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News and Results | Point Standings | 2006 Schedule | 2006 Teams | 2005 Schedule and Results Pennsylvania 500 - Dodge Qualifying Quotes
“That was a good lap for the Mobil 1 Dodge. Obviously we’ve got our eyes on the 11 car coming out here in a little bit, just looking at the way he ran the last race here. We’ve got a good starting position regardless, and we’re looking forward to the race. I’ve got to thank Matt (crew chief Borland) and all the guys at Penske Racing for giving me a good car to drive. I’m looking forward to working with it in race trim. “We’re getting better with one lap. If we can make one lap we can put them together and make 200 here. It’s just a matter of getting things right. The guys did a good job today tuning on the car. The track picked up a lot of grip. That’s pretty obvious for everybody. We picked up 1.1 seconds, so it was a big pickup and good effort to make the car better as well.” LOOKING BACK AT LAST WEEK WOULD YOU HAVE DONE ANYTHING DIFFERENT? “No, I wouldn’t have done anything different other than gas it up if I had known Michael Waltrip was going to hit me. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time a couple of times there. The deal with Stewart, it was just two guys going for the spot. We’ve had our problems about give and take before. He was pretty adamant about keeping us a lap down. I had fresh tires and got in and got a little loose underneath him. He pinched me down. He knows he pinched me down. Like I said, just two cars going for the same spot. My eight tires worked out better than his four.” HAVE YOU TALKED TO STEWART? “Yeah, we talked about it today, no issues. We talked about going fishing. He invited me over to go fishing. Either he wants to drown me or he thinks I’m a good fishing buddy” DID YOU THINK YOUR LAP WOULD HOLD UP FOR THE POLE? “I didn’t know. I think it all depends on how good of a lap the 11 car has. A couple of other cars had a shot. I’m happy to be starting up front, even if it isn’t on the pole.” DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’LL WORK ON TOMORROW? “Not yet. We’re working on it. We made some changes, and the two teams are working together well figuring things out. The bottom line is we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do to get the Mobil 1 Dodge to victory lane.”
“That wasn’t very good. It’s probably the worst car we’ve had qualifying. I’m trying to be optimistic, but it’s just been really tight and we haven’t been able to fix it yet.”
“It was a nice lap for us to pick up the speed we did. It was just real tight this time around. I don’t know if it was with the temperatures or the new left-side tire. We picked up a bunch of speed. That gives us a bunch of motivation for Sunday, but I missed turn three all together today. That left the door open for plenty of guys to slide by us. I knew I left a bunch on the table when I missed turned three. I was dead sideways in that corner. Hopefully we’ll end up in the top five. If not, the top 10. I guess you’re supposed to spend your honeymoon here in the Poconos, but I’m a week off. Hopefully we can do just as good as we did here last year and take this Miller Like Dodge to victory lane.”
“It was the best we’ve run all day. We picked up a second, so that’s about all you can ask for. Maybe it’ll put us in the top 20. This is still one of my favorite tracks. Somewhere hopefully in the near future you’ll see that again.”
“I thought the weather was perfect for us, and everything worked well for us there. The car was really good. I felt like I left a little bit in each corner. Maybe you go after that little bit and go slower, but it was a good lap for the Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger. We’ll see where it ends up. Hopefully it’ll be in the top three or four.”
“Tshat was as fast as we could go. We’ve struggled here, all three of our cars struggled. That’s the best I could do. We made some adjustments before qualifying, and the car was better. We’re going to have to work on some things and make some big changes tomorrow in race trim. We were one of the best three or four cars last week at New Hampshire. The guys did a great job did a great job building a great racecar, and everybody did a good job making sure the car was good. We didn’t have the other side of it handled. We’ve got some work to do, but at least we had a fast racecar.”
“We picked up a second, but that’s what everybody is doing. I can’t say if that’s good or bad. We just haven’t been fast lately.”
“We struggled in practice, and we picked up a second in qualifying. Everybody is picking up a lot of time with this overcast. It wasn’t what we needed for sure. It’s pretty far off, but we’ve just got to keep working on it. Hopefully we can get it in race trim and get it working pretty good.”
“All these guys on this Valvoline Dodge did a good job this weekend, and we learned a lot here the first race. We thought we’d be able to come back here and show what we have and have a good race here. We know we’re going to have a good race. We just wanted to be a little faster in qualifying. I think we gave up a couple of tenths. Kasey did a good job getting it all out of his car. I don’t know if it’s going to hold up for him, but I hope it does. I wish we could have got a couple more tenths. I think we left a little bit out on the racetrack.”
