USARacing Pro Cup Series Notes and Quotes: Brushy Mountian
250 Test Day
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USARACING PRO CUP SERIES NOTES AND QUOTES FOR THE BRUSHY MOUNTAIN 250 TEST SESSION HISTORIC NORTH WILKESBORO SPEEDWAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010.
Eleven USARacing Pro Cup Series drivers participated in at test session today at Historic North Wilkesboro Speedway.
NOTES:
Clay Rogers leads Caleb Holman by 34 points in the series championship standings entering the October 3 Brushy Mountain 250. J P Morgan is third in the standings, 65 points behind leader Rogers.
Logan Ruffin is the leading Raybestos Rookie in the series, 163 points head of fellow freshman driver Ryan Heaver. Ruffin is sixth overall, 94 behind Rogers.
DID YOU KNOW? Ruffin is one point behind fifth-place Jeff Agnew. Agnew is the only USARacing Pro Cup Series driver to race at Historic North Wilkesboro Speedway.
CLAY ROGERS, No. 16 USG SHEETROCK/BUILDING SPECIALTIES/SHENANDOAH BUILDING SUPPLY/TIDEWATER INTERIOR PRODUCTS FORD: WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THIS TRACK? “I did a test here with the Roush Gong Show one time a few years back and it’s just as slick as I remember it. It’s actually a little bit slicker than I anticipated, to be honest with you. I came up here and watched the PASS race [late model cars] and they seemed like they had a little bit of grip. We sure don’t have any. We’re going to try a couple more little things here then we’re going to have to go to a game plan change or something. We’re going to have to attack this whole place a little bit different than we anticipated.�?? HOW EXCESSIVE IS THE TIRE WEAR? “We’ve got 37 laps on our tires right now. I think we’ve legitimately lost three-quarters of a second out of the tires if not close to a second. We’ve gotten the car better so if we put another set of tires on right now and g
o out we’d be running about a second faster than we are right now.�?? HOW ARE YOU GOING TO RUN AT THE FRONT OF THE PACK AND STILL TAKE CARE OF THE TIRES? “This race is going to be like the Snowball Derby. It’s all going to be about tire conservation. You’re going to see a lot of people sitting back and riding. It’ll be similar to our races that we have at Myrtle Beach. In our case we’ll have to go hard for the first few laps and try to get bonus points for leading a lap and then after that we go into conservation mode and start backing out early and not spinning the tires up off. Right now everybody is looking for speed but consistency is what it’s going to be all about. Whoever is going to have the fresher tires at the end of the race is going to be the one to beat.�?? WILL THERE BE A LOT OF SLIPPING AND SLIDING AND TRYING TO DRIVE A CAR THAT WON’T TURN? “Well that’s the key. Everybody can deal with spinning the tires up off. You just drive l
ike you’ve got an egg shell under your foot. The hard part is getting it to turn. If you can get the car to turn the way you need it to you’ve got half the battle won. That’s what we’re working on right now. You’re not going to fix the loose-off condition. If you can get the car to rotate right down here in the center of one and two and it’s pretty rough down there in three and four but there is a strip of a little bit better asphalt so that kind of compliments that end of the racetrack a little bit. I feel like there’s a lot of speed to be gained down here in one and two.�?? IF YOU HIT ON THE RIGHT SETUP, IS THIS A TRACK WHERE YOU FEEL LIKE YOU CAN HAVE SOME FUN? “Yeah, for sure. It’ll put on a good race because you’re going to see a lot of passing ‘cause you’re going to have guys on different agendas. You’re going to have some people that have has struggles throughout the year that are going to go as hard as they can right off the bat to
run toward the front. Then hopefully you’ll see some of us guys that have had good years and are up in the points backing off and riding. I think you’re going to see a lot of passing and a lot of side-by-side racing and different tire strategies are going to dictate how all that works out because if you’ve got a guy that come and puts tires on at lap 30, he’s going to come from 15th to the lead in a matter of 10 laps if he wants to. It’s just a lot of decisions to be made as far as hard you press your car and how early.�?? YOU LEAD CALEB HOLMAN BY 34 POINTS IN THE SERIES CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS. WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE TO STAY THERE? “These are the types of tracks that we run well on all year. The 75 [Holman] has been strong on the fast racetracks, the big racetracks. Hopefully we’ll equalize back out here at these tracks where handling is a premium.�?? WHAT WOULD WINNING THE CHAMPIONSHIP IN THE PRO CUP SERIES MEAN TO YOU? “For me it would be big.
