Notes & Quotes - Phoenix Qualifying
Written by John Davison · November 5, 2004
Collected notes & quotes from drivers and crew following qualifying for this week’s NEXTEL Cup Checker Auto Parts 500.
BRIAN VICKERS, NO. 25 GMAC CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - 2nd: “The last run we made on stickers was not really what the car was. I messed up Turn 3 a little bit trying some different stuff. It didn’t work out. I was still happy with the car. I don’t know if it’ll be the pole or not. I hope so. Ryan (Newman) seemed pretty quick. But the track slowed down a little bit too. So, we’ll see.”
(YOU STARTED ON THE OUTSIDE POLE HERE A YEAR AGO. AND COMING OFF YOUR BEST FINISH THIS YEAR - 7TH AT ATLANTA, HOW CONFIDENT IS YOUR TEAM?) “We’re pretty good. I think everybody on the whole team is confident. I feel like we have more motivation and at Hendrick Motorsports as a whole. I know I do after what happened recently. So we’re looking forward to the race here. I like the race tack. We like coming out here. The fans are great. It’s a lot of fun.”
TONY RAINES, NO. 51 MARATHON / CHASE CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - DNQ: “It’s going to be really close. We made some adjustments in practice and it got a lot better. Some guys will pick up and hopefully some will slow down. But it’s going to be close and we’ll cross our fingers and hope for the best.”
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: “Yeah, that was definitely a good pickup for this Lowe’s team. I had three-quarters of the track down pretty good. I was just real loose off of Turn 4. But that should put us hopefully somewhere in the top 10. It’s been a great race track for me and we’re on a roll of three wins so we’ll just see what happens on Sunday.”
(HOW MUCH MOMENTUM CAN CARRY OVER FOR THESE LAST THREE RACES OF THE YEAR?) “It makes a difference. But with the loss that we had with all of our close friends and that plane going down, it’s been a weird experience to win races and to feel the emotional highs of winning and then the lowest of lows knowing we’ve lost our close friends and families. It’s been a weird experience and I really hope I don’t have to go through it again. It’s really been a tough few weeks. But the good thing is that the car has been running well and we’ve been able to win some races. So who knows? We’ll just keep going.”
TONY STEWART, NO. 20 HOME DEPOT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - 6th (IT LOOKED LIKE YOU MIGHT HAVE HAD A SHOT AT THE POLE) “Yeah, I think we would have had a pole run but I got a little bit loose off of Turn 4. I just tried to push it a little too hard. This is my home away from home, so I always want to run good here at Phoenix.”
(HOW MANY DIFFERENT SERIES HAVE YOU RUN HERE AT PHOENIX?) “I’ve won in Midgets, Silver Crown cars, the Cup car here (’99), and I’ve run 2nd in the IRL car and Super Modifieds here. So it’s a place where we’ve always had really good luck. I’ve spent a lot of time out here. When I was in the IRL, we tire tested a lot here. Obviously with USAC, we were out here a lot. It’s kind of a place that’s a home away from home for me.”
JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DUPONT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - 8th (NICE JUMP ON THE SECOND LAP) “Yeah, you know on that first lap, the car and the tires weren’t quite up to temperature. On the second lap I just carried do into Turn 1 and the car just did everything I wanted it to do. It was a little bit snug in the middle, but other than that it was a great lap. I’ve got to thank Robbie (Loomis) and those guys on the DuPont Chevrolet. They’ve been working hard all day long to give me a car that we can get up there in the top five. We’ve got it right now. Let’s just hope we can hang on up there and do better than we did last week, which was 10th in qualifying, and keep that streak of improving in qualifying. I feel really good about our race set-up. We came here and tested. I’m looking forward to tomorrow and Sunday.”
(YOU’VE NEVER WON AT THIS RACE TRACK. HOW MUCH OF A CHALLENGE IS THAT FOR YOU FOR THIS WEEKEND?) “It is a challenge because I’ve always liked this race track. It’s just a very temperamental track to get that right feel and that right balance on. I love the whole are of Phoenix. It’s just a beautiful area. I’m looking forward to coming here twice (in ‘05). We’d love to get a victory out here before we start coming here twice.”
EFF GORDON, NO. 24 DUPONT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO:
(ON A FIVE-DRIVER CHASE FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP) “It doesn’t matter whether there are 10 people in it or two. We have to do the same thing. We just have to go out there and put our best effort forward and try to get the best finish and performance that we can and not really pay much attention to what other guys are doing and just focus on our own program. It’s kind of the same thing we’ve been doing all year long. It doesn’t mean it always works, but I don’t know of any other way to really do it. When the pressure is as intense as it is for the championship these days, I think it’s the way you have to do it to mentally stay in the game.”
