Winn-Dixie 250 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

KYLE BUSCH IN THE #5 LOWE'S/GLADIATOR CHEVROLET WAS THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE RACE AT DAYTONA. Notes: Busch finished 11th and took top rookie honors for the 15th time in 18 races this season. "It's disappointing. We never did have a good handle on the car all night long and when you have to lift at Daytona you're not going to finish well and we had to do it all night long. I guess it was a good night for the Lowe's Chevrolet overall but we wish it could have been better." WAS THE RACING PHYSICAL? "There wasn't a lot of that today and I was kind of surprised. I was trying to keep my nose clean and keep it to a minimum but I was getting run over a couple of times out there. A lot of the times, man, everybody would just drive by the Lowe's Chevrolet just to put us in the back and it kind of stunk. I guess you'll have that." WAS IT DIFFICULT TO GET ANYBODY TO DRAFT WITH YOU? "Pretty much. You try to make a hole and you're going and then nobody would go with you. You'd be stuck there and you'd fall back 20 spots but that's Daytona sometimes. You try to make your chess moves right and tonight they didn't work out. We've got a car in one piece. I guess last year they didn't have a car after two of the restrictor plate races and this year we're able to take one home after all of them. I don't think that one has a mark on it." ARE YOU GLAD TO GO BACK TO THE INTERMEDIATE TRACKS? "I wasn't looking forward to going to Daytona, I knew that. Let's go to Chicago and kick their butt there."

RICK MARKLE, #68 MARKLE RACING CHEVROLET - Notes: Markle finished 20th on the lead lap, the first time in 13 career Busch Series starts that he has posted a lead lap finish. Markle's best career finish came at Talladega in 2003 where he placed 12th. "The car was too free the whole race. We had to run the car so free to qualify that I knew we were going to be in trouble for the race. We spent all night trying to tighten it up. We put right side tires on it twice and we were good right in the middle one time and from there on we just struggled. We're a little down on power from what I can see and struggled a little bit on our race setup but I think this new format with qualifying is going to work out pretty good." YOU WERE RACING HARD FOR POSITION AT THE END OF THE RACE. "Well, a little bit. That's all we had [smiles]. All I know is that I didn't lift the last 30 laps." WERE YOU CLOSE TO ANY ACCIDENTS? "There was a little beating and banging but relatively minor. In this package sometimes you don't have any choice but to rub on somebody because the car just shifts lanes a little bit on you and before you know it you're up against somebody. The big one never happened so that's probably a good thing, right?" YOU WERE ABLE TO PUT A WHOLE RACE TOGETHER TONIGHT. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR YOUR TEAM? "A bunch. We were kind of getting down on ourselves a little bit with breaking the gear at Daytona and going to Talladega and blowing a motor. We were counting on those races to help us later in the year so when we blew up at Talladega we had to put our whole program on hold and rebuild for here and that put us in a position not to run any other races. But now we should be lined up. We'll go to Pikes Peak and maybe IRP and Michigan from there and see what happens." HOW MANY RACES DO YOU PLAN TO RUN THIS SEASON? "As many as possible but probably not more than six without sponsorship. We are totally doing this 100 percent out of our pocket. We had a little sponsor this week with unfinishedfurnituredirect.com. They are some of my friends from down in Coco Beach and they helped us out with some tires this week. We greatly appreciate that but other than that we're doing it on our own." YOU RAN WELL TONIGHT, SO DOES THAT MEAN YOU'LL GET AN EXTRA RACE? "Basically, it doesn't put us behind. We come out even. We don't really make any money; we come out even so the money that we built up can go on to the next race. And every race that we fail or have problems or break something, that puts us behind the eight-ball again and it takes us a month or two to build it back up." I don't want to go unless we can be top-20 competitive, or I'm not going."

BUSCH POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE

"The Lowe's/Pella Chevrolet kind of struggled all night long. We were never able to go all the way around the racetrack two laps in a row with the throttle all the way down. It was kind of difficult for us. You need a car to handle at Daytona, not so much at Talladega. We worked on it all night long and tried to make some changes to it but just could never get a handle on it and tried to pick off as many as we could. Every time we tried to make a move nobody would really go with us. They would either go around us or go with whoever I was trying to get by. It just didn't work out for the best of us. Going into the last lap, I just saw the 99 spinning out. There was no caution so we kept going and the 00 and the 81 wrecked. I saw them in the fence up off of turn four there and just tried to keep my foot in the gas and steer toward the bottom of the racetrack because I knew that Junior was good enough where he wasn't going to spin across the racetrack and neither was Leffler so they were going to be OK and stay up high." YOU WILL ONLY LOOSE A FEW POINTS TO TRUEX. "We knew that they were going to be strong coming in here. At least they didn't finish one-two. He still finished fourth and gained a lot on us; we're probably 60-something back now. We'll just kind of go on to Chicago and see what we can get there and do the best job that we can and obviously try to make up ground on him. I believe there's 16 races to go so there's plenty of time to catch back up."