TNT Quotage From NASCAR Sprint Cup Race in New Hampshire

June 27, 2010 | Posted in NASCAR, TNT | No comments

Our last press release on this Sunday night/early Monday morning on the East Coast is from Turner Sports and quotage from the NASCAR Sprint Cup race that took place in Loudon, NH. You have the quotage from pre-race, race and post-race. Check it out.

Notes from TNT’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Coverage from New Hampshire live from Loudon, N.H. – Sunday, June 27, 2010
TNT’s coverage of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series continues on Saturday, July 3 with the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona, presented in the network’s Wide Open format. Countdown to Green begins at 6:30 (ET) and the green flag will drop on the race at 7:30 p.m. (ET).
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Countdown to Green
Lindsay Czarniak (host), Kyle Petty (analyst) and Larry McReynolds (analyst)
McReynolds on whether No. 56 Martin Truex, Jr. will retaliate against No. 24 Jeff Gordon after Gordon wrecked Truex and eliminated him from the race: “Here’s the question, did Martin Truex, Jr. mean Loudon in June or did he mean Loudon in September when the Chase actually starts? I honestly believe that we will not see retaliation from Infineon this week, there’s too much on the line. You think about Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth, those guys need to be focused on winning a race. You think about Martin Truex, Jr. he’s trying to get to the top 12. I saw David Ragen and Elliott Sadler, those guys are fighting for their ride. They need to focus on performance, not retaliation.”
Petty on the race dictating whether No. 56 Martin Truex, Jr. will retaliate against No. 24 Jeff Gordon: “A driver never forgets, you’ll ride a guy a little high, you won’t give him any room. You won’t see retaliation here today. If (Martin) Truex (Jr.) is running good, Jeff Gordon is the farthest thing from his mind. If Truex gets into an accident, Jeff Gordon had better be leery every time he laps his butt on the racetrack because he’s going to be laying for him.”
Dallenbach on how No. 24 Jeff Gordon’s on track demeanor against No. 56 Martin Truex, Jr. will determine how Truex responds: “That’s why Larry (McReynolds) is not a driver and I’m not a crew chief. Larry said you’ve got to focus on driving, but when you’re a race car driver you focus on getting the guy back. I think a lot of it has to do with how (Jeff) Gordon is going to race Martin (Truex, Jr.) today. If Martin gets in the back of the No. 24, I’m sure the No. 24 is going to get out of his way to give him a lot of room. If that happens you pretty much just wipe it out, you don’t think about it anymore. But if you have a problem with a guy and you come back to the racetrack and he’s jacking with you, you’re not going to wait, you’re going get it done.”
Petty on No. 47 Marcos Ambrose’s recovery from losing the Toyota/Save Mart 350 last week: “I’m going to tell you something, I was impressed with Marcos (Ambrose) this week. The interviews he gave, his line, the way he talked, the way he held himself, the way the team carried itself, they come right back here and go back out on the racetrack. Once you’re back out on the racetrack, that’s your comfortable place. So being in New Hampshire back in the car, it’s behind him now.”
No. 11 Denny Hamlin joined the TNT rig during Countdown to Green.
Hamlin on using negative press as motivation to succeed: “It’s amazing, whenever anything negative in the media is put out about us, we’ll poster it, we’ll put it up in the hauler and use it as motivation. We usually use the beginning of the year predictions when it says, ‘who will miss it,’ and our names is mentioned as going to miss it. We post it right up and use it as motivation. The knee stuff is no different. I’ve really relied on my team to pick me up over those few weeks right after that and since then our team has been on fire.”
Hamlin on having a great competitor in teammate No. 18 Kyle Busch to push him to be better: “It’s no different than the No. 24 (Jeff Gordon) and the No. 48 (Jimmie Johnson). When you have a competitor like myself and Kyle (Busch) on the same team, it’s motivation. We knew right from the very first test, when he was still with Hendrick Motorsports and they let him come over and test Atlanta with the Gibbs cars, he got in his race car, (and ran) top of the chart. I was top of the chart until he got there. He showed up fastest. I went back out and topped that, and we kept going back and forth, and that’s what it takes to keep the fire in your stomach.”
