Sunday, Nov. 6, 2011
Texas Motor Speedway
Dodge Motorsports PR
AAA Texas 500
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Post-Race Quotes
BRAD KESELOWSKI (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger) Finished 24th “Just a tough night for the Miller Lite Dodge team. We couldn’t get the speed out of our car that we needed and fought all day for track position.
“We lost the handling on the car right in the middle part of the race and adjustments were made to make it better and it just made it worse. It was unfortunate.”
DID YOU APOLOGIZE TO THE 11 FOR THE CONTACT ON PIT ROAD? “It was my fault 100 percent. I’m going to walk down there and make sure that he knows that I feel bad about that.”
WHAT HAPPENED? “It started with the 39 who didn’t even try to get into his pit box. (He) made ever attempt that he could to block us in.”
PAUL WOLFE, (crew chief, No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger) “The first part of the race, we lost our track position and that really hurt us. We made some adjustments in the second and third runs and got ourselves back inside the top five. Just about then, the track started to tighten up on us and we didn’t do a good enough job staying with it. As a result, we fell back to 10th. We battled all day and then we had the incident on pit road with the 11 (Denny Hamlin) car and lost all of our track position. Brad backed up, got into the 11 and it just was downhill from there. It was a struggle. The Miller Lite guys worked hard all night. It just wasn’t our day.”
WITH THE CHASE CHAMPIONSHIP ALMOST OUT OF REACH, YOU HAVE TO BE VERY PROUD OF YOUR TEAM THIS SEASON? “Very much so. It’s been a rewarding year and I’m proud to work with everyone on this Miller Lite Dodge team. We still have races to go and I’m positive that we will approach them with the same amount of energy we have all year. We won’t lie down. We’re going to bring fast race cars to the track the next few weeks and go after some wins.”
KURT BUSCH (No. 22 AAA Dodge Charger) Finished 30th “We just missed it today. We started outside the top 10 and really never had the car today to compete up front. Our AAA Dodge was tight, then loose, then tight again. We were just all over the board. We tried spring rubbers in, spring rubbers out. We even changed bump stops, but nothing seemed to work. I had a handful all night. Then with about 100 laps to go, we got hit on pit road and messed up the right front quarter panel. The guys patched it the best that they could.
“On that last caution, we pitted for right side and packed it with fuel and Steve (Addington) put me in fuel saving mode from there on out. We came up short with four laps to go, but we went for the win. We just came up short.”