Funai 250 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

PAUL MENARD, #33 MENARDS CHEVROLET: "We were riding around hoping to get back up front to maybe get a lap back. I guess the 74 got into the back of us and got us loose and pushed us up. Once you get up to the top there's a lot of marbles and it just took off. I barely hit the wall but came back down and somebody got in our door, I'm not sure who it was." WHAT HAPPENED EARLIER IN THE RACE WITH DAVID STREMME? "Stremme just turned into me. I don't know what he was thinking. I guess he did that to a few other people too. He got really loose off of four and I got my nose under him and driving into one he just kept pushing me down and pushing me down and took us both out. It was pretty senseless."

KYLE BUSCH IN THE #5 LOWE'S/PELLA CHEVROLET SCORED HIS FIRST CAREER BUSCH SERIES WIN IN FRIDAY NIGHT'S FUNAI 250 AT RICHMOND. Other notes:

· Busch scored the first Busch Series win of his 18-race career at Richmond. He scored the first victory by a Raybestos® Rookie since Johnny Sauter won the 2002 Tropicana 300 at Chicagoland Speedway.

· Busch is the first Raybestos® Rookie ever to win from the Bud Pole since the program was established in 1989. He is the first rookie to win the spring Busch Series race at Richmond, bettering Kevin Harvick's third place finish in 2000. He is also the youngest driver to win a race at Richmond (19 years old).

· Busch scored his fifth top-five and eighth top-10 finish of the season. He has been Raybestos® Rookie of the Race in 10 of the 11 races this season and enjoys a commanding lead in the chase for Raybestos® Rookie of the Year.

· Busch led the most laps at Richmond, the second time in 2004 that he has accomplished the feat. A Raybestos® Rookie has led the most laps in three of the 11 races this season. He became the first Raybestos® Rookie to lead a lap in the spring race at Richmond since Scott Wimmer in 2001. Wimmer led once for seven laps and finished seventh.

· At least one Raybestos® Rookie has finished on the lead lap in each of the last five spring races at Richmond.

· A Raybestos® Rookie has now finished in the top-10 in four of the last five spring races at Richmond: Harvick (2000), Wimmer (2001), and Brian Vickers (seventh in 2002).

· Busch took the lead in the Busch Series championship standings. He enjoys a 15-point advantage over second place Martin Truex Jr.

TRAVIS GEISLER, #36 TUCSON/DCT MOTORSPORTS CHEVROLET: "It's a moral victory for us tonight just to be able to get through it with the struggles that we've had all weekend. With how much work we've done on the car, I'm happy with just finishing. We ended up 26th and stayed out of trouble. We'll take this car to Nazareth next week. I'd like to thank all the guys on the crew and Raybestos for what they do for the rookie candidates." DID YOU HAVE ANY CLOSE CALLS? "Most people give you plenty of room. We had a couple of close calls with the leaders when they were racing with each other but I tried to give them as much room as we could. That's just short track racing. It's a fast short track but it's a short track. It was a good race for us."

J.J. YELEY, #18 VIGORO/THE HOME DEPOT CHEVROLET: "It started off real good and kind of went downhill from there. Paul Menard got in the fence and I checked up and everything was good. I got ran into from behind and it damaged the left side the car a good amount. There at the end, our radio died just before that red flag and the car was real loose. I just kind of ran around there blind. I thought I left a lot of room for someone to get underneath me and someone hit me in the left side and spun me around. I was kind of a moving chicane there at the end. I'm real disappointed because I thought we had a pretty decent car here when we showed up. That's OK. We've got next week off and we'll regroup for Charlotte. This is our second radio problem this year and if I can't communicate with my spotter and my crew it's pretty tough to try to figure out what's going on. I don't know what the situation is but we've got to get it figured out."

