Ford 200 Post-Race Transcript
An Interview With:
JOHNNY BENSON
BILL DAVIS
TRIP BRUCE
THE MODERATOR: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about tonight and winning the Truck Series championship.
JOHNNY BENSON: Tonight was tough. Tonight was about Trip Bruce and making the calls that he did, because if I wouldn’t have screwed up last week we wouldn’t have been in this situation.
That’s one thing I told the guys. Coming into this race was no different than coming into last week’s. It was six points last time, three points this time, and we had to go out and do what we had to do. Trip had said, we may not going to be the fastest, but this is hopefully the smartest one wins this, and his calls were extremely smart. They were great calls. I knew what he was doing. I knew it was going to be an issue for me maybe.
But I have more confidence in this race team and Trip than I’ve had in many, many years, and it’s been a pleasure to ‑‑ one, to win this championship, but to have a fabulous year with five wins, a lot of great runs, and just really got to thank Bill and Gail Davis, for giving me the opportunity to come and do this.
When we started this deal, the goal was to try to get a championship, and it’s been amazing to get 14 wins and now a championship in the last three years. It’s been ‑‑ it means more to me to get this for Bill and Gail than anything you people can even ever imagine. Bill has been in the sport for many, many years. He’s put a lot of blood, sweat, tears in this, a lot of money, and he deserves it. He deserves more than one, and hopefully he’ll get more than one before this is all done with.
THE MODERATOR: We’re also joined by champion team owner, Bill Davis, and crew chief, Trip Bruce. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about tonight and the season.
BILL DAVIS: Well, I don’t know if we went according to plan or not. It looked like it to me, but somebody said ‑‑ down there they said something about being a bridesmaid for so many years, and for a long time tonight it looked like it might be that again.
You know, it worked out. Rick made a call that probably a lot of people wouldn’t have, and that’s how it works. It could have been the greatest call and been a hero and this time but didn’t work out because of how things fell in place, and that’s racing.
It’s just great that we won it, great that we were in a position to win it, and this is why we all race. This is why we all do this and work so hard. This obviously feels real good.
THE MODERATOR: Trip, why don’t you tell us about tonight and the season.
TRIP BRUCE: Well, you know, on that note, we were sitting up there with not a whole lot to be proud of. Typically we’re proud of our performance on the track, the speed we get out of the trucks with Johnny driving, and we didn’t have that this week. That’s a long race, even 25, 45 laps. It’s a long time. Anything can happen. All this equipment is running on the ragged edge all the time. You never know, maybe not over yet. We really don’t know what the outcome is yet, not until the last lap. I said, Bill, they’re not going to let us leave until it’s over. We’re here until the end, so let’s keep hoping.
Sure enough, a caution comes out and it gives us an opportunity for us to not mess up, and like they said, the other team made a little mistake there. I think they would have beat us if we would have stayed out. We all watched the race. They had a better truck than us tonight. It was about taking advantage of an opportunity. We said we’re going to fight until the end, we’re going to stay out, it’s our best shot, and it was, and it turned out good for us tonight, and I’m proud of that.
That was all teamwork getting us to that point, so I’m proud of that part. Same thing we run on all year long, teamwork.
Q. Bill, we’re all aware of how tough the economic climate is today in NASCAR and the economy in general, what a challenge it’s been this year. Can you talk about psychologically what a big moment this is for you and what a big shot in the arm it is for Bill Davis Racing?
BILL DAVIS: Well, sure, it’s been a challenge for everybody in the sport. The entire economy worldwide is something that is in a condition that I don’t think many of us in this room, certainly myself, has never seen in 40 years of business.
But the championship is just ‑‑ as I said earlier, it’s what it’s all about. Toyota and TRD gives us a wonderful opportunity. They give us the best equipment in the garage and the best support, and we’ve come up short the last couple years. Obviously we needed to get it done tonight and kind of fell into it in an unusual way, but it worked out for us really well, and I’m just real happy for all the guys, happy for all the guys at Bill Davis Racing, the guys at Triad, Todd Holbert and Jon Dysinger, the great job he does on the engines, Todd Holbert, the chassis and the body, and the great support that TRD gives us. It’s second to none. Finally we got it done for them.
Q. Johnny, do you appreciate this championship a little bit more than when you won the Busch title in ’95 because at that time you were kind of beginning your NASCAR career, now you realize you’re probably in the latter stages of it, and to get a title at this stage in your career, just talk a little bit about how much more you may appreciate this one than 13 years ago.
