JAMIE MCMURRAY IN THE NO. 42 HAVOLINE DODGE WAS THE TOP RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE
QUALIFIER AT MARTINSVILLE. HE WILL START 17TH IN SUNDAY'S SUBWAY 500.
"That's okay, I just really didn't drive hard enough. The car was probably a
little better than what I ran. The last time here they said I overdrove it
really bad. This time I think I under-drove it a little bit. It will be a
top-15 starting spot and our car will race good." DID YOU MAKE A BUNCH OF
CHANGES BEFORE QUALIFYING? "We were about 15th in practice and that's about where
we are going to end up qualifying, I think. I hope we get in the top-15. It
seems like they're picking up now. We didn't really change anything. The car
felt good in practice. We just put new tires on it." WHERE IS A GOOD PLACE
TO PIT HERE? "First I guess is the best place, I don't know (laughs). It's
chaos leaving pit road here. That first pit stall is big. I would say the
further up front you can get the better. It depends on how fast your car is. If
your car's fast I'd want to be up front, if your car is not good then maybe be
in the back." HOW BIG OF A FACTOR IS TRAFFIC GOING TO BE HERE? "It's big but
I didn't have a problem passing people here last time. Lap traffic can
sometimes be a pain but not that bad, really."
GREG BIFFLE, NO. 16 GRAINGER FORD:
"It was a lot better than it was in practice. The track just felt like it
had more grip. I broke the tires loose coming off of four on my second lap,
which I thought was going to be a lot better. It may have been a top-10 there, I
think, but unfortunately it spun the tires there off of four. It looks like
we might hang out around the top-20 so that's going to be good for us." YOU
ARE ALSO RACING THE BUSCH CAR AT MEMPHIS. "It's working out good as long as
the weather holds off over there. It's been cloudy, overcast, kind of a threat
of rain but it hasn't been that bad so far. As long as the weather holds out
I think everything will be all right." WHAT MAKES MARTINSVILLE SO DIFFICULT?
"It's so flat and such a long straightaway and you've got to use so much
braking and it's so slow in the middle of the corner. It's absolutely so slow in
the middle
of the corner one little hiccup can almost mean seconds, let alone tenths.
You look at how tight the times are that's why this track is so tough. One
little tiny, tiny pause of a second means so much in lap time where if we're at
Charlotte or something, a little wiggle is no big deal. A little wiggle here
is two or three tenths. That's why it's so difficult." IF YOU BEND UP SOME
THING ON THE FRONT OF THE CAR, DOES THAT HURT YOU HERE? "Not really because it's
so slow the aero doesn't mean that big of a deal. Certainly you want your
stuff to be like it's supposed to be but it's not that big of a deal."
TONY RAINES, NO. 74 BACE MOTORSPORTS CHEVROLET:
"That's probably the worst effort that I've had all year. I overdrove it on
the hot lap, smoked the front tires. We were kind of running late and was in
a big rush and I just didn't have my mind set the best that I needed it to get
out there and run because it's easy to overdrive here. I'm just not real
happy with that lap time. I thought we'd run better than that. The car is
capable of running better than that. We're in the race so we'll work on race setup
tomorrow." WHY WAS THE INSPECTION PROCESS SO SLOW? "What I hear is that the
camber has been a sticking point for most of the cars today. I guess a lot
of them seem to think they went through this morning okay and then when it came
to go through for qualifying they weren't having that much luck. It wasn't
just a few guys; it was quite a few so I don't know if they just decided to
check on it everybody or what. We barely made it through and about six or eight
cars didn't make it through and had to rework their rear ends. Some didn't
even make it through after that so it's kind of self-inflicted by NASCAR but
you've got to be right when you come through. I doubt that anybody in the teams
changed their rear end between the first tech session and qualifying so it
does seem kind of odd."