Southern 500 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

TONY RAINES, NO. 74 BACE MOTORSPORTS CHEVROLET:

"It looked like the 43 was having some serious problems. I don't know if Jason got into him and turned him or what, but we were all stacked up there and everybody was trying to be calm. The track just doesn't have a lot of grip, even for slowing down and everybody got stacked up. It's kind of unfortunate. It's kind of aggravating, to be honest. I don't think it was intentional. Maybe somebody was just trying to hard, I don't know. The same thing happened to us in the spring: We had a pretty good car in happy hour and we got tore up early in the race. Darlington just hasn't been that good to me."

CASEY MEARS, NO. 41 TARGET DODGE:

"I moved right up into Jeff but I had no idea he was there. I mean I just had no idea. I had a little bit of a run on Ricky Rudd on the inside and I started moving back up and right when I moved up I hit Jeff and about that time the spotter was saying 'outside, outside' but I had already hit him. If I would have known he was there, I would have never moved up. We were just trying to finish. I could have got inside Ricky Rudd right there and try to pass him but we're real competitive so I just wanted to hang in there. I just tried to stay out of trouble and we didn't today. I got a little bit of a run on Ricky Rudd and those guys were kind of bottled up. I started to go low and I didn't want to get on the inside of him because we were having a tough day out there anyway. I just kind of wanted to finish. When I went to the inside I don't know if he pulled backup and set up for the next corner and I hit Jeff and then just after I hit them the spotter was like 'outside, outside' and it was too late. If I would have ever known that he was there I would have never come up. All we were trying to do is finish. We weren't having a good day and I just wanted to get through the whole race. I had no idea that Jeff was there. If I would have known he was there I wouldn't even have gone up at all. It's definitely a tough racetrack but the car wasn't handling very good. We had a really good handling car here in the spring. We tried some different things here trying to do some different stuff and when we came back and it just wasn't working for us at all. We were really having a tough day. It's always tough to drive here and we were having an even tougher day than normal. We wanted to finish and have a good day for the Target car and just kind of get home, get the Southern 500 under our belt but it didn't happen."

JAMIE MCMURRAY IN THE NO. 42 HAVOLINE DODGE WAS THE RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE OF THE RACE AT DARLINGTON COMING AWAY WITH A FOURTH PLACE FINISH. HE SCORED HIS FIFTH TOP-FIVE FINISH OF THE 2003 SEASON. HE STRETCHED HIS LEAD IN THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE STANDINGS TO 11 POINTS (242-231) OVER GREG BIFFLE.

YOU HAVE TO BE HAPPY. "Especially two weeks in a row. It seems like every week that we have a good run the following week something breaks or I wreck or whatever. I'm so proud of my guys. They got me out of the pits one time, just a great effort by the whole team. We were really fortunate in that our car was really bad at the start and we were still fast so we kept making our car better every time. It was a very tiring race, especially after having the flu early in the week but when you car is good it makes you have a lot more drive. DID YOU HAVE EXTRA MOTOVATION TO WIN TODAY? "I don't know that you are motivated more. I was motivated just as much to win Bristol. It would have been nice to win the last Southern 500 but I can't imagine a better guy that Terry Labonte to do that. That guy has had some ups and downs and if it wasn't me I'm glad that it was him. He had a really good racecar. It just seemed like track position, whoever got out front, was the man." DOES THAT MAKE FINISHING FOURTH BETTER? "Yeah, because it was an all out team effort. I think the good thing is that we drove to the front kind of like Bristol. You can't use pit strategy here. We just passed a lot of racecars and kept making our car better all day long. YOU HAVE BEEN FIGHTING THE FLU ALL WEEKEND. HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW? "Just tired. I felt a lot better this morning. I don't know that yesterday that I could have done it. When you car is good it makes you be motivated a little bit more and have a little extra adrenaline. I'm just really happy for the whole Havoline team." YOU WERE CONSISTENT ALL DAY TODAY. "The fact that my car handled well was huge. Fortunately, we made the right changes again last night. I don't know that in happy hour that we had that great of a car but Donnie (Wingo, crew chief) and I talked last night and made our car better. That's the most exciting thing to me about my race team is that we've improved the pit stops all year long and then Donnie and I are communicating really good." HOW BIG OF A FACTOR WAS THE HEAT. "I have never taken water on every pit stop. They kept giving me little bottles of ice-cold water and I'd just drink the whole thing. I was even thirsty but I just kept drinking it. By the time the cautions were over I was cool again. The air conditioner worked really well today. The fact that you loose grip here as the race goes on here makes it a lot easier to drive and then the sun went down and the clouds came out and it cooled off a lot when that happened." YOU HAD THEM COVERED UNTIL THE LAST CAUTION CAME OUT. "Well, we thought we did. It's the same thing: whoever gets out front, your car picks up a half-second a lap and you don't do anything different. We didn't make any changes on the last pit stop. The car was really tight and then loose so we couldn't find a happy medium there. When you get out front you can just go. I ran wide open through one and two, two or three laps in a row." YOU KEEP PUTTING YOURSELF IN POSITION TO WIN. "Yeah, and like I say, the thing that's so good is that we keep driving to the front. It's not pit strategy deal. We passed a lot of racecars the last two weeks. That's very exciting for me as a driver and for the whole race team. And then to come in third and beat out two really good pit crews, my whole pit crew has got to be excited.

