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Samsung/Radio Shack 500 - Dodge Post-Race Quotes
McMurray Leads The Way; Three Ganassi Chargers in Top Five
“This is very exciting. Like other teams that have been struggling at the beginning of the year, we’ve been working hard on chassis and bodies and engines. Our engine package is real good right now. It runs for 500 miles and it’s extremely fast. I’m proud of everybody at the engine shop. Our crew chiefs all work together well, and they made some good decisions today. It’s very exciting to be part of Chip’s and Felix’s team right now.
“I don’t think anybody had anything for the 16. They’ve been that way two or three times this year and Jimmie was that way last year. When you’re on it’s hard to beat you. You see it a lot when guys go to backup cars and put backup engines in. Then they always have their best days. I’m not sure why.
“I didn’t think anybody was going to catch Greg. It looked like Casey could stay with him after five or 10 laps, but I think Greg got out to a comfortable lead and then just rode. His car was incredible all day long. We got in an incident on lap two or three and knocked all the valance off. We had to go all the way to the back after the second or third caution, and our car was really, really good. It got harder to pass the closer to the front we’d get, but the pit crew did an amazing job. We passed some people on two or three stops. Track position is important every week, and it was really important today. I’m just glad to get back in the media center. The past couple of weeks with flat tires has been very frustrating, so to have a complete day today without any errors and all the air in our tires was a big deal.
“I didn’t even see Chip after the race. I’ll say this, when things don’t go well, Chip is extra friendly. He says, ‘Don’t get down. It’s okay. I’ve been racing a long time, and you just go through spells like this.’ This is not a quote of mine, this is a quote of Donnie Wingo’s because I don’t want any trouble, but Donnie said that car owners when you run well get grumpy. I don’t know why, but he said they do. In the last couple of weeks we’ve blown tires out, and Chip and Donnie have been on the phone talking, and Chip has been nicer than every. So, maybe I just won’t call him this week, because he might be grumpy.
“After our last two weeks, this is great. These are the racetracks that we feel like we struggle at. Even though the only Cup win I have is at Charlotte, at a racetrack similar to
this, these are what we feel are our weakest points. And Bristol and Martinsville are our strongest, and I had bad luck there. It’s very easy in this sport when things don’t go well – even if it’s something like a tire going out – that you have nothing to do but get down on yourself and be very stressed out whether it’s from a sponsor standpoint or just doubting yourself. So, it feels really good to get back and run well, especially in a 500-mile race to start as far back as we did and get back to the front. I’m going to Phoenix early to play golf, so it’s going to really make for a cool week.
“All year long we’ve talked about the Hendrick teams and the Roush teams. But, it’s incredible to see all three of our teams finish in the top-five. It’s something that we’ve never done as a team. At Sonoma last year, I think Scott and I both finished in the top five and Kasey was like seventh. But it’s a learning process. I think everyone knew when we put the shorter spoilers on went to a different tire, that some of the teams were going to catch on quicker. The car that I ran here today had a completely different body on it. It’s the same chassis that I raced at Atlanta, Las Vegas and California.
“Donnie (crew chief Wingo) went back and cut the entire body off of it and just shaped it all different and tried to get the balance shifted and it was tremendously better. The other deal is our engine program is really turned around. I was very critical of it last year, that the engines broke a lot. Honestly, I didn’t think they ran very well. After the chassis dyno at Atlanta, we made the most power of any team. And it really shows on the racetrack. You don’t have to drive the car as hard when you have more power. So, from our body shop to the guys that hang the bodies to the engine shop, the whole organization has just gotten stronger.
“I think that we’re one of the few teams that all three of our teams, everything is open. Before every race and after every race we all get setup sheets from all the teams and it goes all the way to the way we hang the bodies to everything, the shocks. It’s not surprising when you see one of our teams run well to see the other ones. Chip is very big on everything being exactly the same. I’ll tell you, if you came up to any of our cars everything, except for the seats, is exactly the same. So, that makes it nice.”
