Where the Raybestos Rookies finished at Texas:
Montoya 25th
Menard 30th
Ragan 37th
Allmendinger 39th
Reutimann 43rd
DAVID REUTIMANN, No. 00 BURGER KING TOYOTA: WHAT HAPPENED? “Something in the motor. We were struggling and got kind of jammed up early and killed the right front fender. Everybody stacked up on a restart and somebody run through the right rear corner and then the motor blew up. That pretty much sums up our day. Two more to go so we’ll see if we get through the rest of the year [smiles].” WAS THE CAR BETTER IN THE RACE? “You know, it started off and no, we weren’t very good from where we ended practice yesterday to where we started. They tuned on it and made it a little bit better but it was shaping up to be a long day and now it’s a short day.”
DAVID RAGAN, No. 6 AAA INSURANCE FORD: “I don’t know. I just saw everyone checking-up. My spotter even said ‘Hey, the bottom lane is checking-up.’ We were on the outside and before I know it, I don’t know if I got drilled in the back or just checked-up too quick and lost it. It’s just very unfortunate for the AAA team. Everyone worked really hard. I thought we had a pretty good. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.” WAS YOUR CAR GETTING BETTER? “The track was really slick at first and you just had to be really easy with the throttle. You couldn’t overdrive it. Like I said, our car would drive pretty good on the bottom and it had good speed and we were just kind of making our way up to the front slowly but surely. I felt like we had a top-10 or top-15 car when we wrecked. I really don’t know what happened. I just need to see a replay.” CAN YOU GET BACK IN THE RACE? “I’ll check. I don’t know. It wouldn’t turn over. I don’t know if something was locked up, one of the pulleys or something in the motor. We’ve got a pretty good AAA pit crew. They’ll fix it and get me back going as quick as they can.”
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA IN THE No. 42 TEXACO/HAVOLINE DODGE WAS THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE RACE AT TEXAS.
NOTES:
Montoya finished 25th and took Raybestos Rookie of the Race honors for the 15th time this season.
Montoya led today’s race once for 10 laps. He was the only Raybestos Rookie to lead the Dickies 500.
Montoya was also the top Raybestos Rookie in the April 15 Samsung 500 at Texas, scoring an eighth-place finish.
DONNIE WINGO, CREW CHIEF, No. 42 TEXACO/HAVOLINE DODGE: “We started off pretty good. We had a pretty good car. He was just biding his time. It was a little bit loose through the middle part of the race there and he was just riding along there and we were adjusting on it a little bit. Something happened and it broke a valve spring, broke a valve or something. But we were lucky to finish and didn’t lose too bad.” EARLY IN THE RACE YOU LOST A LITTLE TRACK POSITION WHEN YOU DECIDED TO CHANGE FOUR TIRES AND OTHERS CHANGED TWO. DID YOU THINK YOU WOULD LOSE THAT MUCH? “Not really. I think we lost four spots and we were the first car with four tires. We got by a few of ‘em on the restart. I think we got back up to third. Probably the next stop was the stop that maybe we should have pitted and didn’t. We just wanted to stay up front, stay out of trouble. But that’s not what got us. Dropping the valve, that just killed us.” YOU HAD A BAD NIGHT, BUT DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF LUCKY? “Oh, we’re very lucky. We were just lucky that it broke a valve in the head and it didn’t kick nothing else out. It was just sitting there riding along. We’re very lucky.”
