Catchfence

Dodge Motorsports 2010

“A great day for the Miller Lite Dodge.  We did what we needed to do to be strong at the end.  We pitted before some of the top guys when it was raining and we still had 50 laps to go.  Good call by (Steve) Addington to get us in, get four tires and beat everybody out.  That gave us 10-lap fresher tires than everybody.  We got up to the front, ran top five.  We tightened it up on that last pit stop and the car was still a little too loose.  We know that we’re missing a little bit, but we showed up when we had to today.”

HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT TO STAY PATIENT TODAY? “Yeah, that’s what it’s about, trust and understanding each other’s tone and what we have to do to make our car better not only at California but other tracks like Las Vegas and Atlanta.  But patience was a key today.  We just kept on working on our car, had great fuel mileage and great pit strategy at the end that put us in a position to get a great finish.”

A GREAT MOVE IN THE STANDING, UP TO 11^TH AFTER TODAY. “Today’s finish won’t erase last week, but Daytona is Daytona.   A top-six finish is a credit to this team staying after it and getting our cars prepared for California.  We got ourselves back in the points.  You just can’t have bad races early in the year, so this was a nice step in the right direction.”

STEVE ADDINGTON (Crew Chief, No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger)

TALK ABOUT YOUR DAY TODAY? “I’m still learning the setups on these cars with the packages that they have on them.  I made a wrong adjustment when I tried to get wedge out and we tightened the car up.  That was just me learning, but we got back on top of it and got the Miller Lite Dodge heading in the right direction.  Kurt (Busch) did an awesome job staying calm all day and working through it and some days that’s what you have to do.  You just have to manufacture a good finish and that’s what we did today.”

SAM HORNISH JR. (No. 77 Auto Club Dodge Charger)

“We had a good Auto Club Dodge today.  It’s a shame that yellow came out (lap 149) because I was ready to pass (Jeff) Gordon for the lead.  I was really happy with the Auto Club Dodge.  Travis (Geisler, crew chief) put it best; we had an imperfect day and finished 16^th.  We had a pit road speeding penalty which was my fault and then we pitted and the yellow came out (lap 225).  It was just one of those days.  We made some mistakes, but still came away with a top 20 and that’s a good sign.  We have to make our bad days 15^th to 20^th and move forward from there.”

TRAVIS GEISLER (Crew Chief, No. 77 AAA Dodge Charger)

YOU GUYS HAD A REAL GOOD CAR TODAY: “This has been a place that we’ve struggled at.  We had some decent finishes (in the past).  Today we managed to finish 16^th.   A top 20 for us.  The car is in one piece.  This is what we’re working towards.  This is what we talked about all winter long.  It’s nice to come out here and struggle a little bit and still manage to get yourself in a good spot at the end.  We almost got our five bonus points there (for leading a lap); I think that I got shorted out a little bit, but I’ll take it.  If that restart would have gone without a caution, I think we would have been able to pass for the lead and stayed up there.  That’s a good day for us.  The AAA Dodge was nice.  We head to Vegas and see what we can do there.”

BRAD KESELOWSKI (No. 12 Penske Dodge Charger)

A GOOD DAY EARLY BEFORE YOU CUT DOWN A TIRE: “I was driving as hard as I could.  I got up to 12^th or 13^th just trying to keep up.  We’re just putting as much into this as we can.  We made a ton of progress this week.  Certainly, I’ve got a lot to learn, but at least we got out with a decent finish and our car is in not too bad of shape.”

YOU WERE ABLE TO RUN ALL 500 MILE TODAY: “Yeah, we got to run the full race.  I think that was important for us to run all the laps and come out with a good finish.  We did that.  We just caught a tough break when the tire cut down and cost us some spots.  We’ll learn from it and move on to Vegas next week.”

- Darnell Communications for Dodge Communications, Press Release