JOHNNY BENSON: Well, I think you can appreciate every championship in its own little way for sure. You know, winning ‑‑ at the time the Busch Series championship was not easy, like this year hasn’t been, either. I may have been a little bit further ahead on that deal, and we won it before the last race of the season, so yeah, I mean, it just shows the performance that we had was great.
This year our performance was great, Ron’s performances were great, but if this was last year and any of the three previous years, me and Ron, the seasons we had, we’d have been running for fourth and fifth. So this year has been a strange year as far as the consistency of that.
And two years ago when we were battling Todd, Todd only had two bad races. He ran 18th and 20th. That’s very unusual to have that, but that’s how tough this series is, and I think this year, I think people had more problems, and obviously it came down to the last race, to the final lap. I actually thought I lost it when the 09 went by me.
You know, we went into this race to have fun, to do the best that we could. I’ve got all the confidence in the world in Trip Bruce and Bill Davis Racing that things are going to end up okay, and obviously they ended up a little better than okay.
This one does mean a lot to Bill Davis Racing. I knew we would win a championship. I hated that it took this long, but I knew we were going to win a championship. It was just a matter of time. We had good people. Like Bill said, with Triad, TRD, all the engineering, Jon Dysinger building the engines, all the bodywork that we do, the people that we assembled for this deal, it was a matter of time that we were hoping that we were going to get this.
When we unloaded at Daytona, that was a goal like every year to win the championship, and it’s been a hard‑fought one. I really think that Vegas didn’t take the wind out of our sails. It took the wind out of me when I hit the wall, but not out of our sails because we were performing doing what we needed to do during that race. The only time that I thought that there was going to be an issue is when I messed up at Phoenix and I lost every bit of our cushion that we had at that point in time.
If I could go back there and change it, I would, and that what we had to do. Me and Trip talked, we didn’t have the performance we needed tonight to beat the 33, but we had the crew chief and the calls and the desire to try to go beat them, and that’s what happened tonight.
Q. Johnny or Trip or Bill, whoever wants this, the controversy with NASCAR in the pits with the tape on the spoiler, Trip, how close did you come to blowing up on that, and, Johnny, what was your reaction when he told you?
JOHNNY BENSON: Well, we knew that that wasn’t going to make a difference either way. There was more than just us out there with that problem.
I don’t think it’s an advantage or disadvantage to have tape or not. At the point in time we were so loose, I’d have took the tape, we just didn’t get it on there. I don’t know if that would have been a right call or a wrong call to call us in there. They gave us an opportunity to get it fixed. We tried to get it fixed but we couldn’t get it to stick. They gave us an opportunity later and we got it done.
Q. To all three of you gentlemen, can you look back through the season ‑‑ I know you haven’t had much time to reflect, but pick out some moments where you can look back and say, this is the reason why we ended up here with the championship?
JOHNNY BENSON: Well, I can give you in 25 races the reason why we won the championship, because that’s what it took. It took 25 races. It started at Daytona when we unloaded, ended when we loaded up tonight, and it’s every race. And we’ve had some good races, we’ve had some great races, we’ve had some mediocre races and we’ve had a lot of heartbreak with one engine blown, we had a couple tires blown and wrecked. Every one of those is a decision or a result of us being here winning a championship.
You know, like I say, it takes a whole year, and it’s just a way‑cool deal here. I don’t think people understand how much this means to me to win this, but not just for me, for Bill and Gail, everybody at Bill Davis Racing, Toyota Certified Used Vehicles and Exide, everybody involved. I’ll remember this for many, many years to come.
Q. Bill, where does this rank compared to some of your other accomplishments, winning the Daytona 500 and that sort of thing, and how much does this sort of act as a salve to soothe over some of the problems you’ve had the last couple of weeks with the Cup team?
BILL DAVIS: I don’t know what problems you’re referring to, but obviously a championship is what it’s all about, no matter what series you’re talking about.
Winning the Daytona 500 was a very cool thing and to finish Top 10 in the points series is very cool. But a championship is a championship, and that’s the ultimate goal for everybody that races.
This is way up there obviously.
Q. Two questions: Johnny, you’re kind of a commonsense kind of guy, but you’ve got that bottle of champagne you’ve been swigging here in the media center. How are you going to celebrate? And, second, is this bittersweet thinking about the future now, kind of your thoughts about that?
JOHNNY BENSON: Well, yeah, we’re going to celebrate, turn three of the lake in the infield here, we’ve got a motor home with a lot of food and a lot of drinks. Anybody that wants to come over, come on over.
