Saturday, Sept. 3, 2011
Dodge Motorsports PR
Atlanta Motor Speedway
AdvoCare 500
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Qualifying Notes
ROBBY GORDON (No. 7 SPEED Energy Dodge Charger R/T): HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TRYING TO QUALIFY EACH WEEK? “The reality is today I can’t find enough sponsors to run the whole race. But if you just stay home you don’t learn. The deal is this gives us the opportunity to come learn and we’re not the only ones doing it. As much as it hurts everybody hearing me do it, it hurts me to do it. I’m a racer and I want to go out and compete and race people but the first thing we have to do is we have to learn how to qualify so that we can race people and we’re working on that very hard.”
ARE YOU ENCOURAGED BY THE RUN? “I’ve always liked Atlanta. Our Dodge Charger is good. It’s our own powerplant with Joey Arrington so we’re obviously making enough power to make the show so I’m happy about that.”
KURT BUSCH (No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger R/T): “We picked up time from where we were, just on the tight side of things. Hard to know exactly where we’ll pan out. Just a lot of track temperature changes due to times that we’ve been out practicing. You almost have to just shoot from the hip and just gauge for the middle so we’ll see where we end up.”
HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO QUALIFY HERE AT ATLANTA? “It’s really difficult to know how much speed you’re gonna end up picking up and then being able to digest it as quick as you can and then put a lap down.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T): “We were just a little slow, a little off the pace here. Atlanta has been a little tough on us. We put up a good lap in practice and it was unfortunate that we couldn’t back it up but we’re still plugging away, still working on it.”
YOU WENT OUT LATE IN THE SESSION. WAS THAT AN ADVANTAGE? “It should be an advantage. It’s hard to tell. With all the cloud cover it really wasn’t any difference, I feel like.”
ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE RACE SETUP? “It’s hard to tell. I don’t think anybody will know until they drop the green.”
