Chevrolet NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Sunday post-race quotes - Las Vegas Motor Speedway

CHEVROLET NOTES & QUOTES


NASCAR NEXTEL CUP SERIES


UAW-DAIMLERCHRYSLER 400


LAS VEGAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY


March 13, 2005


 


SUNDAY POST-RACE QUOTES 


 

Jimmie Johnson (Winner)

#48 Lowe's Chevrolet

 

Yeah, it was a great performance for Hendrick Motorsports. The Hendrick
cars, at the beginning of the day today, we all were pretty...struggling
with the cars. I don't know what the other guys had for issues but I was
really loose. I think by the first pit stop I was near 20th. We got real
aggressive at the beginning, pulled some spring rubbers out of the right
rear. Actually, we didn't lose many positions. It was an amazing stop.
We've got new guys to the team this year and somehow we got both the
spring rubbers and changed the new tires and came out where we went in,
which was amazing. We were giving him a hard time and thanking him,
which was pretty cool. Beyond that, we just had to stay working on the
race car. It was very good on the short run, but as the run went on we
got looser and looser. Chad started playing some adjustments around. We
finally found something that started to work and once we did that, I was
just railing through the pack. I could find my way to third, and then
from third to first I would get loose again once I got in the clean air
and up towards the front. And then I had to find a new line and work on
some things. We got that accomplished and then Ryan and I at the end,
when we had our car just right, I knew I needed to get by Ryan. He's a
bulldog to pass. And I just had to really work hard to get by him. I
think we put on a good show, we were side by side for a long time. And
got it done, so it was good. We were best when we needed to be, which
was the end of the race. 

 

YOU HAD A PIT STOP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RACE WHERE YOU HAD A PROBLEM AND
DROPPED BACK TO 15TH. DID YOU HAVE AN IDEA OF JUST HOW GOOD YOUR CAR WAS
TO BE ABLE TO PICK OFF THAT MANY CARS?

Yeah, I felt really good with it. When you can move through traffic that
fast, you know that you've got a good car. It's just tough to move
through traffic. One time I think I got six cars in one lap, I caught
two of them in two-three wide situations. I was just flying by guys. It
was amazing with the pit stop, we had some trouble on the right front
with the lug nut which bounced off of the tire changer-it bounced off of
Shane. And When it bounced off of him, it went back and it stuck itself
right on the stud. We saw it on the overhead video, the thing bounces
right off of him and sticks right back on and he couldn't get the tire
back on. So, it was just a crazy thing. Once we had that, we had to work
back from that and things were great. 

 

WHEN YOU SAW THE YOUNGER BUSCH COMING BEHIND YOU, WHAT DID YOU THINK?

Run. He's hungry, he's at his home track, he's in the same equipment I'm
sitting in. Run. I just did everything I could to stay in front of him.
I really worked hard to get a cushion in front of him, so that if I ran
into lapped traffic and had some problems, then I had a little space to
give up or to play with there. I did have some trouble. Some guys were
trying to be nice and get out of the way and I didn't anticipate it and
got into the back of the #22 one time and lost a bunch of time. He was
just trying to get out of my way and I didn't expect it. But, he did a
great job and I must say that for Rick taking a bold move and taking the
#5 and #25 and moving them out of their old shops and moving them up on
the hill next to the #24 and #48, building a new 80,000 sq ft shop,
putting those guys in there over the winter...You can't tell that those
guys made the change like that. They're better than they were last year.
Usually a change slows a team down. These guys, it didn't faze them.
They're doing a great job and I'm very proud of everyone at Hendrick for
what they're doing. 

 

THERE WAS A RECORD NUMBER OF CAUTIONS. WHAT AFFECT DID THAT HAVE ON YOU
AND THE RACE IN GENERAL?

It really helped me because we had an ill-handling race car and we
needed the cautions to work on the car. So, it really helped us out. I
think maybe it gave us the opportunity to win the race. The last two to
three pit stops, we had the car where we needed it, but we needed
everything before then to get the car adjusted. 

 

WERE YOU AWARE THAT GREG BIFFLE WAS GRIPING ABOUT YOUR QUARTER PANEL
BEING FLARED OUT TOO MUCH AND THAT THEY HAD TO TAP IT IN DURING A PIT
STOP?

No, I'm not aware of that. What part of the quarter panel?

 




THEY GRIPED TO THE INSPECTORS ABOUT IT BECAUSE POSSIBLY IT WAS GIVING
YOU A LOT MORE DOWNFORCE

Well, I saw it in victory lane, behind the tire the quarter panel was
pulled out. And that's just a parachute, that just captures air and
sucks it under the car. And that was from some contact. So I don't know
why. But if he thinks it's helping me, that fine. That's cool with me. 

