Dodge Charger NASCAR Quotes from AMS

Friday, March 18, 2005
Atlanta Motor Speedway
Golden Corral 500 Advance Stuff.


KASEY KAHNE (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

 

ARE YOU OUT OF CARS "Our speedway stuff is getting rebuilt. We have some
short track cars, but our intermediate car, we're hurting on that right
now. I've crashed a couple and the guys are building some new ones.
We're looking all right. We need to get out of here with a clean
weekend."

 

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?  "We just missed it on our aero balance. We missed
it a little bit with the new Charger and the spoiler and everything with
all the new rules. When we do hit it we'll be right back where we need
to be, but as of right now we're off a little bit. Hopefully real soon,
hopefully this weekend we'll get it back. The guys have worked real hard
all week long with new ideas changing things over, redoing cars. It's
been a busy week, but I think we're definitely going in the right
direction."

 

WHAT'S WRONG WITH DODGE? "I think there's a lot of good Dodge teams,
Penske, Evernham, Ganassi. I think they're all close, but nobody is
doing much winning. Ray could have 10 Dodge wins all to himself with no
problem at all over the last two years with some of the races with Bill
Elliott and some of my races. They just never happened so they don't
count, but I think we're close. We haven't been close the first couple
of races."

 

HAVE YOU TALKED ABOUT IT BEING TIME TO GO? "Everybody knows it's time to
go. We've had meetings all week in figuring out what's wrong with our
Dodge Charger and how to fix it and what we need to do to make it
better. We can't do anything about the points we've already lost. All we
can do is gain as many as we can from here out. Everybody is working
hard trying to make the right decisions on how to have good racecars. If
I don't have a good racecar I need to finish the race, not overdrive the
car and crash. It's little things we know we have to do. We just need to
start doing them."

 

DO YOU THINK THERE'S NO MORE ROOM FOR A BAD RACE? "I don't think you can
get away with having too many more than two or three, but if you do
finish in the top 10 for a bunch of straight races and get a couple of
wins and lead laps you can definitely get back in it. There's still
plenty of time to get back in it. We just need to turn things around and
get going in the right direction."

 

HAVE YOU MADE ANY PERSONNEL CHANGES? "No personnel changes on our side.
We've been making some changes in the cars. We missed it on the aero
side of things this year. We thought we were pretty good through the off
season. Every time we went and tested somewhere we were the fastest
Dodge by a good bit and the tracks were cool. As things have changed, as
rubber has gone down on racetracks and had more cars around us we've
been really, really loose. We don't have cars to test right now."

 

DO YOU HAVE TO GUARD AGAINST TRYING TOO HARD? "I haven't been trying too
hard. I've just been trying to stay on the racetrack, just trying to
hang on to what I had. The last two weeks, I lost it twice. It's a bad
feeling to do it two times in a row."

 

COMMENT ON RECENT NASCAR PENALTIES "Whatever NASCAR decides to do to
'em, that's what goes on. If it's severe enough, cheating is obviously
severe enough to give 'em suspensions and thousands of dollars in
points. It's just something NASCAR is trying to straighten out to make
sure it doesn't happen anymore. I really don't know what happened (to
the 48). I heard low, but I don't know what that means, if it's the
front or back. I didn't really hear a whole lot about it. I just know
they got some pretty stiff fines, so it must have been something pretty
big."

 

COMMENT ON THE DODGE NOSE "I think for starters when they started
designing this nose and tail they had a lot bigger rear spoiler. They're
trying to make as much downforce as they can in the front. Now we don't
have any rear spoiler. I think we just missed it with aero. We've got
too much in the front and not enough in the back, something similar to
that. We're just working on taking some of that away maybe. I think
we've got a better aero package for this week. We'll see how it works
and keep going on from there. We're getting some cars ready to test.
We're going to Texas in two weeks and get ready for these short track
races. We've got a couple of real nice cars for the short tracks. We'll
be in real good shape for the short tracks. We've just got to get
through these mile and a half, two-mile tracks."

 

COMMENT ON TAKING CARS TO THE WIND TUNNEL AFTER ATLANTA RACE "I hope
they don't take our car. We need 'em right now. We need to be working on
these things. They'd probably learn a lot about where everybody's at.
It's definitely not the same."

 

YOU FINISHED THIRD IN THIS RACE LAST YEAR. WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER MOST
ABOUT IT? "My car was really good that race. We started out super loose
the first half of the race and from there out we were the best car here.
I hit the wall twice and bent the right-side fenders in. We ran third
because of that, but we had a great shot at winning if I hadn't done
that."

 

IS IT HARDER TO ADJUST THE CARS NOW? "It's definitely a lot harder to
adjust them. The way ours have been, as a driver, I haven't been able to
give good enough feedback to know what to do. If I tell them something
and they go and change that, then you have another problem. When you're
fighting an aero balance problem you can't fix it. If you're loose here
and they fix that, then you might be loose over there. You can't fix the
whole corner, and that's where we're at right now."

