NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Sprint All-Star Race

Topics:  Sprint All-Star Race

Kyle Busch
David Reutimann
May 21, 2011

CONCORD, NORTH CAROLINA

KERRY THARP: We're going to roll right into our post race for tonight's NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race. We're joined by our race runner-up, Kyle Busch. Our third-place finisher was David Reutimann.
Kyle, certainly making up some ground there the last lap or lap and a half. Think you could have caught him with a couple laps to go?
KYLE BUSCH: Yeah, possibly. But it was a hundred lapper tonight. It wasn't 102, 3 or 4 or nothing like that. So we knew the game when we started playing it. But unfortunately, we just didn't quite have enough there at the end of the race in the final 10.
Dave and the guys, we talked about it, just made a slight adjustment to it. We knew we weren't going to pick up all the speed we needed to. But we couldn't have made 10 adjustments on that thing on pit road and done what we needed to do. We needed to go back to our seven-post and sim and make some changes and try stuff.
For what we had, it was a really good night. I can't thank the guys enough. Gave me a great piece from off the truck. Thought we had a winning car. We got beat tonight on speed and unfortunately were second best.
KERRY THARP: David Reutimann, you were making up some ground, particularly that last 10-lap segment. Talk about your run.
DAVID REUTIMANN: Ended up being pretty good. Didn't start really good. We just didn't start very good. That being said, we kept plugging away at it. We had a really good car, but we were back in traffic. Hard to tell how good you were. The deciding factor was that last pit stop. My guys did a good job. We got out fifth. That gave us the track position. Rodney and the guys made some good adjustments on the car and it was good at the end.
I was telling Kyle, he moved up the middle, which made me be able to run the bottom. He picked up speed, I picked up speed. It just ended up being a situation where we got a run. We had speed with the car all night and encouraged to come back for the 600 and see what we can do there.
KERRY THARP: We'll take questions for Kyle or David.

Q. Kyle, I think I heard you say on the radio that Carl could come off the corner like five car lengths deeper than you. Could you tell me what he was able to do that you weren't able to?
KYLE BUSCH: I was getting into the turn. When he passed me for the lead there in the third segment, he just drove it five car lengths further than I could drive it into turn three. It stuck. His car would turn and roll the bottom. He slid up off the bottom maybe a foot. If I would have done that, it would have been a lot more than a foot, it would have been a few lanes.
His car just had a lot of front grip in it tonight. They did a good job with it.

Q. What can you take from tonight's race that will help you next week?
KYLE BUSCH: You know, who was it, Ragan and Keselowski can probably take the most from it. They started the first race during the day, then they ran this race at night. From what I understand, I think the 6 did pretty good. They seemed to learn quite a bit, I imagine.
For us, it's just a matter of what we practiced like during the day in the hot and slick sun, then what we had tonight when it was cool out and when it was fast out.
To me, those are some things that you feel like you build on and you talk with your crew chief this week and tell him exactly how your car changed throughout the event, what happened.
DAVID REUTIMANN: Yeah, what he said (laughter).

Q. David, you made up a lot of ground between the third segment, had a good pit stop, then the car sort of seemed to take off. What kind of adjustments were made? If you had more laps, would you have been able to do more?
DAVID REUTIMANN: I don't know. We got as far as we could in the laps allotted.
Tire pressure, added camber, added tape, something for a really short run. The car had gotten tight. The right rear quarter panel got rolled in, must have ran into somebody. Go figure. I don't think so. Wasn't the 18 car, so that was a good start (smiling).
But, you know, it was a good car the whole race. We just got the track position we needed and be able to run up toward the front. It came down to the pit stop. The guys did a good job. If they hadn't gotten me that pit stop, we would have run seventh or eighth probably. My pit crew gets the credit for tonight.

Q. Kyle, the way the car seemed to be in clean air tonight, when Carl got that final restart, was it sort of conceded there? Did you think it was done?
KYLE BUSCH: I didn't think it was done. But as far as he jumped out on me, really surprised me. I thought maybe I could run within three, four car lengths of him and kind of stay there, you know, until you built front air pressure. He took off so far, it was like, Damn, ain't no way I'm going to be able to run him back down in this period of time. Eddie kept running me down on laps to go. There ain't no time.
I caught him on one lap. I think I was 3/10ths faster or something like that. I was like, if I can keep that spread going, it would be pretty good. I don't know if he was relaxing for a lap or so or what. He ran a 30, then the next lap he ran a 22, he got a little bit better, and I only ran a 10. I was pushing it up top on the topside, heating up my front tires. It was already starting to slow down a little bit up there.

Q. The last 10 laps, no cautions. The gloves didn't really come off. Nobody really had at it. Why do you think that was? Did you expect there was going to be something at the end there?
KYLE BUSCH: Typically you see action on the restart. Somebody might spin their tires or something, somebody will try to plug the middle, bump somebody, all hell breaks loose.
I don't know what happened behind me. Carl and I seemed to take off pretty good. We really didn't spin our tires. I couldn't tell you what happened behind me, how congested it got at all.
From my vantage point, it was kind of a tame race today. I don't know what that one caution was for, but I think there was only one or two interruptions besides the normal cautions that we have in this race.
Sorry, we didn't give you any scoop or drama (smiling).

Q. Kyle, you've wrecked in this race before, now you finished second. Which is worse or more frustrating?
KYLE BUSCH: Well, considering our fleet has been getting a little bit low, this is pretty good. I didn't put a scratch on it. It will be my backup car next week. It was a good one.
So the most frustrating part is, you know, when you have a shot to win or when you feel like you have a shot to win and something happens to you. Those are really frustrating because you never know how it would turn out.
Tonight we flat out got beat. There's nothing to hang our heads about, there's nothing to be frustrated on tonight. We just didn't quite have enough when we needed it.
There at the end, we just ran out of time. Next week is a 600-mile race. There's going to be a lot of comers, a lot of goers, back and forth, some good racing. Hopefully next week can be our week.
KERRY THARP: Guys, thank you. Good luck next week.