“I was real happy with it. We went out early and had a pretty good lap. My car drove perfect and we were pretty close. We did a lot in practice today, and it drove better in practice than it did last time, too. I think we’re looking forward to this weekend and have a good shot, hopefully battling with Denny (Hamlin). He’s going to be pretty tough. He beat us again qualifying, and he’s going to be tough in the race. Hopefully we’ll get our Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger running good tomorrow and put on a good race with him on Sunday.” HOW HARD IS IT TO KNOW WHEN TO CHANGE? “It’s tough. It changes all season long and that’s why there’s so many ups and downs it seems like in racing. We were really good earlier this year. We got where we’re about the same as everybody, and we’ve actually changed this weekend. Hopefully it’ll pay off. Hopefully it’ll be in the right direction. We qualified third here the first race, but the first race the track temp was 88 degrees and today it was 102 when I went out and we were a tenth faster than we were in that race. I thought the track was slicker all day, so I think our car is definitely better. Kenny Francis and the guys made some really good adjustments. We’ll just see how Sunday goes. We were barely a top 10 car in June, and I think we’re going to be a strong top 10 car this weekend.” DO YOU LIKE THE VARIETY POCONO OFFERS? “Yeah, I’ve always liked this track to drive on, to race on, to figure out each corner. It changes so much throughout the race and the corners are so much different. It’s pretty fun. I enjoy coming here. Sometimes it seems like everything gets pretty spread out, but hopefully we’ll be up front and spread out this time.” DID SOMETHING CHANGE THE PAST FEW RACES? “It’s not really bad luck. We were just off a little bit. Sears Point was a little bad luck. We had a flat tire with two laps to go or one lap to go and lost 15 spots. That was bad luck there, but other than that that’s just where we ran. We were 25th at Daytona and 23rd at Chicago. We finished eighth last week, and I think we’re back on track. Hopefully that was the start of some top 10s and top fives. This week and Indianapolis, I’m looking forward to the Allstate 400. We had a great test there, and I can’t wait to go there in two weeks.” COMMENT ON BRAKES AT POCONO “You definitely don’t want that to happen (no brakes). You think about it every once in awhile when you’re on the track for some reason that crosses your mind maybe. It wouldn’t be good if you didn’t have brakes getting into that corner. Jeff (Gordon) showed that, but it’s racing. Things happen, and hopefully it doesn’t happen again this weekend. With the new softer walls, the HANS, the great seats and helmets everybody is building these days, we have some really safe racecars. It’s definitely assuring we have cars that are safe like that if that did happen.”
“We picked up and had our fastest lap of the day in qualifying. We’ve had a rough season at times this year and some of those things didn’t make sense. It’s a good feeling inside today. It was a good run for our Mobil 1 Dodge. I felt we left a little bit on the table on the racetrack, but I’d rather have done that than overcharge it and start 25th.” HOW HARD IS IT TO STRIKE A BALANCE BETWEEN THE NEW STUFF AND OLD STUFF? “That’s a good question. I think the answer is you don’t throw away what you’ve done in the past. You just compare it to what you’re doing in the present. Times change. Things change. Cars change. Tires change. All those things change, and you still get the end result, trying to make the car as fast as you can for as long as you can. It’s tough to balance all those things out. There’s so many things we tune on to make those things happen. We’ve had a struggle with that this year at points. Like I said, that was the good feeling inside today, to have those things go in the right direction and everything make sense, make the right changes, make the right calls and have a faster racecar in qualifying than we did in qualifying practice.” ARE YOU USING DIFFERENT BRAKES FOR THIS RACE? “No, not to my knowledge. We have options as far as brake packages we can run – short track brakes and road course brakes are pretty much the same, and then intermediate and step it down one more time for restrictor-plate tracks. Here it’s usually a pretty heavy brake just because of the speeds going into one. It’s a track that’s on the edge. You can run one brake system and definitely another one. We haven’t change anything is the best way to answer it.” COMMENT ON THE TIRE “Where they run the tires means nothing. To me the ultimate answer is they did bring a safer tire. That’s the biggest thing. We could run around here at 169 or we could run around here at 159. We could still put on a great race. Having a tire that is less likely to blow out is what we’re all shooting for. I know the 11 car blew a left rear tire here last race, but I don’t know who else did. I know there were a couple of others, but the bottom line is when they make an effort to bring a safer tire back, you’ve got my vote.” “We brought the same racecar. We changed some things on the car, but I think the speeds are pretty similar to the first race for us speedwise, so no issues of yet.” ARE YOU GETTING THE SAME FEEDBACK FROM KURT BUSCH AS YOU DID RUSTY WALLACE? “No, I talk to Kurt. Kurt and I, we’ve compared notes from the first race here when he finished second. It definitely had some positive impacts on our efforts. Yeah, we listen to Kurt and talking to him and we get along fine. From the mechanical standpoint everything is going good with the car as well. Everything in the past is just that.”
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