Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500 - GM Post-Race Quotes

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE'S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO:

(ON HIS ENGINE FAILURE) "This doesn't happen to us very often. I went up through the gears and was in fourth coming off of two and I felt a really bad vibration, and that was it."

JOE NEMECHEK, NO. 25 UAW-DELPHI CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO:

"We got behind on our adjustments a little bit. It seemed like we could be good one run and then the next run we'd either be tight or else we would get loose. We could never hit it perfect. When we had to make time up we could go, but it's disappointing coming home ninth. We had a much better car than that. The pit stops were up and down. They had some great awesome stops, but then they had a couple where - well, we left the lug nuts loose and we got behind one time. It's just hard to make it up when all these guys keep adjusting their cars, too."

TONY STEWART, NO. HOME DEPOT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO:

"We thought with the sun we might be a little bit free. We were really good in Happy Hour yesterday, but it was overcast and cool. We fought a loose car the majority of the day. We could get it tightened up in certain areas, but we'd get it too tight in others, and then still be loose in some. We just fought it all day, but we had a good day and the guys did a great job. The first half of the race we showed signs of being as good as everybody else, but it seems like if we miss a little bit here it shows up big at the end. The guys that finished ahead of us got their cars right. I've had a cold all week, so when you run 100 laps without a caution that makes for a long day. At the same time, we had a great car. It was a little free at the beginning of the day, but we kept working on it. We just never could get it 100% right through the corner. We'd get parts of the corner good, but we couldn't get 100% of the corner right."

(WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS TRACK AND THE JOE GIBBS RACING TEAM?) "Our teams run really good here. I mean, Bobby's always run well here even before I joined the team. It's a track we both like, and it's a great place for the fans to watch a mile-and-a-half track. It's probably the best one we run on all year. You can run on the bottom, you can run on the top, you can run anywhere in between. You actually get to race here. It's kind of nice on a mile-and-a-half to be able to race instead of one of these new places you can't race on."

JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DUPONT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO:

"What a great day. I'm real happy. To come from 30th and drive up the way we did - I had a lot of fun racing with Junior to get up through there. I just couldn't believe how awesome our race car was. The guys did an incredible job. We had that race car on Friday and unfortunately we over-adjusted for qualifying and weren't able to start up there. But, it certainly made it fun to come from the back.

"I got up there, and I don't know if Bobby was just playing with everybody or what, but as soon as we came in for pit stops and I got the lead, man, he just mowed us right down and blew us away and just drove away. It seemed like anytime he wanted to he could. I thought we had it figured out that one time when he came up there towards the end and was behind me and he couldn't get to me. We were kind of actually driving away from him right before the pit stop. But, he was so good on new tires and Bobby is just good here anyway. I just wasn't as good on new tires as I need to be. I told the guys to tighten it up a little bit because I thought that would help us, especially if we got the lead and it all worked out perfect. We passed him, got the lead and just couldn't hold it. I was actually too tight then, and Bobby was just super strong. I'm just so happy to get a good strong finish and kind of get some momentum on our side.

"We had great pit stops. It was a whole team effort and hopefully we can do that every weekend."

(DID YOU THINK YOU HAD THE TOP BLOCKED WHEN BOBBY CAME UP?) "Bobby could run that thing anywhere. It was amazing how well he could hold his momentum. I went to the bottom trying to protect the bottom. That was where my car was working better. I saw him on the outside of me and my spotter said I was clear. I slid up in front of him, but he had the momentum. When I slid up in front of him he gave me a little tap and I was hoping that would slow him momentum down, but it didn't. I actually spun the tires a little bit and got a little sideways, but it allowed him to kind of get a bumper to the outside of me. I tried to squeeze him up high, but I knew he was there and I knew it was only going to be a wreck if I went any further with it, so I just had to give up the spot unfortunately. But, Bobby was so strong it would have been hard to hold him off there."