(ON RUNNING AT PHOENIX THIS WEEKEND) “We tested here a couple of weeks ago. We tested really well. I was very happy. I’m really looking forward to getting into race conditions. We didn’t make many qualifying runs and the ones that we did we knew we had to improve on. The track has picked up and some guys have run some really fast laps. We’re trying to get qualified as best we can and then get ourselves into the race conditions that we fell comfortable with and good about.”
(WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE REAR END GEAR LAST WEEK IN ATLANTA?) “I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know. It happened and we try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. But sometimes those freak things happen and you’ve just got to take it and move on with it. But honestly, I didn’t even care. I let those guys who know more about it deal with it. If there’s anything I’m doing different, then I’ve asked them to tell me. Other than that, let’s just go to the next three races and get all we can get.”
(WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS NOW THAT WE’RE SEVEN RACES INTO THE CHASE FORMAT?) “I like it. I think it’s a positive thing, for sure. I think there are more positives than negatives. My feelings are the same today that they’ve been since we started this thing and that’s that there need to be a few minor adjustments in the points and the way they’re structured. But I like the Chase. I think having 10 guys in it is the way it needs to be. It has certainly added more excitement and entertainment to it.”
(IS YOUR APPROACH TO THE WEEKEND ANY DIFFERENT?) “I wish I could say that we knew what we could do differently. We come to the race track on Friday to qualify the best we can and practice as good as we can in our race practice and on Sunday, drop the green and run good. I don’t think there is really much else we can go. We just need to pay attention to detail and try to really be methodical on how we break down every segment of the corner and make sure that when we get out there that we know we’ve given it everything we’ve got.
“It’s just been difficult. It’s just been frustrating. I know we’re better than this. You never know what goes on. We just haven’t gotten the cars comfortable. We’ve been fighting loose, loose, loose, and loose. We’ve just been having a hard time keeping up with the pace and the cars are loose. Maybe if we do anything different we might start off a little bit tighter and try to back off from that.”
(BUT LOOSE IS FAST, RIGHT?) “This is not Days of Thunder. It depends on the track that you go to. Some tracks, being free can be a good thing - especially the high speed tracks - but loose is not going to be good.”
(ON BEING THE POINT LEADER OR BEING THE ONE CHASING THE POINT LEADER) “It was a burden and you have a lot of pressure put on you. But I’d rather have that pressure than be the guy chasing any day of the week. Anytime. I’d much rather be the guy with the pressure and the bullseye on him - saying he’s the guy leading, he’s the guy you’ve got to beat. That’s a much better position to be in than anywhere else in my opinion.”
(IS THAT JUST BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHERE YOU HAVE TO FINISH AND THAT YOU CONTROL YOUR OWN DESTINY?) “Yeah, I think it’s yours to loose instead of having to make something happen or hope something happens to the other guy to win it.”
(WITH THE SEASON WINDING DOWN, SO YOU LOOK AT HOW MUCH IS LEFT OF IT OR DO YOU STILL TAKE ONE RACE AT A TIME?) “I’ve always just looked at one race at a time.
“We have people on our team who plan ahead and who prepare for races coming up. But as far as I’m concerned, all I do is focus one at a time and put all of my efforts on that one race. When that race is over, I put that one behind and think about the next one.”
(IS THIS A “MUST WIN” WEEKEND FOR YOU?) “Well, in a lot of ways, yeah. I don’t know if we have to win, but we do if those other guys are going to finish in the top 10. We want to win here because we’ve never won here before and it would be a huge benefit for us to get some momentum back and get up on top and get back to victory lane. It would be a great way to close out the season - regardless of the points. But at the same time, it only matters where the other guys finish. You get all you can get and then it just matters where the other guys finish. It’s just like last week. When Kurt (Busch) had his problems, we were really focused on getting that top 10. And then we had our problems and we came out of there really not gaining anything.”
(ON TODAY’S PRACTICE SESSION) “It was decent. We’re fighting a little bit of loose off and a little bit of tight in the center. Some guys really stepped it up there at the end of practice. I was shocked at how fast these guys were able to go. We made a pretty good qualifying run and really stayed about 15th. So we need a couple of tenths. We’re going to make some final adjustments. And if I can get a good lap, I think we might be able to get a top five.”
ROBBY GORDON, NO. 31 CINGULAR WIRELESS CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - 17th: “We loosened up the car a little too much and I got sideways. It wasn’t good enough. We tightened up the car a little bit and it was pretty good. The car stuck. If it would have rolled in the center of Turns 3 and 4 just a little bit better, we would have probably had another tenth there. But the guys have been working really hard at RCR. We had a good run last week in Atlanta and hopefully we can come off of that and have a good run here at Phoenix as well.”
