Sunday, June 5, 2011 Kansas Speedway Dodge Motorsports PR STP 400 Post-Race Quotes NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
BRAD KESELOWSKI (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger) Finished 1st “It was hot out there. We’ve been so close. We’ve been plugging away. We had a car that I thought was capable of winning. I had a car last week that sat on the pole and had a shot at it and just caught the wrong line on the restart. The same thing at Dover and Darlington, we could just never catch that good break. You can only put yourself in that position so many times before you’re going to catch the right break. We caught a great break today because of all the hard work by the Miller Lite team that works on these Dodge Chargers. We got great gas mileage and that doesn’t hurt either.”
HOW DID YOU SAVE FUEL TODAY? “There are some secrets to it and I just maximized them all. I had plenty (of fuel) left. The 14 car pitted the same time that I did and came out first and I thought for sure that I was going to run second. I was just hoping to hang on to second. Nobody really told me that we were leading. I don’t know when I took the lead. The scoreboard is right in the middle of the race track and I looked over and saw my name on the top with two to go. I started shaking. I’m glad that they didn’t tell me. It’s because of the hard work. It’s because of the bad finishes and the struggles that we had to get here that I really appreciate this win. I really appreciate what this means to my whole team and everybody that has helped me to get here. And to Roger Penske who put me in this ride and stuck with me through a bad year last year. We’re in good shape. A few more wins like this and we can make the Chase.”
YOU STARTED 25TH; YOU DIDN’T BACK INTO A TOP-10 RUN TODAY. “We were a top-10 car, maybe the bottom half of the top 10, but a top-10 car. You look at our runs this year, we’ve been top-five, top-10 cars at a lot of races this year and caught bad breaks. You can only put yourself in position for so long and not have something good happen to you eventually. It did today.”
ROGER PENSKE (Owner – Penske Racing) “I think we’ve made a lot of progress the last several weeks. People haven’t really noticed it, but bad break there when the 4 car stalled at Charlotte with the 2 car there and the 22 has run well. This is a real step-up for us. These are the tracks that were tough for us, the one-and-a-half miles. It looks like we have a handle on these now. We’ll see what happens.”
KURT BUSCH (No. 22 AAA Dodge Charger) Finished Ninth “I’m proud of the way that this team has run. To have a car to lead laps today and be very competitive, I was all smiles. I felt coming into the weekend that if we could pace ourselves, have good team communication, we would be competitive. it was great. There was always something in the back of my mind today that we weren’t going to win, but I’m glad that Brad Keselowski got this win for those Miller Lite guys, for Dodge. We’re really happy to keep AAA up front all day today. It’s just one of those days where you’re on the right side, sometimes you’re not. For all my guys, we’ll take this one and the points. I’m not discouraged at all.”
