Ford Charlotte Truck Race

FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES Quaker Steak & Lube 200 (Truck), Page 1

May 19, 2006 Lowe's Motor Speedway

TERRY COOK-10-Ford Power Stroke Diesel by Int'l F-150 (Finished 2nd) - "I don't know what to say. The Ford Power Stroke Diesel by Int'l crew built us a new race truck and we debuted here. Last year we built a new race truck and debuted it here, and finished second behind Kyle Busch. It's two years in a row that he's won and it's two years in a row that we've finished second. Just a great effort by the entire team. Goodyear brought a tire here that was extremely hard. It chattered pretty much the entire race. It seemed like if you were easy on the tires at the beginning of the run you wouldn't make them chatter too much and they would stay longer. If you got aggressive with them earlier and made them chatter hard early, they would chatter even harder as the run went on. I kinda learned that through the first two or three runs, and the last run we were at our best and tried not chatter the tires as much. I'm tickled to death for these guys. We've got a victory coming soon, and maybe it will be at Mansfield." TALK ABOUT THE DECISION TO TAKE TWO RIGHT-SIDE TIRES ON THE LAST STOP. "That was all Dennis Connor. I helped him to make an adjustment with that, but that was all him and I think that was an awesome decision. The tires weren't wearing and we saw that through practice, but we also knew that we needed to get some tires on there with lower air pressures so they would blow up like a balloon, where you could not only need a slight adjust, which we got, but we got some fresh tires, so it was a great decision by Dennis."

RICK CRAWFORD-14-Circle Bar Truck Corral Ford F-150 (Finished 11th) - "Our guys practice real hard and do pit stops and we finally got an in-house team again after about a year of renting Cup guys, and the first pit stop you come in and a tire from another truck runs through your pit box and knocks two of your guys down. The Ford F-150 was a top-three truck and you see where it's at. You can't keep it in traffic and nobody had to run that hard." "WHAT ARE YOU IMPRESSIONS OF THE TRACK SURFACE IN RACE CONDITIONS? "Some people hit the setup just right and some missed it. I had a great truck. I had a good setup and I felt comfortable and fast all night long. I made some moves and my hat's off to Cowboy (Kevin Starland, crew chief) and the whole crew for setting it up. It ran good since we tested it at Chicago last week and it ran good since we landed here. It's a brand-new truck, so it's now got one under its belt, but it deserved a better finish than that."

ERIK DARNELL-99-Woolrich Ford F-150 (Finished 10th) - "We definitely figured this track out over the course of the race. It was a struggle early on because I struggled in practice. I made a couple of rookie mistakes and got us behind there on tires. When we pitted we had to put on stickers instead of scuffs, and that was really the ticket tonight. We had to have 20-lap scuffs to pick up quick when you got out there, and we didn't have it and we had to fight it all night, and we ended up coming out of here with a decent finish." WHAT ARE YOU IMPRESSIONS OF THE TRACK SURFACE IN RACE CONDITIONS? "You could get a little bit racy out there, but I think most of it was from the tire not being able to do that. You could get alongside a guy, and if you got sideways with these things, it was hard to save. I think with a little bit softer tire that we really could have been racing out there. I love the track. It's smooth as glass and there's definitely a second groove getting worked in out there, I just think we need a little bit softer tire."

MARCOS AMBROSE-20-Team Australia/Aussie Vineyards Ford F-150 (Finished 36th) - WHAT HAPPENED? "I was just trying to get out of the way. I was stuck on the high line there, and I was just letting them go, letting them go, letting them go, and you can only run up there so long when nobody else has been up there all weekend. I'm not sure what happened; she just went around on me. I just feel terrible because all we want to do is finish. I'm just trying to finish one of these deals. We put ourselves in pretty bad position there starting so far up. I was just trying to roll around and get to the back as soon as I could, and I just couldn't get there in time."

FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES Quaker Steak & Lube 200 (Truck), Page 2

May 19, 2006 Lowe's Motor Speedway

TERRY COOK PRESS CONFERENCE

TALK ABOUT YOUR NIGHT. "It's kina déjà vu. We ran second to Kyle Busch last year. Last year we debuted a brand new truck here. Again, as I mentioned, we ran second to Kyle Busch. We debuted a new truck here today, and ran second to Kyle Busch again. Kyle obviously has something figured out about here. The Ford Power Stroke Diesel by Int'l truck was fast from the first time that we unloaded it on Thursday morning's test. The thing that we worked on was getting it to run around this track on the stripe. There was absolutely no second groove here tonight. The Busch race, the Cup race, the All-Star race tomorrow, they are going to struggle with running side by side with anybody in the second groove. We found that the tires weren't wearing at all. A lot of guys talked about not changing tires at all during the entire race, but during the course of a run we picked up a tire chatter. As the tire chatter continuously got worse it actually put divots in the tires, so the tire was losing grip and building up air pressure, so eventually you needed to get them off. We changed tires around lap 45 or 46 and made an adjustment and then took on right-side tires on our last stop, which I think was the call of the night. Not only did the pit crew do a great job of picking us up, but we went from fifth to third on that pit stop. We needed to get some adjustments back out of the truck on that last pit stop, but two tires allowed us to do that."

WAS THE TIRE CHATTER A SITUATION UNIQUE TO YOU? "I think it was definitely something going on with the tires, and I think you could poll the garage area or any truck. I think the only truck that was maybe not chattering, but he probably was a little bit, was Kyle's truck. He was just on a rail. Any of these trucks that were just a little bit tight would just chatter the right-front tire. What I found out, as I mentioned earlier, was early in the run if you really worked the tires hard they would give up extremely quick through the middle and the end of the run. If you were a little easy on them in the beginning of the run, you had a little something for the middle to the end. That was my goal on the last run. We picked up track position by taking two tires and an adjustment only, and was to not be so hard on the tires early on. It paid off. With about 10 to go we picked up that pretty severe chatter and looking at the tires they almost look like a golf ball all the way around them. That's just a product of a hard tire on this surface, and that's just chattering the tire. The tire is bouncing up and down on the race track. Our Ford Power Stroke Diesel by Int'l crew, we weren't able to figure that out throughout the entire weekend and we just kept freeing it up and it kept making it better, but we could never make it go away."

AT WHAT POINT IN THE RACE DID YOU THINK YOU HAD TO SETTLE FOR SECOND? "The first time I saw the 51 driving away, getting smaller and smaller in my windshield. He was just so good tonight. He just drove through the field early on and ran down Mike Skinner and took the lead. At one point with 25 or 30 to go on a restart, he got out about 10 truck lengths on me and I actually started reeling him back down and kind of got excited, and thought I might have something for him, and he was a little jerky on his line and he smoothed it out and just drove flat-out away from us. From that point, I knew I was trying to race Ted to get by him for second and hold Todd off for second as well. I knew with 25 or 30 to go that we were racing for second unless something happened to Kyle. You never consider where you're running until the checkered flag drops, especially in a truck race."

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