Sunday, July 29, 2012
Dodge PR
Crown Royal Presents the Curtiss Shaver 400 at The Brickyard
Indianapolis Motor Speedway
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
Post-Race Quotes
http://twitter.com/teamdodge, www.media.chrysler.com, www.drivesrt.com
Brad Keselowski (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T) Finished 9th “We had excellent pit strategy. Paul Wolfe and the team should be very proud of that. I just made too many mistakes. It’s hard to be mad with a top 10. I’m not mad, but no, I’m not happy. I want to win these races. I want to be a legit contender to win the big races and we were today. I just didn’t close it out. We had a strong shot at getting a top two or three and didn’t. I don’t have much more to add to that.”
WHAT HAPPENDED WITH REGAN SMITH ON THE RESTART? DID YOU GUYS RUN OUT OF ROOM? “We definitely made contact. I’ll talk to him about it. I just raced the 78 (Regan Smith) real clean and didn’t get the same in return. That’s racing.”
YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE MOMENTUM YOU NEED OVER THESE NEXT SIX RACES HEADING INTO THE CHASE. “My team is doing an excellent job with race strategy. I think we’re doing a good job making good decisions. I made a few too many mistakes today to be able to win the race.”
Paul Wolfe (Crew Chief, No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T) YOU WERE ON A STRATEGY THAT COULD HAVE WON THE RACE TODAY. “Yeah, it’s unfortunate that all we ended up with was ninth. We continue to qualify poorly. That’s definitely an area we need to work on. Anyway, we had to do some kind of strategy to get our track position. When an opportunity opened up, we took advantage of it and kind of played our own race. It was working really well. We just couldn’t get going on that one restart. The 78 ran him real tight on his door and got him loose. We lost some track position but still were in position for a top five. We had a mistake on pit road. We just have to clean up the mistakes to be able to get the finishes that we deserve. It’s unfortunate. Everybody worked real hard. I know how special this place is to our boss and everybody back at the shop worked real hard to roll out a new car for this weekend. I think once we got out front there running with the 48 (Jimmie Johnson), I think we showed that we had good speed there. That last run there, the 48 on fresher tires couldn’t do anything with us and I felt good. Like I said, the mistakes on pit road we’ve got to figure out a way to eliminate those and we’ll find ourselves with better finishes.”
WERE YOU SURPRISED HOW WELL YOUR STRATEGY WORKED? “When we do it there is some thought behind it. To some people that don’t think it all through, they might think it’s careless or taking a chance but there’s a lot of thought behind it. We had it planned out what we were going to do. I’m obviously not afraid to run some different strategies. I’ve done it a lot over the last year and a half. At the same time, we feel like we make smart decisions about when to do it and when not. That’s why I think most of the time you see it play out for us.”
Sam Hornish Jr. (No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger R/T) Finished 16th “I’m proud of the effort and run we had with the Shell/Pennzoil Dodge today. This is a tough place to pass for stock cars and I thought we did a good job working our way through the field to finish 16th. It looked like we were heading toward a top-10 on our last run when the car just loosened up and we couldn’t make the passes that we needed to late in the race. I felt like our Shell/Pennzoil Dodge was better than we ended up. At the end of the day, we brought the car back in one piece and raced hard all day.”
THIS PLACE IS REALLY DIFFICULT TO PASS. WAS IT JUST A MATTER OF BEING PATIENT TODAY AND WORKING METHODICALLY THROUGH THE FIELD? “Yes. You can be three-tenths faster than the guy in front of you but when you get within five car lengths of him it’s really hard to get by. You have to keep pressuring until they make a mistake. It’s not like a lot of other tracks. That’s what makes this place so challenging.”
THE 2 CAR USED A DIFFERENT FUEL STRATEGY TODAY. DID YOU AND TODD (GORDON) TALK ABOUT DOING THE SAME? “We were going to use the same strategy but we were coming back around to pit and I felt like we had a tire going down, so we did the smart thing and made sure that we had all of our tires still up. We weren’t able to play that strategy. The 2 car was a bit better than us today.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE RANGE OF EMOTIONS OVER THE LAST FEW WEEKS? “We want to get top-10s. I want to get top-10 and top-five finishes and challenge for wins in the Shell/Pennzoil Dodge. We’re taking steps and heading in that direction. It’s going to take us a little bit of time to get there. Hopefully, I’ll get the time to be able to do that. The big thing for me is to keep bringing the car home clean, getting as much experience as I can out there and learn as much as I can. Todd is a rookie crew chief over here. I had the opportunity to work with him last year (in Nationwide) and I know that he has a lot of talent. As long as we can work together and have two guys that have that equal experience together, it should continue to move forward. I just want to get some continuity going and hopefully have the opportunity to run some more races. It’s nice to be in a Shell/Pennzoil-colored car again. I know that top 10s will come and then top fives after that.”
Todd Gordon (Crew Chief, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger R/T) YOU STARTED 24TH ON A TRACK THAT IS AWFUL DIFFICULT TO PASS ON AND STILL BROUGHT HOME A 16TH. HOW WOULD YOU ASSESS YOUR DAY? “I felt like we had decent speed in the race car and worked forward all day long. The nature of this place is that you make improvements at one or two spots at a time without being able to cycle yourself into sequence. I thought we were going to be able to use some strategy (short pit) but thought that we were getting a flat tire and didn’t get that opportunity. I thought Sam did an awesome job with the Shell/Pennzoil Dodge today. He drove forward all day. Restarts all day were hairy to get stuck on the outside line. He go three-wide a few times, guys just dive bombing the inside line which forces the outside line up. I thought it was a day that we can build off of and move forward.”
