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ABOUT THE DAY
“It wasn’t a great day. I thought we were going to be a lot better than that. We started off the day great, and I don’t know, we just faded. We just didn’t have it. We fought hard for ninth and got that.”
IS IT JUST A MATTER OF NOT BEING ABLE TO CHANGE AS YOU GO ALONG?
“We started off so good. It just seems every weekend we start off great and I don’t know what it is. If we knew what it was, we’d do it (laughs). But you know we lost track position. That didn’t help and we weren’t good on the restarts and that didn’t help. We tried to make adjustments and we tried everything and none of them seemed to help. I don’t know. The track changed it and it affected us more than it did some others.”
YOU SOUNDED VERY FRUSTRATED ON THE RADIO THROUGHOUT THE RACE JUST NOT BEING ABLE TO GET THE RIGHT SET-UP. IS THAT HOW YOU WOULD SUM-UP THE DAY?
“Well I was really excited in the beginning. I thought we were great. I thought we were really going to get up there for the win or at least a top three or four. But man, it just went away in a blink of an eye. On the restart they took me three wide. We just couldn’t get up and get going. I was on the inside lane and from that point on, it was just a struggle.”
ON THE LONG GREEN-FLAG RUNS
“At the beginning of the race I wanted to go long green flag runs the whole time. I really think the yellows are what cost us. The yellows are what really hurt us. We weren’t bad actually on those green flag stops. We were pretty good. But the restarts just ate us up. We just could not get up and go on the restarts.”
ON RICK HENDRICK AND HIS ORGANIZATION
“Those guys are amazing. Rick Hendrick and his organization is the best out there. They have been proving it year in and year out. It’s very gratifying to know that it’s coming to Hendrick Motorsports and also the Manufacturers’ Championship this year and we’re excited and at the same time we’re just like everybody else out there. We want to beat the No. 48 team.
“So, it inspires us over the off-season to try to get better and we’ll look at doing that. And right now we’ve got one race to go and we’ll certainly look forward to giving those guys all the props and respect that they certainly deserve because they’ve earned it.”
YOU MIGHT BE DISAPPOINTED IN FINISHING 9TH, BUT AT THE SAME TIME IT’S NOT LIKE YOU GUYS ARE GOING OUT THERE TO RIDE AROUND. ALL THREE OF YOU TOP THREE DRIVERS IN POINTS WERE RIGHT THERE MOST OF THE DAY
“Yeah, there are a lot of different reasons why we need to run good out there. It’s not just because we’re trying to win the championship, we’re also trying to stay within the battle that we have for second. We lost points to the No. 2 (Kurt Busch) and we lost points to the No. 5 (Mark Martin) and that’s what makes it a little bit more frustrating.”
WOULD IT BE ANY MORE FRUSTRATING IF JIMMIE JOHNSON MAYBE WAS 9TH OR 10TH AND YOU FINISHED WHERE YOU MIGHT HAVE GAINED POINTS ON HIM TODAY
“You know, it really just matters to me how we run. That’s how we operate. Last week we didn’t run good and we didn’t capitalize on their misfortunate. If they finished 9th and we didn’t capitalize on that, I’d be upset too. But it was more because we just didn’t run better.”
YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE DAY?
“I was really excited when we started the race. Man we drove right to the front. Me and Mark (Martin). I know how good Mark is here so I thought we were going to be great. I don’t know. It just got away from us. We weren’t very good on the restarts and it was just a ninth-place day for us. A little disappointing because I thought we were going to be better than that. Even if we had been a third or fourth-place car the No. 48 did what they needed to do which is no surprise. We’ve seen them do it many times. That’s why they are three-time champions, soon to be four.”
IS THE CHAMPIONSHIP SOMETHING YOU THINK IS STILL WITHIN YOUR GRASP? “
Not if we run like this. We’ve got to run better than this. I sure would like to take a couple of tracks and exchange them in the Chase because I think we’re just so much stronger at a lot of different tracks, two of the 10 that are in this Chase. That’s the way it is and we’ve got to get better at them and I feel like that was our efforts this year and we made them better but not good enough. We’ll come back next year and hopefully be stronger. We’re still looking forward to Homestead. I think we have a great car for that race and we’ll see what happens.”
