Channellock 250 - Ford Post-Race Quotes

SCOTT RIGGS-10-Nestle Nesquik Ford Taurus (Finished 23rd) - WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN YOU AND THE NO. 23 CAR? "I'm the one who made it three-wide, so I guess it's my fault. I was the first one up there to all of the rest of the cars with those guys and thought I could get by on the inside and I made it three-wide and got up under the left side and thought I could definitely hold him outside. I had a run underneath him. I thought I stayed as low as I could, but to go three wide at Bristol, I had to go for it. I had a good car and was trying to get to the front."

KASEY KAHNE-38-Great Clips Ford Taurus (Finished 13th) - "We had a good race car. We started out pretty good. We needed a pit stop to help it a little bit. Scott Wimmer helped me out and spun me out for no apparent reason and that put us behind. In order to get back to where we were at the end of the race we had to gamble and go 140 laps on old tires and that's what we did. It was working real fine, but I was getting tighter and tighter, and at the end there I got loose. I'd been getting loose off putting so much wheel into it and Hornaday was right behind and caught me in the wall." DO YOU FEEL IT WAS A LACK OF RESPECT FROM THE OTHER COMPETITORS OR JUST RACING AT BRISTOL? "I don't know why Wimmer hit. Hornaday, he was all over me for so many laps it was good he didn't as good as his car was compared to mine at the time. I think that's respectful for him not to hit me until I crashed."

JASON KELLER-57-Albertsons Ford Taurus (Finished 3rd) - "It was a great weekend for us. This is everything we had. The 21 pitted a little bit earlier than we did, but we can't second-guess anything we did this weekend. We qualified second and finished third in this Albertsons Ford Taurus. We're happy, this place is tough to survive."

STANTON BARRETT-60-OdoBan Ford Taurus (Finished 16th) - "We fought all day to get back on the lead lap after we had a tire go down early in the race. It's just unfortunate. I thought that I might have run over some debris during the wreck. It was just too much of a risk to come in. It didn't feel like anything was down under caution, so we didn't think anything of it. It's just unfortunate it started going down after we went back to green." HOW HARD DID YOU RACE THE LEADERS TO GET YOUR LAP BACK? "We wanted to finish the race. I raced them hard, but you have to respect them, especially at a place like this because there's not very much room. I didn't go easy, but I raced as hard as I felt that I could without causing any major trouble. We were off a little bit, but you have to respect their position. I knew we could fall in line in fourth or fifth there and run. I raced them fairly hard and if nothing happened early in the run, I let them go and run for spots because they will take you out here. You mine as well fall in line and try and learn and finish the race. It was just a long day for us."

JASON KELLER PRESS CONFERENCE

"It was typical a Bristol times three or four. It just seemed like every time we got going the caution would come out. Luckily for us, we stayed out of most of it. A couple of them happened right in front of me. We just had a really, really solid weekend. We qualified on the front row and had a top-three finish. We had a top-five car all day long, so we can't second-guess ourselves. The 21 got on pit road before we did, but Steve (Addington) didn't think that we could go that far, my crew chief. I'm not second-guessing his deal at all. We came on pit road when we thought we could, so we did what we needed to do and brought the Albertsons Ford Taurus home in third. Any time you can survive this place it's a victory in itself. "

"My spotter is just walking in and he's sweating more than I did today, I think. It was an extremely difficult day. A couple of the cars right in front of me, the race track just closed up and luckily for us we chose the right line through there. But, we have that at Bristol. You know coming into Bristol that you're going to have a lot of excitement, but it was a little bit magnified today. I think that today was a little bit different."

HOW CLOSE WERE YOU TO THE INCIDENT WITH YOUR TEAMMATE AND SCOTT WIMMER? "Extremely close. That was one of those things that my teammate looked like he got an extremely good run off of two, and some of the lapped cars would commit themselves to the bottom, and I commend them for that. They would stay on the bottom and you could pick your way around them, but some of the lapped cars, they would be all over the place. Unlucky for my teammate he ran up on one of the lapped cars that really didn't know which groove to be in. Wimmer went to the outside and he went to the inside. I had already started slowing down a little bit because I didn't think that three-wide would work getting down into three. I don't fault my teammate because he had a run, and here at Bristol you have to take advantage of every opportunity that you can."

"A lot of the cautions happened where I couldn't see them. I don't want people to think that the Busch Series is made up of a bunch of accidents waiting to happen. That's not what the Busch Series is about. I am curious to get back home and see the replay of the race and see how the cautions took place and what went about. It's not something that we want to have this many cautions. Every time we'd get clear of lapped traffic another caution would come out. The frontrunners don't want to see cautions. We want to see it go green so we can race and race amongst ourselves. It seemed like there were very few times today that we could get out and race amongst ourselves, and that was difficult. I am curious to see a replay of the race and see a lot of the cautions and see how they played out."

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