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Subway 400 - Ford Post-Race Quotes

JARRETT GIVES FORD FIRST WIN OF 2003

  • Dale Jarrett registered his 31st career NASCAR Winston Cup victory today.
  • Jarrett's win means he has now won at least one race each of the last 11 seasons, the longest streak among active drivers.
  • Jarrett moved into a fourth-place tie with David Pearson on the all-time Ford win list with 29. His father, Ned, is the all-time Ford leader with 43.
  • Jarrett ranks first on the Ford charts with 16 Taurus wins.
  • The win was Ford's 538th all-time triumph in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series and the 68th for Taurus.
  • The last time Ford swept the top three spots in a NASCAR Winston Cup race was at Michigan in the Sirius Satellite 400 when Matt Kenseth, Dale Jarrett and Ryan Newman fininshed 1-2-3, respectively.

    TODD BODINE - No. 54 Army National Guard Taurus (Finished 42nd) - "We had a flat tire. That's the second Rockingham race in a row we've had a flat right-front. It's a shame because we had a good race car. We worked our way up to about 25th and got in a good spot, so I just started riding. Kenny caught me from behind and I started to get a little tight. I started bouncing around and thought I had a broken shock, but we went for 10 laps like that." DID YOU NOTICE ANY TIRE PROBLEMS AFTER THE CAUTION ON LAP 46? "No, the tire wear was great. We were real happy with it and we were real happy with the car. It was a little bit loose, but we only put only a pound in the right-front, so we must have just run something over."

    KURT BUSCH - No. 97 Rubbermaid Taurus (Finished 2nd) - WHAT WAS THE DIFFERENCE AT THE END? "It feels like this is the second verse same as the first. We had an awesome run. This Taurus was rolling pretty good. I'm real proud of the way that Dale Jarrett and I raced. That was a lot of fun. If that doesn't get you pumped up, I don't know what does. We were just a little bit too aggressive on the rear tires. We burned them off at the end and we did that last fall. We're just missing a little something to get to victory lane here the Rock, but we're still very happy with finishing second." DID YOU ADJUST ON THE CAR A LOT? "Yeah, we made a few adjustments early on, but this is a testament to how good this team can be with building this car, with no practice, with throwing a setup underneath it with four different springs. I mean, there is just a lot that went into this team effort today. I'm real proud of my team and our sponsor, Rubbermaid, just for getting this Ford up front. We had a great time." WAS IT FUN AT THE END? "It was awesome. It's tough to come out on this end of it. We had a dogfight with Johnny Benson and Mark Martin last fall. This is a great race track that puts on great races. I'm gonna hate to see it lose a date, if it does, I'm just disappointed we came home in second." YOU STAYED IN CONTROL THE WHOLE WAY. "The downforce, with the way it's pushing down on these cars, it's an old school feel. I was real informative to the crew chief on what I thought I needed today because it had an old school feel to it. The older guys had a good feel and the veterans took charge, I just wish that we could have beat them today." WHAT ABOUT LAP TRAFFIC AT THE END? "Lap traffic helped us and it hurt us. You've got to dodge it, you've got to position yourself so that you get through it as quick as you can. I just burned the rear tires off and I couldn't get any bite off. That's where we were the best today was off the corners, but I couldn't do it at the end."

    MARK MARTIN - No. 6 Viagra Taurus (Finished 7th) - Both Kurt and I had cars that were good on the short run, especially ours. Our strong suit was short runs. I thought we were set up with two 50-lap runs there at the end, which would have given us a top-three, no doubt about it, but we weren't set for a 90-lapper. We fell off real bad after about 50-60 laps, but we were really strong the first 50 and I was happy for that. That was my weakness last year, which was getting to go. We could sure get going today, but we couldn't quite stay long enough. We didn't hit the setup just right." IS THIS A DAY WHERE YOU WERE BETTER THAN THE FINISH? "Oh we were definitely better than the finish, but I'm proud of this team. They did a great job, had a great car and it was a good run."

    MATT KENSETH - No. 17 DEWALT Power Tools Taurus (Finished 3rd) - "It was a great day for us. We performed really well since we got here. I'm really proud of the guys and the effort they put into the car. We just came up a little short. We had a good car, we just needed to be up front." WHAT ABOUT THE STRATEGY AT THE END? "Everybody pitted except for three or four cars, so we couldn't have made it unless we pitted. We've gotten burned here on tires before and Robbie and I kind of have a five-lap rule, if we run five laps we're gonna get tires, so I think we ran six laps and we decided to get four tires and brought it in. It worked out for us."

