Dickies 500 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

TRAVIS KVAPIL IN THE No. 77 KODAK/JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS DODGE WAS THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE RACE AT TEXAS. Kvapil finished 24th on the lead lap. He took top rookie honors for the 11th time this season. “We had a decent day. At the start of the race I thought we were going to be really good. We were able to take off and pass a couple of cars back there. We just couldn’t go on the short runs. The first 10 or 15 laps of a run, everything we would do in the last 15 or 20 laps of a run they would beat us back. The last part of the run we could pass guys and really run some great lap times. The start of a run we were just way too loose. I don’t think we had quite the right springs in the front end to be able to go on the short run. We stayed on the lead lap all night and made some good adjustments throughout the race and had a decent day.” YOU STRUGGLED HERE IN THE TEST AND AT ATLANTA BUT YOU BOUNCED BACK AND RAN WELL TODAY. “It’s definitely encouraging. We definitely learned some stuff. We’re looking forward to going to Homestead. We’ll probably take this car since it survived out of here. It’s something that we’ve been working with and we definitely learned a few things today. As the race went on and the track got faster, we got worse and we’ve got to try and figure out why that happened.” HOW DIFFICULT WAS IT TO KEEP UP WITH THE TRACK, FROM HOT CONDITIONS DURING THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON TO THE FINISH OF THE RACE TONIGHT? “What happened is that we were really good in the heat of the day. As it got cooler, everybody else got more grip and got faster and our problems that we had just kind of got worse. I’m kind of disappointed. I wish it would have stayed in the heat of the day because we would have been a little better.” WERE YOU SURPRISED THAT SOME DRIVERS CHOSE NOT TO PIT UNDER THE FINAL CAUTION? “It was for me. Tires were a pretty big deal for us all day. It looked like they were going to be sitting ducks. I think putting tires on was definitely the way to go.”

KYLE BUSCH, No. 5 CARQUEST CHEVROLET: (Notes: Busch unofficially maintains a 77-point lead over Kvapil in the Raybestos Rookie standings after tonight’s race (305-228). “That’s a pretty pathetic finish for how we ran. We ran pretty decent. We kept getting behind further and further on pit stops trying to make too many adjustments to the car. In the beginning it was really good but the handling went away for some reason.” DID THE TRACK CHANGE THAT MUCH AND THROW YOU THAT BIG OF A CURVE? “I’m not sure, maybe it did. I don’t really know why we fell off so bad as what we did. There was anything that we could have really done different I don’t think.” WHAT HAPPENED AT THE END OF THE RACE? “I think that Roush system [the “kill switch”] kept kicking on for some reason. But when it would kick on, the light wouldn’t turn on so I didn’t think it was the Roush system. I had that problem happen to me last year one time at Charlotte in the fall Busch race. The switch just automatically came on for no good reason but the light turned on so I was able to reset it and keep going. There it just kept going off but the light wasn’t coming on. I don’t know what the deal was there. Hopefully we can figure the gremlin out and get it out of there and have a better week next week.”