(WERE YOU SURPRISED HE CAME AT YOU SO QUICKLY ON THE TOP LIKE THAT?) "When Bobby Labonte has a car that is capable of winning he drives it for all it's worth, so that doesn't surprise me. I think a lot of people think of him as maybe just this calm, conservative guy. But, nobody is any hungrier than he is when he's got a shot at winning, so nothing surprised me. And, he's so good here at Atlanta. You can't take anything for granted. They certainly had their car dialed in today, so no - it didn't really surprise me."

(ON THE HIGH NUMBER OF BLOWN ENGINES TODAY) "We're cranking these things really hard - a lot of RPM. On those restarts there we were almost wide open there for one or two laps. You have no idea how much stress - you can just hear the engine - the RPMs it's turning, the stress that's being put on it. We were running some pretty darn fast laps there, especially there towards the end of the race, so it didn't surprise me. I know I looked at my tach one time. I had turned like 9,400. I don't know if that was just coming through the gears or whatever, but I got a little nervous because I did that. It wasn't surprising me that guys were blowing. I was just hoping that mine wouldn't."

JOHNNY BENSON, NO. 10 VALVOLINE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX:

"I really thought we were going to be a little bit better. But after how we unloaded Friday, (crew chief) James Ince and the guys did a tremendous job. I mean, we were 40th quick after unloading, worked our way up, qualified okay, and in the race worked our way up to 11th. It was a good day for us, just a little bit behind, but not bad. We fought the car on the long runs, which is really unusual for us. Normally we run really good on the long runs, but we fought that a little bit today."

(ANOTHER SOLID FINISH MOVES YOU UP TO SIXTH IN THE POINTS.) "We'll take whatever we can get. You kind of look at the points race, but then you don't, so we'll just keep working away."

DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 8 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO:

(DID YOU HAVE ANYTHING FOR THE GUYS THAT FINISHED IN FRONT OF YOU?) "No, I don't think I really had anything for the '18' or the '24' when they were in front of you. It just really depended on who got off pit road first and who got in the clean air - you might have a chance of keeping them tight back there behind you. The '18' was really, really good all day. Me and Jeff came up through the pack together and raced together pretty much most of the day. I felt like we had a good shot at a top five if we just kept our nose clean, so that is what I concentrated on."

GORDON:

(HOW WOULD YOU RATE BOBBY'S PASS ON YOU AT THE END?) "I don't normally rate passes. I figure if they make it and they win the race, then it must be pretty darn good. That's what happened. He didn't do anything I wouldn't have done, that's for sure. I thought it was a great move."

(AFTER FOUR RACES WHAT KINDS OF TRENDS DO YOU SEE DEVELOPING?) "It's hard to tell with what happened today because guys that have run good here in the past ran good today, I feel like. A lot of them just happened to be in Chevrolets. But, Kenseth has been real strong everywhere and so he ran good today. I don't really see a trend, yet. I think it's maybe a little bit too early to tell. I'm looking forward to the cars going to the wind tunnel and see what they find there. I always like to look at the facts instead of what just happens on the racetrack. Obviously, I was happy with the car today. I've been happy with it every weekend and just haven't had the good fortune to get up there and battle for wins like we were able to today. But, I haven't really put my finger on the trend yet because Kenseth was so strong last weekend and then the Chevrolets seemed to be pretty good today."

EARNHARDT, JR.:

(ON THIS BEING A 'DIFFERENT' CAR TODAY) "I was just saying that the setup we had underneath the car was something really crazy. I didn't have a lot of confidence in it. I don't think anybody has ever won a race in the history of NASCAR with the setup we had under there. I kept joking with Tony [Eury] Jr. that 'it wasn't going to work, it wasn't going to work.'

"But, it ended up working out all right. Everything we had in the car from last year and the previous top fives and top 10s we'd got - this has always been a good track for us; we've always led and run good here - but, it wouldn't work. All that other stuff wouldn't work. I don't know why. But, we got it driving really good. I was really happy with it all day long. I was just a little too tight in the center."