It’d be my fourth championship and that would tie me with Bobby Gill with four championships and that’s a pretty elite group to be in with guys like him. Nobody’s got five so I’m happy with four [smiles].�??
CALEB HOLMAN, No. 75 FOOD COUNTRY USA/AARINGTON ENGINES DODGE: WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE FOR YOU TO PASS CLAY ROGERS AND WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP? “If we don’t win he’s going to. That’s the bottom line, that’s all there is to it. This is his kind of racetrack and we’ve just got to beat him.�?? YOU FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO WIN RACES TO BEAT CLAY. “We’re going to have to outrun Clay and he’s probably going to finish second if he wins. I feel like we’re probably the best two in the series right now as far as race teams. We seem to have the setups figured out on these tires. That’s definitely what we’re going to have to do. If we don’t win I feel like he’s going to be right there and at least finish top two or three. That’s what it’s going to take. That’s what it’s took as long as I’ve been watching Pro Cup when you get in the Championship Series, you know Benny Gordon in ’08, he won I think two or three races in the Championship Series
and everybody that’s ever won the championship has to win a lot of races this time of year. That’s just the way it is. If we can’t do that we don’t need to be the champion.�?? IS THIS YOUR FIRST TIME IN A RACE CAR HERE AT WILKESBORO? “Yeah, to my knowledge the only other person here that’s raced here is probably Jeff Agnew. Dad [Darrell Holman] has but he’s not racing today [smiles]. It’s new to everybody. Honestly it’s not that much different than the majority of the places that we go to. You fight the same kind of stuff most everywhere. It’s kind of a Myrtle Beach-Richmond type mix kind of deal. It’s a lot of fun. It’s going to be way more fun to race than it is to practice. You can’t practice at a place like this. Your tires wear out and it gets slick and you can’t tell much about it. You just kind of get comfortable and do the best you can.�?? ARE YOU FOCUSED MORE ON MAKING LONG RUNS TODAY AND SEE HOW THE CAR REACTS? “Yeah,
pretty much. You just try to get as comfortable as you can and get the car driving well and just kind of throw out the lap times and that kind of thing.�?? IS IT EASY TO GET FRUSTRATED? “Yeah, you go out and the crew chief is like ‘Well what was that like?’ And you say ‘Well you told me the times, you tell me.’ It’s easy to get ticked off with it but you’ve got keep in your mind that it’s going to slow down. These BFG tires seem to slow down with heat in the racetrack as much as they do with heat inside them. The first car on the track run 20.30 and then 10 minuets later I couldn’t run a 20.50, a few minutes later I couldn’t run a 20.70. We haven’t changed that much so it’s easy to get caught up in that. You go to Bristol and every time you hit the racetrack you’re going to run about the same speed. It’s a whole lot more difficult to deal with for sure as a driver and as a team.�?? HOW DO YOU COME WITH A STRATEGY? DO YOU TRY TO SAVE A S
ET OF TIRES FOR THE END? “You just try to make sure that you’ve got something good to go with at the end but the thing is you can’t lapped, too. If so-and-so comes in at lap 50 and gets a set of tires and laps the field twice on a long run, then that set of tires isn’t going to do you any good. It’s a chess game for sure. You just got to hope that the cautions play out. If the cautions play out right, it makes it easy: everybody does the same thing and you just kind of see who the best racecar is. You get a lot of cautions, which I don’t expect to see here then you get into a lot of different strategies.�?? YOU DON’T EXPECT A LOT OF CAUTIONS EVEN WITH THE TIRE WEAR? “I don’t. It’s like Myrtle Beach. It slows down so much that it’s almost hard to wreck. It’s slick and it’s hard to drive but at the same time you’re going so slow. You just feel like you’re crawling around here and I’m sure you’re have wrecks, there’s no doubt, bu
t not at a place where you’re going fast all the time.�?? AS A DRIVER, DO YOU BECOME MORE IMPATIENT DURING THAT LONG RUN? “You just have to burrow in and be patient and say here’s what I’ve got. It’s all I can do. You can’t push the car too hard. If you push it too hard you’re just going to lose more and more. You just do all you can.�??
