Bill Elliott Daytona 500 Post-Race Press Conference

"I got a little help from my friends and we were all just trying to stay in line and do what we had to do. Even when the 10 car was leading we were trying to stay in line to make some time on the other guys to where you could put yourself in a postion to run at them because as soon as you got side-by-side with somebody, I mean, if you didn't clear them then the whole pack caught you and you didn't want that. You wanted to race a couple of cars because if you hadn't of cleared him, you might have put yourself in a position to lose a lot of spots. If you tried to pull out on somebody and if you didn't make the pass, you had a good chance of losing a lot of spots. That's where the caution and everything coming out right there at the end kind of threw things in a tailspin because you wanted to protect your position. You want to put yourself in a position to win, but it's still hard to do."

YOU HAVE SOME MOMENTUM NOW? "We do have some good momentum with this team. They've worked hard. They worked hard last night on this particular car and it drove great, ran great. Tonycola (Tony Santanicola) came in with Ernie on the motors and I can't say enough good things about what's going on. They put a great car under me. They made a good call there at the end putting two tires on and that's what put us in a position to run third. If not we would have run who knows where."

WAS THE TWO TIRE CHANGE A GAMBLE? "We had to do it, we had no choice. It was either come out where we were at on the race track or put two tires on it and I felt like I got my car good enough that I could stand two tires. The way it ended up we ran a little bit, the caution came out, we ran a little bit, so it really didn't matter if you had two or four because we didn't really give up anything by putting two tires on."

WHAT ABOUT THE RACE? "Yates' cars have always been the car to beat down here for a lot of years, so that's no exception. When you look at it, Jeff Gordon had trouble, a few other guys had trouble. It was one of those deals if you got back a little bit, I don't know when I've raced this hard if you get back in the pack a little bit. It was a pretty tough day. I'm just glad we all got out of here on a good safe note."

HOW ABOUT FIVE FORDS IN THE TOP FIVE? "I totally agree. We all work together and obviously there were five or six Fords at the top because we stayed pretty much lined up and that's what we did. Like Jeff said, Benson had won the race. Probably had that restart not have happened, when Dale got by him, Benson probably would have won the race because Mark was trying to get by him and then we canned him, and then he got beside the 10 car and that's where he went. Anybody else in that pack, if they would have gotten out, that's where they would have went."

MARTIN WENT HIGH AND NOBODY WENT WITH HIM, WHY? "I'm like Jeff, I couldn't run up there. Dale and Dale, Jr. went up there one time in the race and I saw nobody going nowhere up there and I tried to go up there and I lost a bunch of spots doing it. The only place I saw to be was on the bottom. You had to be in the grass on the bottom and that's it."

DOES THIS GIVE YOU MOMENTUM? "I think coming out of Daytona really sets a tone on the year. It really helps us. You said there were three Roush cars in the top 10, well, all of Bill Elliott's cars made it in the top five -- all one of them. I was just trying to get some help from my friends. I was just thankful Rusty was able to help me. I tried to help Jeff. I figured if his tracks went into the grandstands that's where I was going (laughing), it's just one of them days but we're tickled to death."

HOW CLOSE WERE YOU TO DALE'S INCIDENT YESTERDAY? "If you'd look on the right-rear of my car, he hit the wheel and down the right-rear quarter panel. Dale said, 'Were you the car that went by.' It was plenty close enough. I told him I had one opportunity to make a turn and whenever I could finally see where he was at, I turned left and I just did miss him. It was one of them deals that if the timing hadn't been exactly right I would have hit him and we both would have had to go to backup cars."