darlingtonraceway.com 200 - Ford Thursday Quotes

STANTON BARRETT-60-OdoBan Ford Taurus - THIS IS YOUR SECOND STRAIGHT RACE STARTING ON THE POLE. "Every track, track position is very key, especially here; it's always good to start on the front. I'm just happy we get to do it two weeks in a row. We've worked really hard to start on the pole; it took a lot of effort on my part for that. Thanks to Greg Biffle and the crew last year. It's exciting, it's good for our sponsors and good to be up front running with these guys and learning. I'm looking forward to Saturday."

WAS YOUR EIGHTH-PLACE FINISH AT LAS VEGAS A CONFIDENCE BUILDER FOR YOU? "I think so. We felt really strong there. It was a good run for both my guys and myself. They made good calls and we worked real hard on the setups there. I think we were a contender there for the win at the end until the last caution when I made a mistake and spun my tires. We had a strong car and it was good to run up front with all of the guys that we ran up front with. There were a lot of good Winston Cup drivers and top Busch guys, with Keller and everyone. That was a good confidence builder, I think for the crew especially. That's an all-new crew except two guys, so that showed that they're doing their part in building good equipment and maintaining that level of success that they've had in the past. Obviously, it was great for me because it's always good to run up front for any driver and it's been a long time. It was fun. It gave us a new idea of our potential but also keeping in focus our long-term plan that we set out in the beginning of the year to finish races and run every lap to build that chemistry and seat time that it takes to be competitive and learn and grow off of that. It was fun. I had a lot of fun and it was definitely beneficial to change the tone of the team in the shop."

JASON KELLER-57-Albertsons Ford Taurus - THIS TRACK IS NEAR YOUR HOMETOWN OF GREENVILLE. TALK ABOUT RACING HERE. "Definitely, Darlington is special. Me being from South Carolina, I've raced around this area for a lot of years. I don't really know how the Albertsons Ford will fair. Hopefully we'll get some practice the next couple of days so we'll know what to expect on Saturday. One good thing, my teammate Scott Riggs came and tested last week, so we have those notes to go off of. We actually chose to bring a 2002 Ford Taurus because we didn't know what to expect out of the 2003 quite yet. It should be the same as last year, mostly the same, and we ran great both races last year, so we're looking forward to that. We're looking forward to a great race. We've come close here a lot of times and this is one of those places that if I could win at any other place - you don't ever choose it chooses you - it would be a great place to add to my resume, that's for sure."

ARE YOU USING SCOTT'S SETUP IN YOUR CAR? "We had already set up our car for race practice this morning. Even if we would have qualified or if it would have been pretty, we had already said that we were going to practice our race pace. Actually, the car right now has the same identical four shocks and springs that we had in the fall last year. That was going to be our starting point. Now, we do have the notes to go off of of what Scott did, but right now, our game plan is to start out where we ended last fall. That may change if we don't get any laps on the race track. We may have to go away from that and take what Scott has, but right now our game plan is to use his notes if we have to, but go off of what we had in the fall of 2002 because this is a 2002 car. We did test in Nashville Monday and Tuesday of this week. We tested a 2002 and 2003 trying to see what the differences were. We opted to bring the 2002 here just because we had such good notes from last year. Actually, the spring race and the fall race both were good to us. We feel like we have a good database. This place doesn't change a tremendous amount, so hopefully we have some good notes to go off of."

DID YOU TEST IN NASHVILLE IN ANTICIPATION OF RACE THIS WEEKEND? "I don't know if it was in anticipation of rain. It was our first open motor test that we've had all year long. We tested at Talladega and Daytona for those two-day tests, but we go to Rockingham and get little or no practice. We go to Las Vegas and get little or no practice, so we haven't been able to build a lot of information this year in our 2003 stuff. We're still a little bit not knowing and the reason we chose Nashville to go test is because the track stays so consistent on the tires. With it being concrete, it's not real heat sensitive, so we could make changes and know what the changes would do to the car. That was kind of our thinking of going to Nashville. Plus, too, your tests are so limited, we chose to do that because we race twice at Nashville. Instead of going to a place that we race at only one time, we definitely wanted to go to a track that we race at twice. I think that those notes will come into play here because we do get some trends of the cars and it got me feeling real comfortable in the car. The weekend off helped me mend a little bit from the first of the year, and I'm looking froward to it."

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