Where the Raybestos Rookies qualified at Chicagoland:
Menard 16th
Reutimann 21st
Montoya 30th
Ragan 32nd
Allmendinger 45th (DNQ)
DAVID REUTIMANN, No. 00 BURGER KING TOYOTA: “I just hope that holds up. That’s what it comes down to. We’ve got a lot of bullets to dodge, we’ve got a lot of guys coming up and hopefully we’ll be in this deal for Sunday. The car’s driven pretty good ever since we’ve gotten here and we can’t seem to get any speed out of it for some reason. I’m a little confused as to why that is. Each time we went out we got faster and faster. We just can’t seem to gain as much as these some of these other guys do. I drive the thing off in there deep and back to the throttle and it’s tight on exit but looking at some of the times these guys are putting down I don’t know where we’re missing it at. But hopefully, good Lord willing, that’ll be what we need to get in the race and we’ll go after them on Sunday.” YOU PICKED UP A COUPLE OF TENTHS FROM PRACTICE. “Every time we went out it was as hard as I could go. I knew we had to pick it up. I really didn’t know what to expect, to be honest with you. We made some more changes with, not big changes, but the car was getting into the racetrack some and some other small stuff, some air pressure changes that hopefully would have made it better and it improved it but not quite to the extent that I think we needed it to. If we could have run a .50 I’d be dancing on the hood.” YOU HAVEN’T RUN HERE IN A LONG TIME. HAS THE TRACK CHANGED? “It’s the same as I remember it. It’s fast, it’s smooth and it’s got a lot of grip. It’s a good track and hopefully it’ll be a good track for us on Sunday.”
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, No. 42 WRIGLEY’S BIG RED DODGE: “We only run a .90 in practice. It’s not fast enough here I guess. I was pretty tight coming out of four and maybe lost a tenth there, maybe a bit more. But we only run like eight one hundredths slower than practice. We tried different things but I guess that’s as fast as the car is going to run today. The way the car was tight there the second lap was going to be a lot worse.”
DAVID RAGAN, No. 6 AAA INSURANCE FORD: “I wish we would have picked up another couple of tenths. You just don’t know really how hard to push it. We were pretty loose there in our qualifying trim and then maybe just a tick tight in qualifying. I wish we could have got another run or so in there in practice. Obviously the more qualifying attempts that I make the better I get and the better I can tell Jimmy [Fennig, crew chief] what to do to the car. Certainly I feel like the car’s got some good speed it’s just a matter of getting our combination right, taped up with sticker tires in a qualifying run. We’ll run tomorrow and get it a little better for race runs and see how it is on Sunday.” IS THIS YOUR FIRST TRIP HERE? “No, I ran an ARCA race here two or three years ago. It’s a fun racetrack. I think they put a patch down in Turn 1 and it’s a little rougher than I remember. It’s a great racetrack, it’s fast, and I think it’s going to be one of those tracks where clean air means a lot if you can get out into some clean air. I’m sure after our Busch race tomorrow and our Happy Hour the second and third lanes will come in. Time will tell but I think our car is decent. We just need some more laps.”
PAUL MENARD IN THE No. 15 MENARDS/TURTLE WAX ICE CHEVROLET WAS THE TOP RAYBESTOS ROOKIE QUALIFIER TODAY AT CHICAGOLAND SPEEDWAY.
Notes:
Menard will start 16th in Sunday’s race, his best qualifying effort of the 2007 season. He was the 49th and final car to attempt to qualify this afternoon.
MENARD: THAT LAP WAS A TENTH BETTER THAN YOU BEST LAP IN PRACTICE AND YOU WERE THE LAST CAR TO MAKE A RUN TODAY. “The draw helped for sure. Anytime you go late when the sun starts going down is for the better. So I had a good draw and we run that .90 in practice and we couldn’t back that up so that had me worried. It turned out that we run a little quicker so we’re in.” IS IT A RELIEF JUST TO GET THROUGH QUALIFYING? “I hate Fridays man. It’s a necessary evil but it wears on your nerves for sure. Give me great race cars like Dave Charpentier [crew chief] and all the guys have and we’ll be just fine. We’ll keep chipping away at the top-35.” UNLIKE DAYTONA, YOU WILL HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO PRACTICE ON RACE SETUP TOMORROW. “Yeah, hopefully it’s not pushing as bad as it was at Daytona. It was pretty evil last week but we had to go
on speed and forgive about the driving part of it. We can change it and make it drive better.” DO YOU LIKE THIS TRACK? “It’s alright. I’ve only raced here I think twice here before and it seems like the groove is starting to move up a little bit. It’s kind of a cookie cutter, obviously, we a bunch of racetracks similar to it. It’s fun. You drive the car quite a bit. There’s a lot of things you can do about giving up entry to gain speed off and things like that. In three and four it’s a little bit rough. I think it was kind of rough in one last year and I think they ground it but three and four still have a few bumps in it.”
AJ ALLMENDINGER, No. 84 RED BULL TOYOTA: “I don’t know what happened. I just didn’t get it done today. I scraped the wall on Turn 4 on my first qualifying lap and that probably lost us two tenths. I feel horrible for my crew – they deserve to be in this race.”
