The Winston - Ford Post-Race Quotes

TODD BODINE - No. 54 National Guard Taurus - "We came off of two. I broke loose under Kenny (Wallace) on that restart. It's 20 laps and we're all in the front, so there's no need to get in a rush, but Tony (Raines) got a run on the outside, I think, and he wasn't far enough up. The caution was out and I was just trying to race back to the caution and he got into me. I know Tony doesn't race like that. It wasn't anything intentional. It's just the excitement of The Winston. Running up front, everybody wants to go to the front, but this doesn't need to happen on the second lap."

JEFF BURTON - No. 99 CITGO Taurus - WINNER'S INTERVIEW - "It's over. It's time to go onto the next race. We've got a fast race car and we need to try to take advantage of it tonight. It's wild. I expected it to be wild and it is wild, so it's gonna be even more wild this race but that's what I want. I'm ready to get into it and get going." HOW MUCH WILL THOSE 30 LAPS HELP IN THE WINSTON? "We know what our car is gonna do. I've always said if you can find a way to get in after the Open, it should be a little bit of an advantage, but there's a lot of stuff to get through and a lot of really good cars in this next race. There were a lot of good cars in that last race, so we've got our work cut out for us." HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT BEING IN THE WINSTON NOW? "It means a lot to be in The Winston. It's our all-star event and not to be in it is not a good thing. We've really been agonizing over the fact that we weren't in The Winston for the right reasons and we did a great job today. It's a brand new car and our guys did a great job getting it ready. This race is over. It's time to go onto the next one and we've got some work ahead of us to get done. We've got a fast car, now we've got to go see if we can get it done." CAN YOU TALK ABOUT GOING THREE-WIDE IN TURN ONE ON THAT FIRST LAP OF THE FINAL SEGMENT? "I didn't even know who made it three-wide, I just knew it was three-wide and all I could do was kind of hold my position and hope for the best. That's what you have to do in these kind of races. They held back and got a run on us. That's OK. Racing is racing and you've got to do what you've got to do, but I just had to hold my line and hope for the best."

ELLIOTT SADLER - No. 38 M&M's Taurus (Finished 23rd) - "It's very disappointing. To bring a new race car out here and have it run like that is kind of frustrating. I really don't know what to do to fix it. We're gonna try to bring back a different car next week and, hopefully, it'll be a little bit better. We'll wait and see, but it's embarrassing to run like that. We know we've got to go to work, so we'll see what we can do this week and, hopefully, make a better showing for the 600." THE LEFT-FRONT HAS A LITTLE SHEETMETAL DAMAGE. DID THAT HAVE A NEGATIVE EFFECT? "No. It was bad way before that happened, so that didn't have any effect on the car at all. If anything, it might have made it better with the way it slung out like that, but we just missed it pretty good. We need to go back to work."

MARK MARTIN - No. 6 Viagra Taurus (Finished 15th) - "I was slowing down, but I had to get slowed down because the 5 was going around slowly and somebody ran into the back of me. It was probably Bill (Elliott) because I think he was running behind me and he got into the back of me and that turned us out of control. It just wadded up from there. The 20 just got in the back of the 5 and turned him and he was doing a slow spin, so I had to wait for it to go down or up. The 20 and I really had to really whoa down, but then I got hit from behind. The wreck was on once the 5 started turning sideways."

DALE JARRETT - No. 88 UPS Taurus (Finished 18th) - "I saw the 5 get turned. I'm not sure, but it looked like they might have gone three-wide. Anyway, when I saw that and saw him go up the track I thought I had a perfect opening to get to the bottom because I had beaten Gordon off turn four and got myself back on the bottom of the track in the last transfer spot. I thought I was gonna sneak by it, but I guess he ran in the back of me. It's just everybody trying to get what they can get. Unfortunately, we ended up in the middle of the wreck and that's kind of been the way this year has been." YOU WERE TRYING TO HOLD GORDON OFF FOR THE LAST SPOT UNTIL THE WRECK. YOU WERE JUST TRYING TO MAKE YOUR CAR AS WIDE AS POSSIBLE? "I was just trying to get myself back to the bottom to where I could give myself a chance to at least run around and get off the corner to try and make something happen."

