ON THE STRATEGIC PIT CALLS HE MADE AND ON THE STEAM COMING OUT TOWARDS THE END OF THE RACE: LETARTE - “I think Jeff picked the right part of the race that really turned it around was that green flag cycle. We really weren’t good enough to short pit, at that point we were just trying to get the best finish we could so we decided to stay out and hope for a caution and it didn’t come and then just a lap after we pitted it did come which worked out good. We had fresh tires so we decided to stay out and that moved us into the top five.
The cars just handled quite a bit different in the top five and I think we made better decisions as a group and maybe had a little better read on our car since we were clean air. Once it started to overheat we pulled all our tape off but there really was no other fix so the Hendrick engine department, they’ve really, really impressed us time and time again over the last few years and today was another perfect example of teamwork and a whole company coming together and all the small details that people forget. That’s what came together today with good pit stops, a good car and a good finish with the engine. “
ARE YOU CONCERNED YOUR TEAM IS TOO STRONG THIS EARLY IN THE SEASON AND THE POSSIBILITY OF LOSING MOMENTUM: GORDON -“I’ll be honest with you, today we were off. Steve and I have already been talking about things that we’re going to do different going forward. Not that we go to this type of track anywhere else, but the speed mainly and the banking of this track. We made some mistakes on what we had in the car and that’s why we struggled so much today, why we couldn’t move forward. To me we won a race today that probably shouldn’t have where we didn’t win at Martinsville. I feel like we’ve had some get away from us that maybe we should have won. Now we’ve won some. We’ve won some that we shouldn’t and we didn’t win others that maybe we should of.
I think that right now it’s just about continuing to move forward. I’ll always constantly try to get better and while I do think that some other guys are going to figure some things out close the gap, I still feel confident that we’ve got room to improve as well. If we can continue to do then I feel confident but right now what I’m excited about is that we’ve got a great race team. My goodness we’ve got a great race team. I think today’s performance really showed what kind of race team we got. We’re going to be on and we’re going to be off with the race cars at times but when we can perform the way we did today with a race car that’s not capable of winning, it’s got me very, very excited about this entire season. “
WAS THERE ANY THOUGHT AT THE END TO FOLLOW JIMMIE INTO THE PITS BECAUSE YOUR CAR WAS GETTING HOT? GORDON - “You can probably ask Steve that. He makes those calls. I didn’t say much on the radio because I was shocked that Jimmie was going to come in. I didn’t think we’d run enough laps… if you got the lead in clean are, I don’t know what’d be run six laps. If you got the lead I didn’t think that was enough laps to come in. Track position is extremely important today. I was pretty happy that he was telling me to stay out but it was his call but he can tell you more. One of the reasons I didn’t want to come was because when we stopped on pit road the overheating got worse and so I wanted to keep moving.
I ran in fourth gear to put the rpms as low as I possibly could to not build heat. I tried to just get as much air and being out front. honestly had we gotten behind we probably would have blown up. I think that’s why a lot of guys blew up there at the end because they were actually behind other cars and not enough air was getting to the front to even hold on to the end. From my standpoint we didn’t have much of a choice because we thought we were going to blow up but I will say if he told me to come down pit road I’d have come down pit road. He said stay out and I thought it was a great call. “
WAS THERE A TIME THAT YOU KNEW YOU GOT THE CHEMISTRY RIGHT? LETARTE - “I don’t know if there’s a specific moment. The one race that comes to mind that I feel we did the best job last year was the fall Charlotte race where we broke towards the end. We were just pitiful in Charlotte in May and we weren’t very good. We had struggled at the mile and halfs a lot that year and we showed up at Charlotte in the fall and we weren’t very good again. We qualified extremely bad and to build a momentum and make good decisions that day, we were in a position to win when we had our engine failure and I think that’s the one that maybe gave me the most confidence to make decisions.
But I think the key is we’re going to run bad again. There’s going to be a week that we show up where we struggle and we miss it and run bad. Those are going to happen and I think that as long as you can accept it, there’s no fault in it. We all have a percentage in it, some of us might have more than others. As long as you understand you’re going to miss it some weeks and just get the finish you can. At Bristol we completely missed and we came back for a top five and I would say this weekend here there weren’t many highlights until the last 10 laps here this weekend and we still pulled out a good finish. I think the key is there’s no magic chemistry it’s just being on the same page all the way through the team top to bottom. “
GORDON - “Steve doesn’t quite give himself enough credit but to me we were a team to beat for the Chase last year. We were strong, real strong and we had some failures. We didn’t run good at Homestead. It was the only place in the Chase that we did not run good. We had failures and problems that kept us out of it. To me that was when I remember us really gaining momentum with how strong we were in the Chase last year. I feel like the momentum coming from the 48, we’re in that some shop so. Steve got a year under his belt and then had an off-season to just say ‘OK, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We just need a little here, a little here, a little there and ever since this year started I could just tell the cars are better, he’s more confident.
The guys are behind him and then when we go out and put the results together on the race track, it just builds momentum. He had to push me today. I was just not very happy inside that car today yet the whole time I was screaming we were still maintaining top 10 at that time. We made a few adjustments, saw some improvement and even there at the end I just didn’t think we were going to make it to the end. Steve just kept saying ‘Hey, we got this. We can do it. We can do it. Stay with us. ’ I never slowed down or anything like that. I was just a little frustrated. There’s going to be days when I’m going to need that and he was there to be able to that today. Besides getting this team to a whole new level that part of it is nice as well. ”
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