Where the Raybestos Rookies finished at Atlanta Motor Speedway:
Allmendinger 16th
Menard 27th
Ragan 33rd
Montoya 34th
AJ ALLMENDINGER IN THE No. 84 RED BULL TOYOTA WAS THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE RACE AT ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY.
Note:
Allmendinger finished 16th and took Raybestos Rookie of the Race honors for the second time this season.
ALLMENDINGER: “It was exciting. On car speed we didn’t deserve to finish where we did. But on effort, we thought we deserved to finish higher. We never gave up. We just could never get a handle on the car. It was so loose, and we just could never get the right rear on the race track. This is stuff I’m learning, this is stuff the team is learning. When we’re not very good, and, heck, to survive and almost have our best finish of the year with one of the worst cars that we’ve had, I think that shows that we’re learning as a team. We can be struggling like that but we can have a good finish.” WHAT WAS YOUR VIEW OF THE SECOND-TO-LAST RESTART WHEN EVERYONE BUNCHED UP? “I don’t know. I was so far back. I think it took the 11. It might have been out of fuel, it didn’t take off. When we went to take off I could see we weren’t taking off for awhile. Either he was struggling all the way to come to the green or he was trying to check everybody up, whoever it was. But we just didn’t really take off for a long time, so I knew something bad was going to happen. We started stacking up, and Timmy, my spotter, did an awesome job getting me through that.” NEXT WEEK IS A SIMILAR TRACK AT TEXAS; DO YOU PLAN TO TAKE THE SAME CAR? “No, I think we got a couple of new cars that we’re going to try. No reason to not try it. Obviously, that car is really car at Charlotte and is the same car we ran at Charlotte. We just never got a handle on it. But we got a couple of new ones to try probably, and we’ll see what happens.”
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, No. 42 TEXACO/HAVOLINE DODGE: “Hey, we had a good car and I think that is very important. Reed [Sorenson] finished third and that's great for the team. I think we probably had a car to win the race. The beginning of the race we we're coming towards the top 10 easily. Blew up a tire and killed the car, they kinda fixed it and blew up another tire and damaged the suspension. Came in and fixed the whole car and brought it around and brought it to the end. It's a little frustrating, but your know in a way you always hope the guys around you in the points around don't have a good day when you don't and they all didn't, so it's probably the good thing. The only car I think that ran really well was the 9." WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE TWO TIRES IN THE EARLY STAGES OF THE RACE? "Ask him he's the tire man (pointing to a crew man). I know the first one just blew. It came out of the corner, if I would [have blown the tire a] hundred yards earlier I would have killed the car."
PAUL MENARD, No. 15 MENARDS/JOHNS MANVILLE CHEVROLET: “It was a long day. We came on pit road right when the caution came out, so we lost a race there. Once you’re two laps down, you can never get it back.”