    DAVE BLANEY - No. 77 Jasper Engines Taurus (Finished 10th) - "We were just loose all day. On one run we were exceptionally good and then a couple we just kind of hung on. Then on the last two runs we got way loose again and just maintained instead of going forward." YOU TOOK TWO TIRES ONLY LATE IN THE RACE. WAS THAT YOUR CALL OR BOOTIE'S AND DID IT HELP OR HURT? "It was Bootie's and, overall, it probably didn't hurt us. We just needed to adjust the car a little bit." HAPPY WITH THE WEEKEND? "Yeah. Anytime we can get a top 10 we're gonna be halfway satisfied. We had more in the car, but we just could never adjust. We got it once, but then we couldn't find it again."

    DALE JARRETT - No. 88 UPS Taurus - VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW: WHAT ABOUT BOTH PASSES FOR THE LEAD? "I didn't know the 97 had come back. I knew there were cars there with new tires, I just didn't know who I was passing. I was just trying to keep my car going straight. These guys did a great job of working on this car and adjusting on it today. The 38 guys - Elliott Sadler and Raymond (Fox) and Shawn (Parker) - all came down here and tested. If it wouldn't have been for that and them giving us something to start with, I don't know where we would have been. We had to adjust on the car quite a bit all day. We were loose most of the day. We got in and adjusted it and that's the best that it was at the end and that's what you always want. It was a heck of a race. You know what kind of competitor Kurt Busch is. He's not one to give up the lead and then when he came back by me, like I said, I didn't even know it was him coming by. It was a great race and just a great job. I want to thank UPS, Coca-Cola, Ford Credit and that will be a little bit more money for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation."

    JEFF BURTON - No. 99 CITGO Taurus (Finished 12th) - YOU STAYED OUT ON THE LAST CAUTION. "Yeah, we couldn't keep up with the car today. We took off and it was pretty good, but we just couldn't seem to be able to keep up with it. The first run we drove way up the field and then it just kind of got away from us. These are brand new cars, brand new bodies, different chassis, all kinds of stuff and it's gonna take us a little while to get used to working with them. Twelfth isn't how we want to run, but I'm not totally discouraged with that. We didn't work on race stuff on Friday. Paul and I are really concentrating on making our qualifying better. We didn't work on race stuff and I think that hurt us some today, but that's OK." WHAT'S THE FEELING WHEN THE LEADERS ARE RIGHT ON YOUR TAIL AT THE END OF THE RACE? "You want to get the hell out of the way, but you're also racing for yourself too. You've got to race for yourself, but you also don't want to have a negative impact on the race. I was trying to get out of the way, but I was trying to race the 10 car too."

    RICKY RUDD - No. 21 Motorcraft Taurus (Finished 11th) - "We were just a little off on the handling all day. They made some adjustments, but we could never get it hooked up like we'd like to, so we just went out and made the best of it and came home 11th. I thought we were gonna have a top 10, but it just didn't work out." WHAT HAPPENED TO THE RIGHT-REAR OF THE CAR? "John Andretti tapped me real early in the race, but I don't think it affected anything."

