California Qualifying Notes & Quotes
Written by John Davison · April 30, 2004
Here are the assorted notes and quotes from drivers and a few crew chiefs following today’s qualifying for the Auto Club 500.
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Note: Crashed his primary car in practice and will go to a back-up car. “It was the first lap and I ended up crashing the car unfortunately. The front end of the car was dragging the track really bad and literally the front wheels were off the ground. So I kept turning the steering wheel because I needed to make the corner and finally the car got off the track - I had way too much steering wheel put into it - and it rotated the car around into the fence.
“But after that, we worked on the back-up. We just have a really free set-up to start with and we finally made some ground there at the end (of practice). We’re trying to figure out what it really needs to make it right. Hopefully with a top 25 qualifying effort - we were 29th at the end of practice - we’ll be okay. We learned a little bit more. We’ll put the good motor back in and we’ll have a lot more speed and hopefully we’ll have a lot better run.
“Our primary car was our Las Vegas car (started 12th, finished 16th) and the back-up car is our Darlington car (started 11th, won the race). So we’ve got a great back-up. It’s just a matter of trying to find out what stuff works. We made some big changes and it hasn’t addressed the problem. The good thing is that we’re about out of areas to look, so it’s got to be one of the few that are left. We’ll get there.”
JOE NEMECHEK, NO. 01 US ARMY CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: “I’ve got to thank this whole US Army team. These guys have given me an outstanding race car. This is the car we had at Texas. We led a good part of that race. I don’t know if that’ll hold up for the pole, but I got to show off what these guys gave me. It’s an awesome race car. My teammate, Scott Riggs, is running good. So there are a lot of good things going. What we need is just a little bit of good luck during the race. If we can have that, we’re going to have a great run.” More to follow (WHEN YOU GET IN A SLUMP, HOW DO YOU STAY MENTALLY FOCUSED?) “You’ve just got to keep digging. Nothing really changes. You can’t really change how you drive the race car. You’ve just got to drive it as hard as you can all the time. It will eventually take. The last three weeks have really killed us. We’ve had good cars for the last three weeks and it’s just a shame we’re back there in points right now. But we can make it up. We’re going to have a great run on Sunday.”
HERMIE SADLER, NO. 02 FANZCAR CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: “Our practice time was a little bit limited. But we’re looking for improvement every time we go on the race track. We’ve done that. Hopefully we can get the car nice and balanced and try to stay out of trouble to get ourselves a decent finish on Sunday. This is one of those race tracks that takes everything. It takes a lot of downforce, a car that drives good, and that has lots of power. We’re lacking a little bit of all of that right now, but we’re going to keep working on it and hopefully by Sunday afternoon we’ll be competitive.”
MICHAEL WALTRIP, NO. 15 NAPA CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: “We have a similar set up in the two cars (Busch and Cup) and we’ve learned a lot about air pressure and so forth when we qualified our Busch car and picked up a lot over practice. We’re pretty optimistic. At this track you can run high and run low and try to find a place where your car is happy. That’s what I like about California Speedway.”
JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DUPONT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: “I wish we could have picked up a little bit more. But we’ve got the car working really well through the corners. For some reason, the overall speed’s not there but I think we’re going to have a real good race car and we’ll see where we end up here with the Dupont Chevrolet. It’s been a great week– a busy week. We’ve certainly had a smile from ear to ear all week long (after winning at Talladega last week). Hopefully we’ll carry that momentum through this week.”
(DO YOU ENJOY THE CALIFORNIA MARKET?) “I do. It’s been great. I think it’s going to be exciting to come back and race under the lights. I love California since I was born here and grew up here. It wasn’t Southern California, but it’s always a pleasure to come back here. I’ve got a lot of fans that really love NASCAR racing. Coming off that win in Talladega, it’s hard not to have a fun week even though it’s been really busy.”
