“This really is a pretty good start to the year for us,” said Ambrose.
“We just have to be a little conservative here to start the season to make sure we lock ourselves in on points, to take all that pressure off of us by not having to qualify into theses races.”
“So it’s exciting for us to have a solid finish, although we had some troubles.”
“We had a better car than where we finished but we’ll take that position. I’m learning and getting more confident every day and I feel like it’s a good foundation, although leaving the track right now I feel just a little frustrated.”
“We made an adjustment on the second stop that really hurt the balance and handling of the car. We lost a lap during that time and we never got it back, and that’s what hurt us, just track position and getting trapped a lap down.”
“Basically we were racing the guys on our lap there until the end, but that’s the nature of the business in this racing. You’ve got to be on your game every single run and we’ve made an error with the balance of the car and we paid the price.”
“But in general we had a car that handled well for most of the day and I think it was a solid result.”
“I ran out of rear tyres towards the end. The right rear was gone and the left rear was worn out a lot as well and I was sliding around a lot. They (the following cars) just ganged up on me basically and just trapped me in the middle (of the race track) and I had to back-pedal it to get out of the situation and I lost a couple of spots.”
“Very unfortunate but it’s the nature of the beast. We passed those guys early in the run but they came back to get us in the end.”
RESULTS: Auto Club 500 at Auto Club Speedway
Race 2 in the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
1. #17 Matt Kenseth 250 laps
2. #24 Jeff Gordon
3. #18 Kyle Busch
4. #16 Greg Biffle
5. #2 Kurt Busch
6. #11 Denny Hamlin
7. #99 Carl Edwards
8. #14 Tony Stewart
9. #48 Jimmie Johnson
10. #83 Brian Vickers
22. #47 Marcos Ambrose 249 laps
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