NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
POCONO 400
POCONO RACEWAY
TEAM CHEVY POST RACE NOTES AND QUOTES
JUNE 8, 2014
DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 88 NATIONAL GUARD CHEVROLET SS – WINNER
TELL US ABOUT HOW MUCH YOU KNEW ABOUT BRAD’S ISSUES WITH THE OVERHEATING AND ALL THAT AND DID HE LET YOU BY?
“Well he didn’t want to let me by, but I don’t know if his motor was going to make it. That is unfortunate for him. He had me beat I couldn’t get to him. Just real hard to pass here. But I have lost some in some strange ways so it feels good to win one like that. I want to thank National Guard, Diet Mountain Dew, Kelley Blue Book, Chevy and Sprint and all our partners. Thank Rick and Linda (Hendrick), my team, what a great bunch of guys. We always have to thank those guys, but man when I talk about my team I really mean it. These guys are a hell of a group, obviously Steve Letarte and everybody back home watching. I don’t have much to dotomorrow so tonight is going to be a long one.”
BRAD WANTED A LITTLE BIT OF HELP TO GET THAT PAPER OFF BUT YOU WEREN’T ABOUT TO HELP HIM WERE YOU?
“Well he knew I wasn’t going to do that. I mean I got to try to win the race. We had a little temperature on our car too at the end. I don’t know if we had something on the grille. Brad definitely had the better car and I am definitely owning up to that, but we won the race. We are definitely going to enjoy it. It goes into the books and helps us toward the Chase. We were there all day running great. We had a fast car just never really got that track position until the end. You’ve got to be there and we were. Somebody had an issue so we capitalized. I’m real proud of my team and especially Steve Letarte. This is his last year. I’ve never won here. I’ve never been here, this is amazing. I can mark this one off.”
A LOT OF STUFF TO TALK ABOUT LET’S START WITH THAT PASS THAT YOU MADE ON BRAD KESELOWSKI AND WHAT YOU SAW COMING OR IF YOU SAW IT COMING:
“I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t think he would go up there to try to get the stuff off his grille. I don’t think he ended up getting it off his grille. I was surprised that he did that, but he felt like he needed to I suppose. He definitely had the race won up to that point. I was having a hard time making any ground on him, but we both had real competitive cars and it feels good to run well and capitalize on some else’s issue. We have told ourselves many times we just need to be around toward the end of these races and we can capitalize. We did today. I’m proud of my team. Steve Letarte and the whole crew, this is the best crew. I have so much fun with these guys. We all get along so well and I couldn’t be having more fun driving race cars I will tell you that right now. I want to thank the National Guard, Diet Mountain Dew, Chevy, Sprint, Kelley Blue Book all our partners. Just real happy to be in Victory Lane I have never won at Pocono so this is a thrill for me.”
WHAT DOES THIS SECOND WIN MEAN FOR YOU AND THIS FIRST WIN AT POCONO?
“Well I just love winning with these guys. Wins aren’t really anything unless you can enjoy it with good people. Without good people around there is not much to them. I’m having the best time of my life. I think the rest of the crew could say the same. Steve has got to be enjoying himself this year. We have worked to get to this point to be in position to win races. It’s great to finally do it. We didn’t have it won, Brad (Keselowski) definitely had it won and I definitely understand that, but we have got to be around at the end and we got the team poised and ready for that. We capitalized today.”
IT LOOKED LIKE YOU HAD SOME DEBRIS ON YOUR CAR TOO WERE YOU WORRIED ABOUT THAT?
“My temperatures were going up, but I guess not as bad as Brad’s. I had a little bit of temperature, but nothing to worry about. We definitely had some red gauges, but they were still within good reason to stand on it and give it hell. I looked in the mirror and saw Brad didn’t have his debris off either. We were both going to chug along there and see who made it.”
KURT BUSCH, NO. 41 HAAS AUTOMATION CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 3RD
ON HIS RUN:
“It was a great top-five run. Qualifying throughout the race, the finish, restarts were good to us. Thanks to Daniel (Knost, crew chief) for leading us in a new direction today. I feel like we shed some new team skin today and ran up front. Haas Automation has been great, State Water Heaters, Chevrolet and Monster everybody has been wonderful. We just need to start building this chemistry as a team if we want to be a championship contender. Today is a perfect type of day.”
KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 TARGET CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 5TH
YOU CAME AWAY WITH A TOP-FIVE ON YOUR FIRST TRIP TO POCONO:
“Yeah, I will take it. That was a lot better finish than I thought we were going to have today. I thought after Happy Hour we would have a 15th-place car. I knew from the drop of the green we had a really good Target Chevy. Especially throughout the race got better and better. There on that last run I was really good. I thought I was better than Denny (Hamlin), but he was just doing a really good job of keeping his car in the right spot to get me tight behind him. A top-five here at the ‘Tricky Triangle’, a win yesterday in the ARCA series I guess you could only ask for a little bit of a better weekend.”
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S/KOBALT TOOLS CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 6TH
TALK ABOUT HOW THIS TEAM FOUGHT THROUGH ADVERSITY TODAY:
“We started deep in the field and got ourselves up towards the front. Then we did a two-tire stop. We just didn’t know who was coming into their pit stall. The No. 9 was coming into his pit stall and we were going out. Chad (Knaus, crew chief) thought he was on his way out. He told me there were two out there, but I didn’t know the No. 9 was trying to get in and made contact. I don’t know who it is on the No. 51 car, but God was looking out for him today. My car somehow pivoted around that right-front tire changer and carrier and I didn’t hit those guys. I was scared to death I was going to hurt someone. From there we just went to work and do what the No. 48 does best and grind it out. We thought we had a shot at it. Chad had a great strategy, but that last set of tires was just way too tight and I couldn’t get it done. I couldn’t get it done with my Lowe’s/KOBALT Tools Chevrolet, but so stoked for my teammate Dale, Jr. to be in Victory Lane. I’m going to go over there and have a beer with those guys.”