    KURT BUSCH PRESS CONFERENCE - TAKE US THROUGH YOUR DAY. "With no practice I thought we did a great job guessing at what we thought we needed to win this race. We had four different springs underneath it from what we had in the fall, but we had the same outcome. We just came up a bit shy leading the race with 20 laps to go. It just seemed the more we ran throughout the race - our car was excellent through the middle part of the race when we were leading. It took a while for the track to come to us and then we didn't make the adjustments the proper way to keep track of the track later on . We just slipped up a little bit at the end. Dale Jarrett had a better car and he just got by us like anybody else would. Traffic helped me get back by him and we staged a great race there at the end. If the fans didn't dig that, then they need help." WAS THE WIND A FACTOR? "No, not really. The wind changed directions from one and two down to three and four and then it blew from the front straightaway to the back straightaway. We had the best seat today - all 43 of us drivers were pretty warm." DID KURT AND JIMMY SPENCER GET TOGETHER DOWN THE STRETCH? "No. It's pathetic the amount of times you guys bring it up. He was a lapped car just like anybody else was out there. I was maneuvering in and out, going low, going high. You have to stage things to where you look ahead and I don't think I lost anymore time trying to pass him than I did anybody else." HOW MUCH WAS LAP TRAFFIC A FACTOR AT THE END? "This race was similar to the fall race. I knew it was coming. We had an 80-lap run to finish the race. We had an 85-lap run to finish the fall race. That's when we were leading and faded to third. We faded to second today, not due to lap traffic, it's just too many laps on a set of tires. We had to stay out. We were in that position to do so and we need to figure out something to where we can run a little bit better for 15 more laps into a run, but we're pretty good from the get-go all the way up until about lap 65. So we've got something to learn. We've got to do something better so we can get into Victory Lane at Rockingham." YOU WIGGLED A LOT AT THE END. WAS THAT TIRES? "Yeah, like I said, we're real good for about 70 laps and that's when you'd have to pit in a normal sequence. So we had a little bit of understeer going into the corner and the car was pushing. That elevated the loose off and that was just killing our momentum that you'd keep around this race track. Once we lost forward bite, there's nothing we could really do except make the Rubbermaid Ford as wide as it could be and Dale Jarrett got his Ford underneath us." DID YOU THINK BOBBY LABONTE WAS GOING TO BE THE ONE TO CONTEND WITH? "Yeah, he got a lap down and then they threw the yellow as I was crossing the start-finish line, which, if we were a lap down, we would have stayed a lap down. They gave him his lap back and then he didn't pit and he passed everybody out on the track while everybody came in to pit because he only had eight-lap-old tires. So once I got back by him, I knew he had eight-lap-old tires and I just had to pace myself. He was on my rear bumper. I knew he was there, it was just a matter of time before his tires wore out quicker than mine. I didn't want to pull away too quick and burn my stuff up, but I did see DJ back there and I just tried to pace myself to stay in front of him."

    MATT KENSETH PRESS CONFERENCE -- WHAT ABOUT THE CHEVROLETS TODAY? "I think you'll know more after Vegas and Atlanta. I don't think you can tell anything at Rockingham. Rockingham is more of a setup track and driver-feel type track - springs, shocks, swaybar type track. I remember when we were having all the aero stuff like three years ago or something like that when Labonte brought his car to the wind tunnel he was like 300 pounds of downforce worse than all the rest of the top five and he won the race, so I don't think the body and the downforce means as much here as what it's gonna mean the next few weeks."

    BUSCH CONTINUED - DO YOU FEEL YOU'RE A CONTENDER FOR THE WINSTON CUP? "It feels good to get off to a great start. We had a lot of things go our way at the end of last year to get into Victory Lane a few times. They were races that we were prepared for and that's what we kept working towards in the off season was to get ahead. I think we've got our car built for Texas right now and that puts us a good two months ahead of where we need to be. As long as we can understand that and keep all the crew guys motivated and all the guys that jump over the wall - they're knocking out 13-second stops that kept us up front today. It takes a whole team package and we were fortunate enough today to have a balanced setup underneath the car to run towards the front. So we go to my hometown next week, Las Vegas, we go to Atlanta and we'll get a very gauge as far as the aero is concerned between the four manufacturers. Then after that, I hope we're still up there in the points and we can continue moving forward. We'll assess our season after Sears Point. We're just two races in. I'd like to say that we're a championship contender with the way we ended last year and we'll just try to keep our momentum rolling forward." DO YOU SHARE A LOT OF INFORMATION BETWEEN ROUSH TEAMS FOR THIS TRACK? "Mark won his first Winston Cup race back here in '89 and since then Roush has been very competitive here. We ran real well in the fall. Kenseth won the spring race here last year. Yes, we do share some notes and that's what you have to do with five cars now. The way that our process works is we share vital information. We share some insider information and, yet, we compete on the seventh day. So we work together as teammates for six and we compete on the seventh." HOW DOES IT FEEL HAVING THE POINTS LEAD GOING TO YOUR HOME TRACK? "We're just fortunate enough to finish second in both of these races. This one is much more difficult to swallow than the original race. We had a great run today. I'm real upset that we didn't win. I would have loved to have gotten off to Victory Lane so early in the year, but finishing second isn't too bad. That gathered up a lot of points for us and, low and behold, we're the points leader so we'll just roll into Vegas. You need a whole different type of car there and a whole different type of frame of mind. It feels good. The confidence is there and we'll just continue rolling." HOW MUCH DID YOUR TEAMMATES HELP AT THE END ON THE TRACK? "You don't have time to stage anything. Everybody is racing their car to the best of their ability and you have to find the right hole to go in to move forward and to keep your momentum and to run the fastest lap time you can. It looked like Jeff Burton helped me get the lead back, it just happened to go that way where I filled the hole on the outside lane and pinched the 88 down and got back by him. There was a lot of give-and-take between the lapped cars. There was a lot of give-and-take between Dale Jarrett and I, so it was an exciting race. I was glad to be a part of it, we just came out on the wrong end."

