Catchfence

2009 Raybestos Rookie Contender

ELTON SAWYER, COMPETITION DIRECTOR, RED BULL RACING: “Financially it’s not a big deal because we’re here, it’s local and everybody is staying at home anyway. As far as Dover, yeah we do have time. We can run tomorrow and still be able to meet our schedule, our truck be out of there Wednesday and be ready for Dover and not be a real problem. The worst part is tomorrow is a holiday and everyone wants to be on the lake. You can’t do anything about the weather so we’ll do what we have to do.”

IS THIS ONE OF THE MOST FRUSTRATING CIRCUMSTANCES FOR A RACE TEAM? “Well it’s the same for everyone. It’s no different for us than it is for anyone else. You deal with it. We’ve had two good practices leading up to this. We were here last week so we’ve got some good notes so missing happy hour last night wasn’t a big deal and there again we are close to home so that makes things a lot easier. If we were in California needing to get back to the east coast for a race next weekend then it would be more difficult. It kinda of is what it is.”

DO YOU HAVE A PLAN IF YOU ARE IN THIS SITUATION? “If we were in let’s say California, we would already have rain plan in place. When we schedule our travel hotel rooms, rental cars and things like that, we always plan a rainout and then it’s just rain plan in place. You go back to the same hotel or we don’t go to this hotel, you go to this one. For the most part you have to do that.”

HOW BIG OF A FACTOR LOSING A DAY OFF FOR THE TEAMS? “Well if you look at the last month or so, month and a half, we’ve been on a Friday-Saturday race schedule, since Phoenix and that went all the way through last weekend. We have kind of got caught up a little bit on the time at home. The summer months, starting kind of the first of June if you will through August, it’s every weekend. It would be nice to have tomorrow off but there again, the things that we can control I think everybody has done a good job. The things we can’t, we can’t worry about.”

WOULD RACING IN THE DAYTIME ON MONDAY THROW YOU A BIG CURVE? “Yeah it could be because obviously we’ll be dealing with the heat so you won’t have as much grip. The characteristics of the handling is definitely going to be different. It’s the same for everybody but it will be different.”

Raybestos® brand brake and chassis parts are produced by affiliated companies in Affinia’s Global Brake and Chassis Group, the leading manufacturer of braking systems and chassis parts in the transportation industry. The brake line includes everything from brake drums to rotors, pads, shoes and hydraulic parts, while the chassis line features tie rods, ball points, idler arms and sway bar links. Raybestos brand braking and chassis systems are also the only systems used by NASCAR’s Joe Gibbs Racing in competition. For more information about Raybestos brakes, visit Raybestos.com. For more information on Raybestos Chassis visit RaybestosChassis.com

Affinia Group Inc. is a global leader in the on and off-highway replacement products and service industry. In North America the Affinia family of brands includes WIX® Filters, Raybestos®, AIMCO® and BrakePro® brake products, and McQuay-Norris® and Raybestos™ Chassis parts. South American and European brands include Nakata®, Filtron®, Urba® and Quinton Hazell®. For more information, visit affiniagroup.com.

* Affinia Group Inc.’s affiliated companies include Brake Parts Inc. WIX Filtration Corp LLC, Affinia Products Corp LLC and other high quality manufacturers of the Affinia family of brands.

- Camp & Associates, Inc., for Raybestos, Press Release