Chevy Notes - Truex Jr. Wins Busch Mexico City

CHEVROLET NOTES & QUOTES
NASCAR BUSCH SERIES
TELCEL MOTOROLA MEXICO 200 - RACE NOTES
AUTODROMO HERMANOS RODRIGUEZ
March 6, 2005
 
RON FELLOWS, NO. 87 NEMCO CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO:
"We got run into. This is real disappointing for all the guys at NEMCO. The car was very, very good. There was some interesting driving going on out there, unfortunately. We got kind of lousy track position. But I think all the guys at Joe Nemechek are disappointed. We owe him one"
 
ROBBY GORDON, NO. 83 RED BULL CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Note: Sidelined with motor problems. A difficult weekend, Gordon qualified on the outside of the front row, had to change an engine, and started the race from the rear of the field. Had an early spark plug problem. Then, a stream of oil followed is car all the way back to the garage. Gordon declined comment.
 
KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 21 PELON PELO RICO CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Finished 2nd and leaves Mexico City in the Busch Series point lead: "We didn't need much. This Pelon Pelo Rico Chevrolet was fast. All we needed was three chances there. But we've just got to say thanks to all the guys. They did a great job all weekend. We stuck to our plan and but it's been a good day for us. That was three second-place finishes in a row for us. Our car was good. A few of those guys just got lucky and caught the caution there. But our car was really good and really fast. I had a lot of fun. I wanted to win this race bad. But we came up one short." More to follow
 
MARTIN TRUEX JR., NO. 8 BASS PRO SHOPS CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Race Winner: "I knew we had a strong car. I knew it was good on long runs. We were counted out. There were a lot of guys who probably didn't think we could win. I talked to Dale Jr. last night on the phone and he asked me if we could win and I said our car was pretty good. He said to just keep in on the road and we'd be all right. And that's what I did. It was awesome all day long. It was the best it was at the end. My hats off to these guys. It was just awesome. Coming here, we never thought we were going to win the race. We always think we have a shot, but I haven't done this stuff for a while and when I used to do it, I never had much luck at it. But the guys gave me such a good car today. This Bass Pro Chevy was so great. At the beginning of the race I knew it was good. We adjusted on it and made it better and at the end it was the best it had been all day."
 
(WHAT ARE SOME OF THE THINGS YOU LEARNED TODAY IN THE RACE) "Well, we pretty much got comfortable with the car with the transmission we've got in it and the brake package we've got on it. We tried some stuff with the set-up and I pretty much came here the same way. We were running that good when we unloaded and we picked up three seconds from the time we unloaded to the time we qualified. Everything we did made it faster and everytime I went around the track I was more comfortable. I felt like I was faster. We just put it all together. Pit strategy was great. Pit stops were great. It was just a complete team effort today."
            
(IS THERE SPECIAL PRIDE IN WINNING THIS RACE?) "This is definitely extra special to be down here representing the United States. I'm so proud to be here. It's just an awesome day. To beat them in qualifying is one thing, but to out race them all day long is something we're real proud of." More to follow
 
KEVIN MANION, CREW CHIEF, NO. 8 BASS PRO SHOPS CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - "All these guys did a great job this weekend. The competitors, the Mexican hospitality, the track here - it's all been great. The guys in the shop worked so hard on these road course cars over the winter. It was pretty tough for a Busch team to build cars over the winter. I feel fortunate we have a well-funded team and a good effort. I feel bad for some of these lower-dollar Busch teams trying to put together cars. So I think all my competitors and all the people here at the race track.
 
"For a while, I was just telling Martin to save gas, save gas. We felt like there would be an overabundance of cautions. I didn't expect that many. We went up to VIR a couple of weeks ago with Martin and we took two cars. After about four or five laps, I knew we had something for them."
 
SHANE HMIEL, WIN FUEL CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Finished 4th  
(WHERE IN THE WORLD DID YOU LEARN YOUR ROAD RACING SKILLS?) "I went to the Bob Bondurant school last fall and Ron Fellows taught me a lot out there. But this Chevrolet was good all day. To come out of here with a top five was a great points day for us. It was a whole lot of fun. That's the most fun I've ever had racing."
 
