Chevy Race Notes - Fontana, Feb. 27
CHEVROLET NOTES & QUOTES
NASCAR NEXTEL CUP SERIES
AUTO CLUB 500 RACE NOTES
CALIFORNIA SPEEDWAY
February 27, 2005
JOE NEMECHEK, NO. 01 U.S. ARMY CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - NOTE - SIDELINED WITH ENGINE FAILURE: "I tell you what, this Army Chevrolet was awesome today. They knew we were here. I could go anywhere I wanted to go - high or low. We had an awesome day. I've got to thank Hendrick Motorsports. The engines are incredible and I don't know what broke, and it's not very often we break anything, but I've got to thank big Mike and all the guys back at the shop for an incredible race car, and Ryan Pemberton. All the pit stops were good. Everything was right today. We just didn't have that luck on our side. But I'll tell you what, we'll be back in Vegas. We've got another new one just like this and we'll be there to win."
MICHAEL WALTRIP, NO. 15 NAPA CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - NOTE - SIDELINED WITH ENGINE FAILURE: "We just broke a motor. We either broke a crank like we did last week, or a rod. Something pretty big came out of the bottom of the NAPA Chevy. We had a great day though. We got caught speeding and that was going to put us back on our finish more than we should have been. But nevertheless, we just gained on it all day long and I'm real proud of my team."
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE'S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Finished 2nd - POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS:
"Man, I wanted to win at home so bad! We put out all our effort there at the end. We came close, but we'll come back and hopefully get it here again in my home state later this year. We got out of sequence. We did a fuel only. I put the thought in Chad's mind. He did the fuel only. We suffered pretty bad from it. And then on that restart, we started off in 10th or so and got in a battle with a bunch of lapped cars all fighting for position and knocked me up in the marbles and I had to start over. I was surprised I even got back up to where I did. I'm very happy with this Lowe's Monte Carlo. This race team is incredible. My guys were the best on pit road and we had the best car. We just came up a little short."
(ON THE LAST COUPLE OF LAPS BATTLING WITH KURT BUSCH) "The Roush cars and a lot of those guys stayed out there on the last stop. It worked for them because the four tire guys got hung up in traffic. If we just had another corner I think there would have been a different outcome to this race. But it was just an awesome day for this Lowe's Monte Carlo."
(ON FALLING BACK AND THEN GOING TO THE FRONT) "We pitted and didn't take tires at one time. I've got to take a lot of the responsibility for that. I thought it was going to be a great call. I wanted the track position and I thought a lot of guys would take two tires. I gave Chad the idea and it backfired pretty bad. We did recover from that. I don't think it affected us too much. Maybe it gave the Roush guys the thought to stay out - I'm not sure if it did or not. After a few laps went by, everything stabilized and we held our own. But we fell in about 10th after we made that call. Coming through there, I really thought I could get up to fourth. And then before I knew it, I had caught the No. 16 and the No. 97 and if there was another lap, maybe I could have gotten inside the No. 16. But it was a great finish. I'm happy to be here in my home state. It was all in all a great day and a great start to the season."
(IT WAS A TOUGH DAY ON THE HENDRICK ENGINES. DID YOU HAVE ANY TEMPERATURE PROBLEMS OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT?) "No, I didn't have any issues with temperatures. I don't know what caused those engines to fail. I know in the Busch race yesterday a lot of people had trouble with windshield tearoffs landing on the grills. But that's pure speculation. I don't know what happened. When I saw the No. 24 break, it started to make me nervous and I started to let off a little earlier going into Turn 1. But I had no issues."
(ON RACING WITH JOE NEMECHEK) "Joe was awesome - especially in the middle stages of the race. I hated to see him have the (engine) failure. I really felt like we would be battling with the Nos. 97, 16, and 01 in the end. Everybody showed a lot of speed. I didn't lead a lot, but I was able to hang with whoever was leading. But those guys looked really strong. I don't know why the engines failed. I'm sure we'll go home and work on it. It raises some eyebrows because we're not turning the rpm's like we did before."
(ON THE NEW AERO PACKAGE) "Spoiler-wise, it didn't seem to be as much of a deal as not having the gear that we'd want to run in the car. The cars definitely have some movement to them in traffic, but I had a really good driving car all day long. It didn't bother me too much. The hardest thing would be going into the turn, rolling inside of someone, and beat them back to the gas. The fact that you're pulling on the steering wheel and making a tighter radius would bog your engine down. And you couldn't accelerate up alongside the car that was outside of you. That was more frustrating to me personally than the aero package."
