Charlotte II: Allgaier - Wednesday media visit

JUSTIN ALLGAIER (No. 12 Verizon Wireless Dodge Challenger)

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HOW THE NASCAR NATIONWIDE SERIES DODGE CHALLENGER HAS BEEN FOR YOU IN THE THREE RACES IT HAS COMPETED IN THIS YEAR? "The Verizon Wireless Dodge Challenger has been extremely good every time that we've taken it out. My finishes don't really show how well we've run. At Daytona we were leading and felt that we had a car as good as anybody, maybe even better. We had an issue with a rear bumper cover getting knocked off.

"And then we went to Michigan and finished well there. At Richmond we pretty much ran up front all night, unfortunately at the end of the race our pit strategy and the way that it all came together we just didn't have the car at the end of the race.

"Out of the box today I feel really good about it. I ran some decent lap times early and as the sun came out we're not where we wanted to be. Like Joe (Balash) said, with the rpms (down about 400), you're trying to be on the gas longer to get more rpm as you go and unfortunately, the way that the setups are you're putting your car on the edge. We haven't been able to get to that spot where we feel really comfortable when the sun has come out. We're working on that, but feel if unloading off the truck is any indication to what the night race is going to be like, we should be pretty good. Hopefully we can keep the Dodge Challenger running as strong as it was when we unloaded and get a good finish out of this weekend."

HOW DOES THIS CAR DRIVE AS COMPARED TO MICHIGAN? "I think the one thing here at Charlotte that we've all fought is (the car) just being tight. I think that's just the radius of the corner and the amount of speed that we're carrying off into the corner. Michigan was either really tight or really loose. Our car was pretty comfortable; I felt like we hit it pretty close. There's going to be guys that hit it a bit closer than others. There were a lot of things that's we tried today. For me, we're trying stuff. There's still hope that I can be at Penske Racing next year if we find sponsorship, so there's no sense in trying not to learn something. (Penske) has given me a great opportunity and my job is to go there and do as much as possible to learn. We're still pushing ahead. We're still trying a lot of stuff. I think that reason that we're trying is because there's always that hope that you'll find something that works. We haven't really found anything today that's been the magic key that's fixed all of our problems. There's a lot of stuff that we're going to try (in second practice session today). Having a multi-car team has been a huge benefit here. You're able to try stuff out on different cars and see how things go. We're making ground the three cars and as long as we can take that into Friday's race I think that we'll be in great shape. The Dodge Challenger is really comfortable here. There are no questions to what they're going to drive like Friday nigh; everybody is still trying to figure out how to make their cars that much faster."

-source: dodge motorsports