JOHNNY SAUTER, NO. 30 AMERICA ONLINE CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: “It wasn’t very good. This AOL Chevy has kind of a new package this weekend that we thought we’d try. There’s still some promise there. We picked up a little bit from where we practiced this morning. But it looks like we’re still not fast enough and we need to keep working on it. Nevertheless we’ll keep digging and hope that we figure it out.”
(ON RUNNING IN THE BUSCH RACE TOMORROW) “That helps us every week more than it hurts us. The Busch car picked up a lot from where we qualified earlier so hopefully we’ll have the same luck with this car. We’ll just keep digging on it.”
BRIAN VICKERS, NO. 25 GMAC CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Note - Vickers becomes the youngest driver to start at California Speedway in a NEXTEL Cup race: “The car pushed on me quite a bit on me down there in Turn 1 and 2. I don’t know if the front tires didn’t have quite enough heat in them or what. And to be honest, I thought it was going to be worse than that. We have a great car. The GMAC crew did a great job. We started. We got behind the eight ball a little bit there at the end of practice. That definitely hurt us. But we just keep coming so close to these poles. I guess when the time is right it’ll come. But it just gets frustrating.”
(ARE YOU PLEASED WITH THE WAY THINGS ARE GOING THIS YEAR?) “It’s gone good. We’ve had our ups and downs and growing pains. We’re building chemistry with this team but for the last couple of weeks we’ve been doing really well. I’m proud of the guys. We’ve had some awesome tests and I’m looking forward to the race here on Sunday.”
ROBBY GORDON, NO. 31 CINGULAR WIRELESS CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: “This will probably be our best effort in a while - probably since 2000. But I think we’re sitting here in 13th and I think that’ll probably going to fall to 20th. We were eighth in the Busch car. We’ll be able to race from there. The car has been handling very good. We didn’t do anything wrong, it just wasn’t fast enough.”
(ON DOING BOTH THE INDY 500 AND THE COCA-COLA 600) “We’re going to handle everything the same way we have for the past couple of years. We have great people and great sponsors. Citation Jets is going to take care of us on airplanes and helicopters back and forth. We’re real excited about our Indy 500 effort. We were at Indy Wednesday and Thursday this week and we were third quick.”
WARD BURTON, NO. 0 NETZERO CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: “Last time in practice, we picked up from a .90 to a .40. So we picked up a half a second. This time we got our heads together and picked up four-tenths. So we’re going in the right direction just a little bit too late. We’re whistling Dixie most of practice and going to the wrong area of the car. But we made some good changes right there and the NetZero Chevrolet picked up where it needed to.”
(WHAT’S YOUR STRATEGY FOR SUNDAY’S RACE IF YOU QUALIFY IN THE TOP 10?) “The main thing is like always. We’ve got to get our car to handle well so that we’re good not only for the first 10 laps, but for 40-50 laps into the run. It’s been a good track for me but it’s easy to run good and it’s easy to run bad. We’ve got to get this car handling more to my liking and that’s what we’ll be working on to stay out of trouble.”
SCOTT RIGGS, NO. 10 VALVOLINE CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: “This team has been coming together by leaps and bounds. We’ve been learning a lot and the guys are building great cars. Every one keeps getting better and better. I’m learning a lot each week. One of these days we’re going to have some finishes that show how good we’re getting. Last week we qualified well but got hit in the back and unfortunately didn’t get a good finish. Today we qualified good again and hopefully we’ll have a good solid finish here on Sunday.”
(DOES IT GIVE YOU CONFIDENCE TO COME BACK TO A PLACE WHERE YOU’VE WON BEFORE IN THE BUSCH SERIES IN 2002) “We’ll a lot of times you’d like to think it gives you confidence and you come here with that thought in your mind. But at the same time it’s all about how your car feels right off the truck. We’re unloading better so I feel better about the cars. They’re making better downforce. We’re just going to keep working hard and hopefully get better every week.”
