Bill Elliott Gatorade 125 Press Conference

THIS MUST GIVE YOU SOME CONFIDENCE. "It does, but still, looking at the whole deal -- Dale, Rusty, Mark -- we all lined up and let the other guys race and we were able to run away from them. It seems like you can run 10 to 15 laps on the tires and then from there they start going away. I knew if you could get 20-25 laps in the run and I could stay on the bottom of the race track I felt like I'd be in pretty good shape. Watching some of those other guys. Mark's handling went away. Rusty's car started running hot and then he really couldn't help Dale because Dale could have probably gotten me had Rusty or Mark been able to help him. But, still, you look at these cars and you get to racing side-by-side. We were kind of in a unique situation. We got lined up, we stayed lined up and we got away from everybody else because we caught them racing. That's typical of the way it goes in restrictor-plate racing."

WAS IT IMPORTANT WITH THE OFF-SEASON CHANGES TO START THIS STRONG? "I think it was very critical. For our team, as hard as they have worked through the winter to be able to come out and qualify third and win the 125 and do what we needed to do from that standpoint. It was a crucial point for us. I really thought we had some good new guys on the team that we had acquired over the winter, but i really didn't know how talented they really were until we came here to test in January and started putting stuff together for this year."

ALOT OF THE FAVORITES WERE IN THE FIRST RACE, HOW MUCH DOES THAT TELL YOU ABOUT SUNDAY? "I don't know. You still only race against half of the cars and there are a lot of good cars left in this race. Here the cars have got to handle and that's probably the most critical part. This racetrack has gotten another year older and gets greasy and it's hard to stay on the bottom. You can watch here where there is several cars that are working together and they have gotten away from everybody else. That's kind of the way it is. If you get enough cars that are handling and can work together, they can break away from the rest of the cars."

YOU WERE THE KING OF THE NON-RESTRICTOR PLATE ERA HERE AT DAYTONA AND TALLADEGA; HOW MUCH DIFFERENCE IS IT WITH THE RESTRICTOR PLATES AND WINNING RACES? "Well restrictor changed things so much because with fresh tires, everybody can run together. If the racetrack was 6 lanes wide that's how wide we'd be racing, just like Talladega. It puts you in a different mindset because you just don't have the power to jump out and pass somebody. You've really gotta work them to get what you need to do. That comes back to the car and it's got to handle at the end of 20-25-30 laps or you're not gonna beat anybody."

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE THREE GUYS CALLING THE SHOTS ON YOUR TEAM? "I don't know that it won't work, but it's an opportunity that we're trying to put...if you look at a team and if a team's made up of critical people thoughout the organization, everybody has a hand in putting their input into what ultimately goes in that car Sunday afternoon and that's all we're trying to do. Not necessarily name a person and say you're the crew chief, but to go to all the people who have critical input into the deal where you can unanimously make a decision to say this is gonna work. You're gonna have days it's gonna work and have days it's not gonna work, but still, from the standpoint of what we're trying to do, I mean, I think it's probably where teams are going to later on down the road."

DO THE SHOCKS AND SPRINGS MAKE IT HARDER TO PASS NOW? "I don't know if it makes it harder to pass. You guys don't realize how good you've gotta have a car handle here to run a corner wide open. That's as critical point as taking a shock combination or whatever they give us and match the springs and the rest of the car where you can balance it and run the car wide open the whole run through the corner. That's where it starts becoming critical. I don't know that restrictor-plate racing here is as hard as it is at Talladega per se. The biggest thing that separates this place from Talladega is you've got to handle here, you've got to run the corner wide open and that's why here separates it from everywhere we go. This is kind of a unique circumstance to everywhere else because you'll probably see on Sunday several cars breakaway because they'll have handle on everything. They'll be able to run a full gas stop and never back off and be able to blow away from the rest of the guys."

