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News and Results | Point Standings | 2007 Schedule | 2007 Teams | 2006 Schedule and Results | 2005 Schedule and Results Ford 400 - Dodge Qualifying Quotes
“The lap was good. It was a little bit off what Jimmie did. My car felt good. I slowed up a little too much by getting into one and across the center. I didn’t carry much speed down the backstretch. It felt really good. It felt like we have a car we can race with this weekend and try to finish off strong this year and have a little momentum going into the off season. I look forward to finishing up strong this weekend and being done for a little while.” ARE YOU AT THE POINT WHERE YOU SEE WHAT JOHNSON HAS ACCOMPLISHED AND AREN’T SURPRISED? “As far as Jimmie and that whole team goes; every week they are really strong and really good and tough to beat no matter what time of the day it is. They are really good. They give everybody something to shoot for that’s for sure. We just have to keep working on our program to make it better. I have to work on my driving and my feed back and keep trying to get better and better as a team.” ARE WE SEEING A DIVIDE DEVELOP BETWEEN HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS AND THE REST OF THE TEAMS? “That is tough to say. I would say that they definitely were the best team at the start of the year with two race cars. They had two race cars and enough people on it and enough good people, drivers and teams. The way they run their company; they did everything right. They were the team to be throughout the entire year and they’re still the team to beat. They win every race. I don’t know how we gain on that we just keep working hard. I think as time goes and you focus on one car again then hopefully, everybody starts to catch back up. They definitely were able to get both cars really good.” HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO GET A WIN IN A YEAR WHEN YOU HAVEN’T HAD ONE SO FAR? “I personally would feel a lot better heading into this winter if I could end with a win. I think everyone would. It would help our team. Gillett Evernham Motorsports - I think they’ve won every year since they’ve been in the Cup Series. I haven’t won every year that I’ve been in Cup so that wouldn’t be anything. It would just feel good to win the final race and you could feel good about something. Anytime you win whether it’s any type of race feels good. You’d probably forget about the rest of the year if I could get a win on Sunday. I just look forward to next year.”
“Honestly I didn’t think it was near as good as it was speed wise. When they said it was a 58 (seconds) I was like man that is really good. Knowing that the track was a little bit hotter we tuned on the car and made it over a tenth quicker, so really didn’t expect Jimmie (Johnson) to come and bust out that lap. I really thought that after practice Kasey (Kahne) was going to be the guy to beat and he was he just wasn’t the only guy to beat. It was a good smooth lap I just didn’t feel like I slipped the car enough to make it go any faster. In saying that if I did it might have gone slower.” ARE THERE ANY SENTIMENTAL FEELINGS THAT THIS IS THE LAST RACE FOR THE SO-CALLED “OLD CAR”? “I wouldn’t say sentimental feels. I’d like to think that my career will go further than just the old car. For some reason it kind of hit me when I was doing some hospitality last weekend. I think the biggest disappointment with the new car compared to the old car is just pure performance, the fact that the car is a half-second slower. When we go to test we anticipate going faster each time we go there whether it’s Kentucky or Nashville or each race track we go to. For instance Atlanta the last test, it’s nice to be able to come back and go faster. You take a brand new car or a brand new designed car and take it to the race track and it at minimum is a half-second slower it’s difficult to say man this thing really drivers good or man this thing just feels that much better. The Car of Tomorrow, which is going to be here all year next year, that’s going to be our baseline as we go on. We kind of have to put all of those thoughts and all of those feelings behind us.” DOES IT SURPRISE YOU HOW WELL THE NO. 48 HAS RUN ALL SEASON? “I wouldn’t say that it surprises me by any means. He’s a great driver, he’s got a strong organization, and he’s on a roll. He’s the next step beyond on a roll. He’s got everything going for him. I wish he didn’t but I’m happy to be competing against him and with him on any given Friday or Sunday.”
“These guys are going a good job. The No. 48 team is tough to beat no matter what time of the week it is, so that’s good. If we can start in the top-five we’ll be happy and try to end the season strong. We’ve had an up and down year and it would be good to end with some momentum and have a good off-season.” TALK ABOUT THE OFF-SEASON AND HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO HEAD INTO IT WITH SOME MOMENTUM FOR NEXT SEASON? “The off-season is going to be fun. Relax a little bit and build some really nice cars for next year and just kind of get ready to go again. I have some things planned to kind of enjoy myself and I know the team does too. I’m just looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to Christmas and Thanksgiving and all that stuff too. Then we’ll get ready race next season at Daytona.”