 

HE WAS GRIPING IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE RACE WHEN YOU BLEW BY HIM

I don't know. I guess everybody is frustrated when they're getting
passed. But, I don't have a clue.

 

AT THE END WE HAD CLOSE TO A 40-LAP RUN UNDER GREEN. WAS YOUR CAR
FEELING WELL ENOUGH AT THE END HAD THE PIT STOP COME ANY SOONER?

We made one run just about to the fuel window. The tires...our left
front was wearing out. We were really abusing that tire with our setup.
I think we could go almost 60 laps...59 laps or something. And by lap 55
the car would get really tight. So we were getting close to that area.
But the car was still driving really good. And even though I was
complaining on the radio about the handling of the car, we still at
times would have two or three tenths over competition, so even though I
didn't have a very good driving car, nobody did. I think that is because
of the smaller spoiler and softer tire combination. It's making the cars
harder to drive. That's something that I think we've all wanted to see
from a drivers' standpoint. It does spread the field out, but it lets
the drivers and teams go to work and try to find an advantage.

 

DO YOU FEEL MOMENTUM NOW AND LOOKING AHEAD AT THE POINTS, DOES IT FEEL
GOOD TO HAVE THIS CUSHION?

It's nice to get off to a good start in the Chase. Hopefully we can be
in a situation where we were last year. When we got close to race 26 we
could experiment with some things and try to find an advantage for the
final 10. That's our game plan and hopefully we can have that situation
develop for us. It's still too early, obviously, to tell. But, the
team...we made some changes over the off season. We've improved our pit
stops, we've improved the mechanic situation on the race cars and I
don't think we took a step back this year, which is really good. I do
believe we've maintained, if not taken a step further from where we were
last year. That's good to have. 

 

DOES TAKING OVER THE POINTS EARLY CHANGE YOUR STRATEGY OR CHANGE THE WAY
YOU LOOK AT IT?

Not yet. You know, it's good for team morale. You know, we got $30,000
from NEXTEL for that for the leader bonus, so that's good. We can go to
the blackjack table tonite and have some fun. It's really good for
morale more than anything. As far as your strategy it's still too early.


 

IT APPEARS TO BE A ROUSH/HENDRICK BATTLE

Maybe. I hope that it's definitely the Hendrick group that's up there.
But you see I feel in our sport, you'll have a team or two that sorts it
out or has everything figured out for five to eight race span. And then
the other guys that didn't run so good are going to go home, going to
test, going to Kentucky or go test at the next race track that we're
racing at and try to find something. And then when that happens and we
start finishing fifth, tenth, we go back. It's just a cycle that takes
place. And right now all the Hendrick cars and all the Roush cars...you
can see the hard work that everyone put in over the winter. They've got
one and we've got one. So, we're on par with those guys. The whole
crucial part of this is to time it for the final ten and make sure that
your cycle comes around on that final ten so that you can be the
champion. 

 

IT APPEARS THAT THE FEARS OVER HENDICK ENGINES HAVE DISAPPEARED

Yeah, fortunately, we had an off weekend. The off weekend really let the
guys work hard and figure out what was going on. All the engines, even
mine, I finished and even mine was getting ready to go. It was the same
problem on all the engines. So it was really easy for us to see what was
going on and look at it and address it. So, we hate the fact that it
took so many cars out, took Jeff out. Nemechek had an incredible race
car. We hate that, but we did learn a lot because of how it broke. And
so many of them broke. So, we feel good about it. A 400 mile race wasn't
as long as Fontana, we didn't have as many RPMs for a long period of
time. So, with the off weekend and the short race, we could go home and
really pull everything apart. I'm sure everything is under control but
I'm sure the guys are eager to look inside the engines. 

 

HOW BENEFICIAL WAS YOUR TESTING HERE IN JANUARY?

Really, it's hurt us. We tested the car and had such a great test. We
really came back how we tested and thought that it would work. And we
really had to go to work on it. Qualifying, we still ran a good lap. But
it was a very eventful lap. The first half of the race, the car was
really loose, still. We finally got it right at the end. We really tuned
in the car during the test session and it hurt us for the first half of
the race.

 

YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT GOING BACK TO ATLANTA?

Yeah, we did a tire test there and coming back inside the gates, driving
on the track, remembering the battle at the end of the race battling
with Mark Martin, brought back at lot of memories, so I think that was
good for the team to go back. At least for the #48 team. The other teams
still have to go back and I'm sure will have some emotions. We left
there on such a high note, all the Hendrick cars were really running
well and I think we're going to have a really good showing.