(IS IT TOO EARLY TO JUDGE THE NEW RULES PACKAGE?) "For the first three or four races, the guys who didn't run like they wanted to today will go back and work on it. We have a weekend off to test and to dig deeper to find something. I think we need to wait for five or six races in and then we'll have a good understanding of the intermediate tracks. I was shocked to see so many cars and it may not have appeared that way, but it looked like the Hendrick cars were strong and the Roush cars were strong. Those two teams broke away. Between the two of us, we seemed pretty paired up as far as the teams were concerned."
(ON THE NUMBER OF EMPTY SEATS HERE THIS AFTERNOON) "This is my own perspective that I've had for a long time and I don't know if anybody wants to listen or not. But I think when you have two events at any track, you take away a little bit from each event. When you have a single event, there's a demand. It's the one shot you have to go and watch a race there. If there are two dates, you think well maybe you've got some stuff going on and you'll go to the next one. It gives more people an opportunity to go to the races and the overall attendance would be up, obviously. There are probably more new fans coming because of the two events. But it's new on the west coast and I think it's going to take some time. But I would love to see us go to single events all over and race in every single state at 38 different races and hit every fan around the country."
(HOW IS IT TO RACE WITH KURT BUSCH?) "It's cool. I love racing hard with everybody. My opinion has always been that in order to be the best you have to beat the best. I love racing Jeff Gordon and Kurt Busch. Greg Biffle has been on the gas. He's fun to race with. He always puts on a good show for you. I love to race with these guys. Granted, when I roll across the line in second, I was e because I wanted to win. But there's nothing better than being out there racing with these guys. I'm sizing up the competition. I watched Kurt a bunch because I know he's going to be a major player at the end of the season and I wanted to see what his car was like at the start. You evaluate things and get a gauge on the competition."
JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DUPONT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - NOTE - SIDELINED WITH ENGINE FAILURE:
(ARE YOU CONCERNED ABOUT THE ENGINE PROBLEMS YOU'VE HAD AS WELL AS OTHER HENDRICK-POWERED CARS?) "Yeah, I'm certainly concerned and it's a bummer. We had a good car. Joe (Nemechek) had a really strong car as well. We'll try to figure it out, get to the bottom of it and make sure it doesn't happen any more."
(DID SOMETHING BREAK?) "I think it was something in the valve train. I'm not sure. We should be really safe here. We're turning less RPMs than we were before. We're not really sure until we get to the bottom of it."
(DID THAT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE CAR'S HANDLING?) "Actually my car was handling really good. I was a little bit tight there at the end. If you're going to break engines when you're that good, then we've got a problem."
(DID YOU THINK THE NEW REAR SPOILER AND NEW SOFT TIRES WORKED?) "Well, this is a hard track for an indication. I think so, yeah. You know, we normally get spread out here pretty good, typically. I think we'll go a couple weeks and see what happens at some other tracks and go from there."
(YOU DIDN'T HAVE AS MUCH PRACTICE TIME. HOW WAS THAT?) "My only concern there is: yeah, we don't have enough tires. If you look at what we used to do, we used to get three sets of tires just to do qualifying runs. Now we get three sets of tires to do qualifying and race. I think we need to get at least one more set of tires. And possibly a little bit more time."
(WHEN YOU GET TO ATLANTA IS IT GOING TO BE A DIFFERENT SITUATION?) "Yeah, well, you've got to look at each track. This track versus Atlanta is a much, much different deal. It's hard to get comfortable qualifying there. So, making one run, two qualifying runs is going to be tricky there. I don't know. But I don't think we're under the same format at Atlanta, so I don't think we'll have to worry about it so much there."
DALE EARNHARDT JR., NO. 8 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO:
(WHAT WAS GOING ON WITH YOUR FRONT LEFT TIRE?)
"They just kept going flat. You'll have to talk to Pete and those guys about what they think the initial cause was, but the car was handling great. I made a big, big mistake in qualifying that caused us a good starting spot. We had a great car and we were going to work ourselves up there. I thought we had a top 10 car at the start of that race and we got it even better. It depends, I mean, we just had some problems.
"I was really proud of the way the car drove. The car was driving pretty good. And even after we fixed all the problems and didn't have any more flats, it was still driving alright. I just didn't want to get up there jerky and racing those guys that were on the lead lap. You know, those tires going flat-that was weird.
"We didn't change anything and we didn't have any problems any more. We didn't change. We stayed at the air pressures-everything was the same. They just quit, blowing out.
(IS THERE ANY EXPLANATION FOR THE TIRES?)
"I don't know. I just know the outside edge was 300 degrees on the corner and that makes it come apart fast. We didn't see that at all during practice."