(YOU AND RCR ARE GOING YOUR SEPARATE WAYS IN 2005. WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO ANNOUNCE YOUR PLANS?) “We’ll have the Fruit of the Loom Chevrolet that we’re going to run the Busch Series 24 events. We qualified 7th with that yesterday. The team is already in place. The buildings and equipment is in place so it’s not going to be that big of a deal to roll it up to the next level to compete in the Cup Series.”
DALE EARNHARDT JR., NO. 8 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - 14th (WAS IT AN ADVANTAGE TO GO OUT LATER IN QUALIFYING?) “Probably so. Most of the time it is. The guys did a great job. We changed a lot of things on the car. We weren’t very good in practice. I think we were 30th fast. We changed some stuff and ran better. We obviously would have liked to qualify better but it was a good pick up for us. I’m proud of my team. They put in a great effort all day long to get that.”
(AFTER LOSING A COUPLE OF POSITIONS AT ATLANTA LAST WEEK, HAVE YOU AND THE TEAM TALKED ABOUT IT?) “We haven’t talked at all really. I’ve been in L.A. shooting commercials all week and came here yesterday. Maybe that’s okay too to give everybody a chance to cool off and reflect on it. That was a tough weekend for us. We were racing hard. My guys would have rather have gotten a lot of points there. If I could go back and do it again I’m sure me and Carl (Edwards) would both have different ways we’d it to end out. But it wasn’t his fault. We were racing hard and should have been racing maybe not so hard. I was just doing what I thought I needed to do and got myself in trouble there.”
KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 GM GOODWRENCH CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - 5th: “We knew it was a real good lap. The car’s been good since we unloaded it. We thought we’d pick up just a little bit, but I screwed that up in Turns 3 and 4. I just drifted up a little bit too high and had to wait on the throttle that much. And when you’re talking about hundredths of a second, it doesn’t take that much. It’s still a good lap for the GM Goodwrench Chevy.”
(WITH YOUR ROOTS OUT WEST, IS PHOENIX A LITTLE MORE SPECIAL FOR YOU?) “Yeah, we’ve raced a lot out here. We’ve got a lot of friends and family and people out here. It’s a lot of fun to come out here and race. We raced a lot of Southwest Tour races here so it’s pretty cool to come back here and race.”
BRIAN VICKERS, NO. 25 GMAC CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - POST QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS:
“We unloaded fast off the truck. I knew we were going to be faster in qualifying that we were in practice unless I really messed up. I was trying some different lines and kind of messed that lap up a little bit. I was confident the car was better than it was in practice. I wasn’t too sure how fast. This was our second time qualifying second to Ryan Newman. Last time I think we missed it by seven thousands of a seconds. I thought all night long about where we could find some speed. I felt I got everything I could out of the car. So at least I can sleep tonight. I don’t know where they got that speed or that grip. The track is quick.
“As far as the race, I feel pretty good about it. We were fast in the race here last year, which was our third Cup race I believe. There in the middle of the race we lost a lot of time and a lot of ground. The car really kind of went away from us. We didn’t keep up with the track and different things. Now that we know that, what we learned from that race will help us be better this time.”
(SO WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ON SUNDAY?) “You’ve got to start really good at the beginning of the race because a lot of times you’ll have a long green flag run early in the race that can get you a lap down if you’re not careful. So that’s important. It’s also very important to keep up with the race track throughout the race.”
(IF YOU’RE FAST IN QUALIFYING, DOES THAT MEAN YOU’LL BE FAST IN THE RACE?) “No, that’s not true. I know that looking back at the past couple of weeks, Ryan Newman has got something figured out for qualifying. Whatever it is, it doesn’t work in the race. It doesn’t work in the race and it doesn’t last. It doesn’t last a long run or whatever it is they can’t do it to the car for the race. So we’re not as concerned about that in the race. For qualifying, we’d better get our stuff together. Not only have we not found it, but 42 other people haven’t found it. He’d been fast in qualifying.”
(WHEN YOU LOOK AT JEFF GORDON AND JIMMIE JOHNSON, HOW DO YOU VEW YOUR RACING APPROACH AND YOUR LIFESTYLE APPROACH?) “I’ve definitely learned a lot from both those guys. They’ve both become great friends and have helped me in a lot of ways both on and off the race track. I see a lot of similarities between the two of them and for anybody who drives for Hendrick Motorsports for that matter. It starts from the top. Rick Hendrick instilled that in Jeff and then in Jimmie. Jeff has a lot to do with that. It’s the type of people the organization attracts. As far as how they approach a race or the media or fans or sponsors, it’s very similar.”
