Target House 300 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

Where the Raybestos Rookies finished at California:
K. Busch, 9th
P. Menard, 21st

Raybestos Rookie standings after California:
K. Busch, 312
P. Menard, 175
C. Bowyer, 146
J.J. Yeley, 132
B. Parker, 74

KYLE BUSCH IN THE #5 LOWE'S/SHOP VAC CHEVROLET WAS THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE RACE AT CALIFORNIA. BUSCH FINISHED NINTH, HIS 16TH TOP-10 OF THE SEASON. Notes: A Raybestos® Rookie has finished in the top-10 in five of the six of the seven Busch Series races at California Speedway: Jay Sauter (tenth in 2000), Greg Biffle (sixth in 2001), and Scott Riggs (first in 2002) Kyle Busch (seventh in May 2004). "Points are not our biggest worry: finishing is out biggest worry and we weren't able to finish where we wanted to. We thought we had a top-five car today. The Lowe's Chevrolet was pretty decent all day long and we were ahead of the 8. It just didn't come down to be that way at the end. They had a better pit strategy taken there at the end, too." WHAT HAPPENED WHEN YOU HIT THE WALL? "I just got squeezed up a little bit too high. I think I got too far underneath the 25 car and he lost his air and squeezed us in the fence. I didn't honestly think I was that close to him but if you're behind somebody you're taking air off him." YOU WERE ABLE TO PICK UP A FEW SPOTS IN THE LAST FOUR LAPS. "All you can do is if you're not going to be able to pass cars come in and make a change and go back out and pass 'em all again."

PAUL MENARD, #11 MENARDS/PITTSBURGH PAINTS CHEVROLET: "It was slippery. I couldn't get on the gas hard at the first of the race. Then we were four-wheel sliding all the way around. We'll have to go back to the shop and see what happened."

LANCE MCGREW, CREW CHIEF, #5 LOWE'S/SHOP VAC CHEVROLET: "It's kind of one of those racing deals. We were a little free all day. The car was respectable. We tried a little bit different pit strategy. I think it would have worked out if we had got the debris caution but they didn't let 'er fly [smiles]. We turned around at the end and pitted a couple of times to try to get some free track position. We wound up going around the 25 on the outside and got squeezed up into the fence. That knocked the toe out a pretty good bit so we salvaged what we could get." WHAT DID YOU DO ON THAT LAST STOP WITH FOUR LAPS TO GO? "It killed the right front fender. It pushed the fender in and everything else and it just wouldn't turn. We just came in and pulled the fender back out, the left front fender back out, and let it go."

BUSCH PRESS CONFERENCE

"I felt like everybody was beating me at the bottom of three and four. Then once we were able to fix that then we had to work on one and two again. We didn't really get a compromise on both ends of the racetrack but I kind of had to make up for it a little bit there. All in all, a decent day up until the end. We got squeezed into the fence and knocked in a right front fender and had to come in on that last caution and pull it out. We ended up driving from 14th or 15th all the way up to eighth or ninth or whatever it was. It turned out to be OK but nowhere near what it could have been." COMMENT ON IF THE BUSCH SERIES HAD A CHASE FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP LIKE THE CUP SERIES. "I think for the Busch Series it probably would have been a great thing. There's so much hype about the Chase for the Championship on the NEXTEL Cup side but there's no real hype in the NASCAR Busch Series. It's just two guys going after the championship and I think the top-10 guys in the Busch Series like Ashton Lewis, I believe he's tenth; he's fighting for a sponsor. It could have been great publicity for him and I'm sure there are a few other guys behind him that have a shot to get in the top-10. This was our 10th race to go so we already had out cutoff point which is the top-10 before this race so now we're already in our chase for the championship but we don't really have top worry about it that way." ON PIT STRATEGY DURING THE RACE. "I would have actually liked to have come in a little bit quicker if the race was going to go green to the end. If we were going to go green to the end I think that if we would have came in sooner we could have got our fresher tires and maybe gotten out and gained some track position on the rest of the guys that were in front of us. We were just hoping to stay out and catch a caution. We had some pretty good fuel mileage here and Hendrick horsepower was great today, too. The longer you can stay out the better the chances you have for catching a caution and there being only two or so cars on the lead lap which is better for you but it wouldn't be good for the race or for the show." WHEN HE HIT THE WALL LATE IN THE RACE. "I got up behind him and I thought I was going to make some good ground and I got up to his outside and then he was trying to get on the outside of somebody else and there just wasn't room to go four or five wide or however wide we were coming up out of the corner. You can run three or four wide throughout the corner but you're all going to file into one groove coming up off so you've got to be careful on that. And that's exactly pretty much what happened, I guess. He might have got squeezed but I got the worst of it because I got the wall and caked in the fender and weren't able to pass any cars after that so we had to make sure that we came in there under that last caution and pull it out just in order to gain some track position. If we didn't come in we probably would have gone backwards." YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE POINTS RACE. "You keep digging. Every week you've got to go after the same thing and that's to get the top-fives and top-10s. Today we missed out on a chance to get a top-five, maybe even a third or fourth or something like that. Like I keep saying, the guys never give up. The Lowe's guys do an awesome job week in and week out and they are definitely championship caliber and we're trying to do it with a Raybestos Rookie driver. There's definitely mistakes that are going to be made and out there on the racetrack, probably one that was made today, and there's probably going to be some made in the pits as well too because that's just the way racing is. You can't have everything perfect but when you do have everything go perfect you're going to get into victory lane and that's where Biffle ended up today and these guys were awfully close. They ran a great race up front. I never got a chance to contend with 'em or see it but I can hear about it."