 




Kyle Busch (2nd place)

#5 Kellogg's Chevrolet

It was definitely a good day for the Kellogg's Robot Chevrolet. It was a
lot of fun. To be able to bring a second place finish home to the
Fox/Century folks that were involved here today for the event and the
movie coming out, that came out Friday. It's probably going to be the
number one movie so I was one spot short. We've still got a long year
ahead of us. I hope this wasn't just a fluke but qualifying on the pole
two weeks ago in California and finishing second here in Vegas. It's a
tremendous opportunity for the whole team, putting the #5 and #25 cars
in the same building. Being able to go out strong here is definitely the
awesome thing. Just working on the cars all day here is what we did. You
know we were tight, tight, tight always in the center. To be able to
work on that all day, Alan Gustafson and the guys made awesome calls
there and got the car handling better and I was able to drive by all
those guys on the outside to come back up through to the second spot.

 

DO YOU RATE A SECOND PLACE FINISH IN THIS RACE AS BEING BIGGER THAN ANY
OF YOUR VICTORIES IN THE BUSCH SERIES?

If it was a win, probably. But, you know what? I haven't actually gotten
a win since our accident in October of last year. It's just another one
of those second place finishes that we could have turned into a win but
we're glad that our teammate was able to win. I can't say that it's been
bigger than any of our Busch Series victories just yet, but it's
definitely right up there with him. Right up there with them. Probably
Lowe's Motor Speedway is my biggest win because it was in front of all
the Hendrick Motorsports people and in front of all the whole racing
people around North Carolina. And it was our home track, Lowe's.

 

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE IDEA OF A SECOND RACE IN LAS VEGAS?

I think it should be here. An October or September night race sounds
good. 

 




WHEN YOU WERE CHASING JIMMIE PRETTY GOOD, HE HAD A LITTLE BIT OF A
PROBLEM WITH WIMMER AND YOU WERE ABLE TO TRIM SOME OFF THE DEFICIT. WERE
YOU ABLE TO GET CLOSER OR WAS IT JUST A LITTLE BIT?

I was obviously excited that I was catching him, having a shot just to
kind of get up there, but then once Jimmie got through another set of
lapped cars and got through there pretty good...and I got to them and
they were side-by-side. So, I kind of lost that ground again. Anything
can kind of play around in the lap car world. You know, I was there last
week, so I probably screwed up a lot of people. It's all a matter of how
you can get through the traffic and stuff like that. Jimmie was trying
to go low on him and I guess Scott was giving him the outside to go
around him and they got bottled up-no big deal. I'm sure Jimmie would
have been upset if I won and he lost, but...

 

THE EARLY PART OF THE SEASON AS SHAPING UP AS ROUSH AND HENDRICK, WHAT
IS YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON THAT?

I'm just excited to be here. It's fun to be associated with such a great
organization in Hendrick Motorsports and what Mr. Hendrick gives us all.
Just for what the chassis, body and engine shop and everyone...they just
work their hearts out. It goes from the front office to the dumpster
guys, the guys that sweep the floor. It just doesn't matter, everyone
does there job there at Hendrick Motorsports. Their job is to be number
one and obviously we're working towards trying to be there. We've got
the Roush guys to try to beat but it's definitely going to be a good
battle. And like Kurt said, don't count out anybody else just yet. It's
a long season ahead of us. Those guys will go test, they'll get it done.
DEI will go test, Ganassi...Yates, everybody. There's just a tremendous
amount of opportunity out there and for everybody to get going.

 

PRESSURE ON YOU BEING IN FRONT OF YOUR HOME FANS....WHAT DO YOU THINK OF
THE WAGERING?

I had a bunch of guys that put money on me so I was wishing the #48 car
would have pulled over and let us win. They would have made some bank. I
bet you all of the sportsbooks would have gone broke! But, it was pretty
cool. Everything was fun this weekend but I bet next year I'll have a
lot lower odds.

 




YOU SET THE AGE RECORD FOR QUALIFYING AND RAN WELL THIS WEEK. ARE YOU
SURPRISING YOURSELF?

No, I'm not surprising myself. ....(A Coca-Cola is placed in front of
him) No, not Coke! Pepsi's better. Anyways, back to the question. I'm
not really surprising myself. I just wish it was easier on myself to try
to finish this well every week. In the Busch Series I could finish top
10 every week. In the Cup Series, it's just a tremendous amount harder.
There in the middle of the race I thought, 'Damn, we don't even have a
shot for 15th!' But the guys kept working on the car and got it running
better for us and we were able to pass guys on the outside and come back
up to second place. So, I wish I could have obviously won today, anybody
would wish that. We could have set that youngest winner record. It
probably would have been pretty, pretty hard for anybody else to beat
coming up.