DALE EARNHARDT JR., NO. 8 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: “We thought we would have a much better qualifying effort than what we just showed. I went down there into Turn 1 and the car just bottomed out the front valance and wouldn’t really turn too good. But it was still a good lap. It was a good run. It was a good effort by us. This hasn’t been one of our good race tracks even though we got a sixth place finish here last year. We haven’t really gotten the good top five run we think we should get. Hopefully with a good starting spot it will begin a good day on Sunday and we can keep it up.”
(ON BEING ONE OF PEOPLE MAGAZINE’S MOST BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE) “It makes you feel great. I don’t know who is voting, but I’ve got to give them a thumb’s up. I don’t know how I made the list. They must not be just looking at looks alone. Maybe I got in on personality. But we have a lot of fun. My team obviously had a good laugh over it - picking on me, and everything. But that’s great. It really means a lot to my mom, I’ll tell you that. She was really thrilled over it.”
HIGHLIGHTS OF POST-QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE WITH JOE NEMECHEK, NO. 01 US ARMY CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: “Whenever you go out early, you kind of think it’s a bad draw. But today, it didn’t seem to be. We were fast in practice. I knew I was going out early. You just work hard at making your car drive good. Today the US Army Chevy did the same thing it did in practice. It just stepped up the time. In our qualifying run in practice, I didn’t quite hit Turns 1 and 2 quite right and I knew there was some time left. So it was a good run. I knew I hit the corners pretty good but not quite good (YOUR TEAM SEEMS TO BE PULLING THINGS TOGETHER PRETTY GOOD) “Ryan Pemberton leads this group of guys for the Army. They’re building new cars all the time. This is the same car we had for Texas. It qualified well there and led part of that race. It ran very good. We had an issue with a spark plug or something happened where we finished the race on seven cylinders. We had a top five run and it was disheartening to have that happen. This car drives really good. But the team has really stepped up. I’m just glad they’re giving me good stuff.”
(DID THE WIND HAVE ANY AFFECT ON QUALIFYING?) “It definitely changed. The first thing this morning, it was blowing really hard down the backstretch. And then it changed directions by the end of practice and was blowing down the front stretch. You just have to pay attention to which way it’s blowing. Your miles per hour are definitely going to pick up whatever way that wind is blowing. You’ve got to take that into account on how far you drive down the corner. It played a factor. It seemed like Turns 1 and 2 were harder getting through later this afternoon than it was first thing this morning. When the wind changes direction, it makes Turns 3 and 4 harder.”
(WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS PLACE THAT YOU LIKE?) “I don’t really know. Back in ‘97, sitting on the pole here was one of those deals where we’d been qualifying in the top three every week and we came here and I got my first pole. We got three or four more in the same year. The biggest thing is having the equipment. You’ve got to have a good motor, good downforce, and the thing has got to drive good. You’ve got to have the whole package. If you don’t have that, it’s hard. There are times when everybody thinks all of a sudden you forgot how to drive. But that’s not it. It’s competitive out here. This is the most competitive thing I’ve ever done. If you’re off just a little bit, it’s like sharks out here. You’re going to get eaten up. It tough. It’s cool for me because the guys come up with some new things on the bodies. And I’ll ask them how much more downforce is it going to be. And they’ll tell me and then I’ll say okay that car is going to run good. You pretty much know right away what’s going to happen. It’s pretty amazing.”
(WHY HAVE THE ROOKIES QUALIFIED SO WELL HERE?) “Back when I was getting into Cup racing, you just didn’t have good guys getting into those cars. Jeff Gordon hopped in with Hendrick Motorsports and it was a different deal. He struggled his first year. But in the 10 years that I’ve been here, it’s incredible how many dollars you spend and engineers you have working and all the resources you have. It’s incredible. For a new guy coming in now, he gets hooked up with a team that has common sense and the dollars it takes to be competitive, and they’re going to run good.”
(DO THE TIRES FEEL SOFTER AND WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY’RE GOING TO DO ON SUNDAY IN TERMS OF FALLOFF?) “I think you need to ask that tomorrow. It’s hard to tell. I know we made one run and came in and they still had the little nubs sticking up on the right front and right rear.”
