HAMLIN: “We definitely made up a lot of ground there in the middle part of the race, got the car a lot better. Looking back on it, I’m surprised we ran as good as we did with that damage. That’s what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to turn your bad days into top-15 finishes. We’re executing and we keep pushing and keep pushing and eventually we’ll get there.” YOUR CAR HAS A DING ON THE RIGHT FRONT HEADLIGHT DOOR. “I was pulling out of my pit and Mayfield was already going and I ended up clipping his left rear. I didn’t know it was that bad, but still, you’ve got to capitalize on bad days and make them good and we did that today.” WHAT DID YOU LEARN TODAY THAT WILL HELP YOU HERE IN SEPTEMBER? “I definitely learned a lot. Today, the groove was a lot different today than it was yesterday so I wasn’t able to take what I learned in the Busch race to bring it here. What I’ll do is just take all this information and we’ll come back with a better setup in September.” DID THE SECOND GROOVE COME IN TODAY? “You could do it late in a run, but it seemed like early in the run you had to run the bottom or else you’d just get freight-trained. The lapped cars were just so tough to try to get around. It was hard to make up track position. I think you seen it by the 26. We were better than him most of the day and he ended up second. I think track position was just key.” DID FOUR TIRES MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE TODAY? “Not really. It seemed like early in the run four tires were the best. It seemed like after 10 laps it didn’t matter what kind of tires you had on. That’s what happens. We’ve got these hard tires again like we had at Charlotte and track position is key.” IT SEEMED LIKE THERE WAS ALL TAKING AND NO GIVING DURING THE LAST 75 LAPS. DID YOU NOTICE MORE AGGRESSIVE DRIVING TOWARD THE END OF THE RACE? “It seems like that’s what happens in pretty much every Cup race. There’s a lot of give and take just because it’s a long race. There’s no need pushing it and hurting the car. You’ve got to kind of time it to where you put yourself in position mid to late part of the race to where you don’t have to race hard. We did our best to try to battle back from adversity. I’m very happy with an 11th-place finish.” YOU POSTED GOOD FINISHES AT CHARLOTTE AND DOVER, TWO LONG AND DEMANDING RACES. “I am, I’m really happy with that. We’ll keep taking top-15s every week. I’m not going to be greedy and say we wanted our fourth top-10 in a row. I know we did [smiles]. We were catching Dale Jr. there at the end and that’s what I kept thinking ‘Four in a row, four in a row.’ We were pushing and we got to him. We just needed one more lap.” THE NEXT RACE IS POCONO. HAVE YOU SEEN THE TRACK? “No, never been to the racetrack before. Hopefully it will be a good track for me. It is on my computer, anyway. We should have a good day there.” HOW ODD IS IT TO PREPARE FOR A RACE AT A TRACK YOU’VE NEVER BEEN TO? “It’s definitely hard to do, but there is so much experience behind the team and crew chief. They’re giving me a veteran’s car. It’s just a Raybestos Rookie driving it. The results don’t show that a rookie is driving it. The results just show how good the team is.”

REED SORENSON, No. 41 TARGET DODGE: “We had a horrible car in practice and horrible at the start of the race. We made a big adjustment there the first stop. It was kind of decent the rest of the day. There were times when we were really good and times when we were not very good. All in all it was an okay day.” WHAT DID YOU DO TO MAKE THE CAR BETTER? “We tightened it up. We did make a bunch of changes this morning but at the start of the race it was so loose so we tightened it up some more on the first stop. It was a good day overall. We were horrible in practice. I think we were like 38th or something and weren’t really excited about today. We made some changes this morning on the car and then the first stop we made some big changes and it was okay the rest of the day.” YOU RAN WELL AT CHARLOTTE AND DOVER, TWO VERY TOUGH RACES. DOES THAT GIVE YOU SOME CONFIDENCE GOING TO POCONO? “I’ve never been there so I hope we’re okay [smiles]. We’re taking a car that we usually don’t qualify too good but races really good. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot during the race because I’ve never been there before. Stremme is running the ARCA race there to gain some knowledge and he’s going to be able to help me out a little bit and Casey will be there to help me out as well. Those are tracks where we usually run pretty well at so I’m not really worried.” HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO PREPARE FOR A TRACK THAT YOU’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE? “Just go with an open mind [smiles] and hope your car is pretty close.” ARE YOU DOING ANY COMPUTER SIMULATION? “Yeah, but I don’t care what anybody says, once you get to the track is a little bit different.”

MIKE FORD, CREW CHIEF, No. 11 FED EX KINKO’S CHEVROLET: “That’s about everything we had. We got a little damage early. We had to go to the back and came back through and to almost get another top-10 was good. We had an 11th or 12th-place car and we finished there so I’m very pleased with that right now.” WERE YOU IN POSITION TO GAMBLE FOR TRACK POSITION TOWARD THE END OF THE RACE? “No, we really weren’t. We needed to get the car a little better for anything to work. We weren’t really in a position to roll the dice and try and pull out a win or anything. We had an 11th or 12th-place car all day and to finish 11th with it was about all we could do.” WERE YOU PLEASED TO COME OUT OF THE CHARLOTTE-DOVER PART OF THE SCHEDULE AS WELL AS YOU DID? “I really haven’t worried about Charlotte and Dover. Denny does a great job everywhere we go. I know he hasn’t even been to Pocono yet so that’s a concern. I’m really happy with how we’ve run the last three or four weeks. We just have to continue that.” HOW DO YOU PREPARE FOR POCONO BECAUSE HAMLIN HAS NEVER SEEN THE TRACK? “You prepare like you would any other time. You try to put your best equipment on the track and just have to spend a little more time talking to him and debriefing, which is going to be difficult because he is going to be flying in and out. That’s going to be the hardest thing, the time constraints.” DO YOU HAVE A SUBSTITUTE DRIVER FOR HAMLIN NEXT WEEK? “No we don’t. We haven’t even really thought about that, really. I really don’t want to go that route if we don’t have to. He’s a Cup driver, it’s a Cup race, he’s got to get in and do it [smiles].” DOES HAMLIN’S LACK OF EXPERIENCE AT POCONO FORCE YOU AND TEAM TO BE MORE PREPARED? “To be honest with you, I don’t know how you could be any more prepared that what we are every week. You just have to go into it doing the same things you do every other week and let him learn the place and just be patient.”

HAMLIN PRESS CONFERENCE

“We didn’t have the best of racecars today for sure but we made the best of an okay day. I felt like we had a 15th to 20th-place car at parts of the race and we had a top-10 car at parts of the race. We just got behind. I think we were running seventh at the first pit stop and on pit road and I ran into Jeremy and basically knocked the nose off of it. We had to go to the back and that made us go a lap down and once you get back there it’s just so hard to make up anything. But we got that Lucky Dog and we just battled back and got our car better. We could see the top-10 two car lengths in front of us. We definitely wanted four top-10s in a row but we just came up a little short.”