(WHEN A TEAM GETS ON A ROLL LIKE RYAN NEWMAN IS, DOES EVERYONE ELSE START SECOND-GUESSING AND TRYING TO FIND OUT WHAT THEIR SECRET IS?) “Absolutely. You try to find something on your own. You don’t want to always follow everybody else. That can get you in trouble sometimes if you don’t get the right information. But yeah, when it’s something this significant that obviously they have. It’s not like two or three guys are beating us by that amount. It’s one person that’s several tenths ahead of the field. There’s something there. Newman does a great job of qualifying the car. But I think it’s a combination of several things they have on that team and something they’re doing. We’ve got to figure out what it is.”
JOE NEMECHECK, NO. 01 U.S. ARMY CHEVROLET POST-QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS - 3rd:
(HOW DO YOU ACCOUNT FOR RYAN NEWMAN’S QUALIFYING SUCCESS?) “I don’t know. He ran fast like that in practice. I asked him walking out on the starting line to qualify how he did that. He said, ‘I don’t know but I’m going to do it again.’ I said okay, I wish you luck but not that much luck. But he poured it on. That was pretty incredible.”
(SO HOW WAS THE TRACK FOR YOU TODAY?) “The track feels good. It seems like we’re sliding around a little bit more than normal for whatever reason. We’re running pretty fast, but it seems to be a little slick. You try to do things to go faster all the time. And when you pick the throttle up to go faster around the corner, you’re putting more load on the tires. It’s the same race tack and asphalt that’s been here for several years. It’s just losing a little bit of grip each year.”
(A COUPLE WEEKS AGO YOU SEEMED TO BE FAST IN QUALIFYING. DID YOU FIND A SPECIAL TRICK THAT WORKED FOR YOU?) “No, and I don’t know what’s different. I’ve been trying to give Ryan and all the guys who are working on this car some good feedback as to what I’m feeling in the car. And we’ve been able to make some changes. Today we tried a lot of stuff. Some of it worked. But we needed to do something else. And then we worked in a different area and it was better all of a sudden. I attribute it to communication and what I know I have to feel. That’s one thing that experience gets you, you tend to learn what happens at these tracks. If the sun’s out, it’s going to get slippery. I thought I was going to have a great opportunity when I went to qualifying because it’s really cloudy and the sun was barely peeking through. But when I got out there, the sun came out. I think going earlier today might have been an advantage. But then Ryan Newman went out in the middle and it didn’t matter. You try taking advantage of whatever you can. That will help you have success.”
(ON YOUR SEASON AS A WHOLE AND ON THE ‘05 SEASON TO COME) “We’ve been on a roll. But the tough part about that is that we’ve actually run better at races earlier in the year that we have here at the end of the year, but we’ve had crazy things happen to us.
“Whether you call it bad luck or whatever, but things happen. It’s taken us out of a lot of races where we’ve actually run extremely well. When you’re running in the top five and this stuff happens, it hurts because it puts a 33rd or 35th place finish on your report card for that week and that’s not how this team is running. This team has run good. At the beginning of the year, we started off on a good note. We missed our set-up on a couple of races there. We missed our set-up a little bit. They worked on our cars and got them better. We really haven’t changed a lot of the way we’ve done things. But we’re starting to get a few breaks going our way. We’re trying to make our own luck too by being prepared.”
(ARE YOU A TOP 10 TEAM?) “I think we are. If we would have had these finishes back half-way through the year, we would have been in the top 10. That’s what’s frustrating. We’re not there. We didn’t earn our way into the top 10, but I think this is a top 10 team. We’re building on what we can do this year. I think we can take all the momentum we have and apply it to next year. Our goal is to make that top 10 for the championship cut. If we can run like we’re running right now, that’s not going to be a problem.”
(IF YOU’D BEEN STRONGER EARLIER IN THE SEASON, WOULD YOU BE UP THERE IN POINTS?) “Well, there’s a lot of things that happen, but woulda-coulda-shouldas don’t get you anywhere. Each week is a new challenge. We’ve got to figure out as a team how to get our race cars around the track the fastest, and to do it for 300 or 500 miles or whatever it may be. So I think we have a top 10 team. If we would have run like we are right now and just had the finishes we gave away when we were in the top five, we’d have been knocking on that 10th place deal. So I think by what we’ve shown this year we can apply to next year. The big problem that’s going to throw every one of these teams for a loop next year - even the top 10 guys - is when they cut that spoiler off and when Goodyear changes a tire it changes the way these cars drive. We’re going to have to learn some things really fast. Whoever can get the jump on it at the beginning of the year next year is going to have success really early.”
(ON THE CHASE AND THE POINT SYSTEM) “I’m sure everybody is keeping track of all the different points in the old system and the new system. It’s going to be interesting. NASCAR will look at it and make some adjustments if they have to. It’s all new. It’s definitely added some excitement. Heck, for me, I thought it was all done and in the last week it’s changed and made the race a whole bunch different.
Comments
Got something to say?
You must be logged in to post a comment.