 

WHAT'S THE BEARD ALL ABOUT? "Last week I forgot my shaver so I let it
go. I've been letting it go. It's not a three-day thing. It takes
awhile. I'm going to have to shave Monday. I've got some things to do
that I've got to get cleaned up for."

 

 

JAMIE McMURRAY (No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger)

 

COMMENT ON RECENT NASCAR PENALTIES "Those guys are my friends. I don't
understand why Harvick had something taken away if he did something in
qualifying. I don't think that seems fair to do to somebody when they
race legal. I think a good punishment for the 29 car would have been
just make 'em start the race with a bad fuel neck and make 'em change
it. They would have lost a few laps and never done it again. I don't
really understand taking points away. The other two cars, there's some
of them I don't think were stiff enough penalties and the others were
too harsh. Everybody can do what they did, but everyone else tries to
stay within the tolerances NASCAR gives them. For the most part, we all
can. I guess some of them didn't."

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT TAKING A WIN AWAY IF THE CAR DOESN'T PASS
POST-RACE INSPECTION? "I think it all depends on the situation and how
far the car is away from being legal. I don't know where those cars were
at. I've heard they were just barely illegal and I've heard they weren't
even close, so I think it depends on what the crime is before you can
assess the punishment. If those cars were as far off as they say they
were, I think that would be just fine. I think that's what you would
need to do."

 

CAN YOU FEEL A CAR BEING TOO LOW IF YOU'RE DRIVING IT? "The 48 car, the
roof height being low, really you lower the front of the car to get the
roof low. We run our cars high because they drag. They travel so much.
If our car was a half inch low it would drag. We wouldn't even be able
to finish a race I don't think. You could definitely feel that, so I
don't know how he was able to drive that unless their car was built to
run a half inch low."

 

COMMENT ON RACING AT AMS "To me the racing has not been as good this
year as what we've had the past couple of years. The cars don't drive
very well. To be honest with you, they drive terrible. When you get on
the track, I don't think you can pass as well as you did last year.
Fontana and Vegas last year, the outside was really good. At Fontana
(this year) there was no outside. At Vegas there was very little of it.
I think this is the ultimate test on whether this is going to work or
not. This is a racetrack you could run completely at the top or bottom
every year we've been here. We had a meeting this week. We talked to
Donnie (crew chief Wingo) and the engineers. We're going to approach
this race a little differently with our setup. We're going to try
something a little different. We're going to spend the first hour of
practice this morning working on something a little different with our
setup."

 

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM WITH THE NEW AERO PACKAGE? "The problem is you can't
find any grip. I think everyone complains about being tight behind cars
or aero tight. It's worse this year than ever because you don't have any
grip now. I've been going back and forth from the Busch car to the Cup
car, and the Busch cars are a lot more fun to drive. They have more grip
and I think they're easier to pass in. You would have thought cutting
the spoiler off would have made the cars looser. It has, but what it's
created is we've tightened them up so much to where they drive in good
but they're tight in the middle and it's worse. Some of these guys have
caught on and their cars are running fairly well, but the cars seem very
touchy. The 48 car was terrible until the first stop last week and then
they got their car really good. It's a very fine line between good and
bad right now."

 

WHAT'S YOUR OPINION OF THE NEW SCHEDULE "It makes for a very long
Friday. I know Rusty and I were talking about this at California. You
get here early on Friday and you're here all night long. I guess for the
Cup guys who don't run the Busch race it's no big deal, but it takes a
whole lot to get used to. When you get used to practice from 9-11 and
11-1 and then qualifying both cars, it makes it hard to get your car
right. We've got two hours to do it in and then we've got all day
Saturday to worry about it. I think it's probably better at a place like
Martinsville or Bristol where the setup from qualifying is not very
different. Tonight we're going to qualify, and these cars are always
loose at Atlanta for qualifying. It's going to be interesting tonight to
see how bad the cars bottom out and what you're going to have to do to
make it drive decent in qualifying with a race setup in it."

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT QUALIFYING AT NIGHT AND RACING IN THE DAY TIME?
"The track will have more grip at night than it will in the afternoon.
Qualifying at night is cool, and I always enjoy watching qualifying
here. The cars always look good under the lights."

 

ARE YOU RUNNING THE BUSCH RACE NEXT WEEKEND AT NASHVILLE? "Yes, that was
one of the races Top Flight chose to run. Rusty asked me if I would do
it. I kinda wanted to have the weekend off, but I enjoy racing and it's
hard to say no to Rusty. He just has a way of when he asks you something
that it's hard to say no. Nashville is a fun track. I ran well there the
first time and struggled the second. I've tested there a few times in
our Cup car, so next weekend should be interesting."