WE'VE SEEN 64 LAPS WITHOUT A LEAD CHANGE. "I didn't think it was dull from where I was sitting. It's pretty exciting from that side of the coin, but, maybe for the race fans it might be a little bit. But, still, the cars are so equal everybody is afraid to jump out until they get themselves in the right position and all those guys are trying to do is get themselves in a position to get far away from everybody else to where when they do duck out they don't have 25 cars racing them for the lead. That's what these guys are trying to do -- it's strategy."

WHAT IS YOUR VERDICT ON THE SPRINGS AND SHOCKS? "Give us a race or two under our belts and NASCAR will tweak it out a little bit better and I'm sure we will too. We've got a lot to learn. This is our first time under the belt, but if we know the parameters we've gotta work under, then we can kind of work through it. My hat's off to them for what they're trying to do anyway from the standpoint it did get out of hand, I felt like, from where we were at a year ago. The springs and shocks we were trying to run made a pretty bad deal on the race track, but, still, we'll tweak through it and get a little bit better. I feel like NASCAR will learn from this, we'll learn, and all it will do is get better."

ONLY ONE GM IN THE TOP FIVE, ARE YOU SURPRISED? "They didn't work together. I got a little help from my friends."

HOW HAVE YOU KEPT YOUR SPIRITS UP THE LAST SIX YEARS? "As I recall in '97 I almost won this 500 again and it's stuff like that. You have years where things come together. You're gonna ride that rollercoaster. I've had a lot of inconsistency within the team over the years and that's what I feel has hurt me, but if I can get that consistency I believe I can put everything together."

CAN THIS TEAM WIN ON SUNDAY? "I feel like they can. There's a new group of people there we've got that can do it. That's if everything else can come together because you've got a lot of teams running well right now, very well funded, and that's what you're gonna find all year long. Plus, you've gotta have a little bit of luck on your side."

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO GET BACK TO VICTORY LANE? "It means a lot, especially, I feel like this is more for the guys that worked to put this car together than me because they made it easy for Bill Elliott to sit in victory lane. All the guys with the long hours and the hard work and the weekends they didn't have off, to come down here that's a reward for those guys to be able to put it all together and sit in victory lane."

YOU'RE THE FIRST ONE TO BEAT DALE EARNHARDT IN THIS RACE IN 10 YEARS. "Like I said, I had a little help from my friends. It feels good. Dale, he's always tough in these restrictor plate races, but you still have to have everything together. The car's gotta work, it's gotta handle, you've gotta have all the right pieces to the puzzle or you're not gonna make it."

WERE YOU WAITING ON THE 88 AND 2 TO MAKE A MOVE? "What I was watching when Mark finally fell back and then Rusty was having problems, his problems were trying to stay back, I knew if they couldn't get an effort together, at least two or three cars, it was gonna be hard to beat me. Then, I was catching those slow cars right there at the end and that was everything that kept us together. I kept seeing Dale run on me and where he was running on me and what he was trying to do, but he could never put up a unified effort with the 2 car to beat me to a position, plus I caught those slower cars and that just helped me that much more."

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO BUILD ON NOW? "I've always said that this race seems to kind of put things together and it makes a year start well. If you come here and run good it keeps momentum going. I was probably a little bit apprehensive to think that I could come down here and do well with as many people as we changed over the winter, but we went to Talladega in the first part of January and I was the worst car there. They turned around, built a new car, and I was fourth fastest overall just in a matter of weeks. I said, 'These guys are pretty good. They know what they're doing.'" WILL YOU ADDRESS THE DODGE RUMORS? "What rumors. I'm in a Ford, man. I don't know what you're talking about."

WAS THE MCDONALD'S DEAL A WAKEUP CALL? "Things happen for a reason and I don't really know that that was a wakeup call. Nobody needs to tell me that I need to run better when I'm running bad. I want to run better when I'm running bad, nobody has to tell you. But I do feel like for us to continue on for what we need to do, we need to make this year count. If ever a year counted, this year needs to count. Ford's made a lot of good changes over the winter. They came down here with a great race car. Just as we came down here two years ago with a race car that wasn't that good. They've turned it around. It's a good race car, it's a competitive race car and we'll just see where all that falls as the year progresses. But, yes, it is critical for us to run well this year."