As usual, Turner Sports was very quick to send quotage from its NASCAR coverage shortly after sign-off. So let’s post this so you can re-live what happened in what was a very eventful Sprint Cup race tonight.
Notes from TNT’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Coverage – Saturday, July 3, 2010TNT’s coverage of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series concludes on Saturday, July 10 from Chicagoland Speedway. Countdown to Green begins at 6:30 p.m. (ET) and NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Racing from Chicago begins at 7:30 p.m. (ET).***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ******Countdown to GreenLindsay Czarniak (host), Kyle Petty (analyst) and Larry McReynolds (analyst)McReynolds on Daytona being one of the marquee racetracks at which to win a race: “It doesn’t matter if you’re a driver, an owner or a crew chief. If you run in Formula One, you want to say, ‘I won at Monaco.’ If you run Indy cars you want to say, ‘I won at Indy.’ If you run in NASCAR you want to say, ‘I was a winner at Daytona.’”McReynolds on the Daytona racetrack getting repaved before the Daytona 500 in February: “If you talk to any of the drivers in this race tonight, they are not excited about this racetrack getting new asphalt, they love the character it has. You have to man out you’re way around this racetrack. But because the asphalt is so old, there are so many cracks, we’ve had some flooding here the last couple of years and water is getting down in those cracks and that’s what caused the pothole problem that we had in February.”Petty on the impact of new asphalt on the track at Daytona: “The new asphalt is going to totally change this place. It’s just now getting its character, it’s just now getting to where these guys have to race the racetrack too. When the racetrack is paved you race each other, you don’t worry about the racetrack.”No. 14 Tony Stewart joined the TNT pre-race show live on the set.Stewart on driving a back-up car at Daytona and the positive aspect of starting at the back of the pack: “There’s not a problem if (a first long pit stop) happens (early in the race). It’s better to do it at the beginning than it is at the end. It’s kind of a blessing in disguise when you don’t know what it’s going to do on the front end. It’s probably better to be back and out of the way, that way if something is not right we don’t get run over.”Stewart on the significance of winning any race at Daytona: “Anytime you go in any series to their biggest race at the biggest racetrack of the year as far as popularity and how important this track is to this sport, it makes you want to win. It doesn’t matter if it’s an IROC race win, Nationwide win or Cup win, it’s pretty big. This a pretty cool place to be in Victory Lane no matter what kind of car it’s in.”Stewart on the heat affecting the condition of the track: “In February you hear us talk about handling of the cars, but it’s a lot cooler temperature. With the track sitting with cooler temperatures during the rest of the year that asphalt isn’t retaining the heat that it does here in July. So even though we’ve got cool night tonight, that surface temperature and the ground underneath still has heat in it and it makes the handling even that much more critical. Especially the last couple of years, with the splitters and the bump stops on the front, this place is so sensitive to bumps. You’re not going to get around them, there’s no place you are going to drive to get around the bumps, you’re going to have to go through them so you’ve got to make your car
go through the bumps good. It seems like every time we come back this asphalt sags and settles more and it just makes it rougher because of that.”TNT’s Pride of NASCAR featured a tribute to legendary driver No. 3 Dale Earnhardt.Dale Earnhardt, Sr.’s crew member Chocolate Myers on the reaction of all of the NASCAR competitors congratulating Earnhardt on pit road after his first win at Daytona in 1998: “To win that race and see the people come out there, all the people, all those other guys, whether they loved or hated him, they respected him. When he won that race and came down pit road, there’s never been a more special moment in the history of the sport.”Petty on No. 88 Dale Earnhardt, Jr. who won the Nationwide race on Friday night driving his father’s No. 3 Wrangler car: “Last night (Friday) was an incredibly emotional win not just for Junior fans, but for all of Earnhardt fans. When I say Earnhardt fans, it’s all of Earnhardt nation. It’s Dale Earnhardt, Jr., it’s Dale Earnhardt, Sr., it’s NASCAR. Last night was an incredible win. It was an emotional day for those guys.”McReynolds on the rain delay cooling down the track but disrupting the drivers’ race day routines: “(The drivers) know when they get this track dry it’s going to be cool, it’s going to have a ton of grip. Normally when you get more grip it means handling problems you had in practice are going to be better. But the biggest thing is that these guys have waited all day. They have their routine and it’s the anticipation that we should be ready to race now and now we’ve got to wait and the question becomes how long will we have to wait?”McReynolds on NASCAR having a foundation built on drivers expressing their emotions: “These guys love what they do and they’re very passionate about what they do. I’ve said all along, our sport was built on race cars and racetracks, but it was also built on emotion and feelings and these guys show it. Even NASCAR today, they say, look, we still have to maintain law and order, you can’t have guys getting out of their race cars swing jack hammers at each other, but if we want to see these guys get out of their car, as we’ve seen nearly every single weekend in 2010, and put out their emotions and their feelings, that’s what our sport was built on starting in 1979 and let’s go at it in 2010.”No. 9 Kasey Kahne on details that still need to be worked out in regards to his move to Hendrick Motorsports and his expectation that he would know by this Daytona race: “Yeah, I was wrong. I think sometimes you just have to let things play out and let the best situation happen. That’s what we’re doing and that’s what they’re working on. I know it’s going to be good no matter what it is. Mr. Hendrick told me it’s going to be good equipment and it’s going to be a great car. Whatever it ends up being, it’s going to be fast. But it will be probably be another month (before we know).”No. 33 Clint Bowyer on his desire to be the last Daytona winner before the new surface is laid: “I love this place, it means a lot to me. Being a kid from Kansas, growing up in the Midwest and beating up bull rings in the Midwest, this is what you work your whole life to get to, Daytona. This is an old worn out track and I want to be the last winner on this surface. It would mean a lot to me.”