McReynolds on legendary crew chief Dale Inman who was the focus of this week’s Pride of NASCAR feature: “We can talk about Richard Petty’s seven championships, we can talk about Dale Earnhardt, not to dilute their championships, but that man (Dale Inman) has eight championships. I know this year we put Bill France, Sr., Bill France, Jr., and three very notable drivers in the Hall of Fame, and rightfully so, but when we start putting crew chiefs and great mechanics into the Hall of Fame, that’s the man that needs to go into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, no question.”
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NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Racing: LENOX Industrial Tools 301
Announcers: 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 Yocum
Alexander on No. 31 Jeff Burton clearing the way for No. 24 Jeff Gordon: “It almost looked like a running back with an offensive lineman in front of him. (Jeff) Burton cleared the way and (Jeff) Gordon said I’m following you through.”
Dallenbach: “It’s good if you can follow someone who will do that. It will definitely open the door up for you if you can follow a guy like that, and Jeff Burton knows how to get through traffic, especially at this racetrack.”
Snider on his conversation with No. 47 Marcos Ambrose regarding his penalty at the end of the race in Sonoma which caused him to lose the race:  “I talked to Marcos Ambrose this morning and he said, ‘listen, we had to come here with a different attitude. We had a team meeting on Tuesday and told everyone to put it behind them.’ He said, ‘it was absolutely the most devastating moment of my career, but we had to come here, relax and believe in ourselves, knowing we could run. That meant more than anything, it could have devastated us, but we weren’t going to let it.’ They came here with the right attitude and are running well here so far.”
Dallenbach on No. 47 Marcos Ambrose’s positive attitude: “(Marcos Ambrose) is one of the guys who has the best attitude in the sport right now, I don’t know if I could put it away like he put it away after what happened last week. I’d still be thinking about it.”
Petty: “After last week, I’d be staying in a hotel here (in Loudon) because I would have ripped the door off my bus when I got back to my motor coach. I could not have put it behind me.”
Petty on No. 29 Kevin Harvick: “That’s a team (No. 29) that has the big picture in mind. When you can take nothing and make something out of it, they do it week in and week out. They’ve done it this year better than any other team. There have been times I thought they were going to get lapped in the first 50 laps of the race, but you see (him at Pocono) and they finished fourth.”
Dallenbach on No. 31 Jeff Burton returning to his past form of racing well in New Hampshire: “(Jeff Burton) gets a hold of this racetrack and he is a tough guy to beat at this place. He hasn’t been a threat like he used to be, you used to come here and you had to beat Jeff Burton on this racetrack. But he looks it used to be here when he was winning all these races up here.”
Petty on bubble drivers No. 39 Ryan Newman, No. 99 Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and No. 33 Clint Boyer trying to gain points: “If you’re racing against each other, trying to gain ground on each other, you don’t gain anything. Here you are 13th, 14th and 15th and here you are racing at the racetrack eighth, ninth and tenth, so you don’t really gain anything. That’s the tough part about Cup racing, it’s hard to make up those points because they are so competitive week in and week out they run the same. ”
Alexander on No. 48 Jimmie Johnson winning the race: “For all those naysayers who wondered what was wrong with Johnson, I think driver No. 48 is back.”
Dallenbach: “I never listened to what those people said anyway.”
Petty: “Back from what, seventh place in points?”
Dallenbach: “Back from the big slump.”
Petty on the Chase starting in Loudon: “This is where the Chase starts. If these guys come here now and run like they ran (today), you’ve got to take that into account and say, ‘hey, they won here in the first race, they can win here when we start the Chase.”
No. 29 Kevin Harvick, the Chase leader, on how he will approach the final few weeks before the Chase starts: “You definitely want to be solid for the next few weeks, then you can start doing some things that you normally wouldn’t do, trying some things that you normally wouldn’t try. Even now, we can be a little bit more aggressive because you do have a little bit of a cushion. But we do want to win a race or two before the Chase starts and hopefully get our winnings streak in the last 10 weeks, that’s when it all counts.”
LENOX Industrial Tools 301 Unofficial Results:
  1. No. 48 Jimmie Johnson
  2. No. 14 Tony Stewart
  3. No. 2 Kurt Busch
  4. No. 24 Jeff Gordon
  5. No. 29 Kevin Harvick
  6. No. 39 Ryan Newman
  7. No. 33 Clint Bowyer
  8. No. 88 Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
  9. No. 20 Joey Logano
  10. No. 43 A.J. Allmendinger

We’re done for the night. See you on Monday.