NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
GEICO 500
TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
MAY 2, 2015
Jeff Gordon Wins Pole at Talladega
Hendrick Motorsports Teammate Kasey Kahne makes it All-Chevrolet SS Front Row for GEICO 500
TALLADEGA, Ala. (May 2, 2015) – Jeff Gordon won the pole in the final round of qualifying for Sunday’s GEICO 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race with a fast lap of 49.160 seconds, 194.793 mph. It marked the 80th career pole for the four-time NSCS champion and third in 2015 to date. It was also the fourth pole in 45 races at Talladega Superspeedway for the driver of the No. 24 Drive to End Hunger Chevrolet SS. He was the pole winner for the season-opening Daytona 500.
Starting alongside Gordon will be his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kasey Kahne behind the wheel of the No. 5 Farmers Insurance Chevrolet SS.
A total of seven Chevrolet SS drivers made it to the 12-car field for the final round of qualifying.
Dale Earnhardt, Jr., No. 88 Nationwide Chevrolet SS will start fourth in the 188-lap/500-mile race on the 2.66-mile high-banked oval, the biggest track on the NSCS circuit, and six-time NSCS champion Jimmie Johnson, No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet SS will start fifth in the 43-car field, giving Hendrick Motorsports and Team Chevy four of the top five starting positions.
Three-time champion Tony Stewart, No. 14 Bass Pro Shops/Mobil 1 Chevrolet SS, will start in sixth place.
Paul Menard, No. 27 Quaker State Chevrolet SS, scored the seventh starting position, and Casey Mears, No. 13 GEICO Chevrolet SS, will role off in 11th position.
The remaining top-12 qualifiers are: Ryan Blaney (Ford) – third; Matt Kenseth (Toyota) – eighth, David Regan (Toyota) – ninth; Clint Bowyer (Toyota) – 10th and Sam Hornish (Ford) – 12th.
The Geico 500 at Talladega Superspeedway is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. ET on Sunday May 3rd. Live coverage will be available on FOX, MRN, Sirius NASCAR Radio Channel 90 and NASCAR.com.
POST QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPTS:
JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DRIVE TO END HUNGER CHEVROLET SS – POLE WINNER
THIS IS YOUR FOURTH POLE IN 45 RACES AT TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY. TALK ABOUT YOUR RUN AND COMING HOME WITH ANOTHER POLE THIS SEASON
“When you come to the restrictor plate races, you definitely give the team all the credit because of the prep work that goes into these cars and all the details and hard work, from the engine shop and the chassis shop, all the details of the body and aerodynamics and how you get the heat out of the engine and what things need to be done heated up and what things need to be cooled down. So there is a lot that goes into it from what the team has to do. My part is pretty easy. You release the clutch and get it up to speed and hit my shift points, and run a tidy line. The car showed a lot of speed yesterday and continued today. It’s just a great team effort and I’m very proud of those guys and very proud that they got me my 80th career pole. That’s pretty cool.”
YOU WON THE POLE AT DAYTONA AND DOMINATED THAT RACE AT LEAST TO THE HALFWAY POINT. HOW DO YOU AVOID A REPEAT OF THAT WHERE YOU ARE STILL IN CONTENTION IN THE END?
“It’s a different type of restrictor plate racing here with tapered spacers or whatever we have on them these days. And so, I think that at Daytona, track position means a little bit more than it does here. This place is so wide and fast and you can get multiple lanes that really work, and make some moves there. It’s always great to have a fast car and know you have a fast car and have track position and have that number one pit stall. So, we’ll try to take advantage of those things. I think at Daytona, a lot of what happened was restarts, really. So, it’s about not just you getting a good restart, but the car behind you and the car behind them all getting lined-up and getting some pushes and things on those restarts to maintain that lead. I think obviously with as good a race car as we have, if we can get out front I think we can stay out front. But to me, every time I come to Talladega since maybe the last eight to 10 years, it’s like an 80 percent chance you’re going to get caught-up in a wreck; and how do you avoid that? That, to me, is my first goal is just getting to the finish. And then hopefully we can find a to put ourselves in position to win. If we can stay out front, that would make it a lot easier. Easier said than done.”
YOU’RE 10TH IN POINTS, BUT HAVEN’T LED A TON OF LAPS SINCE THAT RACE IN DAYTONA. HOW DESPERATE ARE YOU FOR A WIN? IS IT ALMOST CHECKERS OR WRECKERS FOR YOU IF YOU HAVE A CHANCE TO WIN?
“Well, we came into this weekend and we planned on racing aggressively and not riding around in the back. So, this certainly helps that plan fall into place with a great qualifying effort. We have not performed as well as we had hoped as a team this year, mainly on the 1.5-miles. So, yeah, we have to take advantage of the tracks where we are strong and this is certainly one of them. The short tracks seem to be pretty good as well. We’ve got to get better on those intermediates and that’s what we’re working on. But desperate? I wouldn’t say we are desperate. We’re just trying to take advantage of opportunities when they come and continue to increase performance at other tracks to get our percentages better of getting that win.”