    MATT KENSETH CONTINUED - HOW WAS YOUR DAY? "We had a good day. We had a really good car. It was a brand new car and, just like everybody else, we didn't get a lot of practice. Overall, we had a great day. We never got the track position that we quite needed and felt like we had a car with an 80-lap run that could have won the race. We could make up a lot of ground. Towards the end of the runs, our car was really strong -- not necessarily the first 20 or 30 laps, but the last 20 or 30. I'm real happy finishing third. I think we had a car that definitely could have contended for the win, we were just a little too far behind on the last restart and was a little too loose that last run to be able to get up there, but it was a great day for us."

    DALE JARRETT PRESS CONFERENCE - WHAT ABOUT YOUR DRIVE TODAY, ESPECIALLY THE BATTLE WITH KURT AT THE END? "We had to adjust on our car all day. Brad did a great job of that deciding whether it was wedge that we'd put in it or just air pressures. We've got thank our teammates. They came down here and tested about three weeks ago, especially with no practice at all yesterday, I don't know where either one of us had been if they hadn't come here and shared the information and things that they'd learned. We started out extremely loose. We adjusted on it and were still loose at the end of the race, but it was obviously a much faster loose than what we had been earlier and we got it right at the right time. Towards the end there, I knew I was gonna be out of tires. I wanted to get as close to the 97 as I could in case we got in lap traffic or his car gave up a little bit that I could take advantage of that. It gave me time to see where his car was the best and where I might be a little bit better. I could see he needed to run up against the wall in three and four and everytime he tried to get anywhere under that, he really got loose. So I was able to catch him behind, I believe the 24 car, and there were a number of cars there. I was able to slip underneath because my car was really the best about a lane down up in three and four. I could really get a good bite off even then with the tires worn and I got by him. Then we got tied up in some more lap traffic and I honestly didn't even know that Kurt was one of the guys that was going by me in turn two. I was so loose over there that I was just trying to hold it straight. I had guys that had fresh tires on going by me and I had Jeff Burton on the outside and I wasn't sure I was clear of him and Kurt got by me. I honestly wasn't sure I'd be able to get back by him, but, once again, in turn three I was able to take advantage of where my car was really good. Once I got in front, then I knew I could hang on. But it was quite a day. There was a lot of fun, fun racing and it was typical Rockingham. You've got to manage your tires and you've got to have a good chassis setup and you've got to have somebody in the pits that knows what they're doing."

    BRAD PARROTT, Crew Chief - No. 88 UPS Taurus - "I have the best driver in the business and once you put a team together like Doug and Robert (Yates) and Todd Parrott have put together and let a rookie crew chief come in and take the reigns, I'm not nervous at all. I'm very confident in my ability of reading air pressures and giving Dale what he needs. That's what we did today as a team. Dale drove his heart out and the pit crew was awesome. The fab shop built a beautiful race car for us to run here and the motor was flawless. It goes back to the balance of our race team and we found that today."

    DALE JARRETT CONTINUED - WERE YOU WORRIED ABOUT GETTING BOXED IN BY THE ROUSH CARS LATE? "I really didn't concern myself with that. If they did something, there was nothing I could do about that. I knew, especially the 99, he was on the same tires I was and, obviously, we had come around to lap him there. So he couldn't have been running as good as what we were. I think maybe the 16, I don't know if he got tires or if we lapped him, I don't know. There were just a lot of cars. Those guys are professionals. As much as they want their teammate to win, they're gonna let their drivers go at it and do it the best way that they can, so I really wasn't concerned. I was just more concerned about whether I could get by a competitor like Kurt Busch and then when I did, could I hold him off. I knew he really wanted to win. You go back to the end of last year and the start of this year, that young man is the hottest driver out here. That's what makes this win even more special is to know that we really beat the hottest guy in NASCAR right now."

