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Patrick Carpentier top Raybestos Rookie in Coke Zero 400

Sunday July 6, 2008

 

Where the Raybestos Rookies finished at Daytona:
Carpentier 14th
McDowell 21st
Smith 24th
Hornish Jr. 29th

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER QUOTES FOR THE COKE ZERO 400 NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES RACE AT DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY, JULY 5, PAGE 1.

PATRICK CARPENTIER IN THE No. 10 AUTO VALUE PARTS STORE DODGE WAS THE TOP RAYBESTOS ROOKIE IN TONIGHT’S RACE AT DAYTONA.

NOTES:

· UNOFFICIALLY Carpentier scored a 14th-place finish and took Raybestos Rookie of the Race honors for the first time this season.

· This is Carpentier’s best finish in 18 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races. His previous best effort was 22nd at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International in 2007. Carpentier’s best finish of the 2008 season was 23rd-place at Infineon (Sonoma, Calif.) Raceway (race No. 16).

· DID YOU KNOW? For the first time this season, all Raybestos Rookies that competed in a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races finished on the lead lap.

CARPENTIER: “It was amazing. I mean, we started with a qualifying car and took a while to change it but the last 60 laps it really came alive and the guys did a good job in the pits. And we had some power so it was good. I’ve got to thank Dodge and Auto Value. It was fun, it was so much fun to be part of it at the end when you can race your way out. I was trying to hold it wide-open no matter what so it was cool [laughs].” HAVE YOU RACED LIKE THAT BEFORE? CARS WERE BUMPING AND BANGING TOGETHER AND GOING SO FAST. “I’ve never see that [laughs]. It almost becomes normal but not really. It was fun. The cars are so hard to drive. They’re loose and sideways and the trick that did it for us at the end was we put some stickers on so we gained a lot of places the last couple of laps and we came through the wreck. I was right behind the 43 when we exited the wreck in Turn 1 so hopefully we’re good.”

MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 00 CHAMPION MORTGAGE TOYOTA: (NOTE: McDowell scored a 21st-place finish, equaling his best effort in 13 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series starts). THIS IS YOUR FIRST RESTRICTOR PLATE RACE AT DAYTONA AND YOU FINISHED. “It’s wild. Daytona restrictor plate racing on the Fourth of July is just crazy. The cars are slipping and sliding. The Champion Mortgage Toyota was pretty good there in the beginning of the race. We just got way too loose at the end and had to kind of go into survival mode there a little bit not to wreck. At the end there we just tried to make some moves there but just kind of get caught out and it’s hard to get guys to work with you there late in the race but not a bad run.” AT THE END OF THE RACE THERE WAS INTENSE THREE-WIDE RACING WITH A LOT OF BUMPING. HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THAT? “No, like I said it’s pretty wild, so it’s definitely going to take some getting used to, but we survived out first one and that’ll give us confidence going into the second one.”

SAM HORNISH JR., No. 77 PENSKE TRUCK RENTAL DODGE: “Well, I think there was more action the last 10 laps than there was in the first 150. We had a pretty decent car, just kind of kept getting hung out there, not really sure why. Made a couple of mistakes going in the wrong line, the car is all beat up. This is the car that we ran here in February and hopefully it’ll get some new skins and be a little bit quicker next time we bring it back.” THINGS WERE GOING CRAZY AT THE END OF THE RACE. HAVE YOU EVER PARTICIPATED IN ANYTHING THAT WILD? “I don’t even know where to start. I think I finished with four flat tires. Man, it was pretty nuts out there for a little while. Everybody knows it’s coming down to the end there and it’s green-white-checker and all that stuff and just the way it turned out it was unfortunate for us. I thought we had a pretty good car. We probably should have been a top-10 car. It was what it was tonight. We brought the Penske Truck Rental Dodge home. It’s all beat up but it was another experience at Daytona, another one for the mental logbook and hopefully we’ll have some more things that I’ll know to be able to do better next time.” YOU’VE HAD SOME TOUGH WEEKS HERE RECENTLY BUT YOU RAN WELL TONIGHT. “That’s nice. I feel like the mile-and-a-halfs and the two-miles is where we’re really picking up strength at so hopefully when we go to Chicagoland next weekend that I’ll feel the same way when we leave there on Saturday night.”

