Tropicana 400 - Ford Post-Race Quotes

RICKY RUDD (Finished 32nd) - No. 21 Keep It Genuine Taurus - ON GETTING CAUGHT UPBARELY, IN A LAP 18 WRECK. "It was really a strange deal. You know, we didn't qualify that good, but we had moved quite a bit. We just passed Bobby Labonte and a bunch of those guys, and was moving forward and the caution came out, and I didn't know that we got into somebody, I guess we got into the 80 and didn't feel the contact but it did some fender damage. So, evidently, in and out of the pits, to get the damage repaired, we must have had a slow leak in the right rear. Must've run over some debris that we didn't see. And, we took off on the re-start and the car was loose, but just sort of felt like that maybe that fender damage was more severe than we thought. The guys said the tires looked like they were up, didn't look like a flat, and the next thing we know, we blow a right-rear tire. It happened so quickly, when it did blow, the casing tore apart and it tore the quarter panel off the car."

MORE ON WHAT HAPPENED. "Everybody put on brakes, and the wreck was happening in front of us, and everybody was dodging each other, and I didn't know I hit anybody until I saw the left rear of the 80 bent up in the air. I didn't feel the contact, but evidently it got our front fender and our day was over, I guess. That's what started our bad luck. Then, it was in and out of the pits trying to fix it, and it's a shame, we had a really, really good car. That's what I'm more upset about than anything - we didn't get a chance to run more race."

WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED? Had a flat in a tire when I went back out on the track, and the car was real loose. I figured it might be the right-front fender damage, and ended up blowing a tire, a right-rear tire."

JEFF BURTON (Finished 33rd) - No. 99 Comcast High-Speed Internet Taurus - ON BEING INVOLVED IN AN EIGHT-CAR WRECK ON A RE-START ON LAP 127. "All I saw was the 9 car sitting sideways. Obviously, someone got into him or something, and there was just nowhere to go. I had it pretty much cleared. The guys behind me didn't get slowed down. They didn't do anything wrong, behind me, it's just one of those big wrecks. It's real disappointing for the Comcast Ford. We had a nice top-six or -seven going. I think we had a little bit more left, we just didn't get a chance to show it."

ELLIOTT SADLER (Finished 21st) - No. 38 M&M's Taurus - YOU WERE IN THE TOP 10 ALL DAY. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE VERY END? "I don't know. I just couldn't get in the race track. On both those re-starts it just wouldn't go. I was really loose. I think some of the guys had a little bit fresher tires than we had, and made it tough for me to stay out there. It's a shame, to run that good all day and don't have anything to show for it, so we'll try to get 'em next week."

DALE JARRETT (Finished 3rd) - No. 88 UPS Taurus - "Got a flat tire there right after we made a green-flag stop and that got us almost two laps down and we managed to get back on the lead lap. And then Mike made a great call there at the end to get two tires, and it was the right thing. Our car was a little bit too tight, and that hurt me a little, but it's still part of our comeback here, and I want to thank all of the UPS employees, there's more than 350,000 around the world, and their support as helped us a lot, and so we want to thank them. Obviously, Coca-Cola and Ford Motor Company. And, finishing third, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, another $5,000 from Ford Credit. And, we just signed on a new associate, we'll mention Citi Financial, so get all of those in. And, it's been a big day for the Jarretts, too. My daughter Karsyn is in Minnesota right now, that's where I'm headed tonight, playing in the national AAU tournament, and she had 24 points and 11 rebounds and eight steals today, so that's a pretty good, so got a lot of pressure to follow that up."

ON THE BIG SMILE ON HIS FACE. "We overcame a lot today, that's the biggest thing. We had a good car. We had a good car all day. And whenever I got the flat tire, then we were almost two laps down there, so we had to overcome that. We got the caution and then we stayed out and got ourselves back on the lead lap there, whenever they had a caution right after that. Mike made a great call for two tires there at the end, and that's what really put us up front."

