Catchfence

KURT BUSCH (No. 2 Miller Lite Vortex Dodge Charger) Qualified Fourth
“I felt like I lost a little bit in turn one.  I got in there nice, got to the gas early, but couldn’t plant it full throttle because the car was a little loose.  We’ll take it.  We’re running well right now.  The package we have right now gives me good confidence in the car and Steve Addington and my guys are doing a great job.”

YOUR TEAMMATE, BRAD KESELOWSKI, GAVE YOU A LOT OF CREDIT SHOWING HIM HOW TO GET AROUND THIS TRACK.  DID YOU EXPECT TO HAVE THAT MUCH OF AN IMPACT? “Any time you can help a new driver, especially a teammate, you do it.  He’s a good student, a good listener.  I told him to stay high here, stay low there and watch out for these bumps.  It’s cool that teammates can communicate like that and help each other.  Any time that we can get him up to speed, it helps us on the Miller Lite Dodge as well.”

HOW IS YOUR RACE SETUP, CLOSE? “We made a good long run.  I was running the low groove in turn three, but I still think the high groove is the way to go.  We have to make sure the car is versatile.  That way, we can go high or low.”

BRAD KESELOWSKI (No. 12 Penske Racing Dodge Charger) Qualified 11th
Having great teammates helps a lot and Kurt (Busch) certainly helped me today.  Sam (Hornish) helped out a lot too.  It was a very strong run at a track I’ve never been too before.  We’ll take it.  We made a lot of gains since the practice this morning.  Its runs like this that makes this worth doing.  It’s awesome.  This is a tough place, but a good place.  It has a lot of history, a lot of heritage.  My family has run really well here.  I’d like to carry on that legacy.”

JAY GUY (crew chief, No. 12 Penske Racing Dodge)
“I’m surprised with the qualifying run, but I felt at some point this weekend we would get the car to where he would like it and he would be competitive with it.  He’s never been here before.  We made about 20 laps in practice.  I can’t give enough credit to Kurt Busch.  He helped Brad out a lot with how to drive the place.  We stuck to our game plan and it worked out from what Brad learned off Kurt in practice.  Brad did a really good job.  I’m just really proud of the effort of all these guys on the Penske Dodge today.  Everybody back at the shop, the engineers, the mechanics, the fabricators, it just shows that we can give Brad competitive equipment if we just give him enough time at these places he’s never been.”

SAM HORNISH JR. (No. 77 Mobil 1 Dodge Charger) Qualified 19th
“That wasn’t what we were expecting.  The car was way too tight in our qualifying runs in practice, so we freed it up a little bit for qualifying and it ended up too free to the point where it got loose coming off of (Turn) 1.  I had to back pedal going into that long straightaway.   I’m real happy with all the hard work the guys put in today.  We didn’t get out of it (qualifying) what we needed today obviously.”

YOU’VE HAD SUCCESS HERE IN THE PAST; IS THERE A PARTICULAR REASON? “It’s a big compromise here with the different turns.  You have to do the best you can with the car you have.  Once you get out there in the race, there are only so many things you can change.  So you have to figure out what is hurting you the most and how you turn it around to get yourself where you really need to be. Obviously, we could have qualified better, but that’s the way it worked out for us.”

- Darnell Communications for Dodge Motorsports, Press Release