NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
DUCK COMMANDER 500
TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY QUALIFYING NOTES AND QUOTES
APRIL 5, 2014
TONY STEWART, NO. 14 MOBIL 1/BASS PRO SHOPS CHEVROLET SS – POLE WINNER
“The first run I knew I didn’t run a very good lap, and then the second run really wasn’t much different than that but we knew we had a heat cycle on the tires. This thing is fast. It was good in the first run, and in the second run it was pretty good and we were second and we ran a little bit quicker. We didn’t know what we could run this third time, but I knew what (Greg) Biffle had run. The good thing is Chad Johnson (crew chief) made a really big change there to try and make it better. Like he said, ‘I was either going to make you quick, or I was going to make you 12th.’ I’m glad he made the change. He’s got a lot of confidence and I really like that.”
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S ‘SPRING IS CALLING’ CHEVROLET SS – QUALIFIED 16th
ON HIS QUALIFYING RUN:
“First of all thank you. My family is certainly dealing with a lot. Each day there is a little less tears, and a little more smiles. So that is all going in the right direction and as well as you could expect. Today, we’re really surprised not to have pace here in qualifying. We have a very fast race car, in race trim especially. Our car is blazing fast. Qualifying hasn’t always been my strong suit, and today it showed up here for whatever reason. We’ll get her cleaned up and get her ready for the race on Sunday. We felt like we had a very good understanding of things, and we spent a lot of time this afternoon working on old tire runs because we were so good in race trim and we just missed it. Everybody else picked up a lot more speed than we did so we will have to dig in deep and try and understand why.”
MARTIN TRUEX, JR., NO. 78 FURNITURE ROW CHEVROLET SS – QUALIFIED 18th
ON HIS QUALIFYING RUN:
“After the first session we felt we could make another move, but our Furniture Row/Denver Mattress Chevrolet lacked forward bite and I just couldn’t lay down the lap that was needed to get into the final round. We wanted better than 18th, but this is a long race (500 miles) so we have plenty of time to get to where we want to get to.”
DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 88 NATIONAL GUARD CHEVROLET SS – QUALIFIED 19th
ON HIS QUALIFYING RUN:
“Our car is real, real fast on the first lap on a set of stickers. It’s been that way in all the practices. I was happy with the way the car ran in the initial first segment of qualifying. But our car is getting real, real tight real, real fast every lap after that, and we weren’t able to put the lap down in the second and third runs. It’s doing that in race trim too. We’ll take off the first lap in race trim we’ll run some pretty poor laps in the first few, then it comes back around. So there is something there in that little spell. We have to figure out if it is on the ground with the splitter or what it is. So we are going back to the hauler right now. We’ll spend a couple hours tuning on it.”
AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 DOW CHEVROLET SS – QUALIFIED 21st
ON HIS QUALIFYING RUN AND HOW HE IS FEELING:
“I just felt terrible yesterday. Today we turned around the car was much better. I felt much better. Disappointed with that right there because I had a good first round. I think I just tried to get a little too much and over drove a little bit. Proud of the first round effort. I wish it was like old school because the first one we would be starting fourth tomorrow. We will take it and go on. Like I said I felt like we had a decent car in practice. Luckily I’m starting to feel much better. I think it was just a 24 hour bug, virus thing.”
YOUR BROTHER STEPPED IN BUT ONLY IN CASE HE WOULD BE NEEDED TOMORROW, BUT YOU DON’T REALLY ANTICIPATE THAT HAPPENING?
“No, not anymore. There was definitely a part from yesterday that I was starting to worry about it. I couldn’t believe my brother as big as he is could get in my car. That kind of got me a little nervous now. No, yesterday was definitely bad. Last night was horrible and then this morning all of a sudden I started to feel better.”
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Founded in 1911 in Detroit, Chevrolet is now one of the world’s largest car brands, doing business in more than 140 countries and selling more than 4.9 million cars and trucks a year. Chevrolet provides customers with fuel-efficient vehicles that feature spirited performance, expressive design, and high quality. More information on Chevrolet models can be found at www.chevrolet.com.
