Pepsi 400 Qualifying Notes & Quotes
Written by John Davison · July 2, 2005
Thanks to various team and manufacturer sources, here is a collection of notes and quotes following Friday’s qualifying for the Pepsi 400 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup race. Tony Stewart continued his display of versatility, winning the pole over Scott Riggs. Road race specialist Boris Said, driving the No. 36 Chevrolet, qualified fourth.
Tony Stewart - No. 20 The Home Depot Chevrolet - Pole Winner Note: First Bud Pole at Daytona. - PIT LANE COMMENTS: GREAT LAP OUT THERE - Yeah, but it wasn’t due to me. Everybody-Zippy and all the guys on The Home Depot team-it wasn’t anything I did to get us where we are. Those guys. And really, in particular, those guys in the engine department and the fab shop. They put the body back on the thing after the Daytona 500. It was an awesome run there-whether it stands or not, we’ll see. If it just stays in the top 5 or 10, I’ll be happy with it.
HOW GOOD IS THIS RACE CAR? It drove really good today. You know, the thing you’ll hear a lot of us talking about tomorrow night is having to get out of the gas. Running the 500, pretty much we can run it wide open around here. But it seems that in July with the heat and the extra heat, it’s a little harder to handle and becomes more of an issue than it does in February. Our car drove really good today in practice. All in all we’re going to have a good day tomorrow, hopefully.
COMMENTS ON RUNNING THE PONTIAC DAYTONA PROTOTYPE LAST NIGHT IN THE GRAND-AMERICAN RACE: I loved it; I just wished we wouldn’t have had the problems. I know at the end of the race my teammate Andy Wallace was turning laps as quick as the leader and it if we wouldn’t have won I think we’d have been in the top-three for sure. We made progress; yesterday at the start of the race was the first time I had run in wet conditions with slicks. And starting on cold tires, nonetheless. It was a learning experience for sure. We had a good run once the track dried up.
DO YOU PLAN ON DOING MORE ROAD RACING? Of course-I’ve had so much fun with the Pontiac brand and everyone at GM has been behind me running a Pontiac even though I’m with a Chevrolet in the Cup side. They are excited to see me back and it’s neat to see how everyone at GM rallies around each other like that.
PRESS CONFERENCE EXCERPTS: REMARKS ON YOUR LAP. HOW IS YOUR CAR IS RACE TRIM? I guess it feels pretty good. We ran the whole setup this morning-no drama. No headaches. Everything was pretty smooth. For the most part, pretty excited. Normally when we come to practice here we complain about our cars not having grip because it’s so hot, but you know, we went out this morning and had pretty good balance so hopefully it will be that way for tomorrow.
IS RACE TRIM DIFFERENT FROM QUALIFYING TRIM? I don’t know. I’m not sure if it is or not. I’d love for this to be an indication because that means we’d have a good day tomorrow. But, at the same time, you know, it’s a situation where having all those tricks and stuff.maybe it’s what we’ve been missing for qualifying all this time-all those tricks.
DOES THIS POLE MEAN AN EQUALISER WITH ROUSH AND HENDRICK? I don’t know if that puts us as an equal. If you look at where Jeff qualified, he’s not going to race that way tomorrow. So, with that being said, I doubt this is a true indication of how everyone is going to race tmorroow. I think handling is still going to be a big factor like it always is. I think everyone is going to drive well for one lap in qualifying, but when you get 10 laps into a run tomorrow night, I think things are going to be a bit different, especially when you get into traffic where the air is moving. It’s a little different.
COMMENTS ON PROGRESSION THIS YEAR; VS. ROUSH AND HENDRICK I’ll be honest. You know, if you look back to Michigan where we ran second-it was a place where we kind of finally hit on some stuff. We think we may have closed the gap with the Hendrick and Roush teams on some stuff. Then we go to a road course and you pretty much throw all that out-just road course setups. Now this week with a pole, we’re here at a superspeedway, so it’s totally a different package again. I’d love to believe that we are, but we are all realistic that we had one good week at Michigan, from that side, and I think that’s something we have to build off of. This week and last week are just two odd weeks. Don’t fit into the total picture of the scheme of things. Even if we’re lucky enough to win here tomorrow night or have a second, I’m not going to say we’re back on track to where we need to be. It’s just two odd races that we would have had the luxury to win, and we’ve still got to run off that second place finish in all reality.
WHAT WOULD WINNING AT DAYTONA MEAN FOR YOU? I mean, this one’s no different from any of the other of them on the schedule, in all reality. If I had to trade a win and only get one of them, I’d rather trade it for a February race obviously. Anytime you can win a race, whether it’s here or Indianapolis or anywhere else, it’s big. Right now, with the competition as tough as it is, a win is a win. You know, it’s not going to be any more significant than anything else this year.
ANY CONCERNS WITH DRIVERS WHO AREN’T HIGH IN POINTS, STARTING UP FRONT? Not really. I mean, it makes me thankful that we qualified on the pole obviously, but you know, the cr
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