MONTOYA: “We struggled tight all day. We tried pretty hard to free up the car. When we stopped under green it was really good, I could run really strong, then every time we pit under yellow it was just too tight. We tried to free it up all day long, just didn’t catch it up enough but we still had a good result. The car is in one piece so I’m pretty happy.” IT SEEMED LIKE YOUR CAR GOT BETTER AND BETTER DURING THE RACE. “Yeah, it was good. We did maybe one wrong change. The rest were pretty good.” ONE YEAR AGO YOU ANNOUNCED THAT YOU WERE GOING TO RACE FULL-TIME IN NASCAR. HOW MUCH HAVE YOU LEARNED ABOUT THESE CARS OVER THE LAST 365 DAYS? “Oh, a lot. I feel I’ve learned probably like 40 percent of what I’ve got to learn. I think we’re still miles off. I think my pace is pretty decent, I can run pretty good. But still, as a team, and everything they need to understand what do I like. I just need more experience in working with Donnie [Wingo, crew chief] and stuff like that.” IS THE DIFFICULT PART TRYING TO LEARN TO BE PATIENT? “No, you just got to race smart. It’s not about patience. You take what you can take and there’s places where you can’t take. You’ve got to race smart more than patience.”

DAVID RAGAN, No. 6 AAA INSURANCE FORD: “We just weren’t very good at the beginning. We kind of fought back to being okay there at the end. We’ve got to get better at the beginning of these races and qualifying. It seems like we’re a step behind at the beginning and it really cost us getting down that lap early. The AAA pit crew did a great job on pit road. We had great pit stops all day. It’s just a long day. I thought we’d be a little better than this. We’ve just got to continue to work. We’re going to go back to some more mile-and-a-halfs. We’ve just got to get better but it was a decent day. We salvaged a decent finish still have one race car in one piece, something we can work on to make better.” DID YOU MAKE THE CAR BETTER TODAY? “Yeah, we made it better and the track changes so much with the rubber and the heat compared to Friday and Saturday. I’ve got to move around and find the sweet spots in the racetrack and know how hard to push it, how hard not to. We certainly made it better but we just wouldn’t good enough to start with.”

PAUL MENARD, No. 15 MENARDS/TURTLE WAX ICE CHEVROLET: YOU HAD A TOUGH DAY RIGHT FROM THE START OF THE RACE. “Our valve latch opened up after practice and they caught that after Happy Hour [on Saturday]. We decided to change the motor so we didn’t get to practice at all with the motor we put in and had an oil line that knocked itself loose and it was spitting oil and caught the car on fire. It wasn’t that big of a deal but I think they used a little too much fire extinguisher on it and made a big mess and we had to clean that all up and replace the lining and go back out, a hundred laps down or whatever it was.”

DONNIE WINGO, CREW CHIEF, No. 42 WRIGLEY’S BIG RED DODGE: “It was a good day. I mean, I don’t think we got the best we out of it we could but all in all it was a good day. We came a long way back and don’t have a scratch on it, first of the year for him. We made gains during the race and that’s something we haven’t been able to do lately. We got the car better so all in all it was a good day.” MONTOYA SEEMED TO BE HAPPY WHEN HE GOT OUT OF THE CAR. IS THAT BECAUSE YOU GOT THE CAR BETTER ALL DAY? “Yeah, I think so. We made improvements on it. We’re still not where we need to be. We started out a little too far behind, I think. Qualifying hurt us some. We got lapped and got the Lucky Dog. All in all a good day.” IS IT A DIFFICULT TASK TO PASS A LOT OF CARS AT THE TRACK? “It’s really, really hard to pass. Just like when we got the Lucky Dog the one time. From the front to where we were running is about a half-second difference and I mean it’s tough. When you’re running in the back it’s just hard. You’ve got so many lapped cars to deal with. We could have took a few gambles here or there maybe and got a little better day out of it but we didn’t. We’ll take it and go on to the next one.”