DID YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN THE 20 AND THE 9? "No, I was out front at that time trying to get a lap back, so all I did was look in mirror and I saw somebody spinning, so I knew we were going to get the caution, and we needed it, but I had no idea what happened here."

ON MISSING THE NUMEROUS WRECKS. "I was pretty fortunate to stay away from most everything. My car was good enough, I could stay around the bottom and get off the corner pretty well, so that helped me miss most of that."

MARK MARTIN (Finished 24th) - No. 6 Viagra Taurus - "We ran good. That's all we can do. I can't help it the thing broke. It's just done that a lot this year. It's been one thing after another. All we can do is make it fast, and hope we quit breaking stuff, or fix it."

DALE JARRETT press conference

"The car was great all day. We made a lot of gains early, and then right after our green-flag stop we went back out and the car was just driving great, and went down into turn one and about spun out, so I took about two laps and figured out that I had a right-rear tire going flat, so put us almost two laps down. Tony was in my mirror to put me down a second lap, and we were fortunate to get the caution and then, and since we didn't have many laps on the tires, we stayed out and re-started on the tail-end of the lead lap, and that's when they wrecked at the front of the field. So, that got us back on the lead lap. From there we just kept adjusting on the car and making our way forward, and it was a tough day. But I think when it started getting a bit cloudy my car just kept getting tighter and tighter, so that allowed us, really, to make the pit stop that we needed there towards the end, with about 20 to go to get two tires - a great call by Mike Ford and that really let us come back up through the pack. So, a pretty good day for us. These are the kind of days that we've got to have if we entertain any thoughts of getting back in the top-10 in the points.

THIS TEAM HAS OVER COME PLENTY OF ADVERISTY LATELY. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE SECOND HALF OF THE SEASON? "A lot of momentum. To think that we've found a combination now that we know that we want to work with as far as chassis' and bodies, and we've got a couple of tests coming up that, hopefully, will put us in good position for a couple of these races coming up. We entertain the thoughts of getting ourselves in the top 10,a nd hopefully we can do that."

DID YOU HAVE ANY SENSE OF WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN THE 20 AND THE 9 ON THAT RE-START? "No, I really couldn't. I glanced in the mirror on the re-start just to make sure that nobody was getting to the outside of me and I had Robby Gordon to the inside of me, so I was just wanting to get down in and through the corner as fast as I could. So, I have no idea, really, what happened back there. I just know that they came on the radio and hollered, 'Caution,' so I hated to see anybody have bad luck, but it was at a time tat we needed something to make up, so it worked out well for us. But I don't have any idea what may have happened."

ON RAY EVERNHAM'S QUOTE ABOUT TONY STEWART. ANY THOUGHTS? "No. It's obviously an owner being upset, you know, his car is leading the race and something happened, so without knowing, having any idea, it would be hard to comment on that. But, you're going to have tempers flaring out here, the competition's tight, and there's a lot at stake out here. When somebody puts up the kind of money that NEXTEL's put up for a championship, everybody's racing hard, so you're going to have some hard feelings along the way."

DID THAT RE-START SEEM SLOW, OR WAS IT A NORMAL RE-START? "Well, I was starting it, so you'll have to ask Jimmy [Johnson] that. Matter of fact, I thought I was a little bit quick because I wanted to have the speed up just a little because I had some heat in my tires and wanted to make sure that I had everything off of 'em. I didn't want to spin the tires and give anybody a chance to get by me, so it was probably a little bit quicker than what we had been going, I think. We started using it when we started running good, which would've been a Pocono, was the first time. We actually tested a couple of times at Kentucky, and I think that Mike saw some things that he liked about it and as a driver it has a good feel to me. The chassis is lighter than what we can go out and but, either from Hopkins or someone else, so it has a lot of good points about it. It's not like it's something new. We actually started building in-house chassis' back in '97. We've had times that we've gone away from them a few times, and then we've made some changes with them, and the version that we have right now seems to work really well. So, that's what we're going to stick with, it's what we have to take to Indy to test, a couple of in-house cars, and pretty much everything else that we're going to be racing will be that. Hopefully, that means we'll continue to run like we have been."