JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DRIVE TO END HUNGER CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 34TH

TELL US ABOUT THE EARLY PART OF THE RACE AND ISSUE THAT PUT YOU FOUR LAPS DOWN:

“I’m not exactly sure I’ve got to get with the team and find out what caused it. It looks like we had a battery go dead, two batteries go dead. I didn’t see anything on the volts meter that stood out or anything really going on there that was alarming. Everything thing was going along really well. Our Drive To End Hunger Chevrolet was strong. I feel like we were in control there when we were out front. We got a little bit behind on the pit stop sequence, but we were coming back. I was just having a blast out there. It’s just great to be that competitive here at Watkins Glen again and I would rather these things happen now so we can determine what caused it and make sure it doesn’t happen again because you can’t have those kinds of things happen once this Chase starts.”

IN REGARDS TO MORE SAFETY AT WATKINS GLEN:

“We can always do more to be safe. It doesn’t matter what we have out there. There are always ways to make it safer. Unfortunately, I’ve been a part of incidents over there off the carousel. It’s a very fast portion of the race track and when things happen cars seem to get knocked back out into the track. But what I question right now from what I saw is the rubber. The Armco barrier I think did its job. Softened the impact, tore the car up, but prevented the car from going through there. So you don’t want a concrete wall you want a safer barrier, but that is tough to do on a track like this, multi-purpose track. That rubber wall with the tires just sucks the cars in, spins them around and spits them out. I definitely think there are areas on the track where it’s good like down in turn one, but I think there are other parts of the track where there could be something better than that.”

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