Catchfence

Dodge Motorsports

That was a good lap for our Budweiser Dodge. It was real similar to where we were in practice as far as speed goes; going out first hurt us a bit. The car was fast all day. I’m real happy with the car and the way that it drove. The new R6 Dodge engine was great. The guys back at the shop gave us a real fast race car.”

DID THE TRACK CHANGE MUCH FROM PRACTICE TO QUALIFYING? “Not really. Usually here there’s a big difference from practice to qualifying, but not today. The track felt very similar to practice and drove the same. I would say it was pretty close.”

WHAT ARE YOUR EARLY THOUGHTS ON THE DODGE R6 ENGINGE YOU HAVE IN YOUR CAR THIS WEEKEND? “So far in practice I can really tell the difference. I can really get off the corner and on to the straightaway because of the torque it has compared to the R5. The new engine is something that we’ve needed and I think that it’s going to be really good with cars around me as well.”

IS THERE ANY ANXIETY IN RUNNING THE NEW ENGINE KNOWING THAT YOU ARE SO CLOSE TO MAKING THE CHASE? “Not at all. With where we’re at in the Chase standings, we need to get any advantage that we can and this new R6 certainly helps provide more horsepower. We started making gains about a month ago and we have to keep improving our Budweiser Dodge to catch the guys in front of us.”

ELLIOTT SADLER (No. 19 Stanley Tools Dodge Charger)

“It was a decent lap for our Stanley Tools Dodge. We struggled a bit in practice in qualifying trim, but the crew made some changes and they worked. We’ll get a decent starting spot for tomorrow and get ready for Sunday.”

KURT BUSCH (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger)

“We just missed it a bit with our Miller Lite Dodge. For some reason we were about one-tenth (of a second) slower in qualifying than we were in practice. I know that we brought a fast race car to Dover; we just didn’t make a good qualifying lap. We had a top-10 car (eighth fastest) earlier in practice in both race and qualifying, so we know that our Miller Lite Dodge is faster than we just showed.”

SAM HORNISH JR. (No. 77 Mobil 1 Dodge Charger)

“Our Mobil 1 Dodge was pretty good, just a little on the tight side. We kind of bounced the car into the track in the turns which scrubbed some time off of our lap. It’s something that we didn’t see all practice earlier in the day, so we’re not really sure why it happened. We’ll take the lap. We thought that we had a better car in race trim than qualifying trim. We’ll just keep wrenching on it tomorrow in practice.”

DAVID STREMME (No. 12 Penske Racing Dodge Charger)

“The car was a bit free off of [turn] 2,” commented Stremme after his two qualifying laps. “It really turned through the center, but I could not get back to the gas as hard as I would have liked. I know we have a
really strong Penske Dodge for Sunday’s race. We worked on our race package during today’s practice and I was really happy with how it performed.

We have our work cut out for us getting through traffic, but it is a long race and I am confident we can do it.”

AJ ALLMENDINGER (No. 44 Auto Value Dodge Charger)

“It was a decent lap. Obviously, we’ve been struggling in qualifying trim the last few races which has set us back a bit for race trim. The good news is that we spent a lot of time in race trim during practice and I think that we have a solid baseline to work from for tomorrow. All of the Petty Dodge’s looks to be pretty fast off the hauler which is really cool. The (lap) times are so close here that to come out and place our Auto Value Dodge inside the top 10 in qualifying is great.”

REED SORENSON (No. 43 Air Force Dodge Charger)
“That was a good lap for our Air Force Dodge. We ran nearly the same lap times as we did in practice which is a positive for us. We unloaded pretty good off the track and the car has been pretty decent all day. The great news is that we have an awesome baseline to work from with two more practices tomorrow.”

- Darnell Communications for Dodge Motorsports, Press Release