TOYOTA NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS)
Post-Qualifying Notes & Quotes
Indianapolis Motor Speedway – July 28, 2012
1st, DENNY HAMLIN 29th, BOBBY LABONTE 3rd, JOEY LOGANO 30th, TRAVIS KVAPIL 7th, KYLE BUSCH 33rd, CLINT BOWYER 17th, MARTIN TRUEX JR. 38th, LANDON CASSILL 19th, MARK MARTIN 43rd, MIKE BLISS 26th, DAVID STREMME DNQ, JOE NEMECHEK
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FedEx Express Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing Starting Position: 1st How did you car handle on the qualifying lap? “I think our car was good. The only disadvantage we had was that the sun was out at least on the front stretch from what I could see. When you do that, it’s more about just hitting your marks. You know the track is going to be slick and you have to prepare for that. It was — the track was slick as what I thought. I just made sure I hit my marks — that was the most important thing. It was a great day for our FedEx Express Toyota. We feel like we have a car that will race good.”
Is there pressure to win at Indianapolis? “Really no pressure — it’s all about winning from this point on for our team. It’s all about getting those three bonus points that will help us in the Chase. We saw last year that three points can make a difference in winning a championship and not. We are going to try to give it everything we can and obviously a good starting spot would go a long way.”
Is it important to be fast consistently fast at Indianapolis? “You don’t want one of NASCAR’s most prestigious races to be at one of your bad race tracks, and so I feel like this is one of our strong race tracks with our team even though stats-wise it may not show that. I feel like when we come here, we can win every single time. You ask me that about a couple other tracks, I would say no. This is very, very high up on my list of tracks to want to win. I consider it as high as the Daytona 500 personally, so this is a great start to our weekend knowing we have the number one pit stall, we have obviously a fast car, and I have a great pit crew that’s going to hopefully keep me out front all day. All those things put together leads to success on Sunday, and I think we’ve got a good start to that.”
Which cars are you worried about in the race? “I think that there were a few cars. I thought a few Hendrick cars were pretty good. You know, I think my teammates, I think Kyle (Busch) and Joey (Logano) will be pretty good. Obviously, any time they qualify good, it ‘s pretty indicative of how fast their car is. I think they’re going to be the guys we’re going to be battling. Anyone who ran good at Pocono I would assume is going to be racing for a win here.
JOEY LOGANO, No. 20 Dollar General Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing Starting Position: 3rd Is there an easy section of Indianapolis? “There’s not an easy part here — this place is so line sensitive. You have to hit your line right in all four corners and that’s a really big deal so if you miss it, that’s a really big deal. It’s really tricky around here. I felt like we had a decent lap in our Dollar General Camry. The car wasn’t quite perfect, but we’ve been working on the thing really hard. We didn’t unload very good. We’ve been working hard and making improvements with it.”
Is handling or straight line speed more important? “It’s handling for sure. Straight line speed here is obviously important, but it’s not like handling. Track position is going to be the biggest name of the game.”
Were you hoping for more cloud cover during your qualifying lap? “We caught the sun, we didn’t catch the clouds. Our Dollar General Camry, we worked on it hard in practice, but we needed a lot of work on it. It’s getting better and it’s getting closer and closer. Hopefully, by the time the race starts we’ll be good.”
How important is it to qualify well at Indianapolis? “I’ve blown up in practice here twice and had to start in the back, and I know it’s really, really hard and it takes all day to get up there. So starting towards the front is going to be — I think it’s more important here than probably anywhere we go. So it should help.”
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 M&M’s Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing Starting Position: 7th How do you feel about your qualifying lap? “Denny (Hamlin) laid down a heck of a lap there. I thought a .70 (second) would be okay compared to Joey’s (Logano) .50, but a .20 is going to be pretty good. The M&M’s Camry has been good since we unloaded. We definitely have some speed in race trim I feel like so it’s just a matter of trying to qualify up front. This will probably be our best start here in a long time, but all in all we’ll just take what we get today. Clouds make a big difference, but we’ve got what we’ve got right now and we’ll just plug away at it and keep working.”