LANCE MCGREW, CREW CHIEF, #5 LOWE'S/PELLA CHEVROLET: "The whole weekend was just awesome. From the time we unloaded the car and went straight through tech, no problems. We didn't have a single problem with practice, qualifying, happy hour, and it just doesn't get any better than that." YOU WON SOONER THIS YEAR THAN YOU DID LAST YEAR. CAN THIS TEAM WITH THE CHAMPIONSHIP? "I think realistically you can't even count yourself out. I hope we do. Kyle seems to be mature beyond his years and everything just keeps going our way which is a lot of hard work."

BUSCH POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE

BUSCH: "It was an awesome one. I had a phenomenal car out there and Lance and all the team did an awesome job in preparing that. We came out here and tested and kind of put this place on the map as something that we needed to work on, not something that we could win at. We came here and tested and had a car that wasn't really capable of what we needed and we worked on it all day long and got exactly what we needed. We were able to come back here and be quickest in the practice sessions and qualified on the pole and led the most laps and won the race. That's a weekend that you dream of, of course Truex did that last weekend. We couldn't let 'em show us up too bad so we had to kind of go back after it."

MCGREW: "I keep telling everybody that keep asking me 'Why do they keep sticking young drivers with you?' I just keep telling them it's the whole team. I feel super privileged to be involved with Hendrick Motorsports and everything that it has to offer."

RICKY HENDRICK, CAR OWNER, #5 LOWE'S/PELLA CHEVROLET: "I think it says a lot about Team Lowe's and says a lot about the Busch guys and says a lot about Lance. We had a program that was proven last year and pulled the key element out of it and put the new key element in and it goes to show that we're right back where we were. I just hope this is our same turning point like we had at IRP last year. After that, it just seemed like the guys had so much more confidence and we were just dominant week in and week out. From the very beginning this year, Kyle has already shown second place, top-fives, top-10s, just about week in and week out. He hasn't torn anything up in a race and the guys are doing a phenomenal job. I'm really looking forward to the future with him and really looking forward to the future with Team Lowe's and everybody at Hendrick Motorsports."

BUSCH: HOW TOUGH IS IT TO SIT UNDER RED FLAG CONDITIONS AND WAIT FOR THE RACE TO START AGAIN? "It wasn't too bad. I turned all the blowers off and wanted to save the battery so we could fire it back up. I put my head on the headrest and kind of closed my eyes. It was either going to be an all the way or second, third, fourth, or fifth. I was like "We've either got it or we don't.' So we're going to restart the way that we restarted the whole race and just do the best job that we can to put it on the bottom. If he was going to pass us, he was going to move us, which Biffle is usually a clean racer when it comes down to the end of the race. He'd have to go to the outside if that was the case."

MCGREW: WHAT DID YOU SAY TO HIM DURING THE RED FLAG? "We had some conversation. I told him 'Hey, do what you've done all night long. You hit your marks on this restarts and you'll just drive away from 'em. But I'll tell you what, when you've got a guy like Biffle and the history that him and Kyle have together on his back bumper, I was a nervous wreck."

BUSCH: YOU'VE HAD A STRONG CAR ALL YEAR. DID YOU DO ANYTHING DIFFERENT TODAY THAT MADE A DIFFERENCE? "Not really. Even if we had to adjust on it we had plenty of adjustability built into it. Lance did an awesome job thinking up some things, put some spring rubbers in the back in order to pull 'em or push or them in. It was one of those days that when you have a phenomenal car after happy hour you're feeling good about it and we were just kind of that way. We just wanted to go about this race any other way like we have been all year and just try to do the best job that we can and make sure that it was there at the end of the race. That's how you get paid to win: be there at the end."

MCGREW: YOU'VE HAD A STRONG CAR ALL YEAR. DID YOU DO ANYTHING DIFFERENT TODAY THAT MADE A DIFFERENCE? "I think the thing that we've done the most of is that we just work hard. Week in and week out, this is a sport about momentum and we've done everything that we can do over the last month and a half, two months, to build momentum. Tonight was just kind of a culmination of that."