 

NOW THAT YOU AND KURT ARE RACING EACH OTHER HOW DO YOUR PARENTS DIVIDE
THEIR TIME IN THE PITS?

I hope my Dad stays in the Hendrick Motorsports pit because that's where
his job is! He works at Hendrick Motorsports. He used to work on my ARCA
team and he works around a little bit in the organization now. You know,
Mom...they both hang around both of us a lot. It's cool to be able to
have such a family that's great like that. It doesn't matter who's up
front or who's behind or whatever. They both support us very much.

 

DID YOU FIGURE HOW THAT TIRE GOT FLAT?

I didn't figure it out, no. The guys were going back and pushing it
behind the wall. I can only assume that it was coming back on the access
road-a bunch of junk coming back there and stuff like that might have
cut it. I didn't feel anything going wrong with it in the last few laps.
I probably wish it was going down a little bit which would have made the
car looser where I probably could have caught Jimmie, but we were just
too tight.

 




WHEN YOU'RE RACING AGAINST YOUR BROTHER, DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT OR DO
YOU THINK ABOUT OTHER THINGS?

You're focused on the task at hand, obviously, and just trying to get
laps and make it to the end and work on your handling and make sure it
gets better. I'm trying to think of a time where we ran side by side
together, I don't know if he was passing me...he probably was passing
me.  I just was always noticing him up front, leading sometimes or
running second or third and thinking, "He's got a good shot to do this."
I don't know what happened on pit road, if he had a slow stop or what
exactly happened. But he got mired back in traffic and that just kind of
hurt him right there but the #48 was really strong and it probably would
have been a really, really good race between him and the #97 if they
would have restarted 1,2. You know, we came back from....I think we
restarted like 10th or something like that on the last restart and drove
up to second and Kurt was farther back than I was. It was pretty cool
that we were both able to come up through there.

 

YOU MADE A GOOD MOVE IN THE POINTS

Oh, come on. Now all we have to do is keep it there, or move up even
further which would be great. That's just pretty cool. I mean, it shows
that the #5 team hasn't lost what it had from years ago when Terry won
the championship. We're looking forward to bringing this car up to the
front every week. You know, Terry was doing an awesome job, it's just
that things weren't really clicking. And he wanted to go back to a
partial schedule. They threw me in there. Everybody is saying that I'm
not ready but we're just going to go out there and try to do the best we
can and if we wreck a couple of cars, win a couple of race....whatever.
We've just got to make sure we're doing out job at hand and do the best
possible job that we can every week.

 

 

Jeff Gordon (4th place)

#24 DuPont Chevrolet

 

HOW WAS THE RACE FOR YOU TODAY?

It was good. You know, I've got to go find out what's wrong with Ryan
Newman, but I guess a bunch of other guys do, too. We had a heck of a
run going there. The car was so good on new tires that I just wanted to
get up there and get a shot at Jimmy. I don't know if we could have won
there or not since we had some tires issues there where we fell off. I
had a great. And I felt like I passed Ryan pretty good. We were being
aggressive and everything and I don't know, he just drove down into the
back of me. 

 

IT SEEMS LIKE THIS IS A DAY WHERE YOU REALLY EARNED YOUR FINISH

Yeah, I'm just proud for the DuPont Chevrolet team. You know, we went
back and forth every time we were up in the top 5. Somebody would take
two tires and we'd have problems or something would happen. You know,
we'd get shuffled back. It was just a great effort on the car because we
just kept tuning to make it better and better. I wanted to get up there
and give my teammate Jimmie Johnson a run for his money and also Kyle
Busch, what a great run for him today. I hate what happened to Brian
Vickers today, if he hadn't have had his trouble he might be up there
today. Overall effort for Hendrick Motorsports is a nice bounce back
from Fontana. I don't know, I had a little trouble with Ryan Newman
there so I have to find out what that's about. But, it costs us a shot
at getting a win. I don't know if we could have gotten up there with
Jimmie or not but it certainly took all of our chances away.

 

WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN YOU AND RYAN?

I worked on him, worked on him and worked on him. I raced him clean, he
kept fighting me and I was doing everything I could to get by him. I
finally did get by him. He got a big push from behind him and got a
pretty good draft going into Turn 1 and I just took my normal line in
there. And, he got on me and got me loose and then he just hit me. I'm
just fortunate...I feel fortunate that we've got a car in one piece and
a top 5 finish. 

