Ford 300 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

Where the Raybestos Rookies finished at Homestead:
Kluever 9th
Andretti 16th
Leicht 27th
O’Quinn Jr. 35th

DANNY O’QUINN JR. IN THE No. 50 STONEBRIDGE LIFE FORD CLINCHED RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR IN TONIGHT’S RACE AT HOMESTEAD. HOW DOES IT FEEL TO WIN RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR? “It feels awesome. I was just sitting back at the trailer there and we were all kind of nervous and shaking and didn’t know what was going to happen. It’s just an awesome program. I’ve got to thank Raybestos and everybody for putting this on for us. It’s been a fun year. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs. I wanted to be running a little better at the beginning of the year but we picked up a lot in the second half of the year. It was a rookie team, I was a rookie driver and we were coming to a lot of these places for the first time. We stayed out of trouble when we weren’t having the best runs at the first of the year and we worked really hard. My team never let down a bit even when we weren’t having such a good day. I really owe this to those guys. They give us great cars each and every week. Roush Racing is an unbelievable team to be driving for and tonight is the first mechanical failure we’ve had all year long so I think that’s pretty impressive. In a 35 race season to only have one mechanical failure there just says a lot for our team. I’ve got to thank my sponsors. Those guys came on board and took a big chance on take a rookie this year and fortunately we were able to deliver this Raybestos Rookie of the Year to ‘em.” YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T EXPECT TO BE RUNNING AGAINST A VETERAN DRIVER. “No, I tell ya, I didn’t. You think of a rookie and you think of racing against guys like me and Todd and Burney. Racing with John definitely brought a little extra-added competition to it, him being at a lot of these tracks. He helped us a lot. He helped all of us rookies a lot. When we went to the rookie meetings and things, he would come out and tell us things about the tracks and stuff so he aided our rookie meetings a lot. It was a lot of fun racing with him all year long.” WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU TO JOIN THE LONG LIST OF PREVIOUS RAYBESTOS ROOKIE WINNERS? “It’s unbelievable for me to look at the names. There’s only a few people who can say that they won Raybestos Rookie of the Year and I’m honored to be one of them. There’s a lot of great drivers that came from that and hopefully I can just add to that list.”

JACK ROUSH, CAR OWNER, No. 50 STONEBRIDGE LIFE FORD: “Danny has really been a treat to work with this year. He’ll bend your heart. He’s a big teddy bear and he’s also a fast race car driver. We had Danny in our Driver X Discovery Channel competition last fall and he was very, very good. The metrics to decide to put the points up one driver against the other were almost arbitrary. Danny and David Ragan and Erik Darnell were at a virtual tie so we just had to try and find something for all three of them. But the difficulty was, as we put all these new teams together, we kept going further and further down the human resource pool. We were halfway through the year before Danny got a car that was built for Danny and I’m sure some of ‘em weren’t too comfortable, didn’t have as much room in ‘em as he needed. It just took a long time to get his program going because they were the third one in line and they were all new. But Danny made a good accounting of himself. He’s had a number of great races. One of the telling stories on Danny is that we were at Memphis and he was racing against somebody that I was not familiar with and the spotter and the crew chief got real nervous because this person kept putting his nose in. Danny was more familiar with that track and the people around the track than probably anybody that was with him. After a little while, Danny says ‘Don’t worry about it. He’s raced with me before. He understands. It’ll be okay.’ So Danny has that dimension to him that also breaks ties when it gets close [smiles]. We sure enjoy having Danny be part of the program. We don’t have sponsorship for it next year and this championship, this Raybestos Rookie championship will sure help him a lot.”

