Coca-Cola 600 - Rookie Thursday Quotes

TRAVIS KVAPIL, No. 77 KODAK/JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS DODGE: TWO MAJOR NEXTEL CUP TEAMS HAVE RECENTLY MADE PERSONNEL CHANGES. DO YOU HAVE A SENSE THERE IS A LOT OF PRESSURE IN THE GARAGE AREA RIGHT NOW? “I personally have that sense all the time. When we went through the last couple of weeks with some really poor finishes and bad runs, fortunately our team never got to pointing fingers or even thinking about making changes. Cup racing is all about how you finish on the racetrack and there is a lot of money and sponsors have a lot of money involved that they want to make sure that their car is running good. Some of these top drivers that have won races in the past and now are struggling, obviously something is not clicking right and the team needs to make changes. I guess a lot of times teams and owners, they want to see those results weekly and it’s hard to be good every week, I think, and sometimes teams just get in a slump and they’ve got to work through it. I don’t if making changes like that are the thing to do, but that’s their situation, I guess. I’ve got all the confidence and belief in my crew chief Shane [Wilson] and my guys building my cars. If it came time to where we needed to make a change, I don’t even know what direction we would head right now because I’m comfortable with everything we have.” DO YOU THINK THE NEXT FIVE RACES ARE GOING TO BREAK YOUR SEASON? “I don’t know if I’d say make or break but I think it’s a good chance for us to make up some ground that we’ve lost in the first 10 or so. Obviously, it’s going to be hard to make points up now that we’re into the season a little bit now than it would have been earlier in the year but we can still get ourselves up toward the top-20 and that’s a big goal of ours. We’ve been testing a lot and I just feel really good these last couple of weeks about the direction the team is going, the communication between myself and Shane, and the approach we’re having to all these races. I feel like we have an opportunity to really turn our season around a little bit and start heading in the right direction.” HAS THE SHORTER SPOLIER AND SOFTER TIRE MADE YOUR TRANSITION TO CUP MORE DIFFICULT? “For me as a driver, it hasn’t been that big of a deal. I’ve never really experienced what these cars drove like in the past so it was all new to me. I think it may have thrown Shane and the engineers for a bit of a loop trying to figure out what body build we needed to make and with the new Dodge nose how aggressive we could be with it and figuring out the new tires and the tire pressures they like and every track is different. Having a rookie driver trying to give them information is probably not the best situation. Veteran drivers sometimes have a lot better feel for what their cars drove like in the past and they know what they’re looking for. Coming to these places for the first time, I don’t really have that experience. I’m looking forward to later in the year, especially when we start coming to these places for the second time. We’ve got a good notebook to look at, we can make some improvements and just be better the whole weekend.” ARE YOU DOING ANYTHING PHYSICALLY TO PREPARE FOR THE EXTRA 100-MILES HERE SUNDAY? “I’ve thought about it and that’s about as far as it’s gone [laughs]. I’m just going to try to eat really good this week, make sure I get a lot of protein and drink a lot of water and not be dehydrated Sunday night. We build these engines to run 500 miles, basically, and stretch everything to the limits. It will be interesting to see if there are motor problems in the last hundred miles. With NASCAR’s gear rule, everybody is turning a little less rpm than they normally would have, so it’s probably going to make it a little easier on the engines. Like every week, you’ve got to be there at the end of the race and put ourself in position to make sure that we’re running at the end of 600 miles and that’s our main goal.” HOW IMPORTANT ARE THE PRACTICE SESSIONS LATE SATURDAY AFTERNOON? “I think any time you get on the track it’s very important, but we’re basing our 600 setup from how we ran last Saturday night in the Open. I felt like we had a really good car. We took it back to the shop and made a few adjustments just to make it a little better, just to see if we can’t get some improvement out of the racecar. But still, 3-5 is still fairly warm and sunny. The 600 is going to go on into the night so I think we’re probably going to look a little closer at our notes and setup from last weekend.”