    BRAD PARROTT CONTINUED - HOW MUCH HAS YOUR PREVIOUS WORK WITH THIS TEAM HELPED YOU? "It helps me a ton. I know what this race team is all about. I was with them from 1996. I went off on my own, but I stayed in tough with a lot of people on the race team to find out where their direction was and everything. I haven't changed anything. This race team is the same race team from last year, it's just that the communication I've brought with the team and letting the guys do their job, letting Dale Jarrett understand where I feel like we can make the car better as a team. Let me reinforce that this win really belongs to Raymond Fox and Shawn Parker and Elliott Sadler because they came and handed me the book. This morning I came in and I said, 'I think this setup is gonna be tight. Can I change something?' I said, 'Nope.' I told Dale when he sat in the car at the National Anthem, 'It's their setup. We'll work on it. We'll do what we can with it and we'll adjust on it all day long.' As I said during the race, 'We're gonna adjust on it until Dale drives the big brown truck. He's not gonna drive the big brown truck, so we're gonna keep adjusting on it.'"

    DALE JARRETT CONTINUED - WHAT ABOUT THE RACING DOWN THE END? "It was fun. It might not have been the fans' two favorite drivers racing for the victory, but they had to enjoy the racing and that's what they came here to see. Obviously, they come here to see their favorite driver win, but they come to see good racing and side-by-side racing and we gave them some of that. It's just guys wanting to go win. Aero-wise, I don't think that we've seen enough yet. This is not what you would really call an aero track. This is handling and about keeping the tires on it. Next week at Las Vegas we'll see a little bit more about aero and then the next week at Atlanta we'll see more. So we'll see where everybody stacks up. As far as the Chevrolets, we know they have a very good car. Adjusting their car to the balance that they have now may take them a race or two. I would say they'll be better next week and then the following week at Atlanta they'll be even better, so they'll get those figured out. Bobby Labonte had a great car, he just had a few problems, so it's gonna be interesting. I would say that right now it may look that what NASCAR has done with the templates, making these cars as close as they possibly can, may in fact lend itself to some really good racing." WHAT ABOUT THE DRIVER AT THIS TRACK? "I think that's what's great. It takes a team effort. Obviously, the pit crew had to do their job. We figured out that we probably didn't pick the best pit that we could have picked today and we saw that early on, but we made the most of it as the race went on. So they did their job to step things up and help me to get good track position. But from a driver's standpoint, you've got to love coming to a place like this. I've heard before that Rockingham needs to be paved, we don't want that to happen I'll assure you. We don't want a one-groove race track when we can race all around here. Yeah, it's hard to get a hold of and it's difficult to race on at times, but it does lend itself most of the time to some really good races and the driver really has to do his part here and I think that's where you get such satisfaction as a driver whenever you do well here." DOES BEATING A YOUNG DRIVER GIVE YOU MORE SATISFACTION? "Yeah, I think it does. Those guys are very talented and all the press that they're getting is well deserved because they do a great job, but, yeah, this is one for the older generation here. I think it shows that we're still ready to battle. Michael won last week. He's kind of in that middle ground. He's not the young spring chicken and he's not up to the older guys yet, so we're giving 'em a race. I think that we can. As I said, I'm 46 years old, but I don't think my age has a thing to do with my performance on the race track. I can hang with them at any track that we go to, but they're tough competitors. So this strikes one for the older guys I would say, the veterans, let's put it that way." HOW MUCH WAS EXPERIENCE A KEY IN THE FINAL PASS? "I think that played a little bit into it because I'd seen that happen here before. As a matter of fact, I'd been a part of it. I think I got passed by Jeff Gordon late in a race a number of years ago. Getting behind because that's where my car was working the best and he slipped underneath me and went on. I saw Jeff pass Rusty Wallace like that, so I kind of knew and I was hoping we could get ourselves in that position. I knew just passing him one-on-one was gonna be difficult, but then the other side of it was knowing after he passed me back I knew I had a few more laps. I wasn't exactly sure how many laps I had to go, but I knew if I could get myself right back to his bumper that because my car had better forward bite at that time I might be able to get by. When you've been around for a while, you realize that you can use every last second. All I had to do was be leading when we came off of turn four to the finish line." DID YOU HIT HIM IN THE BUMPER? "I couldn't tell you. I might have. I was trying to get him as loose as I could right there and still be able to drive by him. I wasn't trying to spin him out or anything, but knowing he was loose, if I