Catchfence

2009 Raybestos Rookie Contender

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER QUOTES FOR THE ALLSTATE 400 AT THE BRICKYARD NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES RACE AT INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY, JULY 26, 2009.

JOEY LOGANO IN THE No. 20 THE HOME DEPOT TOYOTA WAS THE TOP RAYBESTOS ROOKIE IN TODAY’S RACE AT INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY.

NOTES:

Logano scored a 12th-place finish and claimed top Raybestos Rookie honors for the FOURTH CONSECUTIVE RACE and for the 16th time in 20 races this season.

LOGANO: COMMENT ON RACING WITH JUAN PABLO MONTOYA FOR POSITION AT THE END OF THE RACE. “We were racing hard. Every position counts you know. We run hard. I didn’t want to blow our good finish [smiles] away though. It’s like race hard but eventually enough is enough and you’ve you know got to be smart out there. We had a really good car. We took off on restarts like no other. I started on the outside lane every single time which sucked but besides that we took off real good and passed a lot of cars and eventually everyone just single-filed out and we’d get stuck where we were at and it was just tight and you couldn’t pass nobody. You had to get ‘em on the start or you were just kind of stuck there.”

YOU PASSED A LOT OF CARS TODAY. WHERE DID YOUR CAR WORK BEST? “I would try to get ‘em through the short chute which was the best place for me. That way I could try and clear ‘em before I get off to the big straightaway so I could keep some momentum going. That’s kind of big deal there. That’s probably the biggest part where it’s hard to get ‘em. You g et ‘em wherever the heck you can really. It’s so tough. It’s all about timing. You get behind these cars at the same speed or you’re faster and I mean just get behind ‘em and you’re stuck. You’re totally screwed and you can’t do nothing about it [smiles]. And then your car is just tight and then you end up losing ‘em. So you’ve got to get ‘em quick when you get there but you’ve got to have a plan while you creep up on ‘em.”

YOU STARTED TODAY’S RACE FROM THE REAR OF THE FIELD DUE TO AN ENGINE CHANGE. “I couldn’t tell from practice. It was something little in there. It’s good that we found it, probably wouldn’t have made it. I just wish we started up closer to the front because we could run with top-10 cars. We were as fast as anybody on the restarts, just at the end I started over-driving it and giving it all I had and killed the car. I’ve had to start in the back before for other reasons and had a real good race car. If we were at Charlotte or somewhere you can move around and pass race cars it wouldn’t be a big deal but here it’s a big deal [smiles].”

LOGANO PRESS CONFERENCE

“We just stared too far in the back. After we changed motors and started in the rear it’s one of the toughest places to pass. I just figured that out the hard way. I think if it was Charlotte or somewhere you could have a couple of lanes it’d be a lot easier. I think we had good restarts and were able to pass a lot of cars then. It made it tough to be running in the back. I think we had a lot better car than where we finished but it is what it is. The cool part is the Home Depot Toyota ran good at Indy so that’s pretty neat for the first time here and had fun with it. Learned a lot and we’ll come here next time and be even better.”

CAN YOU CHART YOUR PROGRESS? ARE YOU WHERE YOU THOUGHT YOU’D BE AT THIS POINT OF THE SEASON? “I think it’s a lot better than what it was in the beginning of the year. I think I’m getting close. Obviously I’m always wanting to be better. I think that’s something that’s gotten me this far and never good enough. I can tell you those guys out there winning those races every weekend have the same mentality. You never die and keep digging and figuring all this out. The motivating part is, lik e I say, getting better every week and going to some of these places for the first time like here and running better than we would in the beginning of the season at a first-time place. That’s motivating to me.”

WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST EXPERIENCE AT INDY WAS LIKE AND COMMENT ON PASSING SO MANY CARS TODAY. WAS IT MORE DIFFICULT TO PASS THE CLOSER YOU GOT TO THE FRONT? “Usually does, I was expecting that. I thought we had a good race car that we could get up there with it. You know starting the race I thought hey, we still got a solid shot at a top-10 if some things played in our favor. If you look at not many cars wrecked so there really wasn’t any spots given to you. You pretty much had to work for every one of ‘em and every time I restarted it was on the outside and it would never work to Turn 1. You know if you save your spot the first on the restarts instead of losing two spots and then passing those two back and passing a couple more, if you were able to save that and pass four cars that will add up after two, three restarts. But what am I supposed to do about that [smiles]? Overall I think it was a good day. Everyone worked hard. We got a really good race car through practice and it showed today in the race. It’s cool just to be here. Like I said earlier to have a good race car at Indy was really fun. To be passing cars and not getting passed is fun at any racetrack. I wish we had more time or started up closer we might have had something if we got closer to the front. Every time I got around a car I’d get some clean air and I was like ‘Wow! It’s a lot better now, holy smokes.’ But it was just a matter of getting around all them guys.”

WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO RACE WITH JUAN PABLO MONTOYA THERE AT THE VERY END? “He had a good car. My car took off better than his did. I was able to get around him on the restart. I was trying to run down the 17 for all I was worth. I think I was behin d him the whole race. It sure felt like it. I could never get around him. I’d get to him and never pass him. I was like ‘I’m going to get him before his race is over.’ I kept pushing, kept digging, and eventually just wore out the right front tire and Juan started coming and we started racing hard. Every spot is a big deal. I think we had fun. We raced each other hard but pretty clean though at the same time so it was good.”

YOU SAID YOU LEARNED A LOT. IS THERE ONE THING THAT STANDS OUT MOST THAT YOU’LL TAKE AWAY FROM HERE? “I learned a little bit of things about the line when I’m behind cars what I can do to make my car a little bit better. How to pass is pretty much the biggest deal. If I didn’t figure that out today I wasn’t going to learn anything. Definitely learned a few things behind the 39 trying to pass him for 10 laps or so and trying to get the run just right to get to him and you had to work on certain spots of the track knowing where you’re best, where he’s worst. You’ve got to figure all this stuff out and kind of put a plan together and have everything work out just right to get underneath somebody. I was behind him for the longest time and I finally passed him I was like yeah. That was li ke a win [smiles] as tough as it was. You’ve got to do that, what 31 times you said, so it was tough.”

IN 2040 DO YOU ENVISION YOURSELF BEING ABLE TO DO WHAT MARK MARTIN IS DOING THIS YEAR? “I hope I’m as good as Mark Martin is when I’m that age. It’s pretty amazing to see him go out there and run that good. I went up to him before qualifying and said ‘What the heck did you do?’ After he made his run he was like ‘I just tried to scare myself every corner.’ Well I guess I ought to try. It’s cool to see that if you’re out there racing against someone that’s helped you out a lot in your career and see him up there doing good. Hopefully we can get running a little better coming up here in the second half of the season. I think we’re going to and get up there racing with him.”

HOW FRUSTRATING DO YOU THINK THIS MUST BE FOR JUAN? HOW GOOD DO YOU THINK YOUR CAR WAS IF YOU HAD STARTED UP FRONT A LITTLE FURTHER? WAS IT A TOP-FIVE CAR? DO YOU THINK YOU COULD HAVE WON HERE? “I think as far as Juan, I didn’t even know what happened to him. I actually didn’t know he was leading the whole race. I was just racing him like he was any other car around me. He had a good car but it went to show when we were around each other we were about the same speed. I think we had a good race car like Juan did. Yeah if we had started where we were supposed to, 18th and passed cars from there, would we have finished better? Of course we would have. We had a better race car than where we finished. You don’t know until you get up there because you can finish 12th and say I could have finished top-five but you do n’t know that until you’re up there. As you get up there every spot means more, every spot is harder to pass. Did we have a better car than where we finished? Of course we did. Did we have a car to win? I don’t really know but maybe we could have had a top-five, maybe seven or eight or somewhere in there.”

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