THIS IS A CEREMONIAL YEAR FOR YOU. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT GETTING THE POLE AND WHAT THAT MEANS IN THE BIGGER PICTURE?
“Well, I found the secret to getting the pole was going out to the boulevard last night for Mardi Gras. Austin Dillon, I saw him out there; and I was out there. So, that must have been the secret (laughs); and my team not being out there. No, it was so much fun. This whole year, all I’ve wanted to do was just enjoy the moments and take it all in. When they have my number painted out on the front straightaway or on a wall or on a sign or fans waving towels, or lap 24, or whatever it may be, it’s been a lot of fun. But I want to perform better than what we have. So, it’s a balance between enjoying the moment and having friends and family there, to sort of enjoying this final season. But at the same time, you want to win the race. So, I feel like we’ve done a good job of that with the scheduling and everything, and I’m having a ball. I haven’t been out there on the boulevard in like 10 years. And so it was worth it. It was a lot of fun out there. The fans are having a great time and it’s cool to interact with them like that and see what our sport truly offers from a fan experience. I don’t think any other sport has it quite like that. That was cool to be out there. I don’t know if I’m going to be doing more things like that, but I’m certainly going to be making the most of this season, hopefully on the track and off the track.”
AS A DRIVER, YOU COULD HAVE MADE EVEN ONE SIMPLE MISTAKE AND NOT BE ON THE POLE. HOW CLOSE TO PERFECTION DO YOU THINK YOU WERE OUT ON THE RACE TRACK?
“Well, I hear what you’re saying and I appreciate that. If we were talking about Las Vegas or Martinsville or something like that, I would say yes. Even at Daytona, the qualifying format there was totally different and I feel like I played more of a role there as a driver, and how you had to qualify there. But we also had a fast race car. Where here, yeah, can I mess up a shift or something like that? I guess I could (but) when the car’s that good you don’t need to be perfect. You just need to do your job and the car is going to do the rest. I think everybody would tell you that.”
KASEY KAHNE, NO. 5 FARMERS INSURANCE CHEVROLET SS – QUALIFIED 2ND
A NEW QUALIFYING FORMAT HERE AT TALLADEGA. TALK ABOUT THAT
‘Yeah, I was really happy with the format. I went out early, so I sat there and waited through this format, kind of like the old format, to see if you were on the pole once qualifying was over. But we had the top 12 to think about. So, it was neat to sit there and kind of watch and see who was going to beat you and who wouldn’t. We ended up fifth. In the second round, we gained a little bit there and we were able to go quicker. So, it was a great effort by our team. Our Farmers Insurance team did a great job and we brought an awesome car to the track this weekend. The No. 24 (Jeff Gordon, pole winner) was really fast as well.
“I didn’t think I could beat Jeff, but I knew I could get up there on the front row with him after our first run. So, it ended up pretty good.”
CONSIDERING WHERE YOU ARE IN POINTS, HOW MUCH DO YOU WEIGHT RISK VERSUS REWARD IN DECIDING WHEN TO MAKE A MOVE LATE IN THE RACE?
“Well, I’ve figured out the past couple of years, really, just racing at Daytona and Talladega. I’ve just raced and see what you get at the end of the race. The last thing you want is to cause a wreck, but you can be caught-up in wrecks pretty easily here and have nothing to do with it. I’ve just tried to race as close to the front as we can. If we get back there, wait and decide when it’s the right time to get back to the front and hopefully the field gets strung out a little bit on a longer run. I think the biggest thing for us is to just be racing and try to stay as close to the front as possible because you can get caught up anywhere at this race. You might as well enjoy it and try to lead laps.”
YOU WERE ONE OF THE FIRST CARS OUT. WAS THERE ANYTHING TO LEARN? OR, DID YOU LEARN ANYTHING THAT YOU COULD RELAY TO YOUR TEAMMATES?
“No, actually you can’t really do anything. Our cars are very similar. They come out of the same shop at Hendrick Motorsports, so they are very similar. Jeff (Gordon) just had a little bit of speed on the field today. That was awesome for those guys and I’m glad that we were second and pretty close, there. It was great for our shop.”
HOW AGGRESSIVE DO YOU BELIEVE THE START OF THE RACE WILL BE TOMORROW SINCE BEING UP FRONT APPEARS TO BE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT?
“I think it will be pretty aggressive. I feel like the last couple of plate tracks, Daytona at the start of the year, I was surprised how aggressive and how bad everybody tried to lead during the first ten laps of the race. And it kind of went like that the entire race at Daytona. So, I would say tomorrow would be similar. Talladega is a little bit different. It’s much wider. So, maybe it will get a little more strung out during race runs, which will probably be good at times just to log laps and get into those final 100 laps because 500 laps is a long time. The key will be getting those final 50 miles, or so.”
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