KURT BUSCH - No. 97 Rubbermaid Taurus (Finished 2nd) - "That was a lot of fun. I think they should give out money for passing cars and we'd have ended up with a lot of cash tonight. It's just a testament to the crew. It's a lot of fun to drive these kind of cars and I hope that we've got a great car like that next weekend. It's a car we saved and built for the 600 and it's a special paint scheme with Blue Ice next week, so to cap off this evening it's a lot of fun to come out and throw the points away and just duel for cash. There are moves you wouldn't pull in 100 years and it's a lot of fun to throw it up on the outside like that." HOW GOOD WAS THE CAR IN THE LAST SEGMENT? "It was money-on. I mean, we made just one little to it for a shorter run and it was evident because we slowed up the last four laps of that run. It's awesome to drive cars like this and I've just got to thank my crew and all the sponsors that put us in this kind of position to go out and win some money." HOW HARD IS IT JUST TO SURVIVE THIS RACE? "You've got to make calculated moves coming on pit road. There were a couple of times when we should have pitted, but Jimmy said to stay out. I was thinking we should pit, but, all in all, you've got to keep your track position because when you go to the back it's difficult to pass cars when everybody is scrambling." JIMMIE JOHNSON WON THE SECOND SEGMENT LAST YEAR AND SUFFERED WITH THE INVERSION. YOU KNOW HOW HE FELT. "I think we had the fastest car or maybe the 18 did - he was stout. It's just a good way to run tonight. We didn't come here to play possum, so we ended up winning that second segment and ended up coming home second overall, so it wasn't a bad day." WERE YOU HAVING FUN OUT THERE? "I was having a good time. You've always got to beat the 48 car when you come to Lowe's Motor Speedway. They're a stout bunch and they've always got their game on. Whether they chose to stay in the midpack and then run strong at the end, that's what it took for them to win. I didn't think we'd be able to come up that far from 10th place to finish second, so we had a great run. I'm real proud of my team and the way that this Ford ran."

JEFF BURTON - No. 99 CITGO Taurus (Finished 9th) - YOU KEPT HAVING TO SLOW DOWN BEHIND WRECKS IN THAT SECOND SEGMENT. "We just kept losing our track position and then we got off a little bit on our chassis and it took us a long time to get it back. We'd get ourselves right in the middle where we needed to be and then the wreck would happen and we'd lose all of it. Then I got into Ward and almost spun out, but I caught it and went all the way to last. I had to come back again, so we were back and forth all night. It was pretty interesting." HOW BIG OF A LIFT IS IT FOR THIS TEAM TO GET TO VICTORY LANE TONIGHT? "I don't know. Winning is winning, there's no doubt about that. Obviously, the caliber of cars in the Open isn't what The Winston is, but, still, there are some good cars in there. We had a good practice last night and we ran well tonight. I'm disappointed with how we ran in The Winston because something just got away from us there. We'll get home and try to figure out what that was and we'll bring this car back. I don't know, it was a real strange night. Everytime we put a set of tires on it the car did something radically different. I don't understand why that is because I know the tires aren't that different. Since we weren't allotted enough tires - because only one guy was gonna transfer - none of our tires matched. We had a hodge-podge of stuff and I think that really had an effect on how we could run."

RICKY RUDD - No. 21 Motorcraft Taurus (Finished 11th) - "I didn't see anything a whole lot different than I've seen in Winston's from the past. It's always exciting. There are always a lot of wrecks. It's survival, but then you need to have your car adjusted so you're ready to win at the end. We had the Motorcraft/Air Force Ford in there all night. I thought the guys did a great job. We kept making that transfer spot every time, but we were just real tight. We couldn't get the front end to stick in the corner like we wanted to, so we at least had a good seat to see what was going on." WHAT ABOUT THE PASS ON RUSTY? "Our car was pushing really bad and I couldn't get it to turn and stay on the bottom, so the only chance I had at all was to try to drive it into the upper lane and see if the front end would stick and it stuck for one lap anyway. That gave me enough momentum to beat Rusty off the corner. I know he was struggling with his handling on his car also. It wasn't pretty for either one of us, but I've never raced so hard for a transfer spot or 20th before, but it was fun racing." WHAT DID YOU LEARN FOR THE 600? "You hate to say you used this as a test because there's a lot of money on the line and we wanted to run good, but we've been experimenting a lot trying to find ourselves. We came with a car tonight that we thought we were gonna be better with the 600 car. We're gonna bring back a different car on purpose that is built completely different from one another, so we're still in a severe learning mode right now."