GREG BIFFLE, NO. 16 GRAINGER FORD:

"It's pretty unfortunate. Man, my stomach dropped: I had about a four second lead and the flywheel broke coming off turn two. That's what it is now we found out but I thought the motor broke so I started slowing down. Everything was shaking so bad inside the car that the car wouldn't handle anymore. It wouldn't accelerate, didn't have any power. It must have hit the ground on low tire pressure coming off the corner and it literally broke the flywheel in half. When I left the last pit stop a chunk of the flywheel was still in the pit box and no clutch. I think it cracked my ribs it was shaking so bad inside the car. I was in so much pain the last 70 laps: never felt so much pain in my life. You can imagine how unbalanced it would be with half the flywheel gone. That's what this team is made of, how we ran today. I promise you that we are going to win a couple of races before this year is out."

DONNIE WINGO, CREW CHIEF, NO. 42 HAVOLINE DODGE:

YOU HAVE TO BE PROUD OF YOUR PIT CREW. "They kept us up there. The one time that we got the lead they were the ones that got the lead there on pit road. That's just the way that it is. You've got to be out front at the end of these things to win the race. We had a little stumble there, nothing major. It was still a good stop and that's kind of what happened." ARE YOU DISAPPOINTED IF YOU DON'T WIN THE RACE OR GET IN POSITION TO WIN? "We've been in position to win races. When you get that close there at the end of the race you want to win the race. These guys have stepped up and they perform well all day long week in and week out, lately. They really kept us up there and kept us up there and kept us in the race here." WHAT WAS THE KEY TO BEING CONSISTENT? "The car was really off a little bit all day. He was pretty loose all day. We could get it too tight. We just could never hit it right in the middle. We could never get the good balance to it. All the changes we made on it seemed to make it better. We made one bad change there and we got it too tight and went back on it and got it too loose. We just never could hit a good balance there." MCMURRAY DROVE A CLEAN RACE TODAY. "We just have a few rubs on the right side and that's good because we are going to take it test at Charlotte this week."

DOUG RICHERT, CREW CHIEF, NO. 16 GRAINGER FORD:

"The biggest thing that hurt us was the chunk of flywheel flew off. It started vibrating so bad. Then the vibration was making him loose, then it was jumping out of gear, and then when we came in for the pit stop we couldn't maintain that good track position because he didn't have a clutch. I'm grateful to finish 10th. I mean, we had a 20th place car. Here with the condition it's in if it was any longer of a race. Hey, I'm happy. The guys had great stops all day. We had a good consistent day going. We were lucky with some tires that we going flat in the beginning. We were not so lucky in the end." WERE YOU IMPRESSED WITH BIFFLE? "There was no doubt in my mind that Greg Biffle can drive. It's still a matter of getting that rhythm and getting a feel for what he wants and for what he likes in a car and continue to have good pit stops and a good performance with no failures. That's the key. You can run good all you want but if you are not there at the end nobody knows it." HOW TOUGH IS THIS TEAM? "The guys have been through a lot. I don't know exactly everything that they have been through because I wasn't there. But you can look at the season they've had. They've run good and just a lot of things have happened to them. This is just another demonstration here today. They had a good car, we just didn't get to the end with it."

UNOFFICIAL Raybestos Rookie Point standings:

Jamie McMurray 242
Greg Biffle 231
Casey Mears 180
Tony Raines 179
Jack Sprague 158

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