Winn-Dixie 250 presented by PepsiCo - Rookie Final Practice Quotes

Raybestos Rookie Happy Hour speeds:
Andretti 15th
Kluever 24th
Lamar 28th
O’Quinn Jr. 34th
Hines 38th

Raybestos Rookie Mark McFarland was injured in an accident last week in the AT&T 250 in West Allis, Wis. He will not compete in Friday night’s Winn-Dixie 250. McFarland spoke about his situation Thursday evening at Daytona.

MARK McFARLAND, No. 88 NAVY CHEVROLET: WHAT HAPPENED? “When we wrecked there with like two to go I think we were running sixth. They started wrecking in front of us. Carl Edwards and me were side-by-side. We both went to the high side. We couldn’t get any higher. Harvick came back up the track and I hit him, which that wasn’t the bad hit. That hit turned me down to the bottom of the track and then Jon Wood hit my left-front tire. I had wheel in it, which I was going to the left, and when he hit the left-front tire, it just turned the car to the right and turned the steering wheel which jammed my arm back into my body and it shot it out the back. So that’s what happened. I went home and got x-rays the next morning and they didn’t really see nothing because dislocation by that time had already went back into the socket. So I went and got an MRI done down with Dr. Petty and they found all kinds of damage. They put me on a rehab program to get it back strong. There for two or three days I couldn’t hardy move it. It’s just gotten better each day. You can feel the progression.”

WILL YOU HAVE TO HAVE SURGERY? “No, no surgery. Two weeks is what they say. Hopefully if I stick with it I can be back in two weeks [smiles.].”

YOU WERE RUNNING WELL LAST WEEK. “That was probably our best run of the year. We had a great car. We had our new crew chief and he was doing a good job. Everything was going good until that last restart [laughs].”

IS IT HARD TO BE OUT OF THE CAR? “Yeah, it’s tough, but the way I feel right now I’m not missing it at all. I miss it, but I couldn’t do it even if I had to. I can’t get my car up far enough. But Martin [Truex Jr.] will do us a good job here. I don’t know who is racing Chicago. Maybe Martin can do it again. Martin is definitely good down here so hopefully he can get us up in the points a little bit and get us out of our little slump that we’ve been in.”

Raybestos Rookie John Andretti was the top rookie driver in both Busch Series practice sessions Thursday at Daytona. Andretti logged the fifth-best time in the first session and was 15th in the final practice.

JOHN ANDRETTI, No. 10 RVs.COM/FREEDOM ROADS/GANDER MOUNTAIN FORD: YOU SEEM TO HAVE A PRETTY GOOD CAR. “I think so. Right now the tires are a little bit difficult. It’s got less grip and it’s really hard to find a balance but I think our team has done a good job. The first practice I wasn’t happy as I wanted to be with the car and they made a bunch of big changes to it. They said it will be good now and it was. We made one run and felt like the car was right there. I think a couple of small adjustments during the race and who knows? Maybe we’ll be like February, only keep all the air on the right-front tire this time [smiles].”

YOU QUIT PRACTICE EARLY. “Well, it doesn’t always mean anything. I think part of it is a little bit of risk reduction because risk and reward here is pretty high. You can go out there and kind of get a little bit more balance on your car, maybe, but it’s real easy to get tore up. You’ve got to run in a pack of cars to figure out what it’s going to do and you run in a pack of cars that’s where all the trouble starts. And you may just cause it. I don’t want to cause anything; I don’t want to be in anything. We just decided ‘Look, we’ve got to make adjustments throughout the race. This is where we’ll start and we’ll go from there.”

ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE TEAM NEAR THE HALFWAY POINT OF THE SEASON? “I was happy with the team at the start of the season, I’m happy with them now. I think that we’ve progressed as fast or faster than what I expected and I expect a lot. I think they do a great job together. We were a brand new race team at the start of the season, basically, and brand new race teams, they’re hard to build. I think we did that pretty quickly and ppc is a great place to work. I think we’re getting a lot of experience coming over to us, saying that we either want to be back or we hear about you or whatever and that’s huge for our organization. I think we’re just making a step every day. Some people make steps back, some people stand still and we keep making steps forward.”