Friday, Sept. 23, 2011
Dodge Motorsports PR
New Hampshire Motor Speedway
Sylvania 300
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
Final Qualifying Quotes
KURT BUSCH (No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger R/T) Qualified 5th “New car blues. We’re really just struggling finding the front-end, the settle point. We’re either dragging the splitter or it’s five feet off the ground, literally. It’s just been a weird day with travels, new car. We just had to go cold turkey at it. We threw the July qualifying setup at it. We ran a 28.30 in July. We ran a 28.30 again. I just don’t know where that’s going to put us.”
NOW YOU MUST LOOK AHEAD TO USING THE PRACTICES EFFICENTLY. “Yeah we know the sway bar arms and some other things were giving us issues and the bump stops. I mean it’s this wonderful splitter that we have and you got to battle around it some days. When you have a new car you never know what travels you’re going to get sometimes.”
IF YOU HAD YOUR CHOICE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO RACE IN THE CHASE HERE AT NEW HAMPSHIRE EARLY OR LATE? “This is a great spot for it. This is track is fun and the way that the racetrack races you can pass if you have a fast racecar. And if you don’t you’ve got to find strategy to try and find a way to win. But this is a fun place and I enjoy coming up to New England. If we did it much later than this we might be battling snow instead of rain.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T) Qualified 16th ARE YOU DISAPPOINTED WITH THAT LAP? “Yeah a little bit. Not a terrible lap, not a good lap either, just kind of okay. I thought it was a little faster than that. I was a little surprised.”
IF QUALIFYING IS CUT SHORT BY RAIN, WOULD THAT BE AN ADVANTAGE FOR YOU GUYS? “It’s kind of a wash for us. We’re gonna end up about 15th either way so kind of a wash.”
ROBBY GORDON (No. 7 SPEED Energy Dodge Charger R/T) Qualified 36th ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THAT LAP? “Yeah, I mean, 28.99 is a decent lap for us. I’m going to say the pole is going to be, I don’t know, maybe a 30 or a 40 so it’s going to be a half-second. We still have some work to do but like I said, when we start getting to a position where we can qualify up front then worry about racing again.”