Post-Qualifying Press Conference With Pole Winner Jeff Gordon
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May 05, 2007
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Press Conference with Pole Winner Jeff Gordon, No. 24 DuPont Impala SS
ON HIS QUALIFYING RUN: “I knew that was a really good lap but I just felt like the track had picked up and we were going to get shuffled back like what happens typically as the track cools down. We drew an early number and I really thought some good cars going out late were going to knock off us that pole and I wasn’t sure how far we might get knocked back. Obviously it was a better lap than I even though it was. I’m just kind of blown away right now, the kind of role that we’re on and the things that are going on. In practice we made a couple of qualifying runs and they weren’t very pretty. We made some when we were here testing. I wasn’t too happy with them. I told Steve what I thought we needed. He made some great adjustments and the car did everything that I wanted it to do so obviously a great effort by the whole team and here we are sitting on another pole. “
WILL IT MAKE IT EASIER TO WIN TOMORROW UNDER THE LIGHTS STARTING FROM THE POLE?
“It’s never easy to win, having number one pit stall always is a help especially on a short track with track position being important, trying to stay out trouble in the pits because the pits can get tight and narrow and you can get into one another. That’s certainly an advantage we’re going to try to capitalize on that. You know we’ve qualified good here even when we’ve been running bad here the last four times that we’ve been here or however many times that we’ve run bad. We’ve still qualified good and still didn’t perform in the race so none of these things guarantee anything but I will say that I feel like we’ve got a lot of issued resolved that we struggle with to put us further in the back when we didn’t run good and I hope we’re able to show that tomorrow night. We’ll see. “
CAN YOU ATTRIBUTE ANY OF YOUR RECENT SUCCESS TO YOUR NEW ENERGY DRINK?
“That’s what I’m talking about Mike. Thanks for working with me. I don’t know what it is all I know is everything I’m doing I’m not going to stop doing it and I have been drinking the energy drink. We’ve been on some good rolls over the years. It’s been a long time obviously and as competitive as the series is today, it just does surprise me when anybody gets on this type of a roll and I don’t know how to describe it or explain it. When things are working with you and going your way and you’re putting quality race cars and race teams out there, it’s possible and we’re proving that right now to ourselves even. “
ARE YOU SURPRISED THAT YOU’VE BEEN ABLE TO GO FROM MONTE CARLO SS TO IMPALA SS AND CONTINUE YOUR SUCCESS?
“I felt like from the first time I drove the Impala I felt like we had one of the best ones out there. I felt like the development we put into. We almost had a totally separate race team of people working on this car while it was being built and developed and I feel like a lot of credit goes to those guys and the laps that they ran, the tracks and the work they’ve put into it and trying to find out what it was going to take for this car to be competitive and then that gave us a great starting point for us to take it to the next level. While that was going on, we were working from the last 10 races of last year over the off-season on the Monte Carlo to make it better and we did. It made it better in all the different areas. I think the Car of Tomorrow fits my driving style a little bit more than even the current car but we’ve done our homework as well. That’s certainly paying off. I’m not saying nobody else is doing their homework but sometimes you go in a direction and if that direction pans out then you’re going to have success and that’s what I’m seeing right is the direction we’ve been working towards is really working for us and it was the right direction. “
ON BEING ONE OF FEW PEOPLE TO WIN FOUR IN A ROW AND POSSIBLY BEING THE ONLY ONE TO DO IT TWICE IF HE WINS TWO MORE:
“It seems unrealistic to me to be a part of it. Maybe it might look easy from the outside or it might look like Gordon’s on the pole again, no big surprise. It is a surprise to me and this race team. We’re out there working. When you watch us in practice and the lap times, we’re getting everything out of it that we possibly can and we’re getting everything out of it that we possibly can when it comes time to put the lap down on the clock as well.
“We’ve got to get through a whole lot more than that before we can talk about that. Let’s get through three. I’d like to be sitting here Saturday night talking to you guys about that, what it’d be like try to go for four. Even then I probably wouldn’t talk about it. You’ve got to get to three before you can get to four. I know what you’re saying. When we’re on a roll. and I think that it’s the combination that we have. We are capable when the right ingredients are there. You look at Hendrick Motorsports and their resources and when this team gets the chemistry together and I feel like I’m at my best right, we’re very capable of putting some streaks together and we’ve shown that in the past and we’re showing it right now. I don’t like to talk about what could of our should of or might happen, but certainly what we’re doing right now is impressive.
ON GOING TO DARLINGTON: “I love Darlington. I’m going to love it no matter what car we take there but I will say it’s going to have some real challenges. Sitting on the pole is going to be pretty important there. I think that it’s going to be tough to pass there. I don’t think you’re going to want to run behind cars because it’s hard enough to stay out of the wall by yourself there let alone when there’s aerodynamics being taken away from you. I’m really curious to see how that goes. “
ON THE CHARLOTTE TEST AND USING A NEW 17-GALLON TANK AND THE TIRES ARE THE SAME THAT HE RAN THERE WITH LAST MAY:
“Hallelujah. I’m not a fan of small fuel cells. I’m not saying I’m crazy about the tire. I felt like the tire was too hard the last time we were there so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s still probably way too hard. At least we had some consistency in what we were going to be taking to the race track. That’s kind of nice. It just blows me away when we have a tire issue and we ask Goodyear to go build a tire that can withstand the heat and some of the stress that we put on the tire and then NASCAR goes and makes a smaller fuel on top of that. I think it’s pick one. Do one thing or the other, don’t do both. I’m glad we’re going to have our regular fuel cell that we’re running now and I’ll only be able to tell you about the tires and the car once we get through that first day of testing. “
