Sylvania 300 - GM Post-Race Quotes

ROBBIE LOOMIS, CREW CHIEF, NO. 24 DuPONT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: NOTE: Jeff Gordon brought out the first caution flag of the day on lap 127 when he pitted with the rest of the leaders. Teammate Jimmie Johnson was already stopped in his pit when Gordon dived low under Michael Waltrip, who was pitted in the stall ahead of Gordon's (two ahead of Johnson's). Waltrip turned into his pit, Gordon was already there and the two made contact, sending Gordon's car into Johnson's crew. Front tire carrier Ryan McCray and front tire changer Cory Quick were both struck by Gordon's car, but neither was seriously injured. Both crew members were treated and released from the Infield Care Center.

LOOMIS: "It was our first pit stop under yellow, and I don't think Jeff knew Michael was in that pit stall. We knew it was going to be close, so Jeff came under Michael. I should have helped him a little more."

JOE NEMECHEK, NO. 25 UAW-DELPHI CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 3rd: "It's a fun race track to come to. I have to thank all the New Hampshire fans that come here and support all this. We have a great time coming up here and racing. I had a great car and the UAW-Delphi Chevrolet was really good. We kind of got out of sync there; I bent the front fender in when Dale Jarrett wrecked and we had to pit so we got out of sync. It didn't hurt us there at the end. I was racing Ricky [Rudd] really, really hard there trying to get that spot from him. Just to get a top-five.we had a top-five here last time and ran out of gas. It feels really good." HOW ABOUT YOUR PIT WORK? "When we got the fender smashed in, we had to pit and no one else did. Then on the next caution, we stayed out when everyone else pitted. We took two right-side tires and they had to get enough gas in it to go the last 40 laps. We had an awesome motor today. We were turning that thing really hard."

DALE EARNHARDT JR., NO. 8 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 5th: "We had the best car, and then about 120 laps in I lost a cylinder, so we had to run the rest of the race with seven cylinders. The car was still pretty good after that. I just had to make everything up in the corner that I was losing on the straightaway, and we were already going through the corner about as good as we could before that. It was a good job by my guys to pit the car when they did to get us out and get a top-five. I led a lot of laps. On eight cylinders, we had the car to beat."

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE'S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Won his third race of the 2003 season and completed a sweep of races at New Hampshire International Speedway. He heads to Dover International Speedway next week, where he swept both races in 2002. It was Johnson's sixth career victory.

"We had a great race car. With what happened on pit road, with our guys getting hit, to come back from that with no one being injured, we're just so thankful. I have to thank the Good Lord for watching over my guys today. When I looked up, I saw two of my guys on the windshield of the 24 going for a ride. They got up, in pain, and finished the stop and kept us going all day long. I want to thank everybody at Lowe's, Hendrick Motorsports. We had a great car and we had to overcome a lot of adversity today. It took the whole team to do it, and we did it." ANY CLOSE CALLS? "Yeah, there were a lot of close calls. I ended up getting tangled up with Ward Burton and I'm sorry for that. He was racing really hard and I was too. I got loose in front of him going into Turn 1 and got into him and spun him up into the wall. He was pretty mad and he tried wrecking me four or five times while we were out there under green. But I'm just glad nothing happened. Chad Knaus kept his head in there and worked on a strategy that was going to work out for us. The guys that were hit, they pulled it back together and were able to finish the stops the rest of the day and keep us out there."

CHAD KNAUS, CREW CHIEF, NO. 48 LOWE'S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: "We made some significant changes to the car early on in the race, but after that it was just a little bit of air pressure and a little bit of panhard bar. The car was pretty decent and Jimmie did a heck of a job."

