MONTOYA: YOU IMPROVED FROM THE WAY YOU RAN HERE IN THE SPRING. “I guess this is a really bad track for Ganassi. I don’t know why. We struggled all day with the car pretty tight and when we tried to free it up it was really loose off and could never find a good balance. But hey, that’s the way it goes. Generally we’ve been pretty good. This is generally a bad car for us [smiles]. But hey, that’s the way it goes.” DID THE TRACK IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE RACE? HALF THE TRACK WAS IN SHADE AND THE OTHER HALF IN SUNLIGHT. “We had the same problems all day long. We were good in a short run and really bad in long run.” DID YOU RACE WITH SOME OF THE OPEN WHEEL GUYS TODAY? “They were pretty good. It’s hard to judge them after a race.”

PAUL MENARD, No. 15 MENARDS/JOHNS MANVILLE CHEVROLET: “We put two tires on it there at the end and that was a big mistake. Wanted to do four. The previous run we put four tires on and they just weren’t as good. I thought it was a bad set so wanted to do four, we did took two and suffered the consequences.” YOU RAN WELL TODAY AND WERE COMPETITIVE. “This is a new COT car and it’s pretty good. We have something to look forward to for next year for sure with the COT program. We had a top-10 car for sure and got a little off-sequence and then just made a bad call at the end and it really hurt us.” DID THE TRACK CHANGE IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE RACE? “It got a little bit tighter, I think, but not a whole lot.”

DAVID RAGAN, No. 6 AAA INSURANCE FORD: “I felt like we had a good car to start off with. We moved up to the top-15, top-20 there the first couple of runs and was very happy with the car. Then on one of those restarts the 10 car obviously didn’t know we were down there. He was just in the middle trying to hang on for dear life I’m sure and we just got run down. Hit the curb going through the trioval here and broke part of our splitter, lost a lot of front downforce. We came in and making repairs lost a lap. It’s tough to go fast with a racecar when the front end it beat up and when you’re down two laps you have to show a little bit of respect to those other guys racing for a good finish. I thought we had a top-five or top-10 car. You just can’t do anything when you get down two laps in a short race like today.” YOU WENT FOR A WILD WIDE. “Oh it was pretty wild. Everything was pretty calm until that point. We were just kind of picking our way through one at a time. A lot of those guys that preach conservative and take it easy, those are the guys out there running hard, making it three-wide. I think I was following the 20 car just trying to be conservative. I guess I just need to be a little more aggressive on these restarts, especially when we have a good car. If that would have been me a year ago that I did something like that to a veteran driver I probably would have gotten chewed out for it after the race. But, you know, I know how it is. I know how he’s doing in his shoes. I was just there about six months ago and I hate that happened. That was a wild ride and we’ll just have to keep our heads up on the AAA team and go get ‘em next week at Homestead.” DID YOU REPLACE THE SPLITTER? “Our original splitter was just pushed back. We just ripped it off and put another splitter on. Certainly it’s not as good as what we started the race with but it’s better than nothing. From there on we fought a little tight and then we got caught a lap down in the pits working on the car. When you get down like that it’s just tough to make up.”

DONNIE WINGO, CREW CHIEF, No. 42 TEXACO/HAVOLINE DODGE: WHAT DO YOU NEED TO DO TO IMPROVE THE COT PROGRAM? “Our biggest problem is that we’ve got to get it to turn in the center. We fought that all day. It started off pretty good and the second run there it just got tight in the center and we just couldn’t ever get it back.” IF YOU HIT ON SOMETHING TO IMPROVE THESE CARS, WILL IT WORK AT A VARIETY OF TRACKS? “I mean, I think it’ll work to a certain degree but we’re still missing it some at some of these places like this. At Martinsville we’re pretty good but here and some of the other places we just can’t seem to hit it right.” IT’S SURPRISING THAT WHAT WORKED FOR YOU AT MARTINSVILLE DID NOT TRANSLATE TO HERE. “Well you would think it would but it didn’t quite do it [smiles]. I thought we had a pretty good car in practice but it just got really, really tight today and we just could never get it out. It was just real tight in the center.”