(ARE YOU SURPRISED WITH YOUR FINISH AFTER A TOUGH COUPLE DAYS?) "I am. Like I said, I didn't have no confidence in what we were going to do today. What we had in the car for qualifying is what we qualified second with many times here and won the pole before, and it was awful. The bodies on the car are just so much different now that we had to just really to several extremes.

"It runs along the lines of what we've heard a lot of the Fords and Dodges have run here in the past - some of the stuff that we just couldn't imagine running or couldn't run under our cars in the past. We're able to put those under our cars now and just see better results. But, I'm real surprised. It was a good effort for us all day. I thought Matt was going to beat us there at the end. We were able to get him there on that restart and kind of just hung out there in third, best I could."

(WHO MADE THE FINAL CALL ON THE SETUP?) "You get to a point where nothing seems to be working. We changed a lot of things in practice. It just gets to the point where you're frustrated. You keep putting things in there and they don't seem to help the car. But, I still knew that practice and the race were two different things. It was sunny today. It was cool yesterday. You've got the Hoosier rubber from the ARCA race - all these things that make the cars run a little different. So, I was definitely counting on the car to spin out getting off into one on the first lap, but it drove pretty good."

(DO YOU FEEL YOU'RE BACK ON TRACK THIS SEASON?) "At four races into the season, if there is a person that's on track at this point they're a pretty damn good team. But, I feel like these are the finishes we need. It sure helps us in the points and get a lot of people off my back, I'll tell you that."

GORDON:

(DOES THIS GET YOU BACK ON TRACK?) "Absolutely. The first have been disappointing for us, not in the way we've run, not in the way we've performed - just in the way we've finished. I know how good this team and I know if we just keep our heads up high and keep digging, working hard, that the good finishes will come. I'm just thankful that it came now and not too far down the road. This will definitely give us some momentum to go into Darlington."

EARNHARDT, JR.:

(ON THE PROGRESS OF THE TEAM AND ITS PERFORMANCE) "The cars are really driving good. They started driving a lot better the middle part of last year."

"We found some things and built some new cars that really were a lot better than the things we were driving. I look forward to running really good all year long, for the majority of the season. Hopefully, that will be enough to win a championship. The guys on pit road are very good. They're very fast. They've shown that on several occasions. They've just still have a little bit of 'getting used to each other' to do and a little bit of gelling, and I think they'll be really on top of their game."

(WAS YOUR SETUP TODAY SOMETHING THAT YOUR TEAM FIGURED OUT BY JUST THROWING THINGS AT IT?) "There is a formula that the engineers use that will tell you about the current setup that you have and you shoot for certain numbers and equations and percentages through that formula that tells you that your setup shouldn't be too bad. What we had under the car today was really something we had never run before. Jeff [Gordon] just told me he was running it, too, today so I don't know if it was something that we had just never run before. But, it was just really, really big front bars and stuff like that, that I wouldn't have put a lot of faith in. But, it drove good. I was really surprised. The staying power is the biggest thing. What we've always had trouble with was being consistent for a long run and being fast for a long run. We've really been that way here in the past and we were today. I thought we had a really good car on long runs."

(MOST DRIVERS SAY THAT THEIR CONFIDENCE COMES FROM THEIR BUTT - WHAT THEY FEEL...HOW LONG DID IT TAKE FOR YOUR BUTT TO FEEL CONFIDENT TODAY?) "My butt was feeling pretty confident after about two laps and it took about another lap for it to register in my brain.

"When you drive down into that first corner you get the message right away whether you've got a great car, a loose car, a tight car. You can feel it in the car - wherever you're touching the seat - your back and everything. You're not driving with just your eyes and thoughts. Your driving with touch and feel, too, so it didn't take too long for me to get confident in the car. But, the thing is I didn't think it would stay. I thought it would maybe be fast for a few laps and then it would plow, start pushing, go away and go backwards. We saw a lot of cars do that today."

