From March 12, 2017
An Interview With:
COLE PEARN
BARNEY VISSER
JOE GARONE
THE MODERATOR: We have the winners from this lovely race today. We have Barney Visser, the owner of the Furniture Row Racing, Joe Garone, President of Furniture Row Racing, and crew chief Cole Pearn from the winning car, the No. 78 Bass Pro Shops Tracker Boats Toyota. This is the first win for the 2018 Camry in 2017. Cole, go ahead and tell us how your day went.
COLE PEARN: Yeah, obviously we started up front, which was great. Didn't really know what to expect today. Wasn't terribly happy with our car yesterday in practice, even though we cut a lap and we were fast and I didn't think our long-run speed was very good. So we changed a lot going into today and didn't really know what to expect. But obviously we felt like we went the right direction. Obviously we did. Pit crew was unbelievable today. They pretty much had a flawless day and really helped us get the lead a couple times, and man, I don't know, it just worked out.
THE MODERATOR: Barney, Joe, first win for Camry and Toyota this year. Go ahead and tell us your thoughts.
JOE GARONE: Oh, it's exciting to come into 2017 with the new model change and all the work that takes place and then be able to put the three wins together in this race with the '18 Camry, it's an honor. It's terrific. Guys did a terrific job.
BARNEY VISSER: You know, I'd like to thank the guys back in the shop. They have put several hundred hours in in the last three weeks to catch the bodies up, and with kind of the fiasco that we had down in Daytona. These guys, they pushed themselves, and they did it, and I can't thank them enough. Really special.
Q. Barney, one of the things I noticed, Martin came in after qualifying on Friday and basically had it where he wasn't quite happy with the car but still a P2 wasn't a bad thing. Qualifying like he did and running like he did all day, what was it like watching the finish from your perspective?
BARNEY VISSER: You know, I just kept thinking of how hard these guys push themselves, Martin and Cole and all the way down through the shop, Joe, who runs the whole thing. They push themselves, and it's just been fun. As the owner of the team, it's fun to watch guys do like that. I don't crack the whip, they just do it.
Q. Are you liking the two-car experiment?
BARNEY VISSER: So far, yeah. It's great.
Q. Cole, that last stretch with Martin Truex running down Brad Keselowski, how quiet or how active was he on the radio and what were you telling him?
COLE PEARN: Yeah, we were kind of struggling that run. Our track bar motor quit running the stop before and we kind of had it down a lot. For the run before we had kind of gotten loose, and obviously new tires we were back too much on the tight side for that last run. But we just plugged away and we've been on the losing side of those kind of finishes a lot, so to be on the winning side is pretty awesome.
Q. I saw the wheel in the rear, how shredded it was. How many more tires did you have on hand in case that was it?
COLE PEARN: I think we had maybe -- I don't know if we had two or three sets laying at the end. I think we only had one tire that kind of had a tire spot early in the race, and kind of as the track rubbered in we didn't have any more that looked bad at all.
Q. When you lost the lead late, did you think you had enough laps left to get it back, and what did you tell him, like now is the time to make your move? How did you communicate with him?
COLE PEARN: Yeah, really we were just kind of -- when we lost the lead, Brad was really good on the long run, and it kind of had shaken out, I don't know if we would have had a shot. But we just had to keep trying and keep him honest and don't give it to him by any means. We were fortunate to have another pit stop there with the caution. And we almost beat them out of the pits. Our pit crew was pretty much on it all day, so we had a shot out there, but kind of on the track bar, motor was out. I was a little bit pessimistic about our chances. But maybe if we had cleared him and had clean air on the nose, we could have brought it home a lot cleaner.
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