BOBBY LABONTE, NO. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 16th; WERE YOU SATISFIED WITH THAT, GIVEN THE WAY YOUR WEEKEND HAS GONE? "Yes and no. We had two spark plug wires burn off [he radioed his crew saying that the engine was about to blow, but in reality, rubber had collected around the headers and burned through the two wires] with about 20 to go when we were going to pit. We weren't very good, but we were going to be lucky on our pit strategy. We were going to end up with a good finish by our fuel mileage, because we weren't going to have to pit for very long. We came in late because we were running so bad, but that all kind of went away when the spark plug wire went bad."

MICHAEL WALTRIP, NO. 15 NAPA CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 26th; pitted for fuel while leading on lap 272 but had the gas can hang in the filler neck when leaving the pits. It cost him a stop-and-go penalty and the race. "It was unfortunate to have such a thing mess you up. I'm just proud of the car.That's the best I've ever run here. I worked real hard yesterday conveying my thoughts and feelings to the team, and together we came up with a setup. I woke up this morning and I felt like Jeff Gordon. I felt like I was going to be hard to beat today, and that's a great feeling, to have that kind of confidence." WHAT IS THE KEY TO A TRACK LIKE THIS? "You just have to be confident in what you feel and what your hands and your butt tell you, and then relate it to the team and then have them be smart enough to translate it to the car. It's really more about communicating from my rear end to their heads to this car. We've been doing a better job of that lately." ABOUT THE EARLY CRASH IN THE PITS WITH JEFF GORDON. "NASCAR could solve all of this real easy if they would just use their heads and do one thing: once you pass the pit road speed cone, you can't freaking pass. People are getting those end stalls-that's why you saw this car down there, the 24 and the 48, because they know they can speed to their pit while everyone else is waiting in line. You cannot speed, you cannot pass once you cross that line. It would have kept that wreck from happening on pit road today and maybe next time it would have saved someone from getting hurt. And another stupid thing they've got going on is this racing back to the yellow. One car, the 9, is leading the race, all he has to do is go hammer down through the accident scene. That takes 20 cars out of the equation of getting their lap back. When the leader stops, like Bill did, everybody thinks they're going to get their lap back and then you have a gold rush coming to the guy that's wrecked, sitting in the middle of the track. Bill uses his head, NASCAR says 'leader, race back to the wreck,' and you are going to leave people way behind. They're not going to have a chance to get their lap back. It was stupid."

ROBBY GORDON, NO. 31 CINGULAR CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 21st: "Damn. I probably could have saved the fuel to do it, too. If I run 50 laps and drive 50 feet less in each straightaway, we win the race. Hat's off to Hamlin and Chris Andrews and everybody at RCR. We do make good gas mileage. That's not a problem. It went 105 laps there, or something. If we get luck and catch a caution there at the end, we win." YOU GETTING TIRED OF FUEL MILEAGE RACING? "Not really. It's not fuel-mileage racing, it's smartest-guy-wins racing. Unfortunately, we were about four or five laps short of being the smartest guy."

JOHN ANDRETTI, NO. 1 PENNZOIL CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 12th: "I'm pretty happy. We just missed the setup a little bit. The guys did some great adjustments on the car. We just need to pit, make one change on the car and go back at it. We would have been really fast. After seeing Junior and Michael's setups this morning, I was more convinced I should go that way, but I wasn't willing to do it. It's my fault, but the Pennzoil Chevy team did a great job to keep us going and keep us in the hunt and get a decent result with where we started and how we started. It says a lot about the team." A LOT BETTER THAN THE LAST TIME YOU CAME HERE [JIMMY SPENCER SPUN HIM EIGHT LAPS INTO THE JULY RACE], RIGHT? "Yeah, I think I have 307 laps here now without getting wrecked."

JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DuPONT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 19th: "It was hard to describe my day. It was up and down. We had a great race car. I'm real happy with the way it performed. We just had trouble on pit road. I made a mistake and dived in to Michael Waltrip. I didn't realize he was pitted where he was. I went to shoot into my pits and probably jumped the gun a little, and I drove into the side of him. We were very lucky that we didn't hurt one of Jimmie's guys, and the great comeback by them was awesome. We didn't get enough fuel on our last pit stop, so we ran out. It was a pretty bad day at the end."

KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 GM GOODWRENCH CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 13th: "It was a good car and it ran good all day." WHAT WAS YOUR STRATEGY ABOUT FUEL? "Wrong. We ran out of gas. That about sums up the whole day."

RICKY CRAVEN, NO. 32 TIDE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: Finished 38th: "I'm terribly disappointed, as I always am when I don't perform up to my expectations in front of my hometown fans. I knew from the green flag that there was something wrong with the carburetor. It just seemed to be flooding out. The only way I could get it to clear was to hold my foot down about a half-inch and wait for it to clear up before I could really get back on the gas. That' s what led to us running out of gas on the first pit stop. Then, when the engine went dead, I had no way of knowing what my speed was on pit road, and I got caught speeding. As soon as we replaced the carburetor, it cleared up and ran well, but by then we were too far behind to be competitive. I'm just disappointed."

JOE NEMECHEK POST-RACE PRESS CONFERENCE:

TELL US ABOUT YOUR DAY. "It went good. To finish third here feels really good, for all the stuff we've been through lately. It seems like anything that could go wrong has, and it's like anything that happens, it happens in front of us. Today, Jimmy Spencer got into the back of Dale Jarrett and when that wreck happened it smashed my front fender in. We had to pit and it got us out of sequence. I thought we were done because we went to the back, but the car was good, we were able to pass a lot of cars and that out-of-sequence stop didn't hurt us at the end."

IT WAS A LITTLE CRAZY THERE AT THE END: "It was. My guys came on the radio and told me I was running ninth. I said, 'say what?' Some of those guys were stretching their gas mileage."

WHAT WAS THE DAMAGE ON THAT CRASH? "It knocked the left front fender in on the tire. The caution came out, and it was close enough to the tire that when you hit the brakes and the nose comes down, it was going to rub. We didn't need to end up having to stop under green to fix it. We pitted a couple times and beat it out real good and got it ready to go. We pitted for the last time was with 45 laps to go, right behind Ricky, at the same time."

DO YOU CONSIDER YOUR VICTORY HERE IN 1999 AS A SORT OF VALIDATION FOR YOURSELF? "That was a long time ago. Yeah, at that point in time, we announced we were splitting up and then we came here and won. That was really neat. Fortunately, this year we got a victory at Richmond and last week, they talked about Brian Vickers moving up in the 25. The team's not giving up, and it's just a business decision that Rick had to make. Believe me, I do a lot of work for the organization and Rick is looking out for me. He's trying to find me something good to drive. It's cool. They really don't have to do anything, but Rick is going out of his way to help me out."

HOW SLICK WAS THE TRACK TODAY? "I thought it was really good. It was just cold tires, typical of the way this track has been since we've been coming up here. It takes about four or five laps to get going, and they had the Busch North race, where they run a different tire, and the beginning of the race it wasn't bad. You slip and slide about four or five laps and then it's good. It's about how it's always been. The new asphalt they put down is really good. It's made for some good racing. At least we can pass. If you get your car working well down low, you can run up underneath or you can run high. It was a good race today."

DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU'RE RACING MORE TO BUILD A RESUME? "I feel like I'm a veteran. I've been around. I've won three Winston Cup races and it's not easy to do that. I'm not going to be unemployed long. There's a lot of stuff going on. I was hoping to finish my career there at Hendrick Motorsports and who knows, maybe some day I'll be back there. I'll have a good ride when it' s all said and done, and I'm not worried about it. I'm just trying to win races. That's what it's all about."

JIMMIE JOHNSON POST-RACE PRESS CONFERENCE:

Johnson's victory was his third of the 2003 season and the sixth of his career in his 66th career start. He remains fourth in the Winston Cup point standings, trailing leader Matt Kenseth by 472 points. He is the first driver to sweep both NHIS races, and the first repeat winner in the last eight races here. The victory was his third top-10 finish in four races here, his eighth top-five and 12th top-10 this season. It is Chevrolet's 13th victory in 27 races. Johnson led 12 laps, including the final seven.

