Tonight's victory by Mike Skinner is the 27th win for a Toyota Tundra in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Tonight's win was Skinner's 20th career Craftsman Truck Series victory. Skinner has four wins driving a Toyota Tundra.
All four of Mike Skinner's wins in a Tundra have come in the No. 5 Bill Davis Racing Tundra. Jeff Hensley has served as crew chief for all four of Mike Skinner's wins in a Tundra. Toyota has scored wins in the first two NCTS races of the season - at Daytona (Jack Sprague) and California (Mike Skinner).
Mike Skinner, No. 5 Toyota Tundra, Bill Davis Racing:
On the victory in his home state: "I know I had to do the slowest restart ever and not spin the tires on my Tundra and stay on the bottom. All of my guys are great. I was born just down the street (Ontario, Calif.), so that's pretty cool. It was a great night for our Tundra. I can't believe I won here at home. We always qualify good here, but we never run good here. Tonight our Tundra wasn't perfect, but it drove all night with a good old conventional set-up. We had some horsepower under the hood of this Tundra. Toyota has been so great to myself and our whole race team. We won California!"
On late-race strategy: "(Crew Chief) Jeff Hensley made the call to put tires on there and it was a great call. He just makes definite calls. Ron (Hornaday) passed us clean and it looked like we were going to finish third. It just worked out. I've lost so many races the way Mark (Martin) did tonight, it's about time we won one of these. My strategy was to hope Ron and Mark started racing each other and got into one another, and luckily that happened. We got by Ron before the caution came out."
On battle with Mark Martin: "Mark Martin is probably the best race car driver, outside of Dale Earnhardt, to ever put a helmet on. I'm not quite sure what happened, maybe he missed a shift. Ron and Mark got together a bit. I would've rather finished 15th than wrecked Mark for the win."
Todd Bodine, No. 30 Lumber Liquidators Toyota Tundra, Germain Racing: Finished seventh
On pit strategy: "You never know with pit strategy. That's the call we decided to make and you have to live with your call. If we got tires, we could've adjusted the truck, but we would've lost quite a bit of track position. Johnny (Benson) came down pit road in the lead and came back up to us so it was hard to get back where we needed to be. Everyone was on equal tires, I just think we missed the setup a little bit."
Ted Musgrave, No. 9 Team ASE Toyota Tundra, Germain Racing: Finished fifth
On chances of battling for a win: "We were off a little bit. In qualifying, we threw something at it and gave it a shot. The shock package was off a little bit. We worked on it during the race and got it pretty close. I don't know if we were going to win, but with a little tuning, I think we could've been up there for the lead.
On late race battle with Carl Edwards:
"The key late in the race was to get some clean air and do whatever I could to block Carl (Edwards). We had a heck of a race together. He was bumping me a little bit down the back straightaway and I was cutting him off in turn two. We got out of our trucks after the race and were laughing like crazy. I hope we can do this every week."
Jack Sprague, No. 60 Con-Way Freight Toyota Tundra, Wyler Racing: Finished third
On his race: "We had a bad second pit stop and got way back. That was about as good as we could do tonight. I thought I had a better truck yesterday, but I was just loose in the middle all night. Long green flag runs seemed to favor me and we didn't get those late. Actually, we finished about two spots better than I thought we were going to."
On building early season points lead: "I've thought about that all winter long. Big picture racing, baby. That's all we have to do."