Mr. Goodcents 300 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

Where the Raybestos Rookies finished at Kansas:
J.J. Yeley, 6th
P. Menard, 17th
K. Busch, 29th
C. Bowyer, 32nd

Unofficial Raybestos Rookie standings after Kansas:
K. Busch, 322
P. Menard,181
J.J. Yeley, 166
C. Bowyer, 154
B. Parker, 74

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER QUOTES FOR THE MR. GOODCENTS 300 NASCAR BUSCH SERIES RACE AT KANSAS SPEEDWAY, OCTOBER 9, 2004.

J.J. YELEY IN THE No. 18 MBNA CHEVROLET WAS THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE RACE AT KANSAS. Notes: Yeley finished sixth, his third top-10 finish in 15 career starts. He took Raybestos Rookie of the Race honors for the second time this season. THIS GOOD RUN TODAY HAS TO BE A CONFIDENCE BUILDER. "It is. I hoped I would run well here. This place is so close to what Chicago is and having a chance to win there back in July, I was looking forward to coming here. Through practice, the car was really pretty good. We struggled with just little things. I can handle the little things. It's the big things that scare me. The whole race the car was really good. We started out pretty tight. Doug [Hewitt, crew chief] made a couple great calls and got the thing freed up and made a call to do two-tires and save us a lot of track position and that kept us up front. There at the end, having only two fresh tires hurt us a little bit. You just couldn't cut quite like them guys up front there. But to get a good restart and get by the 22 car was pretty good. Hornaday is supposed to be the King of Restarts. He cheats a little bit when he does it [smiles] but to come away sixth, we're happy with that." YOU RAN A GOOD CLEAN RACE FROM START TO FINISH. "It was. The car was great all day. We never made any contact. Going down the back straightaway on the last lap, I cleared the 22 and Hornaday going into one, and for whatever reason, halfway down the back straightaway the 2 car just made a left hand turn and ran into the side of me. I don't know if it was letting me know 'good move' or move out of the way, I don't know. Now we've got a little dent in the side of the car. But the thing came back in one piece and that's most important part of it."

KYLE BUSCH, No. 5 LOWE'S/SHOP VAC CHEVROLET: (Notes: Busch was involved in a accident in today's race. He spent 24 laps in the garage area while his team made repairs to his car. He finished 29th and leaves Kansas second in Busch Series points, 149 behind leader Martin Truex Jr.). BOTH YOU AND TRUEX JR. HAD PROBLEMS TODAY. "We always seem to be able to equal out. We never seem to be able to get ahead of him and we never fall too far behind him, either." WHAT HAPPENED IN THE ACCIDENT? "The 12 car looked like got a little loose there under the 46, just a racing deal. It's shame that we got caught up in it but he just couldn't quite hang on to it. We'll see what we can do next week." IT LOOKED LIKE YOU WERE GOING TO GAIN A LOT OF POINTS ON TRUEX BUT YOU DIDN'T. "It really could have been great but we missed out on a great opportunity. The 8 car had a little bit of trouble there in the beginning. It's a shame that we did get caught up in that mess. All in all, you can only do what you can do and what the guy upstairs will let you do. We'll see what happens next week at Lowe's Motor Speedway." YOU'RE 149 POINTS OUT OF THE LEAD. HOW DO YOU GET FOCUSED FOR THE STRETCH RUN? "We gained three. Whoo-hoo [smiles]. I guess we'll go on to the next races and see what we can get out of it. We could have had a lot of trouble there in the beginning with ourselves getting caught up in something coming up through the pack. We didn't. The 8 car got themselves caught up in something and we really could have capitalized on that and made up a lot of points but we weren't quite able to because we got ourselves caught up a little bit later in the race. All in all, the guys did an awesome, awesome, job putting that thing back together and I can't thank those guys enough. They are a championship caliber team. If we're not able to get it this year, we'll just have to go after it again next year. It's such devastation and a great blow when you get caught up into something like that and there's nothing you can do. I was slowing down, thought I had it missed, but all of a sudden the thing snapped back to the right and ended up in the fence so I don't know exactly what happened to it. All you can do is go on to next week at Lowe's Motor Speedway. We had a pretty good test over there so hopefully we can take Jimmie Johnson with his Sponge Bob car and myself with the Patrick car and hopefully run up front."

LANCE MCGREW, CREW CHIEF, No. 5 LOWE'S/SHOP VAC CHEVROLET: "It's the guys that make this deal. And we've been together a little over four years now. We think alike." WHAT REPARIS DID YOU MAKE TO THE CAR WHEN IT WAS BEHIND THE WALL? "We changed all the sheet metal and the nose, from the center of the tire forward on both sides plus the radiator, the oil cooler, two oil lines, and filled it up with water, checked the toe [front-end alignment] changed the tires, and shipped it." HOW LUCKY WERE YOU TO NOT HAVE MORE SEVERE DAMAGE? "You could have very easily had a lot more damage. We bent the frame over and bent the steering box and we had to sledgehammer it back over. But as far as suspension parts, we didn't have any issues." AND YOU GAINED THREE POINTS. "Yeah, three whole points."

PAUL MENARD, No. 11 MENARDS/PITTSBURGH PAINTS CHEVROLET: "We finished. We made the car a lot better. It was junk at first and we just kept working on chassis and tires. It wasn't too bad at the end. We were two laps down." DID THE WEATHER THROW YOU FOR A CURVE? "A little bit. We played with the pressures a lot during happy hour yesterday when it was a lot cooler and the track temp was a lot cooler. We started off with those same pressures and it wasn't right. We kept adjusting on it and it got better toward the end." YOU STILL HAD A POSITIVE WEEKEND. "We came away with our first pole, hopefully the first of many and definitely learned some things during the race that we can apply to some more of these mile-and-a-half tracks. We're going to take this same car to Charlotte."

CLINT BOWYER, No. 21 REESE'S CHEVROLET: "We were fighting loose all day long. The car was actually getting better and better and it was getting really, really fast. I was trying to get around Kasey [Kahne] there and he was racing me pretty hard. I got up underneath of him and he pulled the air off my spoiler and around she went." FROM THAT POINT ON YOU'RE JUST TRYING TO DO THE BEST YOU CAN WITH WHAT YOU'VE GOT. "Yeah. We smacked both ends. It knocked the spoiler out and at a track like this, it's all about keeping that spoiler up in the air for downforce and once she's not there, it's pretty well over. A bad day got worse, really." WHAT'S THE NEXT RACE FOR YOU? "Actually, Charlotte next weekend. I'm going to be driving one of Kevin Harvick's Busch cars. I'm looking forward to next weekend and then on to Memphis in the 21 Reese's car.

MORE KANSAS NOTES:

· A Raybestos® Rookie has now finished in the top-10 five in three of the four Busch races at Kansas Speedway: Greg Biffle (third in 2001) and Kerry Earnhardt (second in 2002) and J.J. Yeley (sixth in 2004)