(CAN YOU COMMENT ON THE RACING? KEVIN HARVICK SAID IT WAS NOT EXCITING)
"I agree with Kevin. Of course I would, you know, I was in the back. You know, we had a good car. I mean I got a fast ass pit crew and those guys get me a couple of spots on pit road about every time. They were doing that for Michael, you know, for years. So, I knew we were going to get in the top 10 and have a good finish. That second run we were coming up there pretty good and I was just taking my time and the car was still staying with me. On long runs they were backing up fast to us. So, it was looking like it was going to be a pretty good day. I wanted to get a good run, you know, shut everybody up because everybody says we've been having a hell of a time until we get a top 5 or something like that, you know."
(HOW DID THE CAR FEEL OVERALL?)
Really, really good.
(EVEN WITH THE NEW BALANCE ON THE CAR?)
"Everybody is chasing their cars out there. No matter what they do with the spoilers, a guy is going to drive away from everybody. You know, you're going to have guys that are passing and guys that win races. Aside from them bringing the race cars to us, it's going to be hard to get an IROC-type of feel going on and a bunch of racing like that."
(COULD YOU RUN SIDE-BY-SIDE WITH PEOPLE AND FEEL COMFORTABLE DOING IT?)
"No, not with that spoiler. I mean, who could? Would you think you could? I don't think that makes any sense to take that off and say it's going to make it better running side-by-side, obviously. Somebody's got to wake up here, you know what I mean? Somebody's got to.the lightbulb's got to come on. They've got to figure this out. Taking the spoiler off it is going to make it more difficult to drive. The softer tires give us more grip, so it hauls ass and then it falls off-that's okay. You know, that's not a bad deal. We need some more downforce."
(DO YOU EXPECT SOMETHING SIMILAR TO THIS IN LAS VEGAS?)
"Yeah. Pretty much everywhere except for Martinsville and that there. But everywhere."
(HOW MUCH OF THE SPOILER DO YOU NEED BACK?)
"I'd like to get an inch back. What's wrong with that? Give me an inch more spoiler and give me some more front downforce. Give us all that, you know, give us everything. Then we'll have a hell of a race, you know what I mean? Think about what it would be like if we all had good downforce, could drive our cars really good, because they don't drive good. They drive like they were built 20 years ago.because of the spoiler that we got on there. They don't turn, they don't grip in the back too good. I don't want to complain too much because I got my car driving pretty good, comparable to everybody else, you know what I mean? Everybody was just all over the place off the corner, chasing the back, spinning the tires. But, I think if they give us a lot of downforce, you know, we could race a lot closer and charge the corner, get on the outside of guys. When you don't have that spoiler on there, if you get to the outside and it shows the nose on that air, shoot man, it just spins out."
(WHAT THEY WERE TRYING TO DO IS PUT MORE OF THE DRIVER AND CREW CHIEF. DO YOU FEEL THAT HAS HAPPENED?)
"Yeah, I mean we're working harder to figure it out. If that's what they wanted, yeah. It's kind of like Algebra II or geometry, you know what I mean? Geometry is a little bit harder and that's what we've got now. I was really happy with the way my car drove. It was really tough with no practice. I like the impound deal because it was a lot less work but I would have liked to have got a couple of laps after qualifying. You know, it's kind of like a shot in the dark, I felt, because I screwed up really big in qualifying. That cost us a really good lap. We had about a 20th place car, I thought, from qualifying. And then when the race started I thought it was a 15th place car and then some guys would fall out and I'd get a top 10, which is better than I've been running here in the past."
(IS HAVING YOUR GUYS OUT HERE ALL MORNING ON SUNDAY A WASTE OF TIME SINCE THEY CAN'T WORK ON THE CARS?)
"It sounds like one to me, but who am I, you know?"
(YOU DON'T WAKE UP UNTIL NOON ANYWAY, SO WHAT DOES IT MATTER?)
"Yeah! I mean if they want to come hang at the bus, they are welcome. We can all hang at the bus. It would be hard not to get into a case of beer, though, at that point. But, you know, they're making all these changes and change is good and everybody. The thing about us and you all, we're all going to pick and grind at everything they do. Actually, it's a lot less work and if the guys are going to complain.Hell, the less they've got to do, the less anybody has to do in life the better they like it, you know what I mean? It's probably.it's nice and it's going to save money, regardless of what people say and it doesn't as much money when you don't have racing on the track and that much changing and all that.