(DOES YOUR PIT CREW STILL NEED SOME IMPROVEMENT?) "No, not really. We've got really good guys. We've made wholesale changes over the winter and you can't go changing anything now. And, I don't think anything happened today that warrants even any kind of discussion about it. People make mistakes. I make mistakes. I make mistakes on the track all the time. They're going to have falters on pit road, but I think when it comes down to it they're going to be able to get the job done. Tony [Eury] Jr. was a really good tire changer and he retired, and he's doing a better job on top of the pit box. Mine and his relationship is a lot more at ease because he is not under so much pressure in the pits. He's able to kind of see the whole race unfold. He's a little more understanding toward me and he's a little more easier to get along with myself.

"The guys going over the wall are great. I've got a lot of confidence in them. We had good stops, we had bad stops, but we didn't have any terrible ones like we've had in the past."

BOBBY LABONTE, NO. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO:

(PRESS CONFERENCE) "Our car was really good all day long. It was probably better from the beginning to the mid-part of the race. Then, the track got a little tighter I suppose and we probably didn't adjust for it. I didn't adjust on every stop, but it was pretty good. I've been that way before here. I've been catching up a little bit and always got better towards the end. At the end we started adjusting on it a little bit more. Fatback made all the right choices there at the end to free it up a little bit and we were able to get by the '24' car.

(WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS PLACE?) "I have no idea. It's combination of a lot of things. I just don't know. I like this place. There are a lot of things, but I can't do it every time, either. We do run good a lot, but we don't run good every time. We haven't run good every time. But, it's just one of those places I like.

"I told this story this morning at hospitality, and it doesn't really mean anything, but it makes for a good story. I was like 17 years old when I ran my first race here in a 'Baby Grand' car and I finished third, and I think what helped was that the throttle got hung wide open...That was my first time here and I can't explain why I ran good then because we didn't do nothing but wax the car. The guy that I was a teammate with, he worked all week long and he ran like dog poop, so it was just one of those deals. I have no idea why. It just happens. I love going fast here. The faster you go the more I like it."

(FROM THE LAST RESTART UNTIL YOU PASSED GORDON FOR THE LEAD...) "He got by me and my car was pretty good. We had put a set of tires on it and we were going to the end. I had a run off turn four and I got to him down the front straightaway and got up on his outside and passed him going into one and just 'hammer down.' We ran some really fast laps. The tires stuck with me really good. I was able to run - not wide open, but pretty much wide open from there to the end of the race. But, you had to be careful because you couldn't wear your tires out. But, we didn't have that many laps to wear them out. It was just one of those situations where he got by me on the restart, which he had done that once before. He was always getting me on a restart. He got by me. We worked a couple laps to try to figure out a line. I couldn't pass him on the inside because he had that covered - that's the fast way around, so I just carried her off into three and had a good run off of four and got by him down the front stretch."

(DID YOU THINK YOU WOULD LOSE YOUR MOMENTUM WHEN YOU TAPPED GORDON FROM BEHIND?) "The lap before that, I caught him going into one because I had a lot of speed down the front straightaway because I got good momentum off of four. That time there I was trying to get to his outside on that little dogleg there and hoped he didn't block me. I tapped him just a little bit and I eased up. But, I didn't ease up much. We both kind of wiggled. Then, he knew I was on his right rear at that point in time, so he probably knew he didn't need to go there."

(DID YOU FEEL LIKE YOU WERE DRIVING PRETTY AGGRESSIVE THERE AT THE END OF THE RACE?) "I think I was driving as fast as my car was going to let me go. I think that is true in every case. If you've got a 10th place car you don't want to wreck it trying to be first, but you don't want to finish 15th either. We had a fast car. I knew we had a good chance to win and you don't get these chances very often, so I was going to do everything that I could to make sure that I didn't let that happen. I just had a fast car and tried to pass him when we got to him."

