Daytona 500 - Rookie Saturday Quotes

TONY RAINES IN THE NO. 74 STAFF AMERICA CHEVROLET WAS THE FASTEST RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER IN PRACTICE FOR THE DAYTONA 500. RAINES WAS 10TH WITH A LAP OF 49.057 SECONDS, 183.460 MPH.

HOW IMPORTANT IS RUNNING WELL IN THIS FIRST PRACTICE DAY AT DAYTONA? "It feels good. Obviously, if you are doing reasonably well it makes you feel good. It's not a whole lot for me here because I'm just driving the car but it makes me feel good about the guys, that their efforts are being rewarded. They can see it and a lot of times at other tracks they can't but here it's all them. It's all motor, body and physical effort from Bace Motorsports. I feel good because I'm part of the team. Everybody is kind of relaxed. We're going about this trying to do everything right but have our heads on right and have some fun doing it. Those cars won't fix themselves; they just don't do that. We're working really hard and hopefully we qualify okay and then Thursday hopefully the driver learns something and doesn't mess up."

ARE YOU SURPRISED THAT YOU ARE RUNNING THIS WELL? "When we went to Talladega and tested the car, we had to rebuild a car after the first test (at Daytona) and it was almost a second faster than the car we had at Daytona. We knew we were better but we knew that wasn't enough so we kept working on it and working on it. We figured out and thought that we would be about mid-pack which would be reasonable for an upstart team. Amick Engines have been working their guts out and the guys have been working their tails off, a ton of hours on the cars, and I think that's the result: a good motor and a good body down here and you can run a good lap. Hopefully we can run that on Sunday, too."

YOU ARE A ROOKIE TEAM WITH NO SPONSORSHIP AT THE DAYTONA 500. DO YOU FEEL LIKE A HUGE UNDERDOG? "There's no doubt that we're underdogs, we're longshots, whatever you want to call it. If we qualify well here and race well that's not going to make our season. It's one race at a time but I think when the year is over I think people will have been surprised at our commitment. Our level of effort is going to be equal to what this series commands. Bill and Brian (Baumgardner, team owners) want to be one of the big operations in Winston Cup, an RCR, a Hendrick. They want to compete with them because that's the way they do business and that's the way they want their professional racing team to operate. I've know that and that's why I've stayed here. At times we've had weird years, rough years but I don't think I could go somewhere else and it be any better. If I can't get it done here, I don't think I can get it done. That may be a tall order because we are a one man band here but I think if we can do well, it will make me feel so good about myself and this operation that it will make it worth it."

IS THE TEAM RELIEVED TO RUN SO WELL? "I think the first lap out there everybody out there was holding their breath. The first time we ran two laps we were 19th and a lot of guys ran three laps. That's what we had expected of ourselves. It definitely makes you walk through the garage different; I'm not going to lie about that. I would hope that we would qualify well enough on time that if we had something happen in the 125 that we could get in the Daytona 500. I can't tell you how much it would mean to me personally to make it, because I know what it means to all these guys. God forbid, I don't want to be the reason that we don't make it, but it could happen (laughs). I'm going to do my best for that to not happen. I'm just real impressed with the organization. Bill and Brian put everything in place that they could get their hands on. I was telling Bill that I'm not comfortable in a bad way. I'm comfortable that we will overcome whatever we get into."

WHERE DO YOU HAVE TO QUALIFY TOMMOROW TO BE SAFE ON YOUR SPEED? "I'm thinking that if we were 15th, 12th, somewhere in there. A top-10, obviously you would think that you would be in good shape if there was something that happened in the 125. We don't have any provisional points if we get that far down. There's 51 cars here so 43 of them are starting and eight of them are going home. Hopefully it's not us. Weird things happen in the 125s so I'm not going to make any type of predictions. I think if we can earn some respect early in the year and turn some heads I think that's what we need to do to help us get stronger to make it through the whole season."

LARRY CARTER, CREW CHIEF, NO. 74 STAFF AMERICAN CHEVROLET.

ARE YOU SURPRISED TO RUN SO WELL? "Yeah, a little bit, but these guys have worked real hard. I'm pretty proud of the guys. I think we are headed in the right direction, anyway. The first car we build when we went to the first Daytona test, we only had one car and it wasn't very good. So when we came back we built another car and went to Talladega with it and it was quite a bit better. Then we decided well, we don't need to go down with one pretty good car and one bad car is case something happens so we decided to build another one. We had to put a lot of hours in to get that done so that's kind of how that scenario played out."

DOES THE STRICT INSPECTION PROCEDURE FAVOR A SAMLL TEAM? "I don't think it really matters. I just think what matters is that when you come down here and test that you try to test knowing that you are legal or you're not legal so when you come back you know what you've got because I think some of the guys that were fast during testing are not as fast now so maybe they were not legal."

WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU WILL QUALIFY ON SUNDAY? "Our goal all along has been to qualify in the top-20. Some of the other teams will probably pick up a little bit more speed that we are going to be able to pick up. I still think looking at a top-20 qualifying position would be a real good deal for us."

WILL A TOP-20 QUALIFYING RUN SUNDAY GET YOU IN THE 500? "I think they've seen people go home that were like 16th before. I think 15th would be like the magic mark. We may be able to get there but we'll just have to see."

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