O’QUINN JR.: COMMENT ON THE DRIVER X PROGRAM AND HOW STRESSFUL THAT WAS TO GET THROUGH. THEN YOU HAD TO RACE AGAINST ALL THESE NEXTEL CUP REGULARS AND YOU STILL WIN RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR. “The Driver X program was great. Jack sets that up a lot different than most teams do. You actually have an opportunity to go out there and compete against other drivers in equal equipment so I think that definitely comes out and gives you a fair advantage. Just because you’re out there maybe getting beat at a local track or something, there’s a lot of teams out there in different touring series that are well funded and me working on my own cars out of my own shop sometimes didn’t have the best knowledge, best equipment. Jack is an awesome guy. He’s a racer. He understands what it’s like. He put together a great program and I don’t know how many years he’s been doing the Gong Show. It’s obviously worked well for him all through the years. I was just fortunate to be able to go through that and finish in the top-three and him put me together a great opportunity this year. I just can’t thank them enough. They’ve given me an unbelievable opportunity to come over here. This time last year, if you’d have told me that we were going to be Raybestos Rookie of the Year, much less even run a Busch race this year, I would have been thrilled to death. I mean I wouldn’t know what the think. I’ve got to thank these guys. It’s awesome working with Matt and Mark and all these guys over here. They help me a lot. I’m just fortunate enough to be in this situation.” DO YOU HAVE ANY DRIVING TIPS FOR YOUR RUNNER-UP? “Tips? I need some tips myself [smiles]. We’ve struggled up and down this year. Like I said, we’re fortunate enough to get this but I’ve learned a lot this year. I can apply that to future seasons. I’m just really fortunate and like I said, can’t thank Raybestos and everybody enough for putting this together.” HOW WEIRD IS IT TO BE SITTING THERE AS RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR AND NOT KNOWING YOUR SITUATION FOR NEXT YEAR? “It’s definitely ancy. Hopefully this will help us find a sponsor for next year. I definitely want to be over here driving for Jack again next year. But we all know it’s sponsor dollars that make these things go. We’ve got to be able to attract a good sponsor to put me in a program hopefully somewhere over here. Hopefully this will help us with that. I’m definitely on the edge of my seat right now. I’m sure everyone who’s in this situation understands that. We’ll have to ask Jack about that [smiles and turns to Roush].”

ROUSH: “Sell, sell sell. We’re doing the best we can.”

TODD KLUEVER IN THE No. 06 3M FORD WAS THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE FO THE RACE AT HOMESTEAD, GRABBING A NINTH-PLACE FINISH. THIS WAS ANOTHER GOOD RUN FOR YOU. “I was a little disappointed in our last bit there when I drove up to fifth. We were just really, really free on that last set of tires. We even tried to tighten the car up a little bit because it had been free early on all night and I didn’t want to be too free with only 25, 30 laps to go. For whatever reason, that set of tires was either just a little bit too loose. It was a good night for us. I sure would have like to have gotten the guys a top-five that they deserved tonight. It was a real solid effort. This is our car that we left sitting in the shop all summer like we didn’t know what we were doing with it. It’s a great piece and I wish we’d have taken it everywhere. I’m really proud of my guys. We’ve had a horrible year and the last six weeks I think we’ve shown more improvement than we have all season and I’m really proud of them for that. Would have been a good time for them to just pack up and quit on the season and just throw in the towel and they didn’t. They worked hard and we went out on a positive note and I can’t be more proud of them for what they’ve done over the last six or eight weeks in the schedule when it could have been so much different.” YOU MADE THE CHASE FOR RAYBESTOS ROOKIE VERY CLOSE WHEN YOU WERE RUNNING IN THE TOP-FIVE. “Well, I was trying. I figured the only shot I had at it was if we won. Like I told these guys on the radio after the race, I said I just wish we could start over at Daytona right now. Give us another season all together and things would be so much different. Mike [Kelley, crew chief] is so much smarter and I’m so much smarter. Mike is an awesome guy. These last six or eight weeks, not only has the team really grown but me and Mike have really grown together as really good friends. It’s such a shame that it all came together so late in the season. It’s a shame that we’re probably all going to be on different teams next year and we won’t get to enjoy the good part of it.”

JOHN ANDRETTI, No. 10 RVs.COM/FREEDOM ROAD FORD: “I thought we were going to have a little bit better car. Unfortunately we went out fifth in qualifying and when we went out fifth in qualifying, that just murdered us. We had to start so far back. We turned better than we had in the past but on the mile-and-halfs, we still don’t turn good enough to make it happen. But we learned a lot this week and it’s probably our best gain as far as what we’ve learned. We just need to take about 10 more steps forward like that and I think we can race with ‘em.” THE BUSCH SERIES ISN’T EASY. “Not this year, that’s for sure. I think it had to be the hardest year ever in the Busch Series, which is fun. The only thing is that we probably got caught back a little bit because ppc in the last couple of years has gone through a lot of things. I just think all that and we never test so it’s just difficult. You show up at the racetrack and that hour and a half is your test or two and half hours. I’m real proud of the team. We’ll turn the corner and look at ’07 and get excited about it.” DO YOU HAVE A GOOD FOUNDATION BUILT FOR 2007? ARE YOU GOING TO RUN A FULL SCHEDULE? “That’s a good assumption. That’s our plan with ppc racing with Freedom Roads, Camping World and RVs.com and we’ll have a host of other sponsors as well. It should be an exciting year. We’re changing a lot of things around. Change is either good or bad. We’re doing it because we think it’ll be better.”