Alan Gustafson and Shane Wilson took time this afternoon to discuss a variety of current topics including recent crew chief changes in NEXTEL Cup racing, the importance of the next five races, and the challenge of running 100 extra miles Sunday.

ALAN GUSTAFSON, CREW CHIEF, No. 5 KELLOGG’S CHEVROLET: “We’re a little bit off from where I wanted to be. I wanted to be a little closer [in points] somewhere in the teens. I think we’ve done what we needed to do but finish. The performance is there, we’ve just got to get those finishes. But we’ve got ourself in position now where we’re starting to get to where we’re peaking and we’re consistent every week, running good every week. I told the guys at the shop the other day that every team that I’ve been involved with that’s run well or finished top-10 in points or been up there, they make hay in the summer stretch. You’ve got to get yourself in position to do it and I think we’ve done that so we’re looking forward to the summer stretch.” WILL THE NEXT FIVE RACES MAKE OR BREAK YOUR SEASON? “I think it’s important. As you don’t get it done, your season is a lot more intense. You can have a race or two and still be all right but if you don’t have any bad races, that’s when you can make huge points swings throughout this summer. We’re going to go back-to-back and travel across the country. The car count is important and what type of equipment are you bringing, have you wrecked, have you wore your stuff down, wore your guys down. Testing in this swing is tough. We’ve got a lot of tests coming up. I’ve got the guys jacked up knowing this is where we’ve got to get it done.” ARE YOU SURPRISED THAT TWO MAJOR TEAMS HAVE RECENTLY MADE CREW CHIEF CHANGES? “I’m surprised. To me it’s just too short of a period of time. The one situation, the person in question there hadn’t been there long enough to make a difference, really, so I don’t know how you can really make that change unless there is a huge personality conflict. The other one I was really surprised about. It seemed like they had some success last year and ran real well and started to struggle a little bit. But when you’ve got veteran drivers who are used to tires and spoilers and setups, it takes a little while to get ‘em right. I experienced that with Terry [Labonte] so that’s tough.” IS THERE A GRACE PERIOD IN CUP? “I guess is depends on the organization. It seems like a lot of times the teams that are urgent to run well you don’t have that opportunity, that grace period. And I think that’s tough because this sport is so competitive that you’ve got to build. You’ve got to build your guys; you’ve got to build your cars. There’s just not enough time to do it. I think two years is fair. You want to see that progress but you can’t expect a guy to come from 30th to the championship in five weeks.” ARE YOU SURPRISED THAT HENDRICK PAIRED YOU AS A ROOKIE CREW CHIEF WITH A ROOKIE DRIVER? “It was flattering but it wasn’t surprising because I felt like I’ve done more than they asked me to do and have earned that opportunity. But I don’t by any means feel like I don’t have to get it done, either. It’s a great opportunity but at the same time you’ve got to know that you’ve got to get going and I think we’ve made those steady gains consistently. We’ve got to keep making those steady gains because we’ve got great sponsors and they deserve to be up front as does the 5 car and everybody at Hendrick Motorsports. That’s what I’m going to do and that’s what I have to do.” WITH THE SHORTER SPOILER AND SOFTER TIRE, HAVE YOU THROWN THE SETUP NOTEBOOK OUT THE WINDOW THIS SEASON? “Aerodynamically the cars are way different than they were a year ago. It hasn’t hurt us. If you could say that we have a little advantage somewhere that maybe where because we came in with not may preconceived notions that this is what we’ve got to do. We kind of looked at it like a clean sheet of paper where some guys may have won Charlotte here and wanted to being back the same thing and it just won’t work now. We didn’t have that. I know with our teammates, the guys with experience, it doesn’t really hinder them. They know what they’ve got to do to get their cars to go good and they do it.” HOW BIG OF A FACTOR IS THE EXTRA 100-MILES HERE? “It’s a big factor because I think it’s Charlotte and the temperature change. You may have the car that’s going to be the best at the end of the race but if you’re not good at the beginning of the race you get lapped. Being able to stay balanced and consistent and fast over that period of time is really hard. I don’t think it’s like an attrition thing or it’s tougher, it just gives it that much more time for the track to change that you’ve got to chase.” COMMENT ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PRACTICE SESSIONS LATE SATURDAY AFTERNOON. “That last practice is somewhere around 5 o’clock, and it’s huge. Everybody is going to be really trying to get it done there and get their cars right and build that adjustability as it goes on. We’re going to start about that time of night and you end up who knows when, 10 o’clock or whenever it’s going to be. You’re going to have a lot of adjustability in your cars.”