“It feels good, and I’m proud of the effort my guys put in this weekend. We blew out a right-front tire two laps into practice on Friday and killed our primary car. They worked hard to get the backup car ready to go out and race. We had a good Happy Hour. We ran second to Biffle most of the day. We might have had something for him with four tires there at the end, but we were making the call to try to win the race, not finish second. I tried to run the bottom and we just couldn’t run fast enough. It’s a great day for the Ganassi organization in general. I’m real proud of Sterling. He stepped up and he’s been running good this year. We rallied a lot to come back from crashing the primary car and get a top five with the backup. We’re proud of that.”
“We had a real good car. I’d like to thank all the guys at the shop for all their hard work and all the motor guys. The crew here did a great job. We had a real good car. We just got a vibration early and had to pit and got way behind. We got in all that traffic, and it’s hard to come up through there. We gambled and put on two tires, and that’s the best the car drove all day. It was so hard to pass. If you started back 10th on the restart with all those slow cars they were half a track ahead of you before you knew it. We gambled and made the call. Tony Glover and Steve Boyer made some great calls and did a great job all day. The guys have really worked hard on the cars and bodies and chassis and stuff. That’s what it takes, a good-handling car. The motor room has really stepped it up and we’re all picking up steam. We’d get up to ninth or 10th and the car would really get tight in traffic. Glover made an excellent call to put on two tires. I guess the lefts had 20 laps on ‘em. That was the best the car drove all day in clean air. It’s great to have all three (Ganassi Dodge Chargers) in the top five. If the car drives good you can run good. If it doesn’t drive good you don’t look good. The boys on the crew have done an excellent job, and it’s showing up on the track.”
“Well, it's definitely not the finish that we wanted to leave Texas with. We struggled with the handling of the ALLTEL Dodge today. Then we suffered the penalty from a runaway tire on pit road. It just wasn't a good day. In the end, though, the team worked hard all day to get our lap back and pull out a decent finish. We just keep hanging in there.”
“It was off and on all day. It started out really good, and I guess the tracked changed or something. I started sliding around a little bit in the middle of the race. We kept fighting back, fighting back and towards the end we were good again. We just missed it a little bit. We freed it up a little bit too much. It cost us a little time to get it fixed, but we got it. We fought hard today, but that’s what it’s all about. We’ve done that a lot this year.”
“We were tight all day and we finally got it balanced there at the end. Then when the clouds came out it got a little free. We were a little too loose at the end. Overall it was a good day. We’re looking at the big picture and we moved up to third in the points today. We’ve got four top 10s in the first seven races, but we haven’t won yet and that’s what we’re really wanting to do right now. Our goals are to win and be a part of The Chase.”
“Mark Martin has got a lot better head on his shoulders than what he did right there. We’ve had way to many cautions, and we sure didn’t need another one, but that’s about as hard as I want to hit a wall. It’s way too early. I’ve got a lot of respect for Mark. He just made a mistake, I’m sure, but it tore our racecar all to pieces. The track is slick, but you’ve got a gas pedal and you’ve got a brake pedal for a reason, and people are not using their heads on that. The 99 spun me out because I had to let up for a guy wrecking in front of me. I was going sideways through the grass and NASCAR penalized me for running too fast under the caution. I guess it just wasn’t my day.”
NOTE: Kvapil, a Raybestos Rookie of the Year contender, brought his Charger to the garage to replace the radiator during the fourth caution flag. He got caught up in the accident involving Jeff Green and Mark Martin.
“Something broke. I got off the throttle getting into the corner and it slowed way down and then something dropped out of the bottom of the car. I don’t know if it was the bottom of the engine or rear end or what it was, but it broke. We had a top-five car. We made too many mistakes in the pits and mistakes on too many calls. It wasn’t much of a day, but we had a good enough car to still be in the top five. Everybody has tough times. Everybody has bad luck. It’s just part of racing. I don’t feel too bad about it. We wanted to win, but everybody here wants to win. We were trying hard to do that and it didn’t work out today. We weren’t getting better. We still had a top-five car, but you’ve got to get better to win the race.”
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