 




IT SEEMS LIKE IT'S SHAKEN OUT TO BE BETWEEN HENDRICK AND ROUSH HERE IN
THIS PART OF THE SEASON

Yeah, definitely. In winter testing that looked to be the case as well.
I'm really happy with the way things are going. We've got to qualify a
little bit better, but other than that we've got a great race team and
great race cars. The Roush cars do as well. 

 

Kevin Harvick (5th place)

#29 GM Goodwrench Chevrolet

 

HOW WAS YOUR RACE TODAY?

We had the car to beat today, but it wasn't to be.  I'm proud of all the
guys on this GM Goodwrench Chevrolet.  We were put to the back twice and
still got a top-five.




Tony Stewart (10th place)

#20 The Home Depot Chevrolet

 

TELL US ABOUT YOUR RACE

I think we passed 80 cars. You know, we got off to a good start. Got
ourselves in the Top 13, I think, during that first round. Then we got
ourselves in the top 5 during that second round. You know, on the stop
we lose a couple of spots and car spins in front of us. We're slowing
down to keep from hitting the car that's spinning. Then three seconds
after the wreck, somebody plows into the back of me and turns me around.
It was just a first step in a sequence of bad events that kept costing
us time and position. We came in on the next stop and worked our way
back up into the Top 10 again. We followed the #0 car in and his tire
carrier decided he was going to walk all the way around on pit lane to
get around the tire changers and ran into the car with the tire and
knocks the tire into one of my tire carriers and it tears our car up.
Back we go again. The tire was pretty severe on the left front. Joe
Nemechek drives into us off of Turn 2. It was just one after that first
sequence of events...after getting spun around, it was just something we
couldn't recover from. It was bad position coming off the pits. It was
one thing which led to another which led to another all day. 

 

HOW HARD WAS THE DRIVE TO GET BACK IN THE TOP 10?

It was tough! We couldn't have done it without...the guys on the crew
were the reason we did it. They got the thing driving good enough for us
to be able to do that. So, again and awesome job.

 

Jeff Burton (17th place)

#31 Cingular Wireless Chevrolet

 

I had a good car early and was moving along pretty good there and got in
that wreck and spent the whole rest of that race trying to figure out
how to get fixed up from that, get fenders fixed up and all that. We
finally got it where it was decent and took off, got up to about 8th and
then just not knowing what we were to do to the car because we were
always trying to fix the car after that wreck, we just never got the
right adjustments in it. So, I'm a little disappointed for sure that we
didn't get to run as good as we wanted to, considering we were in the
wreck and all that we shouldn't complain too much.

 

 

Joe Nemechek (19th place)

#01 U.S. Army Chevrolet

 

TELL US ABOUT YOUR DAY

I went from having a shot at winning to almost being lapped. This is
really disappointing. The U.S. Army Chevy was great until that last run.
The car got so tight -- it was a handful to drive. I don't know what
happened. There was still plenty of racing left to get to the front, but
this time -- for no explained reason -- the car got awfully tight. It
really hurts when you have one of the best cars for the majority of the
day and then end up 19th.

 

Ryan Pemberton

(Crew chief) #01 U.S. Army Chevrolet

 

When Joe came in for the last stop he had one of the fastest cars on the
track. We didn't make any adjustments -- took four tires and fuel.
Something went amiss and we could not immediately identify any problem
after the race. We'll go over everything at the shop this week to see
what went wrong.

 

Scott Riggs (31st place)

#10 Valvoline Chevrolet

 

TELL US ABOUT YOUR CAR AND YOUR DAY

Yeah, we had a good car. We just kept ticking with the balance and
playing with it the whole time. We had good pit stops just trying to get
around a lap car there, and just tried a little too hard and got on the
throttle a little too quick. It came around on me, I should have pitted,
I knew I had a flat tire but I should have pitted as soon as I came by
pit road. But I tried to go back around and catch up with the field. 

 

IT APPEARED THE PITS WERE NOT OPEN AT THAT TIME, THOUGH

They were open when I went in but they were closed when I spun. But it
cost us more by tearing a fender off than it would pitting too early.
That's just something you learn. We should have been a little bit
quicker about calling that, myself and everyone. I just hate it because
they give me a good car and then we had to come in. It was pretty
extensive work, that tire beat the right front off it pretty bad.

 

ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO ATLANTA?

I am. It's disappointing to have such a good car at California and Las
Vegas and have disappointing finishes. It's just frustrating. 

 

 

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