Atwood Wins ARCA Race at Pocono

Atwood's Dodge Wins ARCA Race at Pocono


CASEY ATWOOD (No. 19 Dodge Intrepid R/T)
NOTE: Competing in his first ARCA race, Casey Atwood started on the pole and won  Saturday's Automobile Racing Club of America  Pepsi 200 at the 2.5-mile Pocono Raceway.

"It's a special win for my career.  I'm only 21 years old. Obviously my Busch wins are special, but my ultimate goal is to win a Winston Cup race and Winston Cup Championship. Until that happens I'm not really going to be satisfied.  I think we learned a lot this weekend, and it's going to help us in the future.
"Sammy (crew chief Johns) didn't think we could make it on gas from when they came in. We needed to go to lap 47 before we came in, and then we could make it to the end.  I thought we could get back up there.  I think there were about 20 laps to go when we pitted.  This is an awful big track, and 20 laps is a long time.  There weren't that many laps left when we got up there, but we were able to get there.
"It was great for my confidence.  I think we learned a lot this weekend.  We learned some stuff that's going to help us out in the future in the Winston Cup division - that's the main thing that we were trying to do today.  Everything went real well on that part of it, and while we were doing that we were able to get to victory lane.  I hadn't been there in a while, and it was kinda cool to get back there.
"I've always had a real strong car here at Pocono.  I don't really know what it takes to win here, but I think I can get around a top-10 or maybe get a top-5 if we have a good car tomorrow.  There's people that run really strong here, but I think we can definitely get up to the top-10.  We just need to get some good consistent finishes and get back up in the points a little bit."

RAY EVERNHAM (Car owner No. 19 Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"This was a test.  It was a good young group of guys working on that car, and it was good for them to be able to go in for the win.  The main thing was to get mileage on some of the pieces that were in that car.  It was great to win and let the guys get confidence.
"We actually put in some new guys that don't have a chance to go over the wall.  There were some experienced guys, and there were some guys that don't even really have a chance to go to the track.
"We want to make sure that we have control over what we're doing and be able to do some testing for Dodge. There were several other things that I wanted to accomplish by doing this.  Make it a win-win situation, get Casey some more track time and get some of the young guys some more experience.
"We had parts and pieces all over that car - and personnel.  We actually got some pit crew guys some experience.  Depending on what they see when they get that motor home, you could see parts of that as early as next week."
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