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Raybestos Rookie Dodge Challenger 500 Advance: Hornish Jr., McDowell and Carpentie

Friday May 9, 2008

 

Raybestos Rookie First Practice speeds at Darlington (Sprint Cup)
Hornish Jr. 22nd
McDowell 26th
Carpentier 41st
Smith 43rd

RAYBESTOS ROOKIE CONTENDER ADVANCE MATERIAL FOR THE DODGE CHALLENGER 500 NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES RACE AT DARLINGTON RACEWAY, MAY 8, 2008, PAGE 5.

SAM HORNISH JR. IN THE No. 77 MOBIL 1 DODGE WAS THE TOP RAYBESTOS ROOKIE IN TODAY’S FIRST PRACTICE SESSION AT DARLINGTON. THAT IS A RESPECTABLE TIME FOR YOUR FIRST TIME HERE IN A SPRINT CUP CAR. “First time here in any car [smiles]. I was pretty happy until the last lap. I got my Darlington stripe. I was trying to be real careful and we were getting some pretty good lap times out of it and I felt like I had a really good lap so I drove it down into three a little bit harder and the front end gave up and flat-sided the car. I guess you’ve got to get that out of the way at some point in time. Just keep working away at it. I was real happy with all the guys on the Mobil 1 Dodge. Coming here for the first time and not really having any kind of experience here I was pretty happy with where we’re at.” IS THIS TRACK AS DIFFICULT AS PEOPLE SAY IT IS? “It’s not like anything else [smiles]. I’ve tested at Rockingham. I haven’t raced there and that’s about the closest thing I can compare to it. Not really layouts but just how the car feels going through the corner, how you want to enter low and the car just slides up and the drop off that the car has from one lap to the next. It’s a pretty interesting place, that’s for sure.”

MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 00 TBA TOYOTA: “It’s obviously a pretty intimidating place. We unloaded pretty good. The car was really good right out of the box. As the track took rubber there we got tighter and tighter I’m sure like everybody else. We’re just working on freeing it up and trying to make it a little better and hopefully this next session we can get it a little bit closer and see what we have. It’s good to unload and run pretty well. We had a really difficult test at Lowe’s. We struggled there and came back and regrouped and rebounded back and that’s what a good race team does, figure out where they’re lacking and how to make it better. We still got to do that every week and try to get better and better. For me it just felt good going out there and getting right up to speed. Hopefully we’ll keep moving at the same way.” IS THIS TRACK AS DIFFICULT AS YOU THOUGHT IT WOULD BE? “I’ve never been here but everyone talks about how abrasive it was and how bumpy it was and now it’s super-smooth. It looks like everyone is running the same line that they normally did. You’re definitely hauling the mail here getting into Turn 1 and not out of the gas very long so it’s pretty cool. It’s definitely an intimidating place but when you’ve got a good race car underneath you and gives you a good sensation it makes it easy to go out there and push it a little bit harder.” WILL YOU ROAD RACING EXPERIENCE HELP YOU HERE? “There’s a lot of things in road racing that helps you that maybe a lot of people don’t think about and one is that you go to tracks that have 15, 16, 17 different corners and they are all equally important. And so going out there and learning a new track, a new road course, is extremely difficult because it’s not just two corners, three corners, four corners so coming to a new place benefits having some road course experience because you have to adapt so quickly at a road course because it is so different. The difference between road course racing and running here at these ovals is just the speed. It’s easier to tell yourself to slide it around at 80, 90 miles per hour but when you’re going down into Turn 1 at 200 there’s no room for error where on a road course you can make a little mistake, slide off, no big deal. The oval is more daunting because of the speed and you’ve got concrete walls on each side but I think road racing definitely helps just being able to figure out a place quickly because there’s so many more corners and every track is so different and surfaces are different. You go to all different types of places and I think that helps a little bit.” DID YOU HIT THE WALL AND GET A DARLINGTON STRIPE? “No. I told the guys that I’m going to try to wait ‘til the race. It’s just one of those things where you know you’re going to get up in it and some point or somebody is going to put you in it and that’s just a part of being here but I’d rather not do it by myself in practice. I’ve had enough spectacular moments with the wall. I don’t need to add to ‘em.”

PATRICK CARPENTIER, No. 10 LIFELOCK DODGE: HOW WAS YOUR FIRST PRACTICE AT DARLINGTON? “I was lost [laughs]. I’ve never been on an oval in my life where you turn twice in the same corner [laughs]. In the beginning I was in everybody’s way but as we kept running it was good, see those guys run and where I’m losing a bit of time. Most of it is in one and two; that’s a trick corner there, just to go against the wall, down against the wall and back down against the wall again. It closes down very quickly at the end of two. It’s just a matter of timing it right and getting used to it but at first it was surprising. I was kind of zigzagging on the track so I don’t think the guys enjoyed my presence there.” HAVE YOU EVER COMPETED AT A TRACK WHERE SCRUBBING THE WALL IS PART OF THE RACING GROOVE? “No, I’ve never seen that. You go to the wall, all the track when you exit you move it up the wall and stuff and sometimes you do it on purpose but here you kind of got no choice. It’s different. It’s just enter corner one and then you’ve just got to let it slide all the way to the wall there and it’s a good way to learn the wall. It should be fun as we get more laps and get more comfortable and we’re running closer and closer.” DOES YOUR ROAD RACING BACKGROUND HELP YOU HERE? “Anything that I’ve done in the past except for the NASCAR season this year doesn’t help [laughs]. I tell you that now. That’s pretty much it. And for me, nothing that I can see that I can bring here and say ‘Oh yeah, that’s the way that it is.’ It’s just laps after laps and running and just learning the track and looking at what these guys do. It was a lot better at the end of practice. We still have a lot to gain but we’ll gain it. One good thing is they put four hours practice. That’s pretty good.” NO MATTER HOW YOU PREPARE, YOU STILL NEED LAPS ON THE TRACK. “Even Charlotte, I mean, I was so glad they put the test there because before all star night there was no time. There was like an hour of practice or something like that and that’s it so for us it helps tremendously. So to have four hours here is very important.’ HOW WAS YOUR TEST AT LOWE’S MOTOR SPEEDWAY THIS WEEK? “It went pretty well. We ended up pretty good at the end there. I think we were a top-10 overall and the car was a lot better at the end. But we found quite a few things on the car and I was really happy with that test.” WE QUALIFIED WELL AT RICHMOND LAST WEEK. THAT MUST BE ENCOURAGING TO YOU AND THE TEAM. “Oh yeah but I kind of knew in the race, where these guys are so good is to run lap after lap after lap at the same speed and that’s just going to take time. Even Mark Martin told it to me before the race don’t be discouraged but it’s going to be a tough pace to follow. But at least we did it in qualifying. I was really happy. The car was really good in qualifying. In the race, just learning, just got to learn. Didn’t finish the race but I like better to run up front and not finish a few races but learn with these guys. So for me running around at the back and just collecting laps is not what I want to do. We need the points but I also need to learn so to me it was a really good weekend. It’s sad the way it finished but it was pretty good though.”

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This report was provided by an outside PR source and posted by Kim DeHaven.

 

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