You know, it is bittersweet to talk about that, but in the same token, I really want to talk about the championship and what it’s meant for us because that’s what today is about. Next year doesn’t have anything to do with right now. Right now it’s about the championship. Right now it’s about winning this for Bill Davis Racing and Toyota and everybody involved, and that’s what it’s about.
It is what it is at the moment, and it’s a difficult ‑‑ it’s a very difficult task about the decision, but I don’t care about that right now because I’m going to celebrate and going to celebrate with all of our team guys, Bill, and just everybody involved, because that’s what it’s about. It’s about this race team today, this race team and what they’ve done the last three and a half years I’ve been here and what they’ve been able to provide for me to go out and win races.
I mean, to win 14 races in the last three years is incredible. I don’t know if those numbers can be challenged by anybody.
TRIP BRUCE: I mean, for everything else worth and everything it was worth, it wore out a little bit there, started to fade back again. I wouldn’t have worried about the left sides blowing or anything like that. The loads are fairly low here at Homestead that gets put on the tire. It’s a great tire. We were in good shape in that aspect.
Q. Bill, during the race your emotions walking on Pit Road, were you calm, were you sick to your stomach? What was going on in your head? Was it up and down?
BILL DAVIS: Yeah, I was pretty calm. It is what it is. You put forth your best effort and you get the best people that you can, the best equipment that you can, and it’s going to come out the way that it does. We’ve been through these deals before, and so ‑‑ I mean, I don’t want to sound nonchalant about it. It was an emotional deal and it was going to be what it was, and it worked out.
Q. Johnny, at what point did you know that you had won the race after the 09 went by? And, Trip, there seemed to be a little bit of indecision at the end where you guys didn’t celebrate right away.
TRIP BRUCE: The way they score these positions manually and electronic ally, they look at both of those and compare them, so it took a few minutes and we were being thorough.
I kind of knew where we were at, that we were ahead of the 33, and that fact alone let me know that we would win. I was pretty confident, but you have to wait and see, and we had an official there that gave it to us.
BILL DAVIS: How many did we win by?
TRIP BRUCE: Seven.
JOHNNY BENSON: The championships are all different in their own ways, but the one thing you can look back and say you can be extremely proud of every one of them. I don’t view one as any better than the other. Obviously the higher you get in rankings and things of that nature, the more challenging they are.
But you really get to the point where you have this same desire to win whatever you’re at and whatever you’re doing. And the accomplishments are overwhelming when you win a championship, when you win, because that takes every race into perspective for the entire year, and to do that is very difficult. They’re all very, very cool. They all mean a tremendous amount, and hopefully we can go win more.
An Interview With:
TODD BODINE
MIKE HILLMAN, JR.
THE MODERATOR: We are joined in the media center by tonight’s winner of the Ford 200, Todd Bodine.
You won here in 2005, your second time in Victory Lane. Tell us a little bit about your night.
TODD BODINE: Well, like Junior said, when we got to Victory Lane, lap 5, if you told us we were going to win this race, we would have laughed at you.
We didn’t have a good truck at all. We missed it pretty bad, and our motto is never give up. And we don’t. Junior took some big swings at it, set up air pressure and wedge and track bar and everything but the driver. Probably should have changed the driver, too.
And then second stop did a little bit of adjustments, third stop didn’t do any. It was the best it needed to be at the end.
I think we probably had the second best truck. We wouldn’t have beat Kyle if everybody had stayed on track, but we could have got to second, I think. That says a lot for this team and the attitude. We don’t give up.
THE MODERATOR: We’re joined by tonight’s winning crew chief as, Mike Hillman, Jr.
Tell us about your night.
MIKE HILLMAN, JR.: Todd basically touched on it. We were struggling at the beginning, and we made some big swings at it and made it a lot better. Some of the guys pitted the last time, and when Kyle came, we decided to stay out because that was the only chance we had to beat him.
We never give up. I’m just really proud of all these guys. They’ve done a heck of a job all year long. Great pit stops on Pit Road, great attitudes, go above and beyond anything you could ever ask a race team to do to make sure that we can be in Victory Lane.
Q. Todd, you said you were shocked that Ron lost the championship. Why is that?
TODD BODINE: Um, you know, the old adage that the fastest truck doesn’t always win, that’s the way it was tonight. Rick and Ron and the whole crew, everybody at KHI, they’ve done such a great job.
Q. How good can this race team be next year?
MIKE HILLMAN, JR.: I believe one of the strongest race teams in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series garage.