SHARE YOUR DAY WITH US. 'The way it started off, it seemed like it was going to be a normal day for us and we were going to race for the win and it would be between four or five cars. When that first pit stop came along and we had that contact on pit road and the 24 and 15 slid in and struck three of our guys.fortunately, no one was injured or hurt. They were shaken up, but they were able to still perform their stops. The next stop they did, they did a 13.7 on a four-tire stop. If you look at them, they were hardly able to speak a complete sentence, but they are trained so well, they could still rattle off a 13.7 stop. Everything was great with those guys, they were able to get back on their feet and finish that stop. That put us in the back, and this track is so tough to pass on. We just worked on the setup and started getting by some guys. I got into a little trouble with Ward Burton, just racing hard for position. That added some excitement for me as the race went on. Four or five times, he tried wrecking us as I was lapping him. He felt that what I did to him was intentional. That's the last thing I would do. I think, knowing my history in racing and how I race people, I'm the last one to run into anybody. It was just a racing incident, he was turned around and hit the wall and obviously upset. Dodging the bullet on pit road with our guys getting hurt, the 22 taking shots at us, I was still able to work on the car and make it fast and we did a great job on that. At the end, we did gas only and the car was handling so well we were able to stay out on older tires and bring it home."

ON THE PIT ROAD CRASH, DO YOU THINK THE YELLOW WAS NEEDED AT THAT TIME? "I don't even recall what brought out the caution [debris]. When that happened, I couldn't remember the first part of the race with everything that went on. I didn't even know why were under caution."

WHO WAS THE THIRD CREWMAN INJURED? " Our jack man, Chris Anderson. Everybody is fine. The one who seems like he's not really home is Ryan McCray, and he' s the front tire carrier, but Chad [Knaus] can speak for me, there's no one ever home there [laughter]. He's probably shaken up the worst. I saw Cory and Ryan on the windshield of the 24 when it went by. I saw McCray's feet but I didn't see him hit the ground. I think he was almost between the 15 and the 24. I saw Cory come off Jeff's car and hit the ground. I saw him do the quick check on his body, stand up and look everything over and then go back to performing his job. I didn't really see what happened to McCray. He could have possibly come down on his head. Cory came down pretty much on his side. Ryan possibly came down on his head and that's why he's a little dingy. I didn't see the jack man. I just saw the two on the windshield."

CHAD KNAUS, CREW CHIEF: "McCray's got a bruised midsection, he might have a bruised rib or something like that. Cory Quick has some beat-up shins, from going up on the hood. Chris Anderson, I think he may have just bummed his knee a little bit. I was just out there checking on them and talking to them. They're going to go in for physicals tomorrow and I think they'll be fine. It's just a testament to the training and the athleticism that these guys have. Everybody says these racers aren't athletes. The drivers go out and drive their butts off for 400, 600, 300 miles or whatever it is, in 120-, 140-degree weather and then the pit crews go out there and get hit by race cars and bounce back up and finish their jobs while some football players get beat up on the field and have to sit out for a while. I'm really impressed with the guys that we have and the excitement and enthusiasm they have to be able to complete their job. They came back from the infield care center, and we did a four-tire stop directly afterwards, and that was a 13.7-second pit stop. That's just awesome after the trauma they just went through." WERE YOU GOING TO ASSUME ONE OF THEIR JOBS? "I was going to go in and change tires for Cory, it I had to." DID YOU HAVE TO? No." YOU DON'T HAVE A BACKUP TIRE CHANGER ON THE ROSTER? "At the track, it gets hard, because there's travel involved, especially coming all the way up here. Sometimes, at the closer races, we have a little more depth in the team, but I've been slated as the backup tire changer if something were to happen, which is fine. Typically, it something like that happens, you don't recover. The team gets stuck in the back and track position becomes an issue. It's hard to get back, so it doesn't play that big a role if you have a 14-second pit stop."

