Menard Chicagoland post-qualifying interview

PAUL MENARD, NO. 27 ZECOL/MENARDS CHEVROLET – QUALIFIED 2ND

Paul Menard, Kevin Harvick Inc. Chevrolet

Photo by: Ted Rossino

THIS IS A GOOD SIGN FOR THE NO. 27 CHEVROLET; CONGRATULATIONS ON QUALIFYING SECOND “Yeah, we needed something good to happen. Since Pocono, we’ve been kind of on a downward slide so this definitely feels good. We unloaded yesterday and we were not happy with the car at all. It was really loose off and nothing that we did to it fixed it. And Slugger (crew chief) and the engineers and everybody put their heads together last night and changed a lot of things for today and I was actually a little tight off (Turn) 4, but I hit (Turns) 1 and 2 really good and was really happy with that. I just lost the nose a little bit off of (Turn) 4. The wind was kind of blowing across (Turn) 3 to the flag stand and that might have had a little bit to do with it. But I’m just really proud of my guys. They worked really hard and came a long ways.”

NASCAR SAID THIS AFTERNOON THAT THEY DID NOT FIND ANYTHING INAPPROPRIATE ABOUT YOUR PERFORMANCE AT THE RICHMOND RACE LAST WEEKEND. HAVE YOU BEEN TOLD THAT, AND IF SO, ARE YOU READY TO PUT THAT MESS BEHIND YOU? “Yeah, it’s behind me. If they had something, I’d love to see it because I don’t know what we would have done. But I talked to David Hoots a little earlier and we didn’t talk about that at all. We just talked about racing. So, if they said that, I’m glad it’s behind us and we’re moving forward.”

YOU SAID POCONO WAS WHEN THING STARTED GOING THE WRONG WAY; AND YOU HAD SUCH A LIFT BY WINNING THE BRICKYARD. DO YOU HAVE ANY WHAT HAPPENED AND WHY THINGS DIDN’T GO UPWARD? “No. We’ve been scratching our heads a little bit. Watkins Glen was going to be a great points day for us. I think we were running 14th or something; but some guys that were racing for that last wild card spot had problems and we wound up blowing a tire. We went back to both Bristol and Michigan where we had top five runs earlier in the year; unloaded very similar and kind of expected to have the same things work and both those races were pretty much disasters. So we’re scratching our heads a little bit. But they’re looking at the same programs and race pace and if we missed bump-stop gaps and stuff like that; just different race paces, spring versus summertime.”