And we’re going to come out next year with our guns blazing. Germain Racing is growing and doing things different. Me and Todd are going to stay where we are and argue with Senior to keep all our guys intact and make sure we got everybody we need and in place to compete for the championship next year.
It’s all could haves, would haves and should haves, and we should have done it this week, but third is not bad. But that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to be on the front stretch. We’re here to win every race and win championships.
I think we proved tonight that we’re back. We haven’t finished out of the top five since Talladega, the last five races. We’ll take this momentum, go home, work on our stuff all winter and come to Daytona ready to win two Daytona races in a row.
Q. How big is winning the season finale leading into next year?
TODD BODINE: Well, it’s always big to win, first of all. That’s what we go every week for. But it’s nice to for the guys to walk around the shop in the wintertime with their chests bowed out.
Every week the winner is a winner for a week, and the next week there’s another winner, and the next week there’s another winner. Now you get a week off and that guy gets it for two weeks. Well, guess what, we get it for two months, three months, whatever it is. And it’s important for the team. It’s important for morale.
Our guys, like I said earlier, we don’t ever give up. That’s our motto. For our guys in that shop, this just proves it right here. Tonight is a great example of what Germain Racing is about. We should not have won this race. We did not have the best truck by any means. But the guys knew that their pit stops were going to count and make my job easier. I’d say probably between the three stops they picked up 12 spots or 15 spots. I mean, that’s pretty incredible.
They know that. They know that they were a part of putting me in the position to do what I can do, and it’s a team effort, and we go through the winter and we’ll have our chests bowed out and we’ll go to the Christmas party and we’ll have fun and talk about our last win and how good it’s going to be to go to Daytona and win another one.
Q. Mike, you’ve been around for a long time. Can you sort of digest or understand the pit decision of Rick Ren for four tires there?
MIKE HILLMAN, JR.: Rick Ren is a great crew chief. He is a great leader and does a great job with his guys. I would never second guess a decision he made. He’ll probably second guess himself for a couple months, but they’re champions. He’s won championships. He was Johnny’s crew chief when we battled them in ’06. You know when you come to the garage you’ve got to battle Rick Ren and Ron Hornaday, and you can’t question that decision.
You know, it looks the worst because it was only three points, but like I said earlier, there was a lot of could haves, should haves, would haves through the whole season for all of us. And you can’t blame it on one pit stop. If they wouldn’t have ran out of gas at Martinsville, he probably wouldn’t have had to worry about who was going to be champion when we came down here.
An Interview With:
RON HORNADAY
THE MODERATOR: We’re joined in the media center by Ron Hornaday, Jr., who finished second to Johnny Benson in the points standings.
Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your run tonight.
RON HORNADAY: Awesome day for us until that last call. We’ve watched many races Kyle Busch puts on four tires and goes around the outside of everybody. Great call. We just didn’t know all them guys were going to put two on and it put us pretty far back.
Gallant effort from Camping World Chevrolet. Toyota has got big, big rear view mirrors because they did a lot of good blocking.
We’ll be all right. We’re happy with second. We gave that one away last week, and coming down here if we would have played our cards right, you never know what happens in racing. It all goes back to Homestead and goes back to Daytona, it goes back to a flat tire, it goes back to running out of fuel.
If I had to pinpoint one thing, Johnny Benson and them guys, a great year, and we came up one position short.
Q. Can you talk about the relationship you and Johnny have built over this battle, which you guys have been neck and neck the whole season? I noticed you rushed down to congratulate him. Talk about the rivalry you have and the friendship you’ve built through this.
RON HORNADAY: Coming down to it, anybody else, the way Johnny and I raced probably the last when he put two tires on, raced side by side, probably just went up and rubbed the guy, but Johnny didn’t come down on me and I didn’t come up on him, and that’s part of racing. And Joe’s Brian Scott, little snot nosed kid coming, stuck his nose in and made it three wide a couple times and made it exciting for us. Points leader, he’ll be going for points later, and I’ll stick my nose in there, too, buddy, but it’s all right. Glad to see you run good.
Johnny, he said he wanted to go nose and nose and do burnouts. It’s like, I can’t go scratching this truck, no testing next year and it’s a pretty good truck, so we’re just going to keep it in one piece. So I was going to go nose and nose and do a pretty good burnout with both of us, but, heck, we’re going to go and drink his beer now.
Q. Just to kind of follow up a little bit on Benson, here’s a guy that, for the most part, pretty popular amongst the fellow competitors, a lot of people like racing with him, and you can kind of see him obviously you want to win the championship, but to see him win it as a competitor, how do you feel about that?
