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[/media-credit]Sunday, March 11, 2012
Kobalt Tools 400
Las Vegas Motor Speedway
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
Post-Race Quotes
Dodge PR
Brad Keselowski (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T) Finished 32nd “We had a pretty decent Dodge Charger all day, probably not as good as Tony’s (Stewart) but really strong. We were going to give him a run for his money and I was going to drive my butt off. It just wasn’t meant to be. I didn’t run out of gas. The fuel pump broke.”
WHAT WAS YOUR VIEW ON THAT RESTART WITH TONY STEWART WENT THREE-WIDE? “My view, whatever happened to Clint (Bowyer), he didn’t go? And when Clint didn’t go, I can’t beat him back to the line. That put Tony is prime spot to capitalize on the restart and he did.”
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU COULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY OR IS THAT JUST HOW THE RESTARTS ARE NOW? “I could have gone down and blocked Tony and wrecked everybody, but I don’t think that’s the solution. We just needed him (Bowyer) to get a better restart.”
Paul Wolfe (Crew Chief, Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T) “It’s definitely tough to take right now. Trying to dig ourselves out of that hole from Daytona and now we’re back in it again with a 32nd-place finish. The guys working on the 2 car have done very well. We put together a good weekend. We put ourselves in position here. We’ve just got to figure out these problems we’re having with the pumps. You can’t race for a championship this way; we’re just going to have to go to work and figure it out. You keep putting Brad in position, he’s doing his job, and we’re letting him down on the other end there. We’ve had what appears to be the same issue two weeks in a row now. Luckily it didn’t bite us and we were able to finish the race at Phoenix, but there was an issue there. And then with both cars having an issue today, there’s something going on. We’re going to have to figure it out.”
A.J. Allmendinger (No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger R/T) Finished 37th “Man this is not the start to the season any of us were expecting. I’m struggling to figure out what to say because I’m feeling so many things right now.
“Our 22 Pennzoil Dodge was really good. I knew we had a top-five car after we got into the race. I overshot the pit box on my first stop. I’ve never done that like that. I got lost behind the 56. Embarrassing, but the Captain (Roger Penske) got on the radio and said he knew we could get it back; hearing that helped me get refocused and back in the race. We had worked back up to 14th with a lot of race left. Just when I knew we could make something solid, we started having fuel pressure issues. It was sporadic. Then it just went away.
“We came into the garage and changed some things and went back out, but the same thing happened. My guys busted their butts changing everything related to fuel pressure we could and went back out to salvage what was left. We’re not sure yet what the cause was, but you know the guys back at the Penske shop will figure it out”
Todd Gordon (Crew Chief, No. 22 Pennzoil Dodge Charger R/T) “We’re looking at all of it. Obviously we had a fuel delivery issue. We lost fuel pressure. We thought it was one piece and we changed it; then we had the same thing so we had to come right back in and we changed the whole system. We’ll take it back to the shop and get these Pennzoil guys to look over everything and find out where we’re at and what we had for a problem. The initial piece, it doesn’t look like the two cars had the same part failure. We’ll diagnose everything when we get back to the shop and make sure that we’re fixed up going to Bristol.”
ARE THESE THINGS TO BE EXPECTED FROM THIS NEW ELECTRONIC FUEL INJECTION SYSTEM? “We changed a lot of things to go to this EFI system. Obviously we all tried to do our due diligence in testing everything, but you can’t simulate a racetrack time: the vibrations, the heat, and the cycles. It’s tough to just put all the pieces for the same parts and make durability runs on ‘em. We’ll get it figured out. I kind of knew this was going to bite a few people. We were hoping it wouldn’t bit us, but it’s the learning curve of the new pieces. We’ll work hard on trying to make sure that’s all fixed for next week.”