SHANE WILSON, CREW CHIEF, No. 77 KODAK/JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS DODGE: ARE YOU SURPRISED AT THE RECENT CREW CHIEF CHANGES? ONE PERSON WAS ONLY ON THE JOB FOR 11 RACES. “Very surprised, of course I’m going to have a biased opinion [smiles]. Everyone has their opinion but I think that’s too quick. Let’s say he gets appointed in late November, that’s when our season ends from the year before, and you don’t have enough time. You’re just changing stuff at that point. It’s hard to get results. They brought him in because they were unhappy with the guy before. I just don’t believe you can change a program around in four months.” WERE YOU SURPRISED YOU GOT THE JOB LAST YEAR, BECAUSE YOU WERE A CUP ROOKIE CREW CHIEF PAIRED WITH A ROOKIE DRIVER? “I believe that in our situation at Penske that we already have a veteran guy in Rusty [Wallace] who’s very knowledgeable, and we’ve got our superstar in Ryan Newman who is definitely not a Raybestos Rookie anymore. He’s becoming a veteran. I’m not surprised that Penske picked another rookie because I think that’s the direction that they went, for the whole organization, for the future. Kodak is okay with it because they did it the year before. Kodak is happy with the results. They’ve got a rookie which rookies get good PR and good press. So I’m not surprised just knowing the Kodak people and how they think and just being in NEXTEL Cup racing, they want to perform just like all the other sponsors do but they look at it a little differently than some of them, though.” DO DRIVERS AND CREW CHIEFS HAVE A GRACE PERIOD NOW IN NEXTEL CUP? “I just don’t worry about it because I just try to do the best I can. If you worry about that stuff, then you’re not worrying about the right stuff. I’ve been lucky but those guys are in high-profile deals. I think it just takes more time. But it just goes with the territory. I guess I feel fortunate to still be here even though we haven’t performed like we should. I think the good thing is there’s people that know that it’s not just all one person, it’s combinations. The team needs to grow and we went through moving and the team buying another team last year. We had so much stuff going on we were lucky to do as well as we did sometimes. That’s how I feel about it. This year, we’re getting better and we’re in a stable environment. We’re in the same building with our other teammates and we’re getting caught up from the merger and things are starting to click. They didn’t happen the first five races for us. We had some success in Las Vegas. We led some laps but at the wrong time of day to lead them. We led them at the beginning, not at the end. We don’t have a whole lot to show after the first 10 this year either.” HOW CRITICAL ARE THE NEXT FIVE RACES? “We would like to have a good run here or Dover because I really feel going to a Pocono and Sonoma races, we may take our lumps there like most Raybestos Rookies do. We would really like to have a good run here at Charlotte or at Dover or both would really help us get through some of the lows that we may see at Pocono and Sonoma.” WITH THE SHORTER SPOILER AND SOFTER TIRE, HAVE YOU THROWN THE SETUP NOTEBOOK OUT THE WINDOW THIS SEASON? “We didn’t have much of a notebook because we had a different chassis last year. Our notebook wasn’t that good to us anyway [smiles] and a different driver. It’s still better than nothing. Trust me, I like it a lot more than what I had last year which was nothing, really. Some places it’s a bigger difference than others is what we’ve seen and I think in some regards it’s helped us just because some of the veteran teams struggled the first few races getting used to it where we had okay runs at Vegas and Fontana and now everyone is kind of figuring it out. You better not miss it from now on.”