"That's smart, but I'm not sure. Speedway tracks we should do it. Maybe we should do it more at the short tracks and mile tracks. But these tracks here, you know, you need a little bit more. Or you would like to have more understanding about your car in race trim after qualifying. Maybe they should do one hour and then qualifying and then one hour. That would be awesome, you know what I mean?"
(CAN WE EXPECT MORE OF THE SAME AT LAS VEGAS?)
"I hope I run a little bit better. And I hope I don't have any problems with my tires and get us a good finish."
(IS IT GOING TO BE THIS TYPE OF STRUNG OUT FIELD?)
"Yeah. It's what you got with this package. It's what you got. They want to get them bunched up. Look at what we do at the plate tracks to get them bunched up."
PETE RONDEAU, CREW CHIEF, NO. 8 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO:
(WHAT HAPPENED WITH JUNIOR'S LEFT FRONT TIRE?)
"We're not really sure. At first we thought something was cutting it down. It might have been camber-related. We'll take it back and look at it and look at the information we get."
(JUNIOR SAYS THE LEFT FRONT WAS 300 DEGREES)
"It wasn't quite that hot, just on one side. It wasn't quite that hot, but just one edge of it. And we're not sure if we had a rub at the same time or what."
SCOTT RIGGS, NO. 10 VALVOLINE CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO:
(ON THE HENDRICK ENGINE BREAKING):
"We had something break in the engine. It's a shame because you don't hear about Hendrick engines breaking very much."
(ON HIS RUN BEFORE THE ENGINE FAILURE):
"The Valvoline Chevy was running great. We worked our way into the top 10 there and had a solid run going. Then we had a little problem on the left rear on a pit stop and that sent us to the back of the field. But we drove right back up there to the top ten before we broke."
"I really wish we could've stayed up there. We had an awesome car. It's fun to have a racecar that good and competitive and I'm just proud of all the guys for giving me such a strong Valvoline machine. We're going to have cars like this all year I hope."
(ON THE TEAM'S MOMENTUM):
"This doesn't do anything to hurt the team's momentum going into Las Vegas. All we did today was prove what a strong car the Valvoline Chevrolet was. We started 12th, which we were disappointed with, and moved up to eighth before we had our pit stop problem (loose lug nuts on the left rear). But within thirty laps or so we were back in the top-10 when we broke.
So I don't think this is going to hurt us. Obviously we're disappointed we couldn't get the finish we deserve, but we still feel great about the team's performance this weekend and the way the guys are working together to build strong cars and strong performances."
JOE NEMECHEK, NO. 01 U.S. ARMY CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO
"The U.S. Army Chevy and the pit stops were as close to being perfect as you can get. The complete package was working. Aerodynamically we were balanced, the engine was great, everything did its job. We just didn't make it to the end. Man, once we got out front the car really checked out. My car was consistent all day; it was just awesome. I am definitely disappointed. We built a new car for here and one for Las Vegas. We're going in the right direction -- we qualified well, raced well and that's all I can ask for. Very seldom do we have engine troubles. I have to thank Rick Hendrick and Hendrick Motorsports for the engines. Just one of those days. We'll diagnose the engine, fix it and we'll be back in Vegas and I guarantee we're going to be there to win. What's amazing is that we made an air pressure adjustment after the first pit stop and never touched the car after that. It was incredible. This car was fun to drive. Today will hurt us in points, but there is always next week.
JEFF BURTON, NO. 31 CINGULAR WIRELESS CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: (ON THE RACE) "Pit crews can't be winning races. We've got to get better cars. We got ourselves up in good position but we had a miscommunication on tire pressure. We were already loose and we ended up putting a lot of air in the right rear tire."
(HOW WAS THE WEEKEND IN GENERAL) "It was terrible. We never ran good. But as bad as we were on Friday, we did a really good job of putting ourselves in position to get out of here with a top 15. We just didn't get it because we had a miscommunication. I look at who finished 14th and 16th and 17th and we ran in front of them all day. We just had a miscommunication there at the end. We definitely have to be better, but I'm proud we were able to make something out of it."
BOBBY LABONTE, NO. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: "We had a good run. We didn't really have the car to challenge those guys at the end, but we worked hard all day. We'd have liked a top-10 finish, but we're pretty happy with 13th after last week. The guys worked hard all day and we got the car better and better throughout the day. We were in a hole after Daytona and we began digging out of it today. We just need to keep getting after it in Las Vegas."
(ON FALLING BACK TO 33RD AFTER STARTING 12TH) "The car was really tight in the beginning, but Steve (Addington) and the guys worked real hard on it, made a lot of adjustments, and we had some great pit stops. That helped us get back to the front."