could get underneath that rear bumper just a little bit I knew I could make him even looser without ever touching him." HOW DIFFERENT IS THE CAR AFTER 10 LAPS ON THOSE TIRES AS OPPOSED TO 70 LAPS? "It would have been like when you came back from Daytona last week and came into North Carolina, where the roads were dry and everything was fine in Georgia and South Carolina, and then when you hit North Carolina it was covered with ice. That's basically the way it was. You just lose traction. It goes pretty good if you've got a good car. Those first 10 laps you feel like you really want to run hard, but you know better. If you've been here for a period of time you know that you can't do that and I knew that my car was the best that it had been at that point, so I had to hold back just a little bit. But I was with some lapped cars and I had to work my way through there. I remember Brad coming on and saying, 'OK, you've got 46 laps on your tires now, you've got 46 to go.' I said, 'Man, this is gonna be tough,' because I had already started to get a little loose off the corners and trying to track somebody down at that point. It's like every 10 laps from that point you lose a little bit more and a little bit more. You find yourself where you really want to get on the throttle and you know that you're off the corner, but as soon as you try to put it to the floor, you break it loose and it turns sideways, so it just continuously gets worse as you go on." DID YOU DO ANYTHING DIFFERENT FROM A WORKOUT REGIMENT? "I'm not sure how much that had to do with it other than my age, just knowing I was getting another year old. I sat down with the guy that I train with and I said, 'I need to work a little harder than what we have because I need to be in a little better shape. I need to get better yet,' because it's not gonna get easier. The racing is gonna get tougher and as it gets tougher that takes its toll on you not only mentally, but physically. So in the off-season where I normally work four days a week, I went to working basically six days a week. I'd work three days, take a day off, and then three days so I was basically working six out of seven days. It helped me get into better shape. I came into the season in better shape. It hurt my golf game tremendously because I never played golf. Once I was through working out and doing my business for the day, then it was time to go to a basketball game with one of my kids. But I knew that when we showed up at Daytona I was in the best shape that I've ever been in in my life and I think that's pretty good at 46. So it did make me realize that if I'm gonna compete with these guys, then I've got to be ready in that respect." DID YOUR TRAINING CHANGE? "I didn't change my actual training that much, I probably worked a little heavier in the weight side of it than what I had been, so I feel like I'm a little stronger in that respect. The cardio side of it, I went from basically a 30-40 minute workout there to each day it was between 45 minutes and an hour. So I took my workouts and not only stepped them up from basically being an hour-and-a-half long to an hour and 45 minutes, most days it was two hours so I was putting in more time there." IN '97 YOU LED ALMOST 400 LAPS AND DIDN'T WIN. TODAY, YOU LED JUST AT THE END. "I learned a valuable lesson that day. As a matter of fact, we had a couple of years in a row that we led the most laps and didn't win the race, we finished second, but I was thinking about that. As a matter of fact, at one point when I cleared some of the lap traffic at the initial part of the restart there, Brad come on and said, 'You're a tenth faster,' and then a couple of times maybe two tenths faster on a lap and I backed off at that point in time. I said, 'I can run this and I can run them down right now, but what am I gonna do when I get there then?' So I did back off and wanted to pace myself. Brad kept me informed of how we were doing and I could obviously see what was going on in front of me. So, yes, I consciously made the effort to make sure that when I did get to him, that I was gonna have enough to be able to get by them - that I wasn't just gonna get to them and that was gonna be all. So it was a lesson learned. I try to pay attention when guys beat me as to why they do that." WHAT DO YOU SEE IN KURT AS TO WHY HIS MOMENTUM HAS CARRIED OVER FROM LAST YEAR? "First off, he's got a lot of talent, but that talent is no good if you don't have that surrounding cast. He and Jimmy Fennig and those guys have seemed to really hit it off. They have a good line of communication. There were a number of times that we were parked beside of him last year before he went on his tear and went flying up into the top five, but we watched them closely. They really work hard. I've talked to Jimmy a few times and Kurt has a good feel for the car and knows what he wants. He will drive a car harder than anybody else out here - as hard as anybody that I've ever seen anyway - but he's not out of control doing that. He just has a lot of natural ability and he puts it to good use. I think, along with that, I see something that's a little bit scary for the rest of us in that he's getting smarter too out here, knowing when he can go and when he can't. When his car isn't exactly right, he doesn't try to force the