J. P. MORGAN, No. 23 J&R RACING ENTERPRISEDS CHEVROLET: WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF RACING HERE AT WILKESBORO? “It’s pretty cool. It’s neat to see the track the way that it is. I mean coming through here there’s a lot of history and that’s the cool thing about coming in here and I had never been actually been out here to race before. It’s neat still seeing the Winston Cup sign and like enjoy Diet Coke and Coke Classic and everything. It’s like stepping back in time and going in the driver’s lounge and thinking about what happened in there and then to get out on the racetrack, it’s neat deal. I think it’s a great opportunity for us to be able to come out here.�?? HOW CHALLENGING IS THIS RACE GOING TO BE WITH TIRE WEAR AND PIT STRATEGY? “It’s going to be very difficult. We’ve been looking at the tire wear out here and man, it’s a lot more than we were expecting. We knew it was going to be bad but we didn’t expect as much as it is.
It’s going to be a matter of keeping that egg shell under your foot. You don’t want to crack that egg because as soon as you start spinning those tires you’re going to wear them out in a heartbeat. They’ve always said it’s tough to get off of Turn 4 out here and I tell ya, after you go a couple laps, you know, hey, I can really spin ‘em coming off here. I’m going to have to be really careful.�?? CAN YOU PUT YOUR FELLOW COMPETITIOR IN A BAD POSITION COMING OFF TURN 4 WHERE HE HAS TO LIFT AND YOU CAN MAKE A PASS? “I think you can because I think the bottom in the preferred line coming off of four because the track crowns off to the outside and you’re going downhill so it’s unloading the car naturally. That corner right there is kind of a key. That corner is so tough and I think you’re right, if you get a guy on the outside there and you pin him out there, it’s going to be tough for him to stay with you ‘cause then you’re going to have the p
referred line going into one, too. I think you’re going to see a lot of exciting racing going right there.�?? DO YOU THINK YOU CAN STILL CHALLENGE CLAY ROGERS AND CALEB HOLMAN FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP? “Oh definitely, I think we can definitely give them a run. We’ve kind of had a little bit of bad luck. We thought we were going to be really good at Bristol. We were great there during the test and brought it back exactly like it was but we didn’t race with the cars that were there before testing so the rubber was a little bit different, made the track a little different, so that kind of caught us by surprise. But if we can get a good run here we’re not very far away from ‘em in points. I’m just trying to win races but I think we definitely have a shot at ‘em. Everybody can have a bad day. We’ve had a couple of just average days and their times for that are coming too. We’ll see what happens.�?? CALEB HOLMAN SAID THAT HE MUST WIN RACES TO WIN THE TIT
LE. DO YOU THINK YOU NEED TO WIN A RACE OR TWO TO HAVE A CHANCE? “Last year I ran against the 16 [Rogers], we finished second in the points to him. We were right there within eight points from him. He won the race, I was finishing like fourth. I’m having great runs, good consistent runs, and in any other series it probably would made us win the championship or be right there, be right next to it, next thing you know we get to the end, we have like two top-five finishes and he won both of the races. As long as we’re on the same playing field as far as when we come out here he doesn’t get on a hot streak, I think that all three of us have a real good shot in that championship. And we can’t forget Agnew. He’s right there behind us and I think Logan is in the mix, too. I hope that it goes in our favor but you never know what’s going to happen. It’s all racing [laughs].�??