(ON PIT CREW STRATEGY) “The pit stops are getting to be so crucial because it’s so hard to pass on the track. If you can pass somebody on pit road, it makes it much easier. On the Army team, these guys practice every day. We know where our weak spots are. And in the last four races, our pit stops have gotten a lot better. That’s good. That’s what it takes. We haven’t been losing spots on pit road. When you do that, it’s tough for a driver. You’ve got to pass those guys again. But when you’ve got a good handling race car, you can do it. You’ve just got to make sure it’s driving good.”
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KASEY KAHNE (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge) - Wins Third pole of the season, ties Dodge driver Ryan Newman for most poles in 2004.
“I love qualifying, and it makes it even more fun when you’ve got Tommy Baldwin and all the other guys on this race team that give me this great car for qualifying. I need to thank everybody at the engine shop, Dodge Dealers, UAW, everybody that’s part of this team did a great job. We put more effort into qualifying now than I ever did in Busch. We put two hours into it every Friday, but we put the same amount of time as everybody else.
“I was very pleased with the lap. We were good in practice, but to run three tenths quicker in qualifying says a lot for the team. They gave me a real good racecar. I’m really looking forward to Sunday. You feel the wind a lot in different spots of the corners. You definitely feel it going down the straightaways, but it didn’t affect our car too much. That’s a good thing.
“The car was really good. I got loose off turn four. I just stayed in it, but it was exciting. It was a good lap. I was pretty happy when they said first. This is a great track to qualify good at. It’s a good racetrack. There will be some passing going on. You don’t have to start in the front here to win the race by any means, but it sure feels good to win the pole.”
KYLE PETTY (No. 45 Georgia-Pacific/Brawny Dodge) - Qualified 28th “We didn’t practice qualifying. We saw there were only 43 cars here, so we practiced our race setup this morning. We ran good at Vegas and Atlanta earlier in the year, and that’s the way we spent most of our time - working on race setup in practice on Friday morning. We struggled a little bit off and on the past five or six races, so when we saw only 43 cars today we went straight to race setup. We threw a qualifying setup under it and picked up a second, but it’s not a true second. It looks good on paper. That’s all car and team. It’s got nothing to do with the driver. They made it drive just like it did in practice. Our race setup is pretty good. We’ve still got to fine tune on it, but we feel like we’ve got an hour and a half jump on most people.”
RUSTY WALLACE (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge) - Qualified Ninth “I drove it in a little tight down there in one and two. It ran up the racetrack a little bit. I drove it in to straight in turn one and it started pushing, but other than that three and four were pretty good. We picked up four tenths from practice, and I was real happy with that.”
CASEY MEARS (No. 41 Target Dodge) - Qualified 13th “We really struggled in practice. We’ve got a good starting spot, so we’re happy with that. We finished seventh with this car at Vegas and Texas, so we’re going to see if we can’t get a top five with it Sunday. The tire combination has thrown us a curve. The guys have been working hard, changed everything we can change and got it better. The biggest thing I’ve been having a hard time with it’s tight getting into the center. I can’t get the car to turn. I’m curious to see what it will be like in race trim. I think we’ll be better off in race trim than we were in qualifying trim.”
STERLING MARLIN (No. 40 Coors Light Dodge) - Qualified Eighth “We made a few changes and picked up a bunch in qualifying. We made race runs all day in practice. We made one qualifying run. The car is driving good, and the motor guys have really stepped up to the plate. I think we’re going to be in good shape.”
JEFF GREEN (No. 43 Cheerios/Betty Crocker Dodge) - Qualified Third “That was a good qualifying effort. My hat’s off to all the Cheerios guys and everybody at Petty Enterprises. This is a brand new racecar. It’s the first time it’s been to the track today. Everybody has done a good job of stepping the program up, and me as a driver, too. We’re happy, and we’re gaining on it. Come Sunday I think we’ll have a good car.
