Where the Raybestos Rookies qualified at Homestead:
Ragan 7th
Montoya 33rd
Reutimann 35th
Allmendinger 37th
Menard 40th
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, No. 42 TEXACO/HAVOLINE DODGE: “That stunk. It was terrible. Getting up to speed I had to get out of the gas coming into the start-finish line it was so tight already, even just getting up to speed and that just killed us.”
PAUL MENARD, No. 15 MENARDS/JOHNS MANVILLE CHEVROLET: “One and two was really good. I drove it in and it seemed like I used less brake and picked up the gas sooner and harder than in practice and it drove off good. I tried to do the same thing in three and four and it jumped sideways and almost wrecked it. I think it would have been a really good lap otherwise. And then the second lap, I think the right rear was kind of mad at me so it got kind of slippery.” DOES THE TRACK CHANGE A LOT HERE? “We only race here once a year. As the weekend progresses we’ll get more rubber down I’m sure it’ll get tighter. But the cool thing about this place is the progressive banking is like textbook. It’s probably the best place we go to where you can run anywhere, wherever the car wants you to go, even in qualifying. I’m sure it’ll tighten up as more rubber gets laid down. Right now with the sun beating down in three and four making that slippery and one and two is in partial shade so it’s got a lot of grip so it’s kind of compromising.”
DAVID REUTIMANN, No. 00 BURGER KING TOYOTA: WILL THAT MAKE THE RACE? “If it gets cooler, probably not. We just have to wait and see, you know. That’s just kind of how it is at the end. Just really, really free and everybody is so close right there it doesn’t take much. We’ll hope that we beat a couple of these other guys and we’ll be all right.” HOW TEMPERATURE SENSITIVE IS THIS TRACK? “I don’t really know. I haven’t raced here enough to really know. I know when it gets cool it seems to pick up a lot of speed from when we ran the truck series and stuff. I would imagine it’s probably like a lot of racetracks, maybe not quite as sensitive as Charlotte but I’m sure it’ll pick up speed as it goes. I just hope it doesn’t pick up any while we’re waiting for these guys to go.”
DAVID RAGAN IN THE No. 6 AAA INSURANCE/SHOW YOUR CARD AND SAVE FORD WAS THE TOP RAYBESTOS ROOKIE QUALIFIER FOR THE FORD 400.
Notes:
Ragan will start seventh in Sunday’s race, his best qualifying effort on a superspeedway this season. His other top-10 starts: fourth at Bristol (race No. 24) and eighth at Richmond (race No. 26).
Ragan trails Juan Pablo Montoya by 21 points (236-215) in the Raybestos Rookie standings entering the final race of the season.
IMPRESSIVE STREAK ENDS: At least one Raybestos Rookie had won a Bud Pole in each of the last 11 YEARS (1996-2006).
RAGAN: “I’m pretty happy with that. That’s a little pickup from practice and our qualifying runs today during practice we were just a little free. I think we made the right adjustments and it was pretty easy to drive. I felt like it was going to be an okay lap but certainly that’s going to be very respectable and just like the last four or five weeks, we felt like we’ve been bringing some pretty good AAA cars to the racetrack. It’s just a matter of hitting your marks and doing the right things and trying to race. We’ve been good in some practices and we’ve had some decent qualifying runs this year but we’ve just got to learn how to race these guys and be around at the end and we’ll be all right.” YOUR QUALIFYING RUN MUST GIVE YOU A BIG BOOST OF CONFIDENCE. “It gives us a lot of confidence and I like I said Jimmy Fennig [crew chief] is always worth a couple of tenths, adjusting on the car a little bit. He’s pretty good at looking over some of the notes and fine-tuning. He’s always really good. Our cars are usually better during the race than it is in practice. He makes the right adjustments and like I said the biggest thing is just get the car comfortable and be around at the end of this race. I think if we took 400 miles at a couple of the Charlottes and Atlanta and Texas we probably would have had some good top-10s or top-15s. That last hundred miles was what bit us. Hopefully, this is a little shorter race and we’ll get it figured out.” DID YOU WORK ON RACE RUNS IN PRACTICE? “Yeah, we always unload in race trim and I think that’s one thing that we can look at. We never really qualify great. I think we’ve qualified from 20th to 30th just about every week. We don’t qualify that great. We always unload in race trim and that’s what we’re here to do is race. Qualifying, over time, I’ll learn to get that feel where I can go hard and not take a risk in tearing up my Ford. Over time I think qualifying is going to take care of itself but our main goal is that Happy Hour and the two Saturday practices. They are more important than this Friday practice.” WHAT IS THE BIGGEST THING THAT YOU’VE LEARNED THIS YEAR? “Oh gosh, that’s a tough question right there. Probably just when to go hard and when not to. If you’ve got a 10th-place car finish 10th with it where before I would try to overdrive and usually tear something up or put myself in a bad position and get wrecked. Not every week are you going to have a winning car. There’s a lot of great teams and great drivers in this top level and just take what we can get. If we’ve got a top-15 car finish 15th with it and that’s one of the biggest things that I’ve learned, just trying to take what I’ve got and make the best of it without going over that limit.”
