All I saw was this black thing, and I couldn't understand what it was. When I hit it, I thought it should have been bigger because it was big hit. It moved the car, and the steering wheel. I had nothing at the end, and I'm sure Scott pushed it just as hard as me. This race was really tough, but it was for the championship and this was a win we really, really wanted. |
Basically, I got eight hours of sleep, but the guys stayed up since yesterday and never slept. They're incredible. I think it took 12 hours to completely redo the car. I think we started the engine for the first time at eight o'clock this morning and in the warm-up, everything was fantastic. I have to say that today's car was even better than yesterday's. |
Because we are getting close to the end of the season it doesn't make sense to press to hard. |
Because we are getting closer to the end of the season, it didn't make sense to take any risks, especially when I had cars around me. We had to think about the championship. When I saw the No. 01 crash in the wall, it made no sense for me to fight with anyone. |
I like the track. I've never been on the NASCAR layout, but most of it is what we used last year and I know I liked that. I'm going there because I want to win the race. We need to win in order to keep the championship fight open. I am going to Mexico with that goal. |
I'm pretty disappointed the GT cars won't be out there. We need to have those guys on the road course. I'd rather have a lot a lot of traffic than no traffic. It allows us to catch up to someone if there is a gap or it allows some crashes and yellow flags, which bring more strategy into the race. It's all about conditions and situations. |
I'm really happy with the set-up (of the car). We worked on different aspects in each session. I hope it will be a clean race. |
I'm really optimistic. We know we have a good, solid package. It will hopefully be easier for us compared to other teams because we've already won the race, so we know basically how to do it. However, there's a new challenge, a new year, a lot more drivers and a lot more teams. |
It's a very nice place, nice facility. It doesn't look like it's in America. We have rest rooms in the pits, which is pretty unusual. It's definitely challenging, but it's also very rewarding to the driver. If you push to go, you are rewarded with a good lap. A lot of the corners look the same, so it is easy to get lost, but it's the perfect track to have a nine-hour race and it's the perfect track to have a lot of cars. There is a lot of runoff and it's very wide. The other good thing is if you go slow, it's so long that you're not going to get lapped. |
It's unbelievable.on the straight, the Porsches just pulled away from us. It's almost like we're not even in the same class with the difference now in power. Since the rule change, we have no chance against them. |
Obviously I'm very happy to start the race on the front row. I think I had a good qualifying session and I really pushed hard, especially in the last five laps when Bill Riley was telling me to push harder to avoid ending up in the back. I just kept pushing and pushing and finally got a good lap together. And it was my best. I don't think I could have done any better than that. |
The testing went quite well with the new rules that add this extra weight. It makes the car a bit more difficult and challenging for us. Because it was just testing, I'm curious to see how the car is and things are during the race with everyone out there. |
We had a tough race yesterday in the rain. Wayne did a good job starting so far in the back and brought the car back in a good position. I had to work very hard from there for the entire race, but we got a good result. |
We had great team strategy and a really good run to make it to the head of the pack. Unfortunately now it is over for us. |
We will have an even better car in Phoenix than [the rebuilt car] at Mid-Ohio when the crash compromised the vehicle and limited us. I'm confident we can do even better in Phoenix. We don't want to change anything or our attitudes and will go with the same frame of mind as we always have and try to win. |