In five previous starts at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, A.J. Allmendinger had yet to finish inside of the top 15. That changed on Sunday, though, as he would finish the Kobalt 400 in the sixth spot.
“To come out here, we got to do the test, the Goodyear tire test in January, I thought that helped us out a little bit, but ultimately I was really happy as the weekend progressed,” Allmendinger commented. “We kept on getting a little bit better and better, weren’t as good as we wanted to be kind of over the course of the weekend, but I think the RCR Alliance really helped. Obviously the 31 (Ryan Newman) and the 78 (Martin Truex Jr.) cars were really fast, and we kind of — second practice yesterday switched over to more their setup, and that really kind of woke the car up and got us in a good place. So having that alliance, and you see our power and everything we get with Chevy really, really helped this Clorox Chevy throughout the course of the day.”
Allmendinger broke through and surprised many last year when he won at Watkin’s Glen to qualify for the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Though, outside of that performance, Allmendinger has been a solid a top-15 competitor. This race, though, breaks him into the top-10, and he feels it’s one of the best races that he has had with JTG Daughtry.
“Car was consistent all day,” he continued. “We kept kind of chipping away at it. Right at the end there, I thought we really had a fast race car, was kind of catching the guys and a few more laps might have been able to get a couple more guys.
“Overall really pleased. You know, everybody on this 47 team, my crew chief Brian Burns, he’s just working hard. My engineer, Tony Palmer and everybody on the team, all of our sponsors, Clorox and Kingsford, Busch’s Beans, what else we got on there, Hungry Jack potatoes, Shore Lunch, Better Than Bouillon? What else we got on there? Scott products, thank you. They’re all right here. Everything else, there’s a lot of — everybody, you’ve got it, right here. So there’s a lot of good sponsors on our car, and I’m pretty excited about that.”
Compared to running from 15th to 20th last year, Allmendinger says that their goal as a team is to continue to produce these kind of races and getting better each weekend. He feels this success this weekend is a combination of their alliance with Richard Childress Racing and stronger cars that JTG is producing this year.
“Last year we were just always behind trying to build a race car. We did the alliance so late,” Allmendinger noted. “More than anything, we’re just so much more prepared and ahead of where we were last year of building race cars and getting the bodies right and getting all those little details to go from that 20th place car to start breaking in the top 10. For us I think that’s kind of where we’re ahead right now.”
Beyond having strong racecars, they have also improved their pit crew – as evident by Allmendinger always coming out near the front after each stop. He credits that success to their jackman and pit crew coach Michael Klein.
“He’s been at the 47 team for, gosh, almost since it started really. He bleeds for all of us, for Tad and Jody and Brad, and he took it to heart last year,” Allmendinger commented. “He was upset about it, and he worked hard. We didn’t make a lot of changes. There was a couple or a few changes we made on the pit crew, but still, I would say it’s at least half the same people we had as last year, but they’ve worked hard, the whole pit crew has. They’re so much better this year. Honestly, I’m probably the weakest link for them right now. I’m trying to make sure I figure out how they want to get in the pit box and stuff like that.
“They’re doing a great job. But that’s what you have to do. When you run up front, that pit stop becomes a lot more critical than when you’re running 20th. As a group we’ve all got to get better together, but Michael Klein, he’s put it on these guys. They’ve worked hard, and it’s showing.”