What do you expect in Sunday’s race? “I think the race on Sunday is going to be hot and slick. There will be a lot of moving around and a lot of slipping and sliding. Traffic seems to be as troublesome as it always is — I’m not sure that it’s much different. I think there’s definitely some different setups out there this year than what we’ve seen in years past. Just trying to get the back of these cars down a little bit more to get them through the air better.”
What would it mean to win at Indianapolis? “It would be a big deal. I haven’t won a big race on the NASCAR circuit yet — the Daytona 500, the Coke 600 or the Brickyard 400. Those three being the prizes of the series, it would certainly be nice to win one of them.”
What makes Indianapolis difficult? “There are so many different nuances here that make this track tough. Let alone going down the straightaway at 200 miles per hour looking down into a flat corner and making it work. Sometimes you’re tight and sometimes you’re lose — you’ve got to find that fine balance and that balance gets disrupted an awful lot in the air with the way that the air moves around these cars and what not.”
MARTIN TRUEX JR., No. 56 NAPA Auto Parts Toyota Camry, Michael Waltrip Racing Starting Position: 17th How did your car handle? “Really tight. Not good.”
How will you make your car better for tomorrow’s race? “We got a lot better today in race trim. We were off quite a bit to start. We made some good gains. Then we tried to apply them there, and we just went a little too far. I think we’ll be okay for the race. I felt decent about where we ended. I felt like we were in the ballpark — we were getting competitive. We’re set to adjust on that tonight and go race tomorrow and see what happens.”
Did you have a good off-week and are you happy to be back racing? “Always happy to be back racing. It’s nice to have an off week here and there. It was good to give the guys a little time to get prepared for this next stretch. It will be a long one — so hopefully we’ll have some good results.”
MARK MARTIN, No. 55 Aaron’s Dream Machine Toyota Camry, Michael Waltrip Racing Starting Position: 19th How was your qualifying lap? “We expected to be a little better than that. For some reason, our car got really tight there — I don’t know why. It’s a different setup for the race than it is for qualifying. I’m not as happy with the car in race trim as I would like to be, but we did make some progress with it. It didn’t seem like we were able to get the car like it was at Pocono and Michigan, which is really what I had expected. We just didn’t seem to have that going on for us. We’ll do what we can — think about it overnight and we’ll go racing tomorrow and work hard at it. The fastest car doesn’t always win and that’s a comfort to me right now.”
DAVID STREMME, No. 30 Stock Car Steel and Aluminum Toyota Camry, Inception Motorsports Starting Position: 26th
BOBBY LABONTE, No. 47 Scott Products Toyota Camry, JTG-Daugherty Racing Starting Position: 29th How was your car in qualifying? “Our Scotts Toyota — it’s a brand new race car that we brought here. David Hyder, our crew chief this weekend did a good job and the team is really doing a great job. We bring a car to the race track that has never had any documentation on it, wish we could have had some of that, but I think for the next couple of weeks we will probably have a little bit of that. Then hopefully we can get the right simulation that we need and we’ll get it better. The guys have done a good job at the shop. We had a weekend off to get ready for the next few weeks. A lot of hard work and patience has been put in by a lot of people.”
TRAVIS KVAPIL, No. 93 Burger King/Dr. Pepper Toyota Camry, BK Racing Starting Position: 30th
CLINT BOWYER, No. 15 5-hour ENERGY Toyota Camry, Michael Waltrip Racing Starting Position: 33rd
LANDON CASSILL, No. 83 Burger King/Dr. Pepper Toyota Camry, BK Racing Starting Position: 38th
MIKE BLISS, No. 19 Humphrey-Smith Racing Toyota Camry, Humphrey-Smith Racing Starting Position: 43rd
JOE NEMECHEK, No. 87 AM/FM Energy Wood & Pellet Stoves Toyota Camry, NEMCO Motorsports Starting Position: DNQ
