Sunday, June 17, 2012
Dodge PR
Quicken Loans 400
Michigan International Speedway
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
Post-Race Quotes
http://twitter.com/teamdodge, www.media.chrysler.com, www.drivesrt.com
Brad Keselowski (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T) Finished 13th “We made a lot of progress from where the weekend started and I think we were better than a 13th-place car. We worked through some things that were a bit of a struggle. I think all-in-all our car was very respectable. We kind of fought some bad breaks and I felt like we were probably a fifth to 10th-place car and came home with a 13th. That’s kind of been the story of our last few weeks. We’ve fought through a lot of bad breaks; some of them just luck and some of them self-inflicted and we’ve been able to get finishes that you can’t cry about. I feel like when we get a little bit of speed in our cars and when I execute just a little bit better we’ll get ourselves back in victory lane. I can’t be happy with a 13th-place day but I can certainly think about how it can be worse.”
WAS THE KEY TODAY KEEPING THE RIGHT-REAR TIRE ON THE CAR? “Yeah, we blistered a right-rear tire on one of those runs and that put us behind for the whole race. It took a while to get back from that but we were never really able to fully recover. Without that I think we would have got about sixth or seventh-place day.”
HOW WAS YOUR RACE ON THE NEW LEFT-SIDE TIRES? “You know I don’t think the left-side tire was that big of a story. I think the right-side tire and the blistering on it was more of a story. It got us that one run, unfortunately, but that’s just the way it goes.”
WHAT DID YOU SEE WHEN JOEY LOGANO WRECKED IN FRONT OF YOU? “Yeah I did, I caught a little break I guess if you can consider not wrecking a break. It just looked like everybody was racing hard and somebody got together.”
Paul Wolfe (Crew Chief, No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T) YOU HAD A RESPECTABLE FINISH TODAY. “Yeah, I guess when you look at how Thursday started off and Friday didn’t get much better and qualifying wasn’t great. We really sat down and all the guys worked hard at looking at the data on the new tire and made a lot of changes to the car and we were respectable in that last practice last evening, which was encouraging, and started off the race and was really fast and felt good about it. We got our track position and then that one run where we had the issue with the right-rear tire just got us off sequence and unfortunately nothing really fell our way from there to be able to really recover well from it. To get a 13th out of it was really OK.”
WAS THE KEY TO THE RACE TAKING CAR OF THE RIGHT-REAR? “It seemed that way. We weren’t able to have all scuff tires. It seemed like sticker tires were the ones that guys were having issues with and unfortunately that’s what it was for us as well.”
IT SEEMED LIKE YOU WERE ABLE TO PASS CARS IN TRAFFIC TODAY. “I think that’s fair to say. It’s all track position here and everything is pretty tough but he was able to move forward on some runs which like I said was encouraging. We never got that break to get the track position back and we did what we could and got a decent finish out of it.”
A.J. Allmendinger (No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger R/T) Finished 19th “We just had a tough day. I’m driving my butt off and there’s always seems to be a glimmer of hope during the race and we just can’t capitalize on it. We were really strong in the Shell/Pennzoil Dodge on the first run but never could take advantage of good track position. We’re running on such a razors edge that it’s tough to describe what’s going on with the car. One run we get loose, the next we’re tight. It’s confusing as heck to describe.”
WAS IT HARD TO ADJUST TO THE NEW LEFT-SIDE TIRE? DID YOU HAVE TO DRIVE DIFFERENTLY TO SAVE THE RIGHT REAR FROM BLISTERING? “No. Everybody has the same tires. We just ran on it worse. I’m not sure what else to do. Some guys are fast. Some struggled a bit. We were kind of all over the map. Once we lost track position we could never make the car right again to gain on the field. We just need to keep trying to get better. It was a tough day.”
Todd Gordon (Crew Chief, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger R/T) “It started on Thursday. We just didn’t find balance in either of our Penske Dodges this weekend. Struggled with speed there Thursday and then the tire change I thought put us back in the ballpark last night. I thought the Shell/Pennzoil Dodge had some speed yesterday. Found some balance and thought we at least had something to work with. You know, it’s just crazy on these new paves. I haven’t really gotten a handle on the swings that we get in balance and what stickers do. We got really, really loose on a set of right-side stickers there and that just kind of backed us up. We came to pit road because we were a little loose in that run and we were trying to shorten it up and fix it and the 18 (Kyle Busch) run into the right-rear of us. It wrinkled up the right-rear quarter panel. Minimum speed here is 180 miles per hour. I mean, aerodynamics play a large role here. It’s a tough day but we’ll just go on next week to Sonoma and road race ‘em because that’s what we do. This one is over; you can’t do anything about it. We’ll look at notes, look at the chassis setups and go back and talk to all the different departments at the shop about how we can get a little smarter because it seems like that Hendrick bunch has got a handle on this skirt trim that they’ve got us on.”
