Sunday, Sept. 25, 2011
Dodge Motorsports PR
New Hampshire Motor Speedway
Sylvania 300
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
Final Race Quotes
BRAD KESELOWSKI (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T) Finished 2nd “I feel really good about this one. We struggled a little bit this weekend, but we executed and that’s what these races are about. We’ve got some work to do on these short-track races, but we got some mile-and-a-half’s coming up where we’ve been really, really good. I’m proud just to get through what looked to be a rough weekend with an awesome finish. I’m proud of my Miller Lite Dodge team. Getting the right adjustments in the car all race and doing all those things that it takes. It’s been a good roll.”
YOU ARE THIRD IN POINTS. “That’s pretty good. I think I left here in the spring like 25th or something. That’s a lot of points to gain in 10 races.”
THIS WAS ANOTHER ROCK SOLID PERFORMANCE FOR YOU AND THIS TEAM. “We did the things we needed to do. We weren’t as fast as we wanted to be but we worked on our car, adjusted on it and got it where we could race with it there at the end and just had good strategy and pulled out a second. We probably weren’t a second-place car but we worked hard and made something happen.”
YOU GAINED A BUNCH OF GROUND IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP CHASE. “Absolutely, that’s exactly what we need to do. I’m proud of my team.”
YOU ARE GOING TO DOVER NEXT WEEK WITH A BUNCH OF MOMENTUM ON THIS TEAM’S SIDE. DO YOU LIKE THAT PLACE? “Absolutely, you know, I think Dover, you can’t help but compare it to Bristol and after winning Bristol I feel really good going there.”
YOU RAN OUTSIDE THE TOP 2O AT THE BEGINNING OF THE RACE AND THEN YOU MADE SOME NIFTY PIT STRATEGY AND IT TURNED YOUR WHOLE DAY AROUND. “Yeah, you know, we were able to pass cars the run before last and we drove up from maybe 25th to 16th or so and caught the yellow and moved up to about seventh, maybe we were eighth. We drove up from eighth to maybe fourth so we did pass some cars, did a lot of good things. Just all in all great execution at the end.”
YOU HAD A GREAT POINTS DAY. “Absolutely and very happy with what we were able to do here today with the Miller Lite Dodge.”
HOW BIG IS THIS RACE AS FAR AS GETTING YOU SOME MOMENTUM GOING TO DOVER AND KANSAS? “Well you know I think we’ve ran really well at the mile-and-a-halfs. We needed to get through the races where we didn’t feel like we were very good at. And these first two tracks were those and we did it. It just gets us in position and we’re just executing very well and just another good sign, and good momentum. Good mojo.”
YOU JUMPED UP THREE POSITIONS IN POINTS TO THIRD, HIGHEST EVER. YOUR CREW CHIEF WAS STRESSED OUT THIS MORNING ABOUT YOUR CAR. DID IT GET THAT MUCH BETTER OR WAS IT ALL STRATEGY? “We made some good adjustments with about 120, 130 to go, and it drove up into fourth, which I was really proud of our team for that. Still played a little strategy, used the fuel stuff to get up to second but we were a legitimate top-10 car, not quite a second-place car. But proud of the effort, proud of how we took a track we were weak at and got a finish at it and that’s what this Chase is all about. My Miller Lite Dodge team, they’re getting it done.”
PAUL WOLFE (Crew Chief, No. 22 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T) IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RACE YOU RAN OUTSIDE THE TOP 20. HOW DID YOU GET FROM THERE TO A SECOND-PLACE FINISH? “What we’ve done well this year is stay focused, try to stay calm. I know it’s tough for Brad when he’s back there running. Kept making adjustments to our race car each stop and got to point there when everybody was spread out there I could see that our lap speeds were good enough to run in the top-10 so as soon as the opportunity was there to stay out and get the track position that’s what we did. It’s hard to stay out when you’re car is not close and at the very beginning we weren’t where we needed to be. We kept working on it and as we got our car where I felt like we were competitive then we took the opportunity to do the strategy call there to get up front. And once we got up front and worked on our car each stop we were solidly a top-five car there. Everybody at the engine shop has done great with giving us great fuel mileage. We played our windows there at the end and had plenty of fuel left.”
DO FUEL MILEAGE RACES PLAY TO YOUR ADVANTAGE BECAUSE OF THE FUEL ECONOMY OF YOUR DODGE CHARGERS? “It doesn’t hurt that’s for sure and we see from short tracks to mile-and-a-halfs, it doesn’t matter where we are, it all comes down to fuel mileage. These Dodge engines seem to be good in that area and not giving up a lot of speed to do it. That’s the key thing – having good fuel mileage and being able to have the speed to go with it and I feel like we had that today.”
IS NEW HAMPSHIRE ONE OF THE TOUGHEST RACES FOR A CREW CHIEF TO CALL? “Honestly, it seems like every week they are the same on making calls. I didn’t feel like this was a lot harder. What makes races harder to call is when you don’t have a great racecar to start the race. It seems like when you have good racecars it makes it easier to call the race. Like I said we got ours there finally about halfway through the race and it was just doing what we had to do.”
HOW IMPORTANT IS THIS FINISH TODAY FOR YOU AND THE TEAM MOVING FORWARD? “It’s huge, especially as bad as we were in practice all weekend. We didn’t qualify as well as we thought we should have. It seems like the last two weeks we haven’t started the race so well but everybody stayed focused, stayed calm and he was able to be there when it counts and obviously that’s what it’s going to take. To have top fives in the first two races is big. It gives us momentum and we feel like going back to Dover we had a top-10 car there the first race. I think we finished 12th but had a top-10 car and we feel that we can improve on that and be a better race for us hopefully next week and hopefully have a shot to win.”
KURT BUSCH (No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger R/T) Finished 22nd “It was a frustrating day. Our Shell Pennzoil Dodge was certainly a handful. The front tires felt like they were on skids and the car was plowing through the corners. We were late going through inspection and that set the tone for our day. We were able to stay out and lead some laps under green and Steve Addington and the guys kept making changes and got our Dodge better by the end of the race. I just wish we could have started the race with the car that good.”
TRAVIS GEISLER (Director of Competition, Penske Racing) THE CAR OF KURT BUSCH DID NOT PASS INSPECTION THE FIRST TIME THROUGH PRIOR TO TODAY’S RACE. NASCAR DID NOT RELEASE THE CAR UNTIL 10 MINUTES BEFORE THE ENGINES WERE FIRED FOR TODAY’S RACE “NASCAR wasn’t 100 percent happy with what they saw on one of their gauges that kind of checks where the rear end is in the car, so we had to do a little work on it. … It’s a ‘go’ or ‘no-go’ type of gauge and it didn’t go. We needed to make sure that it went. It wasn’t like there was any gray area that NASCAR was saying maybe we were or weren’t legal. We weren’t right yet. [We had] to kind of do it on their schedule to make it work the way they wanted. Everybody knew what needed to be done to be fixed. It wasn’t a mystery of what was wrong or a panic of whether or not we were going to be able to get the car fixed. It was just a matter of getting it fixed and getting it done in the timeline that NASCAR wanted to see, and they worked with us and got the car through. … I don’t think they were happy with us having to go around. We were pushing a little bit time-wise for their schedule, so we just had to deal with that and fortunately we got everything fixed and we’re going to make a good day out of it.”