(ON HIS MEXICO CITY EXPERIENCE) "It was awesome. I came here with an open mind but I thought it was really going to be unorganized. But NASCAR did a great job and Mexico City did a great job. I hope we come back for the next 10 years. I think it's a great race track. American fans are great but these Mexican fans sure do love stock car racing."
 
KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 21 PELON PELO RICO CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS:  "I'm a little bit disappointed. We wanted to come to Mexico and win the first race here. It's the third race in a row that we've finished second. The car war really good all day. The No. 8 car (Martin Truex Jr.) just happened to catch the caution coming in there in the pits, but it was still a good day for us." 
 
(ON THE CROWD AND MEXICO IN GENERAL) "I've had a great time here. The hospitality has been great. The race track was a lot of fun to race on. The crowd is a lot of fun. It's a different atmosphere than we're used to in the United States. The crowd starts whistling and whooping and hollering and that's what it is supposed to be like."
 
(ON THE CAR AND ADJUSTING IT FOR THE TRACK) "The temperature was a little bit different. Our car pushed the front end a little bit through the corners. We had to make a few adjustments throughout the day. As we got to the end of the race, Carl (Edwards) and Shane (Hmiel) were racing to win. So they were looking at the big picture and I was looking at the itty bitty picture of Mexico. So we did what we could do and just came up a little bit short. But we had a lot of fun."
 
(DID YOU THINK YOU COULD CATCH MARTIN TRUEX JR.?) "I thought he was too far out to get to him. If we had a caution or a green, white, checkered, there wouldn't have been any question - or there would have been a big wreck or whatever. Who knows? But I think we had a good car and we did what we could do. We stuck to our strategy and that's all you can ask for. You can go back and play Monday morning quarter-back when you get home. But the circumstances are something you can't control and our pit window was the next lap. So that's what we stuck with and it just worked out one spot short."
 
(ARE YOU SICK?) "No, I'm not sick. I feel a lot better today. I got whatever they call that Montezuma's Revenge yesterday. I was up all night. I hadn't eaten in 24 hours and so when you have a good race car it makes it feel a lot better."
 
(HOW CHALLENGING WAS IT TO RACE AGAINST MEXICAN DRIVERS?) "They did a great job this week. There's an experience factor that comes into play with these heavy stock cars and I think Adrian and Michel did a good job. Our experience came into play later in the race as the tires wore out and the cars didn't handle as good. I think with a little more experience they can run fast, but it's all about being able to run fast for a long time."
 
(ON THE WILD COURSE) "I think we're all just a bunch of lunatics, to tell you the truth. I think everybody was just trying really hard and trying to get everything they could. It's one of those places where it really doesn't hurt to run off the course a little bit because it's flat and it's just dirt. No harm, no foul. You can run off anywhere on the race track and not get in trouble. Other places we go to like Watkins Glen is a pretty big transition."
     
MARTIN TRUEX JR., NO. 8 BASS PRO SHOPS CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS:
"It's been an incredible week. I'm so proud to be the first winner here. There were so many drivers in the race - some of the best in the world. To beat those guys makes me really proud. Everything that we've done down here in Mexico has been beyond expectations - from the hospitality of the hotels we've been at to the amount of race fans that turned out. It's just been an incredible weekend for everybody."
 
(ON THE TRACK AND POSSIBLE RETURN TO MEXICO) "First of all, I love the chicane. It make the racing better and a lot more challenging with that in there than with just a straightaway. It makes it harder to pass and I think that's great. Other than that, everything has been great. I think for sure we'll be back next year. The turnout of the fans - even for qualifying - was just great. It's just been fun to be here. I know I'd sure love to come back."
 
(ON HIS RACE STRATEGY) "We kind of planned it out last night. We wanted to be out front in the end and in order to do that we felt that we had to pit early and wait for everybody else to pit under caution and stay out to get back to the front. As long as we had enough gas in the car to go the last 40 laps, that was our plan. We wanted to have a full tank of gas with 40 laps to go - no more, no less. That worked out really good for us."
 