“We’re trying to win races, and if we can’t win we’ll try for the top five or top 10. We’ve got to be able to finish first before we can win. I sat in the truck and watch Joe (Nemechek) qualify and I didn’t think there was any way anybody was going to beat him.
“My car just didn’t turn as good as I wanted it to through one and two. I think we gained a little bit on it, and I’m real proud of my guys. This is the first time this car has been to the racetrack. We knew we were behind in the aero department and the fab shop has really worked hard. We realized how far we were behind now. In my mock up run; we just didn’t have a good run. We worked on it and gained a lot. I think the late qualifying helped us. It didn’t hurt us any.
“Just making it through Talladega was everybody’s goal. I tell myself every time I come away from those tracks that they’ve got to do something different. It’s just not my style of racing. We’ve been running pretty good. We’ve definitely got room for improvement, but we just haven’t got the results that we think we need to be showing. We’ve had some races where we had top 15 and top 10 cars. Our results don’t show that. Our main goal is to come here and get some results. If we could come out of here with a top 10 finish that would be great for us. We could build on that and go on to the next race.
“The wind was blowing pretty hard when I went out, so that was my main focus, watching the 39 cars going in front of me.
“When I got in that car in Dover last year, I’d heard a lot of rumors and a lot of horror stories about Petty Enterprises. They’ve got as good of stuff as any car I’ve sat in. I think the difference for me driving the car and maybe for them letting me drive the car is that we believe in each other. Everything thing I say they believe. The couple of opportunities I had before, 75 percent of it they might have believed. Everybody associated with Petty Enterprises believes in Jeff Green and I believe in them”
BRENDAN GAUGHAN (No. 77 Kodak Easy Share Dodge) - Qualified Fifth “I’m pretty happy with it. We gained three tenths. Let’s see what everybody else gains. We’re trying to get better each week with our Dodges, and anytime the driver doesn’t screw up it’s a good run. We were really solid in three and four. With any luck we’ll stay in the top five, and it should be in the top 10 at least. I’ve always loved California Speedway. It’s been good to me for a long time. We survived last week. We were the top finishing Raybestos rookie. It was our career best finish. If the caution flag had flown 50 feet further I would have been 10th or 11th. We’ll take it. To finish 13th at Talladega and come out of there with our Dodge in one piece, the Kodak boys are pretty happy with that. We try to keep improving each week. Our career bests keep coming. You keep knocking off those career bests all you’ve got left is No. 1, and that’s what we’re working on.”
JEREMY MAYFIELD (No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge) - Qualified 20th “It was a good lap. It’s not going to be what we thought we were going to qualify, but it’ll be decent and we’ll get a good starting spot. We’ve got a good racecar. We’re running good every week now. It’s fast and it’s going to be real good in race trim. We’re just learning more and more every week and that’s what you’ve got to do. We slowed up a little from practice, but we’ll be all right. I think we’ll have our Dodge up front Sunday. It seems like handling means a lot here now. It seems like the track is a little rougher. Shocks will play a big role here, and the aero balance and all that. I don’t think it’ll come down to fuel mileage, but you never know.”
RYAN NEWMAN (No. 12 ALLTEL Dodge) - Qualified Seventh “The track is a little tricky today. It feels different on every lap. The wind makes it so sensitive. I wish it had more banking so the wind wouldn’t mean so much. It’s sensitive in qualifying because you’re so much on edge in the first place. Then you get a little gust of wind and it just kind of throws you off. I don’t remember it being this windy before. Two years ago it rained before qualifying, and that’s why we went so fast. Last year it was pretty calm and the tires were different. Park got the pole on the second lap. Nobody can even come close to a fast lap on their second lap today.”
JAMIE McMURRAY (No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge) - Qualified 12th “We weren’t that good in practice. Donnie (crew chief Wingo) made some changes and it was really good in qualifying. This place is easy to overdrive, and I might have done that in turn one a little bit. We got through three and four pretty good. I think the wind died down on my lap. I couldn’t feel it. This morning I could feel it every time out. It’s a big change from testing at Sonoma the last couple of days, but our car is really good. I’m excited about our chances in the race.”
