Annett Wins $100,000 Bonus, Two Fords in Top-10 at Indy

MICHAEL ANNETT, No. 43 Pilot/Flying J Ford Mustang (Finished 6^th) – YOU JUST WON $100,000 IN THE DASH FOR THE CASH, HOW DOES THAT FEEL?  “This is awesome. This is the Brickyard. We aren’t kissing any bricks today but we have a big cardboard check that we can lay our lips on. This was fun. I was so confused this morning. I just wanted to drop the rag and figure it out as we went. About 20 laps in I realized what we needed to get through the field and we had a heck of a strategy that got us in the right place at the right time. I can’t thank Nationwide Insurance enough. Everyone at Pilot Flying J that have been with us from the beginning, this is the kind of stuff the deserve. The look on the faces of the guys is just awesome. We did everything right today. We didn’t have a winning race car, but that is what makes the Dash for Cash that much cooler. The sixth place car can be racing for something. Ricky was two cars behind me the last 10 laps and I knew he was coming quick. That was the hardest I have driven in a long time for a sixth place finish. We have something to hang on the shop now.”

THE MIDWEST HAS BEEN GOOD TO YOU. “I love the summer months. Each year it seems like I come to life this time of year. I have a team right here that is coming to life too and this past month has been awesome. We missed out on a top five but we will take a sixth and $100,000. We are going to have some fun with this money. Hopefully we will give back to some of the people that put us here.”

WAS IT A TOUGH RACE? YOU SAID YOU WERE HAVING STRUGGLES EARLY. “Yeah we weren’t necessarily struggling early it is just this race track, track position is everything here. We had the same car from the green flag to the checkered. We didn’t make one adjustment on the race car. It was strategy. Felipe Lopez had a great strategy. We took two tires early so we would know what it would do later on and that is what we did and it put us up front where we needed to be. Everything just worked out perfect. I knew Ricky was coming. I think I was sixth and he was eighth and I was trying to hold of the 20 and keep that car between us. It was a very hard fought sixth, I can tell you that much.”

YOUR IMPRESSIONS OF YOUR FIRST RACE HERE AT THE BRICKYARD? “I was definitely confused this morning. I didn’t know what I had. I knew I didn’t have it figured out and didn’t know what my plan was for the race. I wanted to take notes the whole race and make sure we were there at the end and had everything in the book we could pull out and use. That is when the strategy came in. I made some passes early and learned things on how to make runs on cars and complete the pass which is the hardest thing to do here. We got that figured out and everything just came through in the end.”

RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 6 Sam’s Club/Cargill Ford Mustang (Finished 9^th) – “We just couldn’t really get going. On long runs I felt like we were okay. I don’t really know what we needed. The balance of the car felt okay, I don’t know. I really don’t. I don’t know what to point to. Our Sam’s Club Mustang was decent, it just wasn’t great. It was kind of an average day. We ran pretty much eighth to 10^th all day and that is all we had. I really don’t know why. We will have to go look at some notes. It looked like two tires held pretty good there so maybe that is something we should have looked at. All in all we finished ninth, which isn’t terrible, but isn’t what we were looking for.”

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