RON HORNADAY: I think it stinks. I think I should have won it. No, I couldn’t be more prouder for Johnny Benson. I’m really glad to see that he got an opportunity to do it. I know he’s leaving Bill’s stable next year and he’s moving on, so that’s good for Bill Davis and everybody else. That gives him more commodity going into next year.
Johnny is just a heck of a racer. You haven’t seen him take anybody out other than maybe last week when he had brain fade after I had brain fade. He was really stupid wrecking after I had already wrecked.
Yeah, that’s about the only time I’ve ever seen Johnny get in an incident and stuff like that. When Johnny Benson comes to race, you can lead the whole race and when the checkered flag drops, there he is second or third.
He’s one of them guys that come on the last 50 laps, and it showed again today.
Q. Are you frustrated? Are you angry? Are you disappointed, or is that just racing?
RON HORNADAY: I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s just racing, but I’m tired of that kind of racing. I mean, we could use every excuse in the book and we learn by our mistakes and we’ve been beat before by four tires and we said today we weren’t going to do it.
I’m more frustrated our radio didn’t work because I was going to stay out and they were yelling at me, screaming at me coming in, and I came in. And when I saw Kevin stay out, I knew I was in trouble.
I couldn’t get back up because of the grass line. I was just about ready to turn it back right and I let it clip it and that would’ve put me in the tail end in the longest line.
What really hurt us, a lot of them guys putting two tires on there and getting blocked the last couple laps. I had to run my truck really hard to get around Busch and Benson. They really made the track wide.
He didn’t get into me, but he might as well have making it three wide a couple times and turning it sideways.
He drove me like a dog again, and we’ll remember it and put it in the memory books.
Q. The pit call, had your radio been working? Everybody is scratching their heads, just wondering how that could have happened. There were crew chiefs out there from the Cup Series and they’re like, we still don’t understand the pit deal. Had your radio been working?
RON HORNADAY: I told them I was staying out, my truck was good enough to stay out. I was kind of babying it to know what we had. I’m not going to second guess.
If we would have come back and won the race, it would have been the call of the century. We lost it. I mean, that’s all there is to it. I’m going to go back and drink a beer over it, and hopefully we’ll talk about it.
I don’t know, real frustrating to listen to comments being made of another driver telling another driver that I wrecked him and now it’s your chance to go out there this weekend to win the championship. Somebody shouldn’t have said that, and I overheard it, about three of my good buddies would hang around over there, and that’s a shame it comes down to a championship like that. But now I see why it happened.
Q. And if you don’t mind, if you would have had your radio, you would have said I’m staying out, but you would never stay out without having
RON HORNADAY: In the middle and Johnny on top, so you’re a sitting duck when you’re back there behind there. These things are so aero dependent and if you get in there where you can hold it wide open, you’re going to be all right, but I had to get in there, the nose got loose and drove back around him.
But it took more than a couple laps to get around them guys. That’s what hurt. Heck, I don’t know. We’ll do that again.
THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Ron.
An Interview With:
BRIAN SCOTT
MODERATOR: Now we are also joined by Brian Scott who finished second tonight.
This was your second highest finish. You finished fourth last week at Phoenix. Tell us about your night.
BRIAN SCOTT: We had a real interesting night, a lot of fun. This truck is the same truck we ran at Texas and it just doesn’t have a lot of speed qualifying. It’s a real big down-force truck and when you come to these mile and a halfs, that drag ends up hurting us when we’re by ourselves taped up.
It runs really good in traffic, though. Just from practice yesterday, if there was a truck, a straightaway away, just a little disturbance in the air, we’d pick up two and a half tenths.
I remember it raced really well at Texas. I knew we were going to have a good truck when the green flag fell. When it fell, we were a little bit different than in practice, but after a long qualifying run, we were really good.
Jeff Hensley kept coming on my radio telling me I was running ten faster than the leader. And, you know, at that point I knew if we just kept up with adjustments, got our truck a little better and stayed with the good guys, you know, got a little track position, we could be there at the end and we could have a shot for him.
Sure enough, as laps started winding down, we kind of started creeping our way up and there was the restart before the last one, I’m leading it, and that’s the first time I’ve done a restart I mean, as a driver you know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to get the gas pedal down without spinning the tires, but you’ve got to be right on that edge, especially with people like Todd Bodine or Ron Hornaday or Kyle Busch behind you. They’re going to get everything they can get.