LOGAN RUFFIN, No. 31 TURNER MOTORSPORTS CHEVROLET: WHAT WOULD IT MEAN FOR YOU TO WIN RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR? “It would mean a lot. This is the first time in a long time that I’ve run a whole season of something in the same series. Like my last years in late model everybody was telling me that ‘We don’t want you to go out and run for a championship. We want you to go run the biggest, fastest racetracks that you can and get as much experience as you can.’ So I went from running an ASA car to a PASS car to a CRA car to running a local track car once in a while. But this is the first time that I’ve been in something racing for points. I think it’d be really neat to go out and be able to say that we finished this whole season and we won the championship or Raybestos Rookie of the Year or both. That was our goal going into the season, that’s what my team owner Steve Turner told me, that his goal this season was for us so we’re going to try to get it
.â€??? HOW BIG OF AN ADJUSTMENT HAS IT BEEN COMPETING AT THIS LEVEL FOR YOU THIS SEASON? “It’s actually been a pretty good bit different. The weight of these cars is a lot heavier than a late model like I’m used to. That’s been really big. It’s been a big deal to learn my braking points compared to an ASA car because an ASA car you may drive in halfway into the corner where these cars you may let off five or six car lengths after the flag stand. Also the power on these cars is about like a super late model. They have a lot of torque, you have to be easy on the throttle, have good throttle control, it’s a learning curve but I think we’re going pretty well.â€??? HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO EARN RESPECT FROM YOUR FELLOW COMPETITIORS HERE? “I’ve been fighting that since I was 13 years old my first time that I ran late models. If you can race around the guys that have been doing it for years and years, don’t wreck ‘em, don’t try to go out there and rough â
€˜em up, drive with ‘em and be clean, be smooth, finish the races and if you finish well then you start catching their attention to say this is a kind that we can go race with. And that’s been my goal since I started running the late model or even the Pro Cup cars. Guys like Jeff Agnew, J.P. Morgan, Clay Rogers, Benny Gordon, you have to gain their respect. These are all guys who have been doing this for a long time, much longer than I have, and I’ve had to go out and prove that I’m not going to come up behind you and just wreck you. I’m going to race you clean, I’m going to do the best I can.â€??? HOW SPECIAL IS IT FOR YOU TO BE RACING HERE AT WILKESBORO? “I’ve actually been talking to people about that all week. This place has so much history. We sat down in the garage and said ‘Hey, we could be sitting right where Richard Petty sat when he was in this racetrack.’ There’s a lot of history, it means a lot to be here and I just hope we get a good
finish. It’d mean a lot.�?? WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGE ABOUT THIS SPEEDWAY? “The track, I knew it was wore out, but I didn’t expect it to be quite as slick as it is. I was really sliding around a whole lot out there. I expect it to have a little bit more grip. I really didn’t know a whole lot of what to expect coming into it. I’ve looked a pictures of the track on the internet and that’s really it. When we pulled in the front gate I said ‘All right, this is what we’ve got’ and just kind of been learning from there.�?? HAVE YOU EVER RACED ON DIRT OR A PAVED TRACK WHERE THE SURFACE IS WORN LIKE THIS WHERE YOU SLIDE THE CAR AROUND? “We have. A lot of the tracks Pro Cup runs are the historical short tracks that all these guys have run like Langley, Hickory and South Boston. And those are all tracks that are wore out, slick short tracks that you have to have a lot of throttle control and really get your car handling well and that’s a lot
of what this place is, it’s just not a short track. We’re going pretty high speed here and we’ve really got to get our car right. That’s actually what we’re working on right now is getting the car to handle better through the center and off. I think if we can get that right and whoever gets it the best is going to be really good.�?? CAN YOU WIN A RACE BETWEEN NOW AND THE END OF THE SEASON? IS THAT A REALISTIC GOAL? “You know, I really think it is. I can think of three occasions this year where we have been a definite possibility to win the race, Langley being one that I know for sure that we were right there. We went through a multiple green-white-checkereds and blew a rear end on the last one. We led most of that race. We had a really good car at New Smyrna and had a battery problem. Mechanical problems have taken us out of what I see as multiple wins this year. We’ve been working really hard in the shop and I think we can get it done.�??
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