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Raybestos Rookie Chevy Rock & Roll 400 Advance: Michael McDowell

Friday September 5, 2008

 

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER ADVANCE MATERIAL FOR THE CHEVY ROCK & ROLL 400 NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES RACE AT RICHMOND INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2008, PAGE 1.

MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 00 CHAMPION MORTGAGE TOYOTA: IT MUST BE NICE TO GET BACK INTO THE FLOW OF THINGS HERE. “It’s good. It’s never fun watching your race car go around but Mike Skinner did a great job for us and kind of pointed out some of the things that we need to work on as a race team and gave me a lot of confidence of what we can do. It’s good to be back here in Richmond. I’m just hoping that the weather will stay away here. I know we’re locked in if it rains but I really think we could start better than 37th. Track position nowadays is just so tough. Everybody is so good. When you look at practice only three or four tenths separate the field so qualifying would be a big help for us and I think the Champion Mortgage Toyota should be able to qualify somewhere in the top-25 and definitely in the show and give us something good to work with. We were really good in race trim. We ran about 40 laps in race trim and we were very happy with our race car. Qualifying trim wasn’t exactly what we wanted. With the impound race you only get a certain amount of sets of tires. We didn’t quite get it sorted out in qualifying trim but I think our teammates did and we’ll lean on them a little bit. Michael Waltrip was really good in the NAPA Toyota so we’ll lean on him maybe for some information and go out there and qualify.” WHAT WERE YOU ABLE TO LEARN BY WATCHING THINGS FROM STEPPING BACK AND LOOKING AT THINGS FROM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE OVER THE LAST FEW WEEKS? “Probably the main thing that I’ve learned is that I just need to go off of my feel and not chase the board, chase the lap time. Just chase what I need out of the racecar to feel good about running 400 laps so I really focused on that today. The one thing that we did was turn the scoring monitor around and I just wanted to know my times, not everybody else’s, but just work on getting our car better and have it feel good for me and then we went to qualifying trim so I think that helps with a feel. Mike Skinner verified that, you know, we needed to work on our racecar and that my feedback was very similar to his. It gave me confidence that I can do the job that they need me to do. We just need to work on communication and work on getting all the other elements together to make sure that we can get this car back in the top-35.” THE BOTTOM LINE IS YOU NEED TIME. YOU NEED TIME TO WORK WITH THE TEAM AND THE TEAM NEEDS TIME TO WORK WITH YOU. “I mean we knew it was going to be a struggle coming straight to Cup from ARCA bypassing truck series and Nationwide Series. That wasn’t our game plan. Our game plan was to try to get as much experience as we could but the opportunity was in the 00. The opportunity at Michael Waltrip Racing was in the 00. Had we had funding to run a full-time Nationwide program we probably would have looked at it. It’s not like we knew ‘All right, we’re going to go in there and set the world on fire.’ We knew it was going to be a struggle. I think it’s probably similar to the same situation as Sam Hornish. He’s got good teammates and a good team to rely on but this deal is tough and we all know that and it all takes time. The biggest thing for guys like Sam and I and Patrick [Carpentier] as well is to get that second year, to come back to these racetracks and work with the team and just keep building on the confidence to go out there and do it. When you only get an hour of practice before you go qualifying you’ve got to be pretty much right on it off of the box. It just takes time. I’m happy with the progress that we’ve made and I think we’ve got a really good racecar for Saturday night. Hopefully the weather will be able to cooperate with us and we’ll be able to get it in.” WHAT WOULD BE A GOOD FINISH FOR YOU IN THE RACE HERE AT RICHMOND? “Really, where we need to run and where we should run is in the top-25 and that’s a big deal for us. David Reutimann has been running really well these last few weekends especially at the big tracks. He’s got a top-15, top-10 team seems like every weekend and we just got to get to there. But before we try to jump ourself and say we need to run top-10 we need to run top-25 every weekend then we need to run top-20 and just keep moving forward and not try to take too much on at a time.”

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This report was provided by an outside PR source and posted by Ren Jonsin.

 

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