Saturday, Feb. 26, 2011 Denny Darnell Scott Sebastian Dodge Motorsports PR Phoenix Int’l Raceway SUBWAY Fresh Fit 500 Final Qualifying NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
KURT BUSCH (No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger R/T) Qualified 2nd “We’re happy with our run. Our Shell/Pennzoil Dodge was pretty stout. I just gave up a few thousandths of a second. Carl (Edwards) ran a great lap. This is a track position race and to start up front is a nice hurdle to get over.”
HOW’S THE CAR GOING TO RACE TOMORROW? “We have some adjustments to make after final practice yesterday. The race is only 312 laps long. You need to settle in and get a good groove going. I’ve had fast cars here and we’ve struggled as the race goes on with making the correct adjustments in keeping up with track conditions. That’s our big goal this year, making better adjustments during the race. We need to stick with good qualifying efforts, but we have to make better adjustments in the race and we know that. I love coming out here to the west coast and running Phoenix and my home track in Las Vegas. Tomorrow is going to be fun.”
WITH YOUR SUCCESS AT SPEEDWEEKS, DO YOU FEEL THAT YOUR PENSKE PROGRAM HAS EARLY MOMENTUM? “I feel like that we’ve done a lot of hard work behind the scenes at Penske Racing to make our cars faster and you’re starting to see that early in the season. Once we get into Las Vegas, Bristol and Martinsville, we’ll see how things progress. We’ve really searched all over the board to find speed in all areas. With Brad (Keselowski) qualifying in the top 10 today in his Cup car, it shows that our cars are stronger. We need to continue to push the envelope and build on our early success.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T) Qualified Ninth “It was a really good run for the Miller Lite team. Our Dodge Charger is fast. We just kept working on this car and it paid off today. It was a great pick up from where we were yesterday (five-tenths faster). Paul (Wolfe, crew chief) put a great car underneath me today and I just had to keep my foot in the gas long enough to run a decent number. This track is easy to overdrive. It’s really unnerving running around this place in qualifying. You’re basically guessing on how much grip there is in the track. You hope that you can drive it into the corner hard enough and it sticks. Over guess the grip level and there’s a chance that you’ll put the car in the wall. If you under guess (the grip), you feel that you left something out on the track and let your team down. The best that you can do is hit it perfect and sometimes that’s not even enough.”
ROBBY GORDON (No. 7 SPEED Energy Dodge Charger R/T) Qualified 31st “Boy, I’d like to have that lap back. Our SPEED Energy Dodge was fast. I think we were on pace to run a 41 (6.41 seconds) if I hadn’t slipped in Turn 3. Our engine is fast. The car handles great. I like the way that the car handles through the corners. I’m not sure where that will put us, but I think we made some nice gains from yesterday and have a good race car for Sunday.”