WHAT HAPPENED ON PIT ROAD?
“We took two (tires) and we were leaving pretty quick and Chad (Knaus) was spotting me out of the pit and took full responsibility for it. He didn’t know the No. 9 (Marcos Ambrose) was ahead of us pulling in. He thought the No. 9 had left his pit box. So it was just confusion on pit road. I feel terrible for the No. 9 guys and hurting their race car and taking them out of a good day. It hurt out race car too. But most of all, there was a tire changer and tire carrier on the right front of the NO. 51 car and how I didn’t hit those guys is beyond me. And I am so thankful I didn’t hit those guys. It wouldn’t have been good.”
HOW DID IT AFFECT YOUR CAR AFTER THAT?
“We had some aero stuff to sort out. After the second pit stop working on it the car was a lot better. I honestly forgot about it until I felt like we had a shot to win. And Chad made a great call to give me two (tires) to get the track position; just right-side tires were way tighter than what we anticipated in the end and I was kind of hanging on in that last run.”
ON THAT RESTART, IT JUST WOULDN’T GO OR WHAT? WHEN YOU FELL BACK FROM LIKE THIRD TO SIXTH?
“Oh, I hit the rev chip. We’ve got a big gap between second and third on your shifting here, because we use third on track. So, from second to third is a big gap and I was trying to get it up as high as I could to accelerate hard in third and I hit the chip and just lost all my forward momentum.”
JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DRIVE TO END HUNGER CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 8TH
YOU HAD A SOLID DAY GOING WHAT EVENTUALLY DERAILED YOU?
“I guess there were a couple of things. Mainly we just couldn’t catch any breaks on the restarts. I had I don’t know whatever happened to the No. 22, something happened to the No. 27 it was just kind of chaos. But our Drive to End Hunger Chevrolet was actually really quick. I thought that was consistent all day long the pit stops were fantastic. When guys got out of sequence there it just really got our track position off. Once we lost that track position it was so hard to regain it. It was a great effort, great race car again. Ultimately the restarts even when I got a good one something would happen somebody would about wreck in front of me or dive in there four-wide and just cause a mess. We just couldn’t come out on the good end of that side of it. That is what you have got to do to be good. Congrats to Junior that is awesome to see him win here at Pocono. He had a strong car all day. Those guys played the pit strategy perfectly and it really paid off. That is great to see.”
MARTIN TRUEX, JR., NO. 78 FURNITURE ROW CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 9TH
ON HIS RUN:
“We had a decent car all day. I made a mistake on one of the restarts and lost a bunch of track position. But on the last restart (went from 13th to 8th) I was in the right line and got a little lucky. Earlier in the race we were unlucky on the restarts. What goes around comes around. We got the car going really good at one point of the race but I hit the wall, which made the car really tight and we had to fix it on the next pit stop. That incident put us behind, but we battled back, and our pit crew did another great job. Overall it was a tough day. But all-in-all we’re gaining on it. Finishing with a top-10 after a tough weekend is a good sign for our Furniture Row Racing team. We learned a lot here and hopefully that will help us in the future. It was our second straight top-10, but we had top-10 cars all year but we were not able to finish races. The last two weeks we finished the races and got some decent results. We’re gaining but still have a ways to get to where we want to be.”
TONY STEWART, NO. 14 MOBIL 1/BASS PRO SHOPS CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 13TH
CAN YOU TAKE US THROUGH THE ISSUE YOU HAD ON PIT ROAD?
“100 percent driver error. I don’t know how I got through the lights like I did, but I got to where I blew through all the lights and didn’t have any on the tach so I had no clue that I was over it. It was 100 percent driver error. I gave my guys grief last week with a sixth-place run thought we should run in the top three and then I threw it away this week. Had an awesome Mobil 1 Chevy all day, all from Friday through Sunday so great race just the driver screwed it up this week.”
GREG ZIPADELLI, COMPETITION DIRECTOR, STEWART-HAAS RACING:
“We had a strong weekend as far as speed and all the things and did well working together. We had a good day going and it just hasn’t been our year so far. It was encouraging to have all four cars have speed all weekend. We’ve had one or two or three, but never all of them. They all did a good job. It’s just a shame.”
WAS IT AS JUST ABOUT THE MOTORS AS WHAT YOU GUYS WERE DOING WITH YOUR CARS?
“The Hendrick Motors are always good but I think our race cars were good. There was a lot of the day when they ran one-two-three. So, I feel like our team has done a good job and they’ve built really good cars, everybody at the shop. We’ve just got to figure out how to close the deal.”
HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN ALL THE THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED TO KEVIN HARVICK THIS YEAR?
“Yeah, I don’t know. I try not to think about it too much because it gets frustrating and because I really don’t think there’s an answer to it.”
KASEY KAHNE, NO. 5 GREAT CHIPS CHEVROLET SS – INVOLVED IN A MULTI-CAR ACCIDENT ON LAP 142
WHAT HAPPENED?
“Well I had just passed Kyle (Busch) and I caught (Ryan) Newman I was passing him off Turn 3. We were side-by-side so Kyle was able to get a good draft down the straightaway. We got to Turn 1 and I was on the outside and then he knew if he didn’t clear me there then I would pass him back because I just had. He just floored it and didn’t care there was someone out there and ran me right in the wall. We both ended up wrecking. I think he wrecked a little bit, but I hit a good bit harder once we hit my car just went hard right.”
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