JIMMIE JOHNSON:

DID JEFF GORDON SAY ANYTHING TO YOU? "He came to Victory Lane and spoke a while with the guys and gave his congratulations throughout. It was a weird ceremony for the whole team. With the close call we had, I guess we haven't really recovered from that. Just look at how close three of our teammates came to being injured. It was kind of a low-key Victory Lane. Jeff came in and you could just see the expression on his face. He was worried sick still until he actually saw the guys and they spoke for a while. He did his normal congratulations and we congratulated him for being the owner of the winning car."

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN THE SITUATION DALE JARRETT WAS IN WHEN HE WAS SITTING THERE ON THE FRONTSTRETCH? "I didn't see it, but I heard some chatter between my spotter and Chad as to it could have killed somebody and that it was a pretty scary moment. When I came around Turn 4 and I saw what was sitting there, I figured they were probably two or three wide racing to get laps back. Fortunately, I've never been in that position." DO YOU HAVE A SOLUTION? "Just don't race back to the yellow. Until the rule is made where you don't, where do you draw the line? If the rule is there that you can get your lap back, you're going to try to do it. Luckily, we have trained professionals and everyone has spotters who are going to tell them where everybody is. I don't think that makes it any better, but it's one of those things we have to deal with. In one situation, it's a good thing and another day, like today in that incident, it's the worst situation you could ever have. There's areguments working back and forth from both sides as to what is the right answer."

DO YOU THINK THAT RULE NEEDS TO BE REVIEWED? "We've been talking about it for years. There's always been an incidence of a car racing through debris, oil or guys that need medical attention, or the issue of the gentlemen's agreement. There's always been some issue that relates back to racing back to the caution. It's always been there and this is just another chapter in it."

WAS IT A LAPSE OF JUDGMENT ON JEFF'S PART WHEN HE TRIED TO GET UNDER MICHAEL? "He wasn't aware the 15 was pitted there. He had no idea. That was where the problem was. He pulled under the 15 and tried to accelerate to his pit stall. As soon as he hit the gas the 15 pulled into his stall and they made contact."

KNAUS: "The reason the 15 was out so far is Slugger [Labbe], his crew chief, and myself spoke before the race and he was going to stay out as wide as he could to give our guys as much room as possible. What he was going was trying to give our guys enough room so he didn't endanger them. But what happened is that Jeff didn't know that was the 15's pit right there and he was going to have to turn in real late. They [the 15] were doing what they were supposed to do and it was just a misread. It was an accident, just one of those things." WAS THAT CAUTION NEEDED? "We definitely didn't need it. We were rolling along pretty good at that time and felt pretty confident. Debris is debris and NASCAR's going to do whatever they can to keep these drivers safe . God forbid, somebody runs over something with the right front and barrel into the wall because they ran over a piece of debris. From their perspective it was what they needed to do at the time."

HOW MEANINGFUL IS IT TO SWEEP HERE? "It's weird. We were able to do it at Dover last year and then again this year at New Hampshire. Coming in there's a lot of pressure on you to do this. We had the same race car, the same things, we were good in practice yesterday. We knew all the ingredients were there. You sleep on it all night long and wonder how you're going to mess it up. It's really tough to do. Today, with what happened on pit road, I thought, 'we're just going to have to salvage what we can.' Chad came on the radio and said, 'hey, bud, you're 16th now and we need a top-10. We need good points, let's just get good points.' I was under the same realization that it was going to be virtually impossible for us to get to the front, but once everybody got strung out and we started passing guys, before we knew it we were in second. So it was meant to be. It's very hard to come back and repeat and I'm glad that we've done it. We're the first ones to do it in the 18 years they've been coming here. It's a huge honor, but a huge amount of stress for the last week knowing that New Hampshire was the next one all the way through taking the checkered flag."

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