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O'Reilly 300 - Ford Post-Race Quotes

BOBBY HAMILTON, JR.-25-Team Marines Ford Taurus (Finished 40th) - WHAT HAPPENED? "I didn't think that I was here at an ARCA race, but I guess I was. The 79 car got up and just pushed and turned and turned me. I corrected it and just got up there and hit the wall. It's ridiculous. I know they have a low car count, but letting these guys run they way they are, you're going to get somebody killed. It's not like it's Bristol. You hit there and you don't hit hard. Here, you hit hard. I've got a torn up race car because of some idiot. We'll go to Talladega and probably get mixed up in one of those big wrecks too, and we'll try to recoup from these next two weeks. I had a fine race car. Robert Yates gave us an excellent motor. We were out there just cruising. The 5 got by us because of traffic, surprising, right? They got by us because of traffic and were just riding. The 92 was coming and we were going to let him go." DID YOU HESITATE TRYING TO GET BY THE 79 CAR? "The 92 went three-wide, but that's Todd Bodine for you. But, he did what he had to do. Even then, I was on the outside of him. It's just the 79's fault. I guarantee that he's on the same old tires that he'd been practicing the whole weekend. It's a hunk of junk anyway. He's just out there running in it and he just turned us."

KASEY KAHNE-38-Great Clips Ford Taurus (Finished 9th) - YOU SUSTAINED DAMAGE ON LAP 192 ACCIDENT. WHAT DID YOU SEE? "There were cars everywhere. I ended up getting in the back of the 82. We were a little tight all day, and on that last pit stop, Wes (Ward) freed it up to where we were running our fastest laps of the day there at the end. I think that was probably our best race car we had all year compared to the leaders. I think we definitely had a top-five run going at the end before the big wreck. The toughest thing is to pass here. We had track position and we were getting better track position, and I think it was a matter of having track position today. We had a good car at the end, so we could have help in to wherever we were."

JASON KELLER-57-Albertsons Ford Taurus (Finished 18th) - "We made a lot of mistakes. We ran ourselves out of gas and a lug nut fell off on a pit stop. Hopefully we can get all of our mistakes behind us in one race." YOU WEREN'T THE ONLY TEAM TO MISCALCULATE FUEL MILEAGE. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE PROBLEM WAS? "I have to get back and talk to Steve and see exactly what it was. We talked a little bit under that red flag and we felt like we could go all the way there, so I'm not sure why we didn't make it." ARE YOU SURPRISED BY THE NUMBER OF CAUTIONS WE HAD TODAY? "Cautions breed cautions. You have those guys battling on the lead lap. It tends to happen, but I was fortunate enough that I didn't have anybody in the inside of me so I could go to the bottom."

STANTON BARRETT-60-OdoBan Ford Taurus (Finished 19th) - "It was just a bad day for us. Pit stops costs us some time, and we just missed it." YOU HAD A CLOSE CALL BARELY MISSING THE BIG ACCIDENT. WHAT DID YOU SEE? "I don't know. All you see is smoke and spinning cars and trying to figure out where to go. I went low to avoid it and it was the right move today."

SCOTT RIGGS-10-Nestle Nesquik Ford Taurus (Finished 2nd) - DID YOU HAVE ANYTHING FOR NEMECHEK IF IT WENT BACK TO GREEN? "I think so. I didn't really have a chance to race with Joe all day. I think that Joe just had track position. By looking at what kind of lap times Joe was running earlier and what kind of lap times I was running, I think so, but it ended up being a survival race. You would think we were racing at Martinsville the way the cars were wrecked after this race was over. We were running good there and trying to hang in the top five. My hat's off to these guys. All of the guys on the Nesquik Ford Taurus did a great job. I crashed the primary car in practice and got this backup car out, qualified fourth and finished second, which is pretty good."

SCOTT RIGGS PRESS CONFERENCE

"I thought there at the end of the race that we were going to be another hard luck story, having a car that was capable of running close to the front and being a lap down. We got caught a lap down there on that green. It has been a long weekend for everyone on the Nesquik Ford this week. We had a good car. We were right there at the top of the leaderboard, around third or fourth place in all of the practice. I turned it around and backed it into the wall right there before the very last part of practice, right before qualifying on Thursday. The guys pulled a backup car out that had been uncomfortable at a lot of different places that we took it. We really thought that it would be even more uncomfortable here at Texas. We pulled it out and put the exact same setup under the car as our primary car and went out there on my very first lap and qualified fourth. That was a great job on their part by getting that car ready and prepared. That was just me sorta showing those guys how much I hated crashing our primary and how much confidence I had in what they could put under me for that one lap. We hung around the top five all day in the race today just trying to take care of our car. We've had cars the last three or four races here that really could have won the race and we kept up getting caught up in accidents or getting caught a lap down, or things like that going for the win. Today we were just going to ride and be patient and try to be there at the end and have a good finish. Then we got caught a lap down with that green-flag stop. We persevered and kept our heads up and kept digging and we got our lap back and we were lucky enough to be the man that started the last restart because I was in front of all of that melee that happened in turn one and two. I guess Lady Lucky finally turned her head and looked at us and gave us the opportunity to redeem ourselves and came home with a second-place finish."

"I think everyone would love to have a walk in the park and be able to be dominant and win races in any series. It's a hard call when those guys come down and race against us because they did get a chance to get on the track today with their Cup cars, and, granted the Cup cars are different but they might have gotten a little bit different idea of what how the track changed from yesterday from being overcast and cool. It's still cool today, but the sunshine really made a difference on the race track and I think that all of us still had the same problem with our cars, just a little tight, and those guys might have known it. I still stand true to what I say, and I think that it will just make all of us better racing against those kind of guys. We all have aspirations to be able to race with those guys in Winston Cup one day and it just makes victory lane even sweeter when you do outrun them. I think that today, I don't think that a Winston Cup guy came in and won this race because he was dominant over us, or better than us today. I think that with the melee and the things that happened during the race it was just a matter of luck and the 87 just happened to have a Winston Cup driver in it that was doing a good job and kept his nose clean and he was the man to come out victorious."

 

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