(DID YOU FEEL A SENSE OF URGENCY TO GET BY AT THAT TIME - WITH 11 LAPS TO GO?) "I was going to pass him whenever I got to him. I wasn't going to wait, wait, wait because you never know if he's holding back - maybe holding a little bit - because two runs before that I couldn't pass him. Heck, you don't know. You come in and pit. You make a little adjustment. He might have took off in that last 11 laps and he might have had two laps that weren't as good and maybe I couldn't have passed him, but you can't just wait. When I got to him I was like, 'I've got to take my opportunity right now' to make that pass."

MICHAEL "FATBACK" MCSWAIN, CREW CHIEF, NO. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO:

(HOW BIG IS THIS WIN TO YOU?) "It means a lot to me. It means a lot to our whole organization. It means to me and Bobby. Both of us have struggled. Joe Gibbs has struggled. There are a lot of stories behind the scenes that most of you know, but we don't have to print - but, it's a good day. It's definitely a good day."

LABONTE:

(WITH THE SWITCH TO CHEVY AND A CHANGE IN CREW CHIEF, ARE YOU ABLE TO USE YOUR PAST NOTES?) "(Fatback) looks over all the notes we have from the past - all the way back to Dale Jarrett, so he's got opportunities to look at all those notes and make those decisions. Then, he goes and relies on his notes, of course. Then, he probably says, 'Bobby likes a car like this' - what little bit he knows me, but he knows me enough now that he knows that I trend a certain way possibly. So, he's sitting there thinking, 'OK, I need to keep him tight, I need to do this, but I need to do this...' So, we take all those notes and I think he puts them in his head and comes out with a setup. So, we come to the racetrack like that. Like I said last weekend we didn't have very good notes last year to keep because they were like - well, we weren't as competitive as we like to be. I told them, I said, 'I haven't run good in a while, so I don't have very good notes in my head, either,' so we really rely on his notes. Last year, they had good notes and he's had good notes for many years and that was with a Ford, which is probably similar to what we have now, obviously. You put them all together. If he had Tony Stewart as a driver he'd probably have to set it up a little differently. But, we've talked about it enough. We've gone through our testing. We've gone through our few races that we've been together.

"He'd gone through the last of last season together with us -- the last three races - and kind of picked around and picked around and understood, listened and observed and kind of said, 'This is what we need to start with - give us a starting point.' Then, I can go out there and run and say, 'The car is going this, this, and this' and we work on it from there with what we work together with and what he knows and what little bit I can give to him."

MCSWAIN:

(ON BOBBY'S SUPPOSED 'CALM, COOL' PERSONALITY) "He is pretty calm and he is pretty conservative and kind of laid back. But, I think most of you have seen the commercial with the little devil sitting on somebody's shoulder. Well, that's me in his ear going, 'This is your race if you want it. Don't take nothing off these young kids. Let's go get this race. You've got the best race car out here.' Like I told him when he made that move and he come around the next lap, I said, 'Now, that's what I call a race car driver right there, folks.'"

LABONTE:

(WHEN GORDON PASSED YOU ON THE FRONT STRETCH, DID YOU THINK THAT WAS IT?) "I thought I had a chance, but making it work was going to be different. We just had to bear down and go after it - no different than him passing us earlier - he was fast. I didn't know if I could, but I was going to give it my best shot and that's all I could do. I didn't know if it was going to work. I didn't have a prepared plan of 'sorry about that' if it didn't work, but I had a prepared plan of 'it worked,' you know what I mean? I had to give it my best shot because we led too many laps and we had too fast a car to not try."

MCSWAIN:

(HOW IMPORTANT WAS THE LAST PIT STOP?) "I think every pit stop is really important, but especially when you're trying to build momentum and you're trying to build momentum towards the end of the race. If those guys can have a really good pit stop and make it happen on pit road, it just gives Bobby that much more momentum heading into the next restart."

LABONTE:

(DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU ARE BACK ON TRACK?) "We've got a lot of races to go, a long year to go. But, it does feel good that we've gotten to this point so far. Things can happen between now and then, but I just really appreciate everything that has happened so far. I'm thankful that we got (Fatback) last year. We knew this was who we wanted. We were able to move some things around. We were able to tweak some things around and start off the year. I think we started off with a lot of momentum. It's a whole lot easier to start off with momentum than it is to catch it later on throughout the year - playing catch-up.