WHY HAS EVERYONE BEEN FASTER ON THE FIRST LAP? “I only did one lap in practice and the didn’t feel perfect to me, so I figured I better just take that security lap just to make sure I didn’t screw anything up. Obviously it was a really good first lap with the alltel Dodge and now I just hope that it hold up. It was faster than I thought it was going to be. YOU SAID YOU TOOK THE SECOND LAP BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT YOU LEFT SOMETHING ON THE TABLE. DID YOU FEEL SOMETHING? “Well the track is king of tricky because it builds progression banking-wise coming towards the exit of each corner. You can kind of give up a little in entry and then push it really hard middle and off. That’s what I felt like I did the first time and maybe that paid off for me. I felt like I didn’t slip the car enough actually in the first lap and maybe that’s a good thing.”
“We were excited about that lap with the Miller Lite Dodge. We scraped the right side in practice earlier, so it’s been a longer than usual day for us thus far, but to have a shot at Ryan (Newman) on a Friday qualifying day – that means you did something good.” IF YOU DON’T ROUGH UP THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE CAR IN PRACTICE IT’S ALMOST LIKE YOU’RE NOT DOING YOUR JOB. YOU REALLY HAVE TO PUSH IT HERE AT MIAMI. “You do. This track it really unique. You people in South Florida should really be proud of this. People come here in the dozens or thousands because you can pick any lane. The low lane, the middle, the high lane. I just went to the high lane too soon and there were some marbles up there. It was like you push the cushion in dirt track racing.”
“Horrible. Crappy. I don’t know. It was terrible. Getting up to speed I had to get off the gas coming into the start finish line. It was tight already just getting up to speed and that just killed us.”
“It was good. I’ve got to say we have good power. I have to say thanks to these guys. They put out some good power. The car was good. We just had too much push in turns three and four. At first I thought that it was not even close, but it was not too bad. I hope we make it. I think we will make it. Hopefully we will make it. I’m pretty happy.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t very good. I mean we picked up from practice, but I mean it still wasn’t that great. We just weren’t very good in qualifying trim. We weren’t very good in race trim either, so we have time to practice tomorrow to make it better. We haven’t qualified that good at a couple of these bigger tracks and still ran good once we got in the race. As long as we didn’t tear it up in qualifying doing something stupid then that’s fine.”
“For the most part it was pretty good. We were a little bit too tight with the car. That hurt us a little bit, but I think our times are pretty respectable. Out of the seven cars that have gone so far I think only one of the go or go home cars is ahead of us. We look okay, but we also know that it could cool down quite bit and that could hurt us. We’ll see what happens.” HOW WAS IT QUALIFYING THIS CAR AS OPPOSED TO THE CAR OF TOMORROW LAST WEEK IN PHOENIX? “I’m probably the opposite of what everyone else here will tell you, because I’m so used to a car that doesn’t move around this much with how the Indy car is. The Car of Tomorrow is a jump in that direction. It’s not anywhere near it, but it’s more in that range. I actually liked the Car of Tomorrow a lot better because it doesn’t move around as much. I’m looking forward to next year with the Car of Tomorrow at every race.
“It wasn’t a very good lap at all. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow to get this car where it needs to be. We’ve been in this situation before and I’m confident that we can get the car dialed back in. This has been a decent year for us and we want to make sure we go out on a high note.”
“It was okay. This is one of the No. 41 cars that we brought and I’m learning it, but it’s just mediocre and that’s probably where we’ll end up in qualifying. We have a couple hours to work on it and get better. I have a lot of fun here, so we’ll see what goes on.” THIS IS YOUR LAST RACE IN THE NO. 40. LOOKING BACK ON THIS SEASON A COUPLE YEARS FROM NOW WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE AWAY FROM IT? “I mean, I learned a lot. With the experience that I’ve gained over the year, the last two years, it’s been pretty valuable. You never know. The world is a big circle and I might get back in it at some point in time. I’ve had a lot of fun driving for Chip (Ganassi) and Felix (Sabates), but lets keep diggin’. I love racing and that’s what I’m here to do.”
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