Friday, April 29, 2011 Richmond International Raceway Dodge Motorsports PR Bubba Burger 250 Post-Race Quotes NASCAR Nationwide Series
BRAD KESELOWSKI (No. 22 Discount Tire/Ruby Tuesday Dodge Challenger R/T) Finished Fifth “A good night for this Discount Tire/Ruby Tuesday Dodge. Who would ever think that a Nationwide Series would almost go green the entire race. We just didn’t have a long-run car tonight. The tires really fell off at about 30 laps or so and it’s kind of what we’ve been fighting all year. We pitted early, cycled thorough and we ended up back on the lead lap. I’m not sure how that worked out. I’m happy for my Discount Tire/Ruby Tuesday team to get me back to that position. We somehow got a top-five out of the deal; I have no idea how. I’m going to have to go back and watch this race on TV. I feel a little bit lucky about getting a fifth-place finish. We just need to keep on working and getting our cars a little bit faster.”
YOU PRACTICED AND QUALIFIED IN THE SUN AND RAN IN THE COOL NIGHT AIR. WHAT DID YOU LEARN? “I learned a few things. I learned what we’ve fought all along on this Nationwide car that we need some more long-run speed. There were lots of long green-flag runs tonight and if your car wasn’t perfect, it was hard to run fast. With this sort of endurance racing, you need speed and we didn’t have that tonight. We need to figure that out and get our Dodges up front when it counts. A solid top-five finish for us and we’ll take it.”
SAM HORNISH JR. (No. 12 Olympic Paints Dodge Challenger R/T) Finished Seventh “You see long green-flag runs sometimes in Cup races here, but very seldom do you see that in the Nationwide races. I thought we were going to have a pretty good finish if the yellow hadn’t come out, probably a top five. I came here wanting to get a top five out of it and got seventh. We struggled early on to get the car where we wanted it. I thought we were much better at the end. We just didn’t have what it took to get the top five. Getting the opportunity to run more, a couple times in the month, was good. We excited to be going to Charlotte and, hopefully, we’ll be able to get a little more out of it.”
CHAD WALTER (Crew Chief, No. 12 Olympic Paints Dodge Challenger R/T) “It’s a pleasure to work with Sam and it’s a pleasure to work on these Dodge Challengers that Penske Racing puts together for us. We had an extremely strong car in qualifying and I think Sam is the best-kept secret for Richmond. We missed the initial setup just a little bit, got one tweak in it and we were really good, but had a loose wheel. We had to come and get tires and got behind in the sequence. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen two rounds of green-flag pit stops at Richmond. We’ll go back and reevaluate our strategy, make sure we’re not staying out too long, make sure we’re taking advantage of everything that’s going on at these races. Overall, we’re really happy with the crew and the driver did an excellent job, hung in there all night. I hated to see that last caution, because I think we were going to slip back into the top four the way we had it figured on fuel. All in all, a great night for Penske Racing and Dodge.”
