darlingtonraceway.com 200 - Ford Post-Race Quotes

SCOTT RIGGS-10-Nestle Nesquik Ford Taurus (Finished 3rd) - "It was a great car because of Doug Randolph (crew chief). He's got a great setup for this track. He really likes this place. We came here and tested and he really made me feel comfortable behind the wheel. He kept me pulled back and withdrawn all day to save those tires. The main reason we finished here was because of pits tops. My guys were on today; we need to race on Mondays more often. Those guys were unbelievable. Every time we came into the pits, we'd go out four or five positions better. Everybody did a good job on the Nesquik Ford Taurus. We just came up a little short there. I was trying not to hurt my tires too bad, and then when Todd (Bodine) got by me, man, those lapped cars were murder today. Like I said, I was a little too loose there at the very end to make a run on them. We needed a long run. We were real good on long runs." WHAT DID YOU THINK WHEN YOU SAW JAMIE AND TODD COMING TOGETHER OFF OF TURN 4? "I didn't want to mash the gas to go by them because I knew one of them was going to slide down in front of me. Those guys are racing hard. They're two good cars also, and we were hoping to get up to them the lap before and maybe get by them and win this thing, but my hat's off to all of the guys on the Nesquik Ford. Awesome pit stops and awesome race car. Like Doug Randolph said to me, this is just some things to come from this thing."

BOBBY HAMILTON, JR.-25-Team Marines Ford Taurus (Finished 12th) - "It's OK. We started out so bad, typical stuff. We started out so bad that we had to work all race long to get it where we can run with these guys. By the end, you're so far behind, that's when you're just trying to get top-10s instead of trying to win the race." DID YOU FEEL YOU WERE IN A POSITION WHERE YOU COULD TAKE A CHANCE WITH PIT STRATEGY? "Not here. If you have a chance to take tires, you better take tires or the same stuff will happen. You're three seconds quicker on new tires, so there's no strategy here. The only strategy is here is lead when the rains comes." HAVE YOU BEEN PLAYING IT CONSERVATIVE THE FIRST FOUR RACES OF THE SEASON? "We wanted to get some top-10s early. That's all we want to do. We finished 13th the last time, we finished 12th here today, and the next time we need to finish better than sixth, where we finished the last race. That's all we want to do. We're trying to improve all of the positions where we go."

JASON KELLER-57-Albertsons Ford Taurus (Finished 10th) - "We missed the setup. We didn't know what the track was going to do after the Cup race yesterday. It seemed like we got it better as the race went on, but we just missed it a little bit. We'll try it again next time." IT SEEMED THAT IF YOU COULD STAY OUT OF TROUBLE YOU COULD FINISH IN THE TOP 10 TODAY? "For me to come to Darlington and run like we did today, that's not a good day. Anywhere else it might be OK, but I come to Darlington with high hopes. I just really led the crew in the wrong direction. Maybe we'll be smarter next time." DO YOU STILL FEEL THAT YOU HAVE THE MOMENTUM TURNING IN YOUR FAVOR? "We're having a bad race and finishing in the top 10. I guess that's OK. A lot of things are going good, we just need to fine tune a little bit."

STANTON BARRETT-60-OdoBan Ford Taurus (Finished 15th) - "It's disappointing because we wanted to run better than we did. We finished all of the laps and that's a plus for the OdoBan car. It was just crazy trying to get around the lappers out there. They say they have a minimum speed and they should pull them off the track. Instead, you lap them three or four times in 15 to 20 laps and that cost us the lead when we had a little bit of a lead. The other guys caught up to us and you're trying to be careful and I give a lot because I'm trying to finish these races, so it costs you a lot of positions when you do that. I guess we're along our game plan of finishing all of the laps, but we have a better car and better people to finish where we did. We just need to keep working at it and stay clean. It just makes it rough when you have guys that are not driving smart out there and racing you when they're laps down and racing you hard when they have less of a car. Anybody can block somebody if you want to take the whole track; I don't care how slow you are. You can't get around unless the guy wants to wreck you and I'm trying not to do that. We'll just go to Bristol and try to have a good run there and Finnish all of the laps there. That's a tough track, too, and we'll try to gain some points wherever we can get them and work on our program."

KASEY KAHNE-38-Great Clips Ford Taurus (Finished 8th) - "Wes Ward (crew chief) got the car better on the last pt stop. All day it got better, but I got into the wall on the yellow when Bliss crashed. There was still a lot of water and oil on the track. I entered high about five laps into the run, and it was like I was on ice. I hit the wall good, and that put us behind for a while. Once we got to pit, we came out pretty far back and just worked our way up after that.' TALK ABOUT THE RACE YOU HAD WITH THE NO. 5 CAR? "Coming to the finish line, Vickers was blocking we coming down the frontstretch and I got into the back of him and tore up my right-front fender. We're lucky the race ended when it did." HOW TOUGH WAS IT TO PASS LAPPED TRAFFIC? "It's tough because it's kind of hard to pass here when you lose your tires. It's hard to get a run past the cars; that's what makes it tough. And then some of the cars are so far off the pace that if you didn't guess right you had to practically stop to keep from hitting them. That was tough, too."