***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ******Coke Zero 400 at DaytonaAnnouncers: Adam Alexander (play-by-play), Wally Dallenbach (analyst) and Kyle Petty (analyst); Larry McReynolds (analyst) contributes from the in-field with the TNT Offtrack Robotic Car (TORC) with Lindsay Czarniak (host)Pit reporters: Marty Snider, Ralph Sheheen, Phil Parsons and Matt YocumDallenbach on No. 2 Kurt Busch
and No. 48 Jimmie Johnson, who battled the previous week, working together in the race: “You completely forget about last week. In a restrictor plate race you’re simply looking for the fastest guy you can hang onto to work with. You seem to forget about a lot of the things that happened in the past because you never know which car is going to work best with you.”Petty on the pit strategy of cars taking two tires as opposed to four tires early in the race: “If I’m a driver and I’m watching some of those cars out there, I’m thinking give me four (tires). Let me get my adjustments, let’s get my car under me so I am comfortable with it, then I’ll gamble when I’m comfortable. I hate to gamble on something when I’m just not comfortable out there in it.”Dallenbach on drivers avoiding No. 77 Sam Hornish, Jr.: “These guys don’t look like they want to run behind the No. 77. A few of these guys went right up behind him and looked like they were going to help him and saw him get loose and they backed way off. When a guy is that loose in front of you, you do not want to make it worse.”Petty on No. 77 Sam Hornish, Jr. driving in the same spot all night: “(Sam Horish, Jr.) is staying with the girl who brought him to the dance, the high line. He’s going to make these guys go under him at some point in time.”Petty on a wreck involving No. 42 Juan Montoya turning No. 18 Kurt Busch on the back stretch: “It always amazes me at Daytona that we have so many crashes in the middle of the straight away, but we do. We have so many crashes in the middle of the super stretch. You hate to bring this up, but it’s kind of like the same situation between what the No. 18 did to the No. 11 (Denny Hamlin) in practice. They just hooked bumpers while they were crossing each other.”No. 18 Kyle Busch on his reaction to his wreck that involved No. 42 Juan Montoya and eliminated him from the race while he was leading: “I don’t even know what to say, too many thoughts running through my head. Yeah, I guess it was my fault. I’m going to down the straight away as straight as I can be and I went right across the nose of the No. 42 for nothing else to do. Yeah, I wanted to wreck myself. Nobody really understands the draft when you’re beside somebody like that, they can move you, they have control on your car. He was too close to my side and he started turning me sideways down the straight away without even touching me just like I did to Denny (Hamlin), he started turning before I even got over the No. 6 (David Ragan) in practice. When you have no grip on these tires, I was two laps away from pitting, the thing started rear steering me down the straight away and I had no control over it. I didn’t turn across the nose of the No. 42. Why would I do that? Why would I wreck myself? I was leading the race, I had the fastest car, thought I was going to win the thing. (I) thought we had the best car out there, drove from the back to the front. Can’t believe the Interstate All Battery Center Camry is all torn up again, another week, but whatever.”Petty on No. 18 Kyle Busch’s explanation of the wreck: “A really good explanation once (Kyle Busch) got past the attitude part of it, where he said, ‘hey, I didn’t wreck myself.’ He was being sarcastic and that’s ok.”Dallenbach on No. 2 Kurt Busch needing to be more aggressive: “(Kurt Busch) said it tonight, he needs to stop being so nice, he feels like he’s being too nice especially at the end of these races. He’s going to have to be aggressive, he’s in a position where he could win this thing in the last couple of laps and it’s got to be a take no prisoners attitude.”Petty on the first and last races raced on this asphalt at Daytona: “If you can bookend (the asphalt in Daytona) with the ‘79 Daytona 500 and the Coke Zero 400 tonight and the way this thing has played out, two pretty good races to bookend a racetrack and the pavement here. That’s pretty cool.”McReynolds: “Hopefully we won’t have a fight down in turn three.”No. 88 Dale Earnhardt, Jr. on being lucky in the race to finish fourth: “We were terrible all night. We didn’t go a good job this weekend as a team,
putting our car on the racetrack and making it as god as we could. We thought we were going to be ok, but we just weren’t when the raced started. We have to do a little bit better job, we got real lucky to get what we got tonight, I’m proud of the work the guys did. You’d rather be good than lucky. But anybody wants to trade you some luck like they did tonight we’ll take it.”Unofficial Coke Zero 400 at Daytona Results:1. No. 29 Kevin Harvick2. No. 9 Kasey Kahne3. No. 24 Jeff Gordon4. No. 88 Dale Earnhardt, Jr.5. No. 31 Jeff Burton6. No. 99 Carl Edwards7. No. 2 Kurt Busch8. No. 83 Reed Sorenson9. No. 71 Mike Bliss10. No. 82 Scott Speed
That’s it. Once again, thanks for Turner Sports for sending this over and the efficiency in which it was done.
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