Saturday, August 4, 2012
RAM PR
Kentucky Speedway
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series
Pocono Mountains 125
Post-Race Quotes
http://twitter.com/teamdodge, www.media.chrysler.com, www.drivesrt.com
Parker Kligerman (No. 29 Cooper Standard RAM) Finished 7th YOU SCORED A TOP 10 AND GAINED A FEW POINTS ON THE LEADER. NOT A BAD DAY. “No, not at all. You’ve got to take days like that when were 17th in practice and qualifying and just say hey, let’s make the most of it. And everyone on this Cooper Standard Ram team did that and I’m proud of all these guys. They don’t give up. We know where we need to improve and where we can be better and we’re going to work on it and we’re going to do the best that we can. We want to fight for this championship so bad and we know we’ve given a little bit up and we know whom we’re up against. I feel like if we can get our stuff together and go out there and challenge them for the victory.”
DID YOU TAKE A BIG SWING, SETUP WISE, AT THE TRUCK TODAY? “We took a big swing from practice to qualifying and that was our big move. From there we just decided to tweak on this and hope for the best. Doug Randolph did a great job with pit strategy and with the adjustments and came out almost with a top five. We restarted there in the top five and starting 17th you don’t have that a lot of times.”
YOU HAD A CLOSE RACE WITH TY DILLON IN THE CLOSING LAPS. “Ty is a clean racer and we’ve raced a bunch this season. We always seem to end up in these last lap duels and hopefully we can do that for the championship at the end of the year because he’s a real clean race and I like racing him. Those guys work real hard and we know they’re one of our main competitors.”
HOW CLOSE ARE YOU RUNNING CONSISTENTLY INSIDE THE TOP FIVE? “The mile-and-a-half stuff is obviously our strength. It’s where our motor seems to wants to be in the high RPM ranges and places like this where we really dip out of the RPM range it hurts us and we struggle. You know it’s not the fault of anyone. It’s just the situation we’re in and we know where our strengths and weaknesses are. The brunt of the schedule is mile-and-a-halfs. I think we can be good on the short tracks, just get away from these unique places like Pocono and Iowa. I don’t think we’ve got the right strengths to be a top five contender there.”
Doug Randolph (Crew Chief, No. 29 Cooper Standard RAM) “We had a really decent day. You know we really struggled yesterday in practice and never quite hit on anything. Made a few changes overnight, didn’t get the qualifying result we wanted and obviously we battled that most of the day trying to get track position. In the end seventh-place you can’t really complain about with what all we went through this weekend.”
THIS IS A SHORT AND UNIQUE RACE. IS THIS AN ODD RACE FOR A CREW CHIEF TO CALL? “It really is. I mean, you almost call this one like a road course because track position is so important. We had a game plan and you know we sort of got lucky on the first stop. We timed our fuel. We got enough for the second can but the first can wasn’t full. Actually on one of the cautions we came in and everybody behind us came in so we were able to top off and make sure we had no issues with fuel the rest of the race. As many cautions as there were we would have been fine anyway. All in all it was a good day.”