You know, I pushed it a little hard and spun the tires, but I knew going into one from what my spotter was saying that I had like three truck lengths, so I opted to take the high line side and have momentum coming out and I didn’t expect him to pull up beside me and be drag racing down the back stretch. He had a better run through that corner than me obviously, and when we got to three, Todd drove in there until he cleared me.
Win, lose or draw, he was going for the win. I can’t blame him for it. I would have done the same.
An Interview With:
KEVIN HARVICK
THE MODERATOR: We are joined by tonight’s third place finisher, Kevin Harvick.
Why don’t you tell us about your run tonight.
KEVIN HARVICK: We had a good night. Truck was not as good the last run as what it had been the previous couple runs before that, and we got a little bit off and everybody pitted for whatever reason.
I felt like we had a good enough truck to challenge for it, and we got in a good little battle there and wound up third. It was a good night for us.
Q. Could you just talk about the battle that Hornaday and Benson had and how that ended up?
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, I felt like obviously it was great to watch all year, and the back and forth, and it felt like we had it in hand there. And then they pitted and they lost. That’s just the way it goes, and everybody tried hard.
Q. As a car owner, how much were you aware of what was going on during the race and how much were you aware of what he needed to do in the last few laps? Were you in the loop as far as where he was?
KEVIN HARVICK: I was very aware of what they needed to do, and that was beat the 23. Obviously it’s one of those deals where, like I say, I felt like they had it in hand, the way that the pit strategy worked out, it worked out. I feel like they probably would have won the race if they don’t pit.
But there’s a lot of different ways of looking at it, and we lost.
Q. You touched on this. Were you surprised, not just Ron’s team, but so many people elected to make a pit stop with like less than ten laps left in the race?
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, I knew there was debris left on the racetrack, and we saw Johnny run good there on two tires and really do what he needed to do to get track position, and then he faded.
Like I say, I felt like from my position, watching the trucks and watching the 23 go backwards and watching the 33 hold his position in the front, I felt like they had it under control. I didn’t feel like it was I knew I wasn’t going to pit, so I didn’t know where everybody else was in their situation.
Q. After a whole season where you fight for the championship and to have it be decided by such a narrow margin, just talk a little bit about how this series usually has about the best points race that you can find in the three top divisions.
KEVIN HARVICK: Well, these things are fun to drive, and obviously they punch such a big hole in the air that you can pull back up to people. The trucks are you can kind of manhandle the things and make them do what you want them to do and get away with it. They just have a great aero package and the way that the rules are in these things really promotes good racing.
THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Kevin.
An Interview With:
COLIN BRAUN
THE MODERATOR: We are joined by the 2008 Rookie of the Year, Colin Braun.
Colin, this is the sixth Roush Rookie of the Year in this series. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about tonight and having that honors.
COLIN BRAUN: It’s obviously an honor to win the Rookie of the Year championship. My guys have done a great job all year and I feel like they really deserve it so happy to win that.
Disappointed with tonight. Felt like we had a pretty decent truck in practice and got in the race and struggled with it a little bit. I’ve never been here before and I’m sure that hurt us with my experience. I worked on it, got it better there and decided to come down and take tires at the end. I think that was the right call for us. We were pretty fast there at the end on the high side.
That last restart I don’t know what happened. I was trying to change up from second to third gear, hard on the gas, and then everybody started to start. That ended our night. Thought I maybe could have pulled off a 10th place finish or something like that. I just saw the replay and the 22 truck looked like he tried to stop there, so I’m sure that backed everybody up.
Oh, well, that’s the way racing goes.
Q. What’s up for next year? Got any clues on that? Is anything decided?
COLIN BRAUN: Next year I think we’re doing the Truck Series again, Camping World Truck Series with Con way Freight coming back as our sponsor and Ford is back behind us with our technical support. Certainly really excited about that.
Really excited to have an opportunity to go and race against all these guys again next year and have whole year under my belt of experience.
Q. You talked a lot about being happy for your team, but what does the Rookie of the Year mean to you personally?
COLIN BRAUN: Well, I think Jack told me at the start of the year, if you don’t win it, I’m going to kick your butt.
Obviously really happy to win it and certainly if you look back at the history of Roush Racing, I think Jack has won it almost every time he’s tried. It’s really cool to follow in those guys’ footsteps, Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle, those guys have all won it.
Just really looking forward to next year and having a new fresh start next year with a brand new fleet of trucks, and I’m excited.
THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Colin, and congrats.
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