"It does feel good after the past two years not being...you know...kind of 'winning a race, but kind of like just winning a race' and not really being competitive in a race. Being competitive today and winning the pole last week - all that stuff is just good for the stats. Top fives are great. Wins are great and you just want to keep that going if you can. (Fatback) is giving me great race cars and I want to give him the ability that I have that I can drive one for him and make us both work harder week in and week out because tomorrow morning when we wake up it is all back to square one and we've got to work hard towards Darlington."

(YOU'RE NOW ONE CAREER WIN BEHIND YOUR BROTHER...HOW COMPETITIVE ARE THE TWO OF YOU?) "We're really not competitive. They've struggled a lot over the past few years, too, and a lot worse than we have in a lot of ways. We're not competitive and I won't bring that up (being one win behind) if you don't. Just leave it at that. That would be cool, though.

"I've already passed him in money won, but don't tell him that, either."

(WHAT LITTLE THINGS THREW YOU OFF AT ROCKINGHAM AND VEGAS?) "I think we had the same confidence going to those two races that we did here today. I know Rockingham a cut-down tire threw us off there and we couldn't get caught back up. Then we needed a caution that we didn't get and we ended up 16th and that's just the way it is. We hope that is our next to worse finish of the year. But, that's what kind of caught us off there. We had a top five car most of the day and we were competitive throughout the day. That just got us behind.

"In Las Vegas we qualified on the pole and weren't very spiffy for the first 20 laps, but we were better after that. I just think some guys were better than we were. I told (Fatback) before I got there, I said, 'I can qualify better than I can race here.' It kind of showed. I can go fast there, but it seems like I can't get the thing going as fast for a long run. But, I think that was pretty good. That was my best finish there, so that was a step in the right direction.

"The same amount of confidence came into here today. We were pretty good yesterday. We tweaked on it this morning and talked about it - thought about it, talked about it, thought about it, talked about it and made the changes. Today was a little different day. We were fast on the get-go, too, so it was just one of those things."

(ON THE IDEA OF ONLY HAVING ONE RACE HERE) "I don't want to see it leave because it is a great racetrack - a handling racetrack - and there were a lot of people here today because the weather was great. I know they had a lot of walk-up sales today. They've changed the dates a little bit and got the second race a little earlier, so it's in a better time.

"I'd hate to see it go, of course, but I don't make those plans. But, I don't really foresee it happening. I don't think it will happen. It's a great racetrack - not just for me, but it's a great racetrack for a lot of race fans because I've seen a lot of great races here that we weren't involved in, too.

"Rockingham is one of those places that needs a different date, more than it needs a race gone away from it. It needs better weather. It's somewhere where it's not going to put as many people in as this place does because it's not in a big metropolis. But, I've seen it packed there before. It's just that it's in the wrong time of the year that it's going to be really cold and really wet, probably.

"I like them both, so I hope they don't (take a date from both). I don't make those calls and until they let me make those calls..."

MCSWAIN:

(DO YOU HAVE A GOOD NICKNAME FOR YOUR DRIVER YET?) "Actually we do and I can't take the credit totally for it. The guys have got a little saying. When you do something and you do it really good they call you 'The Duke,' so for about three weeks now we've been calling him 'The Duke,' and I think he showed it again today."

LABONTE:

(YOU WON IN YOUR FOURTH RACE IN A CHEVROLET...ARE THERE ANY PROBLEMS MAKING THAT SWITCH FROM ONE TO ANOTHER?) "I don't guess so. It's more hard work on the guys in the shop than it is for me and him probably, because (Fatback) sees all the aero stuff and knows what to do to it to give something here that I might ask for or take something away that I might ask for. I just drive a car that I know is different than the past five years where we had the same car. We kind of tweaked it out of whack. We were maxxed out on it."

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