issue, so they've done a really good job. You always wonder and I think all of us wondered if he would continue that coming into this year, but he's done that. I told someone earlier this week about the season and who might be a surprise as far as the championship goes - now it's easy to sit here and say but I honestly said this week - that I don't know if he would be a surprise to other people, but Kurt Busch is a guy that I think everybody is gonna have to contend with. He runs well at every single type of race track. I don't know that he's won at each of those, but he's run in the top two or three at every type of track that we go to." CAN YOU COMPARE LAST YEAR'S CREW CHIEF SITUATION TO THIS YEAR'S? "We've made a lot of changes and I think one of the biggest changes, and this is nothing against Robert Yates. He's a wonderful man for those of you that know him. He's a wonderful owner and I wouldn't want to drive for anyone else, but Doug Yates has taken over basically as general manager of our race team. Doug came in and he's been kind of standing back and looking - just taking care of his engine program for a number of years now, but he stepped in and realized that we had to make some gains in a hurry in a number of areas. He wasn't afraid to move people around, bring in new people to put 'em in different positions, and I think he deserves a lot of the credit for these two teams performing the way they the first two weeks. We've worked well together. He brought both race teams back under one roof and that's a tremendous help to us. He sat down with Elliott and Brad and Todd and Robert and Raymond and Shawn and said, 'OK, what do you guys need to make this a winning race team again?' He said, 'We'll get it. If it's people, then we're gonna go get the people we need. If it's different parts, then we're gonna get that too if we need to do things differently there.' So I think he deserves a tremendous amount of credit. Then the other side of it is that he got the people in there and let them know right off that they were gonna work closely together. I can't say enough about the way that Brad and our guys have worked with the 38 group so far. They've done a really good job of communicating. At Daytona it was just unbelievable how much talking went back and forth between the two teams to help us get cars that would run there. So I think this is a glimpse of what we're gonna be able to do. Again, the credit goes to all the guys, but, especially, Doug Yates." WHAT ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF LOSING A RACE HERE? "Why would we want to leave here? It is close to home. Honestly, in my heart I hope that we don't, not just because I won here today. It is close to home. I didn't come down here until Friday morning, so it gave me an extra night at my house with my wife and kids. It's a great racing facility. You have great races, but, on the other side of it, I understand NASCAR's position. They have to look at the sport as a whole as to what's best for our sport at this day and time. The TV networks - FOX and NBC - have put out a tremendous amount of money to help grow this sport and they have done that. NASCAR is doing that and sitting with them to see what's gonna make this profitable and good for them as well as our sponsors and to move our sport forward. I have mixed feelings there. I understand that another race in California, that may be better. I don't know. It's hard for me to understand that that would be exactly what we would need, but I certainly would hate to see us lose one here." HOW BIG IS IT TO GET BRAD HIS FIRST CUP WIN? "It means a lot. To see the effort that Brad has put forth since he came on board, he's really organized this race team and done a good job with his people. He believes in the people that he has working with him and I think that's gonna take a tremendous amount of pressure off of him right now - to know that he's done this. There wasn't any doubt in our minds that he could do it, but to get that out of the way this early, I really enjoy what he brings to this team and the enthusiasm that's there. He really has a great, positive attitude and you can see that carry over. I try to bring that to the race team too, but he even gets me enthused. I love doing what I do and to have somebody like him cheering me on means a lot. This is very important for us and for Brad."

    BRAD PARROTT CONTINUED - ON HIS WORKOUT ROUTINE. "They threw me in the river at Daytona. The put an open mike on me and I was running and said, 'Man, I'm fat.' I don't have time to work out. My work out is making these race cars as fast as we can get 'em in the Robert Yates Racing stable. The teamwork is there. The people that are working together are looking for the same thing now. Last year at Robert Yates Racing we were out of two different shops and we didn't share the information like we're sharing now. As you saw with Roush Racing last year, yes I was there last year, and I brought some of that teamwork there. You've got to communicate with your teammates because if Raymond and Elliott wouldn't have come down and tested three weeks ago, we would have had no information to go off of today. It's the teamwork that's gonna lead us to a lot of wins this year."

     

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