Brickyard 400 Post-Race Quotes
July 31, 2011 | By
ROBBY GORDON (No. 7 SPEED Energy Dodge, 43rd): “The motor just blew.”
DAVID REUTIMANN (No. 00 Aaron’s Dream Machine Toyota, 36th): “We were moving forward after a bad start, trying to get track position. We cut a right front tire going into (Turn) 3. I can’t think of a worse place to do it. We hit the wall hard with the right front.”
SCOTT SPEED (No. 37 Max Q Motorsports Ford, 39th): “We had a vibration on the right side. It was something we had from the start of the race. We don’t know what it was.”
RYAN NEWMAN (No. 39 Haas Automation Chevrolet, 12th): “When you get back in traffic, it’s tough. We never could get to the front and get clean air. We rallied to finish 12th and that will help us in the points, but I wish we could have had a better day with our Haas Automation Chevrolet.”
MARK MARTIN (No. 5 Quaker State/GoDaddy.com Chevrolet, eighth): “Lance McGrew did a great job today, and this whole Quaker State team did awesome. I wish we could have stepped on it there at the end, but we ran out in Turn 3 so we had to save everything that we saved. I guess we just needed a little bit more. I had a good car today. We kept it in one piece, and we brought home a decent finish. It was a real smart race by Lance and the whole team. I’m really happy for Paul Menard; really, really, really happy. That’s awesome.”
BOBBY LABONTE (No. 47 Huggies Toyota, 17th):“It was all right. We just lost a lot of time on pit road today. It was probably one of our worse days to lose some track position. You know, it was just a little bad luck on our part. We pitted there and had a full tank of gas and ran until the end. We stayed out, and that helped us out.”
CARL EDWARDS (No. 99 Ortho Home Defense Max Ford, 14th): “Our day was not good. But it ended up finishing well. Our Ortho Fusion was pretty slow. I wasn't doing the best job I could, and then I tore the left front splitter off in the grass. That ended up being the thing that saved us because we came in over and over fixing it. We pulled back out, and I said, 'What's out best chance here?’ Bob (crew chief Osborne) said, ‘Save fuel.’ We ended up 14th. We were running about 25th when I tore up the splitter. It ended up better than I thought it was going to. But definitely we have to work on this track before we come back. It's a tough one for us." (On Paul Menard's first win): "I've worked with Paul as a teammate. He's a great race car driver. He's a better person. I really like Paul a lot. I couldn't be happier for him. If we couldn't win the race, I can't think of a better person.”
DALE EARNHARDT JR. (No. 88 AMP Energy/National Guard Chevrolet, 16th): “We did OK. We had a pretty good car. Track position was everything, like I thought it would be. You couldn't pass. You could run as fast as the guys in front of you, and that was it. It was just like a road course because you couldn't pass. You don't want to be hanging around out there on the racetrack when everyone else is inside the fuel window, so I can kind of understand how it turned out. Even if I had new tires or better tires, I couldn't pass people. When I got off pit road that last time, I knew I was going to finish behind whoever was in front of me as long as he had enough gas. I caught the 4 car by a lucky break, and I caught a car that ran out of fuel and got a spot. Some guys were fast enough to get up there, and some of us didn't. We played it out, and that's the result we got. I don't know what to be angry about if I was going to be angry about.”
JEFF BURTON (No. 31 Caterpillar Chevrolet, 35th): “We worked pretty hard out there today. At the end, we wanted to take a gamble, but we were just a little off on fuel mileage to be able to do that. You look at the top three or four, and they were in a position to gamble. That’s the position they were in, and it worked. We wanted to do it but we knew we couldn’t make it.”
KYLE BUSCH (No. 18 M&M’s Toyota, 10th): “We fought track position the whole day and we once we did get it, we were up front running in the top 10 for much of the day. We made contact on the pit stop when Tony (Stewart) was coming in and I was coming out. It was our fault. We should have waited for him to come in. After that, we got into traffic and knocked the nose in. We salvaged along from there. All in all, it was an ugly way to salvage a top ten finish. It’s so hard to run around here and gain track position. If you can pass people, sure, it won’t be that big of a deal but you can get stuck behind a guy and not be able to make a move on him. That’s frustrating but it’s the same for everybody. A lot of guys are better at it than others. I’d say I’m not the very good at making track position here but we did the best with what we had.”
TREVOR BAYNE (No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Tire & Auto Center Ford, 30th): “It's not the most fun I've ever had. But this is a cool place, and I was glad to run my first (Brickyard) 400 here. We were just so tight all day long. It seemed like we'd get a run going, and someone would knock the grass up in our radiator and we'd have to pit. It started at like Lap 5, our day did. You know, it's just hard to recover from that. But I appreciated that the Wood Brothers let me drive the car. We had a good time, but hopefully we’ll be better next year here.”
TONY STEWART (No. 14 Mobil 1/Office Depot Chevrolet, sixth): “That’s a long day at the office. That’s the hard way to do it, man. We had to fight from the back a couple of times to get up there. I don’t even know how we finished sixth. It was a lot of hard work from (crew chief) Darian Grubb and the guys on the Mobil 1/Office Depot team. We almost finished fifth; it was a good day for us.” (About penalty for hitting pit speed limit cone): “Kevin (Harvick) lifted earlier than I did coming off Turn 4. Versus running into him, I went to the outside of him. The problem was when I got to the cone, I was in the wrong spot. It was one of those things; I was trying to get everything I could get. It was either hit the cone or run over the guy in front of me and I chose to hit the cone, so we got the penalty for it. I’m proud o
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