(ON THE TRACK) "I've had a little bit of experience on these types of road courses, but this one is different than any other one I've ever been to. I think not having a lot of experience on this type of track kind of hurt me when we got here. I think we were behind when we unloaded. But we stayed focused throughout practice. Every time we made a change in the car, we went faster. If you just keep doing that, you're car gets better and you get more comfortable. By the time the race started, I felt like I could run up front all day long. But my goal was just to stay on the race track all day. If we were up front at the end, I was hoping it would be able to stay there until the end, and it was."
 
(ON RACING WITH THE MEXICAN DRIVERS) "I really only raced with Adrian Fernandez today. We got into Turn 1 one time and he had a little bit of a run on me and dove inside on the brakes and slid in there and we about both crashed. And then I passed him back. But it was a lot of fun to race with him. He really did a good job driving the car considering he's never been one of these cars before this weekend. He looked comfortable and was driving it as hard as anybody else. But he was the only one I raced with and I actually learned a few things, so it was cool."
 
(DID YOU DO ANY SIGHTSEEING WHILE YOU WERE IN MEXICO?) "To be honest, we didn't get to do much. The days were long and I was getting up early. So I was in bed early. So, no, I didn't get to do much away from the track. But it was neat to see how different things are here. That's why I was excited about coming here and it's cool to see different things."
 
 (ON THE CAUTION COMING OUT RIGHT AFTER YOU PITTED) "As soon as we went to pit road I thought that was perfect. It wasn't planned. I didn't know the caution was coming out. We planned on pitting on that lap some five or 10 laps prior to that. We caught a break there and got a little bit lucky. But when we got in the front, we had a good enough car to stay there and that was the key today."
 
(WERE THE PIT STOPS IN THE RACE A GAMBLE IN GENERAL?) "It always is - especially on road courses in general. You try to pit under green if you can. It's just hard sometimes. You're getting ready to pit and the caution comes out and there's a guy on pit road and he'll end up leading the race and you'll be 20th.  We just made a strategy and stuck to it and it worked for us today. If we tried to do it again, it might not work for us."
 
(IS THIS WIN MORE SPECIAL THAN SOME OF YOUR OTHER WINS?)  "I'd have to say definitely. This is a huge win. To be the first time the series has raced out of the country and the first time NASCAR has been in Mexico. To beat all these great Mexican drivers and road race drivers makes it one of the biggest wins in my career."
 
(ON THE CROWD AND THE ATMOSPHERE DURING THE RACE) "You could really feel the enthusiasm of the crowd in driver introductions, and especially when you were driving around the track. These are the kinds of fans that race car drivers love to race for. I'm sure we'll be coming back to race for them again. They were great."
 
ADRIAN FERNANDEZ, NO. 5 LOWE'S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Finished 10th: "It was a fantastic day. I'm very happy. This was a car that didn't turn over a lap before the race because of the crash yesterday. We made some changes and we overreacted a little bit. The car was too much push."
 
(ON STARTING FROM THE REAR) "That was frustrating. We started last. To come from the back and take a lot of chances and I was fighting with Martin Truex. I made a great pass on him and then he passed me back and my tires were going off at that point. I went to the back again and that was a little bit frustrating.  Then I got into the rhythm again. There were people who were fighting a little bit too dirty at the back, chopping you off when you were on the brake and already committed, and I'm not used to that. The good and experienced drivers were very good. They knew you were committed and they leave you the open. I flat-spotted my tires one time. I was very quick through the chicane and that was giving me a lot of positions. But I don't even remember the car but I was turning to the right and I lost momentum and I had to lock and I even hit him I felt a vibration after that and my car wasn't the same after that. I felt more and more push. 
 
 "The crowd was great. They were awesome. I knew we could do it - coming from the back. But I was very conservative starting from the back. All my predictions were wrong. I have to work each lap one by one. I never touched anybody until the last 20 laps. My car was clean. During the last 20 laps everybody started getting aggressive and I had to use my car too a little bit.
 
(WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO THIS AGAIN?) "This was just a start - a one-race deal. We'll have to get used to it and we'll see. I'm sure I would take another one if it came about. I'm so glad I finished the race. There were so many things. Harvick passed me on one of the restarts on the left and there are so many rules to learn. I'm used to different rules. Pit lane speed limit is very difficult because we're used to having a button to control your speed. You have to watch all your gauges. I really couldn't tell if I was good or not and they would ask me my speed and I wasn't sure."