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[/media-credit]Sunday, April 15, 2012
RAM PR
Rockingham Speedway
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series
Final Race Quotes
Parker Kligerman (No. 29 Draw-Tite/Mopar RAM) Finished 9th WAS THE RACE TODAY SIMILAR TO OTHER RACES YOU’VE HAD HERE AT ROCKINGHAM? “It turned out to be eerily similar, especially in first half of the race. We ran top three, top five. Had a great RAM, especially in that third run where we ended up being four-tenths faster than the leader at the end of the run. For 20 laps we were faster than any other truck on the track. I just kind of took the experience of saving the right-rear into that run and sure enough it paid off. With 20 laps left in the run I was four-tenths faster than the field.
“It’s frustrating to finish ninth because I made a little mistake in the pits there. I flipped it into gear when I shouldn’t have and then we kind of got off on adjustments from being back in the pack and that kind of sealed our fate. I’m a little frustrated but you know I think it was a good points day and we’re doing what we set out to do. Last year we said if we’d have finished six spots better in every race we’d have been champions and so far I think we’re ahead of ourselves so that’s good.
“This is awesome. I wish we raced here two or three times a year. That’s one of the most fun races I’ve had in a long time: slipping and sliding and using ever groove possible, saving your tires, being 10 seconds back from a guy 20 laps into a run and at the end of 60 laps you’re five seconds ahead of him. That’s awesome. That’s what every race should be like. Tires should mean this much. It puts a premium on drivers and crew guys and everything. It’s exciting and I love it.”
DID THE TRACK CHANGE WITH THE CLOUD COVER? “The sun would come in and out and it would just kill the race track in terms of what you were doing. It would get really loose under cloud cover, really tight under sun and it would just go back and forth so keeping up with it was the deal and we couldn’t keep up with it.”
THIS IS YOUR FIRST TOP 10 OF THE SEASON. HOW BIG IS THIS MOVING FORWARD? “Hey man, we have a clean RAM, that’s the biggest thing right off the bat. For a small team like us that means a lot. We’ve gave our new sponsor Draw-Tite here their first top 10 in a NASCAR Series which is great. For us, it’s about a championship so if we can just put ourselves in position to be top five in points at the end of the year and put ourselves to be there for that championship at the end of the year that’s all we can ask for.”
Doug Randolph (Crew Chief, No. 29 Draw-Tite/Mopar RAM) “We had a really good RAM all afternoon. It was a race of track position. You can make your passes there the first four or five laps. Our truck was really good on long runs. That longest run there we were probably three or four tenths faster than anybody for 20 laps but we had lost a lot of ground. Just frustrating because we knew we had a better piece and lost track position once or twice and kept sneaking the wrong direction. Solid race, solid top 10 and you can never argue about those but our expectations were a little bit higher than that today.”
HOW DIFFICULT WAS IT WITH THE CHANGING WEATHER CONDITIONS WITH THE CLOUD COVER? “It really seemed to affect our truck and the last two runs were probably our worst runs, the track got away from us a little bit. You usually want those last two runs to be your best. It’s frustrating but we’ll go back and figure out what we need to do to capitalize on that but like I said it’s a solid day and we can build on that. We’ve had solid finishes all year, not quite the numbers that we’ve been expecting but not finishes that are going to hurt us so we’ll keep plugging right away.”