CHRIS CARRIER, CREW CHIEF, No. 77 PENSKE TRUCK RENTAL DODGE: “We worked our way back up to 13th coming back to the checkered and probably could have got a little bit more which would have been a good night. I just disappointed seeing another torn up race car to bring back home, especially one that was this good. You know, those green-white-checkered deals, I mean, they are exciting and everything and there are a lot of fireworks. I’m proud of Sam, I’m proud of our people, I’m proud of our pit crew, I’m proud of everybody involved in it. We showed strong here. Sam did a fabulous job of missing a bunch of wrecks all night long. I looked at a replay and it looked like the 28 car lost his car and came down across the racetrack and slammed us into somebody else and then it was melee. But to be honest with you, about the last 10 laps was melee. I hate it. I wish we could have done a little bit better but I felt like we had a better car than what our finish is going to reflect. As I understand they go back to the point where when the caution actually comes out, when you hear the NASCAR official say ‘Put it out’ that’s when the caution comes out and they use every camera angle they’ve got, they use everything they’ve got to say who was here and who was there. I don’t know what the result will be. Whatever it is is what it is and I’m sure they’ll do the best they can to figure it out how fair it’ll be.” YOU GAVE UP QUALIFYING WELL TO RACE WELL AND THAT STRATEGY APPEARED TO WORK WELL. “There’s no way that we’d do anything different. I mean, on the third lap I told our team engineer and said ‘Well there goes the worry about whether we did the right thing’ because he started passing cars and going up through there and caught the pack from being behind the pack. All the things that we were worried about, worried if we had made a bad decision, it went away. We did not want to pit. We didn’t want to come in with eight laps to go but we didn’t really have much choice because we had lost enough track position on the next to last restart to where we were pretty much forced to come in and get tires and work our way back through because we were going to restart 20th, 22nd anyway. So at that point you might as well put fresh tires on and get what you can get and it looked like that might work. Everybody wrecked, caught us up. A lot of torn up race cars here.” NASCAR APPEARS TO BE IN A NO-WIN SITUATION WHEN DECIDING WHEN TO THROW A CAUTION AT THE END OF A RACE. “The 24, he got knocked down through there, the 99 root hogging him down in the infield and that’s pretty normal. But when the 24 spun down through there, he got his car going and the race was going to finish so they really probably didn’t have any reason to throw the caution. I mean, I don’t think he really hit anything that hard and he got his car in gear and I think he was moving. He was out of the way; there wasn’t any debris on the track. They’re between a rock and a hard place and I’m sure they did what they thought was best at the time and they have very little time to make that snap decision to say throw the caution or not throw the caution and keep racing. By that time everybody had come around and the guys in the front were trying to hang on. The guys in the back were coming to the front. Everybody was pushing and gouging and knocking.”

DAN STILLMAN, CREW CHIEF, No. 01 THE PRINCIPATE FINANCIAL GROUP/DEI CHEVROLET: IT WAS A WILD FINISH. “It was pretty crazy. I don’t know, it was a wild finish. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what the final rundown is but we kind of had an up and down night. We had just about everything [laughs]. We were in the lead pack for a while and then we were in the back and came back and it was up and down. Struggled through it but the car’s tore up now but I guess it’s a learning experience.” HOW BADLY DAMAGED IS THE CAR? “It’s pretty tore up right now. It wasn’t when he spun there in Turn 3 avoiding that wreck but it’s pretty tore up.”

®Raybestos® brand brakes are produced by the Affinia Under Vehicle Group, the leading manufacturer of braking systems and components for the automotive industry. The line includes everything from brake drums to rotors, pads, shoes and hydraulic parts. Affinia Under Vehicle Group is at the forefront of research and development in brake technology and operates manufacturing and distribution facilities throughout North America.

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

 

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