SCOTT RIGGS PRESS CONFERENCE

TALK ABOUT THE LAST LAP. "I thought that we definitely had a good enough car to race those guys and get by them. They were pushing me pretty hard in the beginning and I was just trying to stay with them and pace myself. Man, lapped cars were murder today. It was really tough to get around lapped cars. It seemed like the last 20 laps there, I kept catching lapped cars right off of 2, the tightest place on the race track. That last lap, I was really hoping that they would do it on the white-flag lap, a lap before that way I could have a clean lap to myself. I knew those guys were probably going to get pretty ugly with each other. Both of them were pretty aggressive. I saw Jamie get pretty aggressive earlier today when he got into the 20 car going three-wide. I knew they were going to be pretty aggressive with each other, I just wish we could have held on and either stayed in front of them or had a little bit better car at then end. It seemed the last set of tires we put on were a little bit freer than the rest of the tires. We found that out in testing a few weeks ago. We had a set of tires that was a lot looser and there was no reason for it. I think we got onto something like that because the car great all day. It was just a little bit too loose there at the end to make a run for it."

THIS IS YOUR BEST DARLINGTON BUSCH SERIES FINISH. "This is what we expect of each other every single week. All of the guys on the team work awful hard and we have a team that is capable of being in the top five and winning races and in contention to win races every single week. We just had some bad luck the first couple of races here and I think that everyone has turned their head around and not taken notice of us, so I think this is something that they're going to see a lot more of from the 10 team. This is a good track. This is Doug Randolph's, my new crew chief, his favorite track. We really wanted to win here, especially leading all of those laps under green. I thought that I'd be able to hold them off. To come out of here with a third, we have to hold our head up high. I have to give it to the guys. If you were watching pit stops, we had phenomenal pit stops today. Every time I came into the pits we gained at least five positions; that's pretty unheard of and those guys are doing a great job."

HOW DID THE POSTPONEMENT OF THE RACE AFFECT YOUR RACE TODAY? "We didn't make any changes to our car, but the track definitely changes when you have a Cup race here before us. I think you saw yesterday in the Cup race, a lot of guys were really slipping and sliding around until it got some rubber down. I think that with all of the rubber that got put down yesterday, it got slick again from too much rubber. We didn't change our setup, but we definitely had to keep changing it and adjusting every single pit stop. Again, my hat's off to Doug Randolph, my crew chief, he made the right calls. I would just sort of tell him how hot it felt or how loose it felt and he would adjust it perfect."

DID YOU THINK THERE COULD BE A FINISH TODAY LIKE YESTERDAY'S? "I watched yesterday. That was an unbelievable finish; that has to go down in the history books as one of the closest finishes since we went to the computers to keep track of scoring. What I learned most about yesterday was watching the guys who would really push the cars, what line a lot of different guys were running, who would push their cars and how they would fall off. What I learned today, you just have to find a place where your car works goods and is easiest on your tires. A lot of this race, if I got up too high in 3 and 4, where you think it would be easier on the tires, it seemed like it would hurt my right-front too quick. I was just using the middle part of the race track. I think I learned a lot about the race track watching the race yesterday and how those guys worked around the race track. You get to come back on a race track that has all of the rubber from the Winston Cup race, and I think you get a different race track, so you get to learn a different aspect about the race track. I think a lot of time the Busch cars come to a place like this, put a race under our belts, put the rubber down and get the track really run in and then the Cup guys get out there and the track doesn't change quite as much. It was good for us to see a track like it was today."

DO YOU KNOW LAPPED TRAFFIC WILL BE AN ISSUE COMING TO DARLINGTON? "Yeah, unfortunately you know it's going to happen. It's really just luck of where you catch those guys on the race track. You can't afford to slow down and wait for a wide spot on the race track to pass them, especially out there today because it seemed like we were 20 mph faster than a lot of lapped cars. I'm exaggerating there, but we're so much faster than the lapped cars that when you get to them you have to pass them wherever you get to them at. It seemed like with my luck, I kept getting them in the hardest spot on the race track to be two-wide and that's off of turn 2 there. It just kills your speed so much there and when you kill your momentum so much in turn 2 it just carries all the way down the straightaway; you just lose a lot of time. I knew it would be hard. I was hoping that those guys would catch some lapped cars in turn 2 and I could catch up to them and have good tires and make a run for it, but things just didn't quite go our way to be in victory lane, but a good finish for us."

"The urgency was on Saturday. We wanted to see NASCAR start the race early to get our race in Saturday. As far the urgency, you know what you're faced with when it rains it out. You know that you have to come back on Monday and adjust your schedule for it. I'm probably a little more relaxed today because I had time to sit back and watch the Cup race and learn what I could from that. I knew that the track had a lot of rubber from the Cup guys. It's a little more at ease, I guess, to watch a long race and learn a lot from that and have a good race track to come back to."

DID YOU THINK THE TWO CARS IN FRONT OF YOU CROSSED THE LINE IN TERMS OF COMPETITION? "As far as what those guys are doing, when it comes down to the last lap at Darlington with your tires, getting every bit out of your tires, you have to get every bit out of your race car, too. The same thing happened yesterday and I don't think anybody pointed any fingers at Kurt Busch or Ricky Craven yesterday and I don't think that anyone will point fingers at Jamie or Todd today. If I was the one that maybe didn't win because somebody leaned on me, it's real easy to mad about it or say that it's over the line. When you're coming off of turn 4 on the last lap and you're racing for the lead, as long as you bring the steering wheel back home, everything's fair."

©Copyright 2003 Race 2 Win