HENDRICK: DID YOU SEE ANYTHING DIFFERENT TODAY THAT MADE A DIFFERENCE? "Everything came together tonight. We've had dominant races before. We haven't been this dominant. I felt really good about it after happy hour. You sit on the pole and you go into happy hour and you are two and a half tenths faster than anybody in the field. You pretty much know that unless something big happens you're going to have a pretty decent night. I felt pretty confident about it."

BUSCH: DID YOU FEEL LIKE THE HIGHER GROOVE WAS WORKING TONIGHT? "The racetrack was phenomenal. My hat's off to Richmond International Raceway for paving the racetrack. It gave it a lot of grip and it gave it not only our bottom groove, which we were worried about bringing up a top groove. But it seems as though we did get a top groove there in the race. I figured maybe we would get one-and-a-half grooves but again, an awesome job to the racetrack. You had to pass cars on the outside, the lap cars or whatever. It looked like further back in the field that Biffle had to make his way up through there a couple of times so he was able to make some passes. It was definitely great." DID YOU HAVE ANY THOUGHTS ABOUT NASHVILLE DURING THE RED FLAG? "I knew that I was racing a veteran. He's definitely one of those key guys that you'd like to race against but on these guys shoulders they probably know Biffle a little bit more than I do. I know that I used to be his teammate and he treated me right. He's always done that to myself and we've always been able to race clean so I knew there wasn't going to be any hate there. We had a great race and I appreciate him and the other racers out there that did race us clean." WOULD YOU HAVE RATHER WON THE RACE AT NASHVILLE OR TALK ABOUT WINNING HERE? "I don't think it matters where you win your first race. It's just always great to get that first win under your belt. If we did win at Nashville, then this would be our second win and it's a great place to have it. Any race that you do win, it just shows that you are able to do it. The whole team, they are the ones that make it happen for you, so I'm sure they wanted that race back then but I'm sure they're glad they got it tonight, too."

MCGREW: HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT TO KEEP THE TEAM TOGETHER AFTER BRIAN VICKERS LEFT? "It was absolutely the key. I really feel that Kyle has stepped into a better situation at the beginning of the season than Brian stepped into because we were developing a new body, a new engine package, basically, a team, and a pit crew. Everything that we've done has worked and worked on making the bodies better, making the motors better, making the pit stops better. This season with the team is just awesome."

BUSCH: HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT TO KEEP THE TEAM TOGETHER? "I just go out there and drive but I do know the facts that Ricky has done an awesome job keeping this team intact with Lance being the crew chief and everybody else that's involved. The guys work so hard at the shop. I'm sure every other team does too but our guys are key. Stepping into this deal with a championship team with a Raybestos Rookie was kind of difficult to begin with because everybody was expecting you to go out there and win races and do exactly what Brian did last year but it just took a little bit of time. I'm sure there's going to be a couple more bumps down the road but we hope they are smooth ones and we're able to get over them pretty easily." CAN YOU TALK ABOUT BEING IN POINTS LEAD? "Right now it matter but it doesn't matter. It's a great opportunity that we're in the lead but we're just going to go down the road and get some more points. Finishes accumulate points and points accumulate the championships. We'll keep going at it week in and week out and doing what we do and doing what we have been doing and we'll see where it ends up at the end of the year. You can look at the points now but you don't need to worry about 'em until a little bit later."

MCGREW: COMMENT ON TAKING THE POINTS LEAD. "I kind of feel the same way about it. There's a lot of crew chiefs and drivers that tell you it's too early to worry about the points but points start accumulating at Daytona and you have to be worried about it from the very first race. I know because we started out terrible last year. We've been on the fly this year and every point counts. We only won the championship by 14 points last year so that's three positions on the racetrack during the entire season. We count every point."

HENDRICK: COMMENT ON TAKING THE POINTS LEAD. "To be honest I wasn't paying attention that much about the points deal. I think you've got to go out looking at trying to win every race. You can't focus just on the points championship."

BUSCH: HAVE YOU TALKED TO YOU BROTHER YET? "Yes I have. He was down in victory lane. He said congratulations and awesome job. He's kind of not been that successful at this racetrack but he was glad that I was able to come out here and be able to do well with it."