Race 2 Win: Lenox Industrial Tools 300 - Rookie Qualifying Quotes

Nextel Cup Series

Where the Raybestos Rookies qualified at New Hampshire:
Truex Jr. 8th
Sorenson 9th
Hamlin 12th
Yeley 20th
Stremme 22nd
Bowyer 31st

MARTIN TRUEX JR., No. 1 BASS PRO SHOPS/TRACKER BOATS CHEVROLET: “It’s a pretty good lap for our Bass Pro Chevy. The guys did a good job in practice. We unloaded and we weren’t very good and we changed a bunch of stuff and got better. That was within a half-tenth of what ran in practice so I think that’s okay. The track is a little slicker it seems. An early draw is never good here. I’m not sure where it will end up but for what we had and when we went out it’s okay.” YOU HAVE A LOT OF LAPS AT THIS TRACK. IS THIS A GOOD PLACE FOR YOU TO TURN YOUR SEASON AROUND? “Well, I hope so. Like I said, we unloaded and we weren’t very good today. They guys have been working real good and got the thing a lot better. Luckily we got some practice tomorrow to try to make it right. This is a tough place to get your car to working right. You need to be able to turn real good in the center and run around the bottom to pass. I wasn’t able to do that today like I have been in the past and that’s what we’re going to work on.” ARE YOU SURPRISED AT HOT WEATHER HERE TODAY? “Well, I think it’s hot everywhere in July, isn’t it [laughs]? It stinks that we had to go out earlier. We had a pretty decent car and I’m sure that a lot of guys are going to get faster later. I’m not sure where that’s going to end up but it’s a good run for us. It was almost what we ran in practice so it’s okay.” IS THERE A COMFORT LEVEL FOR YOU COMING BACK TO THIS TRACK? “I’ve got a lot of confidence here. It’s just a matter of making the car do what I want it to do. So far today we haven’t been able to do that. If I can get it to do what I did here last year in the Busch car we’d be in really good shape [smiles] but haven’t been able to hit on it yet. We’ve got some more practice tomorrow to work on it.”

J.J. YELEY, No. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET: “It was fair. I think we ran a .77 in practice. The car was really tight in practice. We worked on it and made a bunch of changes. The center was really good. Unfortunately we were just a little bit too free to the throttle. I couldn’t be aggressive in either 2 or 4. Yeah, definitely a harder lap and obviously we tried to have a full run but when you go to short tracks the times are so close and so competitive if I went out and ran a .60 versus a .71, which I felt like would have been pretty easy because I got the car better off the corner, we’d be 10th quickest instead of 17th quickest. I’ve already learned, especially in the Cup side, that just because you qualify good doesn’t mean that you’re going to finish very good so there’s no need to get upset that we didn’t put down a super-fast lap. We’ll work hard during the race and make sure that we have a good car at the end.” IS THIS ONE OF THE TOUGHEST PLACES THAT YOU’VE BEEN TO IN THE CUP CAR? “No, I don’t think so. It might be to pass. It’s going to be difficult, I’m sure. It’s just a drag strip with two corners to get you back going near the direction and the guy that can get turned around the fastest is going to be the winner. We just need to find that right combination that’s going to keep the car hooked up on the corners and turn in the center.”

REED SORENSON, No. 41 TARGET DODGE: “The car was really good. There was something going on with the carburetor. As soon as I got into 3 there and getting to the green it real bad and it got better as it went. It just stumbled really bad.” YOU WERE FAST ALL MORNING. “This is a brand new car. It would have been nice to have it all year, that’s for sure. It’s just faster. It’s a lot faster than what we’ve had so we’ll see what it does tomorrow.”

KEVIN MANION, CREW CHIEF, No. 1 BASS PRO SHOPS/TRACKER BOATS CHEVROLET: THIS WAS A GOOD DAY FOR YOUR TEAM. “Yeah, we beat Jimmy Elledge so that’s all that matters to us. He’s our neighbor this weekend [smiles]. A lot of the guys [on the team] raced up here, modifieds including myself. There’s quite a few of the guys that are from up here. It’s just good for them to run good up here so there are a lot of family and friends in town. All in all it was a pretty rough day of practice. We threw a lot of stuff at it and found some stuff that worked and that’s what it’s all about and made it comfortable for Martin in qualifying trim and we’ll just see how our race trim goes tomorrow. We’re making some changes now. All in all, we’re fairly happy with it. We run good and consistent. We might need a little bit of speed in race trim but as soon as we went to qualifying trim it was alive. Martin is pretty excited about qualifying top-10. We’ll see, just a good day all in all.”

SELECTED TRUEX JR. PRESS CONFERENCE

Notes:

Truex Jr. was the top Raybestos Rookie qualifier for the Lenox Industrial Tools 300, grabbing the eighth-place starting position.

This equals Truex Jr.’s best qualifying effort of the season. He also started eighth at Daytona (race number 17). He has posted two top-10 qualifying efforts in the last three races.

Reed Sorenson also posted a top-10 qualifying effort, grabbing the ninth-place starting position.

TRUEX JR.: “Nothing in particular, just a lot of little things it seems like. We have a whole Raybestos Rookie team and it has taken a little bit of time for us to get off the ground. We’ve had a lot of good things that we could take out of each race but we can’t see to put a whole race together. Every time it seems like we run good we make a mistake or have a problem that get us back in the back at some point in the race and it’s just so hard to pass in this series. It’s real competitive and we haven’t got over that little hill that we keep running into. The guys are doing a really good job, working really hard. It’s just about experience and getting that notebook started and getting to know what we need at each one of these racetracks. I think going back a second time will be a whole lot better. I’d lie if I said I wasn’t disappointed. We’re all here to win. We’re all here to run good, so my team is no different, being rookies or not being rookies. We want to win. We just keep our heads up and keep working hard and hope that things turn around soon.”

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FEDEX EXPRESS CHEVROLET: “I’m not happy but I’m not displeased in the same aspect. I feel like that if we would have backed up our practice time we would have been right there top-five. But the track was just sick. As a driver I probably drove the entry in too much, like a lot of drivers did, but it’s still a top-15 start. We can race from there.” IS THIS GOING TO BE THE TOUGHEST TRACK TO RACE ON THAT YOU’VE HAD THIS YEAR? “I think this is really one of the easier ones for me because I run quite a bit different line than what most guys run around here. I run on the bottom and a lot of guys run up top. I feel like once the cars get strung out, it will be really easy and hopefully we can get up there at the front and keep that track position all day. That’s something that we really struggled for at Chicago last week. We had a great car. We always would take four and guys would take two and it kept putting us further and further back. We’ll keep that in mind and see if we can’t get us a top-five finish.” YOU RAN THIRD HERE IN THE BUSCH CAR IN JULY 2005. ARE YOU PUMPED UP ABOUT RACING HERE? “Yeah, I really am. My Busch car is running really, really good and the Cup car in practice was really, really good. For not starting in the top-10, I’m probably as happy as I can be.”

CLINT BOWYER, No. 07 SYLVANIA CHEVROLET: “That’s disappointing. We expected a little better lap than that. We’ll work on it in practice tomorrow and try to get it better.”