH THE 600 WITH A DIFFERENT MINDSET BECAUSE IT’S SUCH A LONG RACE? “Not really, because Bristol seems longer than this one. The 600 is a long race, but for some reason it doesn’t seem as long as Bristol or a place like that, or a place you’re running bad.”

DO YOU LIKE THE NEW TRACK SURFACE AT LMS? “I like it, but it seemed like when they threw the green flag the other night it really changed on us. I wasn’t expecting that at all. I don’t know what happened to it, but I wasn’t expecting it.”

HOW DOES THE TEAM STACK UP SO FAR IN 2005? “We’re ahead of last year, but we’re a little bit behind of where we anticipated we were going to be with both cars. We went though a huge undertaking over the winter with changing bodies and the spoiler rule and all those other changes. If you take all that in consideration, I think we’re pretty good right now. We’re just now getting the balance right on our cars, so we should be in pretty good shape the rest of the year and at least understand what’s going on.”

DO YOU FEEL PREPARED FOR THE CHASE THIS SEASON? “We’re trying to get all we can every week. I think we showed under pressure last year when it came to crunch time that we really performed. We’re getting the handle on it. We’ve got good cars, but we’ve made some mistakes. I made some mistakes on pit road and on the track. We’ve missed the setup a couple of times, but if we can keep that behind us we’ll keep getting better every week. That’s the name of the game. You’ve got to improve every week and not make mistakes.”

DID YOU BRING THE SAME CAR BACK FOR THE 600? “No, we just lost the handle with the one we had here last week for some reason. I’m not sure what happened. Really you’ve got to run high all the way around the track now. I don’t know where I was running last week. It’s not bad, but the track changes pretty quick. We’ll have a true test this week. The guys have been working hard, and they went back last week and figured out what went wrong. I think last week was a key race for us. It could be a turning point. We got humbled a little bit. We thought we were good and it ended up being pretty bad. I think the track will be faster this week, and it’ll be interesting to see how many cars break the track record in qualifying tonight.”