Friday, July 8, 2011
Dodge Motorsports PR
Kentucky Speedway
Feed the Children 300 Post-Race Quotes
NASCAR Nationwide Series
BRAD KESELOWSKI (No. 22 Discount Tire Dodge Challenger R/T) Race Winner “Our Discount Tire Dodge Challenger was really fast tonight. It was a complete package tonight; a great Discount Tire Dodge Challenger with great fuel mileage. Great pit stops. Just a complete package. That’s what it takes to win. These guys are good. Carl (Edwards) and his team have been really fast all year. Kevin (Harvick) was no exception and Kyle (Busch). It feels good to win here in Kentucky.”
HOW TOUGH WAS IT IN THOSE FINAL LAPS? “It made for a lot of work. It was good. I was nervous.”
WHAT DID YOU THINK WHEN KEVIN HARVICK LOOKED LIKE HE WAS COMING TO PIT ROAD FOR FUEL AND DECIDED NOT TO? “Did he do that on purpose? That was my thought. I wasn’t sure if he was playing games and if he was, I wasn’t sure what that game was. Essentially, it opened the box up for me to be more aggressive saving fuel. I don’t know if we would have run out or not. It’s hard to tell. That opened up the box for us and kind of guaranteed us that we’d be OK.
DOES FUEL MEAN MORE NOW THAN TIRES? “I think it’s different at different tracks. I came down here and did get to do the tire test for the Cup side. I applauded Goodyear at the time because I thought they brought an excellent tire. You saw this weekend that the track took rubber extremely quick. What’s been different this week is that instead of taking rubber and still going like you see at Dover and Martinsville and building on top of the race track, this particular track-tire combination took rubber immediately and then stopped. It stopped building that gray area that made it multi-grooved and allowed you to race really well. I think this is a really good tire in that sense.”
HOW PRECISELY CAN YOU TELL HOW MUCH FUEL THAT YOU’RE SAVING? “I would like to say it’s a special gauge that we put in the car. I call it an “assonometer”.that’s my ass. That’s my gauge. We calibrate it every once in a while. When it hits the wall, it needs new calibration.
“I felt like we were pretty good the very first run. I didn’t think that I was good enough to beat the 60. It was kind of weird. I don’t know if he played possum at certain points of the race because he was really coming hard there at the end, from what I could see in my mirror. It’s hard to say. You never know when you have a race-winning car, especially when it transfers from day into night. I certain felt better about it when I got clean air. You get that clean air and these cars are just phenomenal to driver and mine was not exception. My car was really, really fast.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE RACE TRACK; WAS THE OUTSIDE LANE BETTER THAN THE INSIDE? HOW DO YOU SEE THAT PLAYING OUT TOMORROW? “The groove is always moving around. I’m sure it will move around in the Cup race probably more than it did in the Nationwide race today. I think the big thing is talking about the rubber and how it lays down. When the track lays rubber down like it did or has this weekend and doesn’t put the powder down on the track, just rubber in the track, the grooves tend to open up and the cars tend to be a little more predictable and you tend to be able to run more lanes. I think that’s what you saw here. I think you really can run the top or the bottom. At the end, when Harvick was running me down, he was running the bottom and I think that it’s a testament to the tire combination.”
TODD GORDON (crew chief, No. 22 Discount Tire Dodge Challenger R/T) “I think as you watch the race unfold, at the start of the race, we took an opportunity to take a fuel-only stop, saw some stuff during the Truck race yesterday with Parker (Kligerman) and just paid attention to what’s going on. I saw that we fired off really well with scuff tires and knew that we just needed to play the race backwards which is something that Brad and I talked about before the race started. We knew that we wanted to put it backwards and took tires when we needed too. That put us in a position that we could maintain track position.
“It’s good to get going. We had a monkey on our back to start the season, just seemed like we couldn’t put a whole situation together. I think we did that today. We had the dominant race car, ran fast laps and had the strategy at the end. Brad has done a great job all year. Discount Tire had done a wonderful job supporting us, Ruby Tuesday too. It’s a thrill to be here with Brad Keselowski and Penske Racing. We were about a lap short; he saved us a bunch earlier. We probably had enough to run a green-white-checkered if we had to. It’s a total package. These guys do a fabulous job.”
WOULD YOU HAVE RUN OUT OF GAS IF KEVIN DID MISS HIS ATTEMPT TO PIT? “No. By calculations when we looked at the whole mileage number, you play a race pretty conservatively. I told Brad five laps (short) to start with just to make sure that we saw what we saw. As the race unfolded, we saved enough to get there. I feel like the car was fast enough to separate ourselves and save a little. Brad did a great job of that. Where we were at that point, I don’t think we were in jeopardy of it (running out of fuel). You always have to count on a green-white-checkered flag situation and those are the laps we would have been in jeopardy.”
DOES FUEL MEAN MORE NOW THAN TIRES? “I would say that here the falloff didn’t happen, so the tire had long-run speed and would repeat. So fuel was the premium tonight. We took fuel only on that last stop and still maintained our lead and kept our relative speed.”
TRAVIS GEISLER (Director of Competition, Penske Racing) “It was a great win for everyone on that 22 team. We wanted to get Brad (Keselowski) back to victory lane so bad and tonight was the night. There was no doubt who had the dominant car. I’m really happy for Todd (Gordon, crew chief) and all the guys who work on this car. We let Brad down a few times this year, but he kept working and working and tonight it finally paid off. His Discount Tire Dodge Challenger was really fast. Great pit stops and strategy all through the race by Todd and the guys. A great win for everyone.”
