Daytona 500 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

JACK SPRAGUE IN THE NO. 0 NETZERO PONTIAC WAS THE RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE OF THE RACE IN THE DAYTONA 500. SPRAGUE FINISHED 14TH IN HIS FIRST CAREER WINSTON CUP START AT DAYTONA.

SELECTED RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE QUOTES

"It's a shame that the Daytona 500 had to finish a little over half-way. This is the big race that everybody comes to see and they saw half of it. But on the other side of that coin we stayed out there all day, stayed out of trouble, rode around, stayed on the high side just kind of out of sight out of mind and came home 14th. That's a great accomplishment for this team. This is a brand new team. It's definitely a good finish for us. You don't get a lot of help with that yellow stripe on your bumper, anyway. I guess it's bitter-sweet but it's like Kurt (Busch) said. Certainly we would like to see the race go the rest of the way. I just know that he ran second and I ran 14th and he's pretty happy and I'm pretty happy."

AFTER YOUR ACCIDENT IN PRACTICE, DID THE RACE GO WELL FOR YOU TODAY? "It's one of those deals. Like I said, I'm not going to talk about it anymore I've talked about it enough but I could have stopped the situation from happening but I didn't start it. But I learned a lot through that whole ordeal and how some of these guys race. Therefore today I kept my nose clean, stayed out of trouble, rode around, and didn't push any issues, stayed up by the wall. My car was a little tight but it would run faster on the top. It would cycle around. I was last three or four times and I was in the top-15 three or four times. It just so happened when the rain decided to sock us in that I was 14th and I'm tickled to death with that. And like I said, nobody wants to help the dude with the yellow stripe. These guys have been through it before and I'm going to go through it and that's cool because I'm going to put somebody else through it later."

HOW DOES THIS GOOD RUN AT DAYTONA HELP YOU IN THE RACE FOR RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE OF THE YEAR? "Not much. This is the first race, man. There's like a 100 to go or whatever we run in this deal. There were Raybestos® Rookies in front of me throughout the day and they would cycle around back and forth. There were only four or five cars that I saw that stayed in the front four or five all day. At one point I saw Jimmie (Johnson) three cars ahead of me back around 15th or so. To come out of here with a straight race car, something that we can take to Talladega and at least test against the new one to see if we can build something better, that's a big plus. Not to be 43rd in points, that's a big plus. These first four races are real tough on a new team anyway without having any points to fall back on to get in the race but that fifth race logging point will help me in case something happens in qualifying. We certainly don't want to go home from a race. That's the big thing right now. We want to keep the NetZero Pontiac in every race, get in every race, and then learn. This is a little bit different than a Busch car, probably back closer to the truck that I'm used to. I'm relating a lot of things with these cars that we've been testing over the winter more back to a couple of years ago. I'm getting older so my mind is not as good as it was trying to remember all that truck stuff. But that seems to relate more than the Busch car stuff does to these cars. We had a great test at Rockingham. We are looking forward to going there in a few days and then on to Vegas. The rookie deal, that's a long drawn out deal. Jimmie has been through it with Ryan (Newman). I don't know how they even decided that one. That's a tough deal. I know it's a strange point system. I'm not even going to worry about that."

RANDY GOSS, CREW CHIEF, NO. 16 GRAINGER FORD, FINISHED 21ST.

YOU MADE A PIT CALL NEAR HALFWAY THAT COULD HAVE GOT GREG BIFFLE A TOP-FIVE FINISH. "I'm looking at my book right here trying to see how many laps we had to make it. We came on (lap) 104 I guess for four tires and tape because we couldn't wait any longer because we were going to go back green but we were thinking man, if the rain comes. We could have made it on gas to make it past halfway but the rain wasn't going to come. I guess you only get that chance once in a while, you know, to roll the dice like that. And I would have felt bad afterwards if I would have had a chance to roll the dice like that and didn't do it so I just went ahead and did it, let her rip."

WERE YOU SURPRISED THAT SO MANY CARS DID NOT STOP? "Everybody is watching the radar and it's havoc. To me it's almost as easy to look up at the sky and guess sometimes. That's what we did and then we figured 'Well, that's not going to happen for us' and then we came for tires. It still was going to turn out until it started raining. We were in good shape to race back up to the front."

WERE YOU NERVOUS WHEN YOU HAD TO STOP AND THEN YOU RESTARTED NEAR THE END OF THE PACK? "It's frustrating because you say 'Well, when I get in the big wreck then that's going to be the decision that broke the camel's back. You just have to go do it sometimes."

ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE FINISH? "I'm happy with the finish. I think everybody on this team has worked really hard. They deserve a decent finish like that, if it ends like this. I call that a decent finish for where we came from, borrowing a car from Robbie Reiser's 17 team and putting it all together as quick as we did, I'd say that was a pretty good result."

CASEY MEARS, NO. 41 TARGET DODGE, FINSIHED 27TH. MEARS WAS THE ONLY RAYBESTOS ROOKIE TO LEAD AT LEAST ONE LAP IN THE RACE. HE LED ONCE FOR ONE LAP (LAP 65).

"I guess that you can say that we led a lap. It looks like they are probably going to call it; it's raining pretty bad. It's too bad because we got caught out of the draft there for a little bit and we got way back out of line. Fortunately Terry (Labonte) had his ignition cut off and gave us a partner to run with or else it really would have been bad. I wish we could have ran the whole 500. It doesn't look like the 500 because we keep running these 200s and 125s. It kind of changes the whole feel of it. I was hoping that it was going to stop raining and we could get back out but it doesn't look like it."

ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH YOUR FINISH? "I'm not real satisfied with that, no. I wanted to finish much better than that but we finished. We didn't get caught up in a crash and learned a lot. We're just kind of getting to know the guys. We're never talked in a race situation before so we're changing a lot of things in the way that we are communicating with the spotter and learning some things that we are going to need to do the next time here. I learned a couple of things that I need to do the next time I'm here. We definitely learned. We didn't walk away from here without something good. It's not a bad finish for us but we're not satisfied with that at all."

TONY RAINES, NO. 74 STAFF AMERICA CHEVROLET, FINISHED 33RD.

"I think we had a better car than that. When Jeff Green's tire came apart it got us in the nose pretty hard and we made several pit stops to fix it. That got us on the backside of the field and then of course the rain shows up and we're back there when we haven't been back there that long. I'd rather have seen it go all the way to the end because I think we could get a top-20 out of it but if it rains out, it rains out. What you've got is what you've got."

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