NASCAR O'Reilly
Las Vegas: Vickers post race interview
BRIAN VICKERS, No. 32 Dollar General Stores Toyota Camry, Braun Racing Finishing Position: 3rd What did you think of the race? "It was pretty wild. I think I spent more time avoiding crashes myself than anything else. You're going to have ...
Published: Jun 19, 2009, 7:36 PM
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BRIAN VICKERS, No. 32 Dollar General Stores Toyota Camry, Braun Racing
Finishing Position: 3rd
What did you think of the race?
"It was pretty wild. I think I spent more time avoiding crashes myself than anything else. You're going to have that. These cars are fun to drive, but you have to drive them so hard. They are practically running wide open around here. You have to constantly loosen them up and loosen them up to try to run wide open and it's just going to happen. I'm really proud of the Dollar General guys, we had a great car. Unfortunately we made a mistake on pit road, left a lug nut loose otherwise I think we had a shot at the win. We had a really, really good car the last two runs. We were just fighting back for track position."
Why did a lot of the drivers have a hard time hanging on to their race car today?
"With these cars you're sitting there trying to run wide open around this track with these cars with no horsepower and a ton of down force. It's all about momentum. You've got to keep it free and you've got to keep it turning wide open. I think everybody was just pushing that to the limit. A couple guys didn't hold onto it and you saw a lot of crashes. It's tough. You've got to be able to manage your own car. You can't blame the car, the tires and the track because it's all up to you. But because of the car, because of the tires, because of the track you have to run these things so wide open and so free that you're always on the edge even more so than normal."
Did it seem like no one wanted to win the race?
"All the fast cars were having problems and a lot of them were just crashing. It's tough with these cars. I don't think it's anyone's fault, I'm not trying to say anything bad. It just is what it is. You're out here at this track trying to run wide open and you constantly try to free it up and free it up so you can keep your momentum up so you can run wide open -- that's going to lead to problems. That's why you saw a lot of the crashes, I believe. When it comes to the pit road instances, like us missing a lug nut, I don't know what was going on there. It just seemed like everyone who got in the lead had a problem."
Was the pace car going to fast?
"I don't really know how they pick pit road speed with the pace car, but I think they do a horrible job. Last week it was like five miles per hour fast in the cup race -- it wasn't even remotely close. I don't even pay attention to the pace car anymore, I just go off what the team calculates and if it seems like we're a little slow than we'll creep it up based on what everybody else is running. There again today, the pace car was going what I had for five over and he was claiming it was pit road speed. I just ignored it and went with our calculations."
-credit: toyota motorsports
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