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JEFF BURTON - No. 99 - Roundup Taurus (Qualified 30th) - WILL IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE GOING OUT EARLY? “It did in the Busch cars. Joe Nemechek and Brendan picked up, Joe picked up a lot and Brendan picked up a little more than we did. We struggled a lot in practice and never quite got it the way we wanted it. Actually, that’s about a half a second faster than we ran on our mock qualifying run. That’s not going to be very good, but that’s all we got today.”
CALIFORNIA SPEEDWAY HAS BEEN GOOD TO ROUSH RACING. WILL THAT HOLDUP THIS SUNDAY? “Yeah, I hope so. We’re looking for a good day with the Roundup Ford. It’s been a tough year for us. Last week went well. Hopefully, we’ll get some momentum going and maybe we can build on that.”
ELLIOTT SADLER - No. 38 - M&M’s Taurus (Qualified 14th) - WHY WERE YOU ABLE TO PICK UP ON YOUR SECOND LAP? “I don’t know. We were just a little bit too tight, but we had a little miss in the motor that time, so we’ll go back and check it out and see what kind of went haywire there. The car was pretty good, but something happened. We’ll get it fixed for Sunday.”
CAN THE WIND BE A FACTOR HERE? “I think we would be worried if it was going to be an issue or not if it was going to make the car tighter or looser or whatever, but it really didn’t bother us too bad at all. We were okay with or without. It might affect other people’s cars more than it affected ours, but it was okay for us.”
RICKY RUDD - No. 21 - Motorcraft Taurus (Qualified 35th) - “We’re kind of disappointed. We run really good when practice first opened this morning, we were like top-10 on the speed chart most of the day, and then when it got hot we haven’t been able to run since. We’ve lost the handle on this Motorcraft Taurus and haven’t found it yet. It just sort of slides and glides on top of the race track, it doesn’t get a hold of the race track. We got a little work to do, but we got some time to get it done.”
THERE’S PLENTY OF RACE TRACK TO WORK WITH HERE. WHAT CAN A DRIVER DO ON SUNDAY IF HE DIDN’T QUALIFY WELL? “Well, about what you do when I qualified - you just use up every inch of it on the exit. The car’s not stuck, it’s just gliding across the race track, and it makes for a long day, but you do have a lot of race track. You can run top, bottom here and we just got to get this things stuck a little better to the ground. Hopefully, we’ll find a set-up that works.”
KURT BUSCH - No. 97 - IRWIN Industrial Tools Taurus (Qualified 21st) - DOES THE WIND BECOME A FACTOR ON A TODAY LIKE TODAY? “It’s always a factor when you run in California, because it blows so strong. We just got too tight. We made the wrong adjustments.”
MATT KENSETH - No. 17 - DeWalt Power Tools Taurus (Qualified 25th) - “Our car drove really good in three and four, one and two is were we get more travel, and it drove in probably pretty hard. It just kind of locked the front end down and it just wouldn’t turn. So, as sloppy as one and two was we had a good three and four and a decent recovery, but one of these weeks I would like to qualify in front a little farther.”
GREG BIFFLE - No. 16 - National Guard/Subway Taurus (Qualified 18th) - A NICE PICK-UP FROM PRACTICE WILL GET YOU A TOP-20 START. “Yeah, it did. We’re like bottoming out or coil binding. It feels like it’s running out of travel. We look at it and don’t see anything apparent, but we’re hoping it’s going to go away when we get in race trim. The car feels like it’s got the potential to be really good, but we’re happy with that, I guess. Not as back as far as we were, so we’re alright.”
EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE FROM QUITE A BIT NORTH OF HERE (WASHINGTON), IS THIS LIKE COMING HOME FOR YOU? “Yeah, it is. It’s nice coming back out here. I enjoy coming to the west coast. I get to see my family and a lot of fans, so it’s kind of neat.”
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