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[/media-credit]Sunday, April 22, 2012
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
STP 400
Kansas Speedway
Post-Race Quotes
Dodge PR
Brad Keselowski (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T) Finished 11th “I thought that we had a pretty good day with the Miller Lite Dodge. We just fell off a bit there in the middle of the race and lost our track position. I thought we were a top-10 car all day. We just didn’t have enough to run up front. We had some tough luck on that one restart when we were 10th and the outside line didn’t move. It cost me about six spots. Once you get back in 13th, 14th, or 15th, it’s just so hard to gain track position with how aero-sensitive these cars are today. We’ll take the 11th-place points. Obviously we want to win, but you have to get what you can get in these darn races. A lot of guys had problems today and we were able to avoid them for the most part. We learned last year that every point counts and today was no exception.”
Sam Hornish Jr. (No. 12 SKF Dodge Charger R/T) Finished 19th “We had a decent day with the SKF Dodge. We were good in the beginning, lost it in the middle and better again late in the race. We tried to play some pit strategy late by staying out as long as we could during green-flag stops, led some laps and was hoping for a yellow to fly. It didn’t happen, but we had nothing to lose. It was great to get back in a Cup car again. We had a lot of new guys on the crew this weekend and it was great experience for them to see what it’s like at the Cup level. Chad (Walter) called a good race. I thought we ran hard and made a very respectable effort.”
A.J. Allmendinger (No. 22 AAA Dodge Charger R/T) Finished 32nd “Man, it’s just starting to feel like ‘Ground Hog’s Day’. I wish I had something totally different to say. I know I’m not the only one here that’s frustrated. We all are. We were off to such a great start. We had pole, the 22 AAA Dodge Charger was so good that first run. Our car was fast out front and then the gremlins hit us. Not sure how to explain it other than you’re on the pole one minute riding around leading laps and then next thing you know your car isn’t right. We ran out of fuel coming to pit road on our first stop, but managed to get back out in seventh. But it went downhill quickly from there. It felt like the engine was blowing, them I have to give Todd (Gordon) and all the guys a lot of credit for rolling up their sleeves and figuring out the cause of the problem. I thought for sure that the motor was gone because how flat it got, but that wasn’t the case. Todd told me over the radio that it was a secondary throttle linkage and I just couldn’t believe it. That’s about as rare as it gets. Like I said, Ground Hogs Day.”
DID YOU HAVE ANY IDEA THAT THERE WAS AN ISSUE? “None. The first time I realized something was wrong is when I heard the motor spitting and chattering.”
DID THE CAR REACT POSITIVELY AFTER THE CREW FIXED THE LINKAGE? “Oh yeah. The engine came back to life, but it was just too late and we were too many laps down.”
Todd Gordon (crew chief, No. 22 AAA Dodge Charger R/T) CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE ISSUES ON THE 22 CAR TODAY? “We’re pretty sure that they were not fuel delivery system issues. The first run, I thought that our AAA Dodge was pretty good. We needed a little bit of turn mid-corner to get the nose pointed. It’s a learning curve with these EFI systems. The best that we can say it is that with the ambient temperature being so much cooler that air quality was so good, the EFI was dumping more fuel. Our mileage backed up almost a half-mile per gallon. That’s more than anything that we’ve seen at a mile-and-a-half. We actually ran out of fuel coming to the first stop. That set us back a bit. Halfway through the second run, the motor started to lay down. I give our team credit. We were pulling on a bunch of things trying to figure it out. We changed ECU’s, coil packs, relay box and the guys were thinking about what was going on with mileage with what we were seeing with more data. We decided to look at the throttle body and we discovered that the secondary linkage came off. We were basically running a two-barrel EFI system instead of a four-barrel. We swapped that out and that brought the motor back to life. Fortunately, it wasn’t an internal issue. Unfortunately, it cost us a bunch of laps to identify it and get fixed.”