KURT BUSCH PRESS CONFERENCE - "It was quite a night for us. It was a lot of fun to race a race car that was that fast and just being given this opportunity from my father and from Jack Roush, just to go out on a Saturday and pass some race cars to try to get to the front as quick as I could. There was an agenda that we had the first segment, the second segment, and it started to deteriorate a little bit in the second segment and then, of course, in the third segment we all know what we needed to do, which is go to the front. We came up a bit shy, but I think we put on a great show. I had a lot of fun doing it and I had no idea a car would stick on the outside for that long." WHAT HAPPENED ON THE RESTART TO BEGIN THE THIRD SEGMENT? "I noticed that they pulled that number 10 pill, which we all knew was gonna happen, so here we are in 10th. They wrecked a couple of cars, so there wasn't a full field of 14. It looked like the 21 car behind me pulled to the inside, so I was the last car on the outside lane. With the rules the way they're set up for The Winston, this is a restart, this is not the initial start so you can pass to the outside. So I saw an opportunity to make a pass because the way this front straightaway is shaped, the outside groove or no man's land opens up and you put it in there and see what happens. I think Harvick had the same idea. He hesitated but did get in that hole and I knew when my spotter said four-wide and I hadn't been across the start-finish line that we were gonna get pulled back. You just try things like that with fresh tires and see what happens." IF THAT WAS THE 600 WOULD THAT MOVE HAVE BEEN OK? "That's the deal with The Winston is you have to know the rules and know what position you're in to do things differently. When you're in the 600, there's not double-file restarts unless you have lapped cars. When you're running 600 miles, you've got all day to pass somebody. So there are things you do in The Winston because you've only got 20 laps and you've got four fresh tires. You've got to go to the front now. I was gonna wait a lap, that's what Jimmy and I discussed, but then I thought if I waited a lap the front two cars would be gone and I'd never see them. So I thought I had to give myself an opportunity, which was to put it on the outside and pass cars. So on the second restart, Harvick found a lane on the inside and that opened it up for me to pass three cars by the time I came out of turn two." WERE YOU AS LOOSE AS EVERYBODY ELSE? "Yeah, this is gonna be a big debate and we'll probably have more comments after the 600 on how things shape up. I did a Goodyear tire test here a year ago and thoroughly enjoyed the different experiments that they gave me to try out and for me to give them feedback so they could come up with calculations on what kind of tire to run. We were able to come to conclusions on what we should run at Dover by running here. We chose a new tire for the Dover fall race because in the spring race we had all kinds of blowouts at Dover, so I didn't really see the need to change the tire here. But what had happened is now that we've got downforce off these cars, they want to start softening up the tire a little bit. So we can't say that they softened it up a ton, it was just small increments in the way that tires are rated. There was a big thing in the pit area a few years ago with tire raters, all teams buying these $15,000 machines and parking them at the back of their haulers and rating tires. Well, now Goodyear does that for us. They give us a sheet and we see all of our tires. Our tire guy goes through 'em and positions each set the way it needs to be. All I'm getting at is that now these tires are rated at a specific number and they've taken away 100 pounds of rate off the right-front and the right-rear, so that made the car feel a little different. It for surely didn't match people's setups, it didn't match their shocks and they've obviously got these cars to where they're looser, so you put softer tires on the right side and it's gonna be looser. That's what happened tonight. We had to make adjustments accordingly. In happy hour yesterday the first time in the daylight we were awesome. We went out there at night and we were completely junk. We were gonna go to the back faster than anybody tonight, so we went wholesale on our changes. That's the way our team has been able to make adjustments on our Ford to get it to go forward." JIMMIE SAID HE WAS RACING FOR THE INVERSION IN THE SECOND SEGMENT. HAVE YOU LEARNED A LESSON THAT YOU MIGHT APPLY NEXT YEAR WITH A SIMILAR FORMAT? "Why don't we put up money for passing race cars? I think that's what puts on a good show. I don't think playing possum puts on a good show. There are guys that position themselves to do that. I knew the 24 would, I knew the 48 would, and there were a couple other cars that you knew would position themselves to take that route. I was running fifth in the second segment and I said, 'OK, I'm gonna park it here. We're just gonna ride it and finish it.' But the fans come out to see a good show. It's not that I chose to pass cars, it just seemed like on that 30-lap run our car just kept getting better as the time went on. We picked up a spot, we passed Bill Elliott. We picked up another spot, we passed Michael Waltrip. Then there's a yellow. Now I'm third on a restart behind Harvick and Kenseth and we get an opportunity to lead the race. I thought that was a great show when we were racing the 29 - swapping the lead back and forth. There were cars high, there were cars low - we'd swap it again and run down the straightaway on the reverse side. That was a lot of fun. I was really gassing it up trying to enjoy the moment and trying to make sure we took care of our car to get to the final segment. I'm not saying it's wrong to play possum, but there are guys that choose to do that and there are guys that choose to race their car. It just ends up where at the end of the day it might not have been the fastest car that won the race. I'm not saying I had the fastest car tonight, I think the 18 was the fastest car." DID YOU LEARN ANYTHING FOR THE 600? "There are things these two new right side tires, as far as the way they affect the Rubbermaid Ford's handling characteristics over a long run. Tonight, the car would start out tight, it would get good, and then it would get loose at the end of a run. So we went through a lot of different types of handling characteristics only in short runs and we know at the 600 there are long green flag runs. You've got to be competitive at the end of a run, so we've got a brand new re-built car. It's the car we finished second at Darlington. Obviously, we had to rebuild that thing and we'll give it our best shot at the 600. It turned out real well as far as it's specs and it's wind tunnel numbers and it's a much better car than what we ran here tonight. Hopefully, everything will go our way." DO YOU ENTER THE CORNER DIFFERENTLY NOW BY ROLLING THROUGH? "With softer right side tires, obviously, you can't approach a corner as quickly with the right-front being softer because it's gonna dig in and make the car loose. When you've got a softer right-rear tire, you're able to get on the throttle sooner because it's got more bite. It's just like changing compounds on a dirt midget or any kind of car you're able to change compounds on, so it just presents a little bit different kind of fix that you have to put in with the front end because now you can't approach the corner very hard. You want to adjust for that. Now you've got the throttle on real early in the corner and you've got to make sure that you've got the bite to get off the corner. You just have to approach it differently now. You've got something working a little bit better for you on your right sides, but right now it feels like a four-wheel drift because there's not a match between the right sides and the left sides on the compounds."

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