Tropicana 400 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

How the Raybestos Rookies finished at Chicagoland:
B. Vickers 14th
S. Wimmer 23rd
S. Riggs 29th
B. Gaughan 30th
K. Kahne 36th

Raybestos Rookie standings after Chicagoland:
K. Kahne 215
B. Vickers 175
S. Wimmer 168
B. Gaughan 155
S. Riggs 149
J. Sauter 117

RAY EVERNHAM, CAR OWNER, #9 DODGE DEALERS/UAW DODGE: "I don't know. NASCAR refuses to do anything about it, had the perfect opportunity. I mean, you've got a guy that does it week in, week out and nobody is doing anything. He gave Rusty the finger. I'd like to have 10 minutes with Tony Stewart, I'll handle it myself. What happened there was unnecessary. NASCAR needs to do something about it before somebody gets hurt. I've got a crew chief and guys that work so hard on this car, everybody is ready to fight and it's the same guy week in, week out. Something needs to be done." WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE DONE? "Give him 10 minutes with me by myself to talk to him just for a little bit right now. He needs to be sat down. I mean, how many times do you do that? He spun Kasey at Darlington for no reason; he's lost his temper over and over again. I mean that was blatant. He had the rear wheels of that car up off the ground and intentionally spun him out. It's ridiculous. He got up against the back of him after he shifted and stayed on him and pushed him probably for about 50 or 60 feet before he finally spun out. I mean you know when you are up against the back of somebody. Kasey wasn't sure what was happening. He said the back of the car picked up and suddenly spun out. He didn't even realize that he was up against the back of him. And Tommy [Baldwin, crew chief] is pretty upset and he should be. NASCAR is calling him up in the trailer to talk to him but Tony Stewart damn sure needs to be up there, too." WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THE ACCIDENT? "I don't know exactly what happened down there. I don't condone that. I went down there to split everybody up the best I could. I didn't get down there until after the fact so that I can't comment on." DOES STEWART NEED TO BE SUSPENDED? "He definitely needs to be suspended. He needs to have his ass beat. That's the problem with him. Nobody has ever really grabbed him and give him a good beating and if he doesn't get suspended, maybe I'll do that." WILL HE BE SUSPENDED? "I don't know, but right now he just crashed a bunch of cars and he's leading the race. That doesn't say a lot for where we're at right now." THIS MIGHT HAVE COST YOU A SHOT AT THE TOP-10. "Look what is cost us period. We certainly had a shot at running up front today, could knock us out of the top-10. It hurts. I just can't believe that nothing has been done about it. Does someone have to get hurt? Has somebody got to get hurt before they do something?" IF NOTHING IS DONE, CAN YOUR DRIVER DO THE SAME THING TO TONY? "We're not going to play that game. If nothing's done, we'll just figure out some other way to handle it." WHY DO YOU THINK STEWART CAN GET AWAY WITH THIS STUFF? "Because he's never had his butt kicked."

KASEY KAHNE, #9 DODGE DEALERS/UAW DODGE: "I was just getting ready to shift and my car started getting real light in the back. It was getting real light and I was steering it back and forth and right as I pulled into fourth it turned right and into the wall. I guess he got under me and turned us into the wall. I'm very aggravated. The team is really aggravated. It gets old. He had a great racecar. We had a great racecar. Ours didn't take off good all day. It didn't take off as good as some others and he had a great run on the outside. I don't know why he didn't wait until we got off turns one and two where he could pass. He just turned us around." DO YOU THINK SOMETHING SHOULD HAPPEN TO STEWART? "I don't know. I think somewhere along the line somebody is going to probably get Tony Stewart. Every week something goes wrong and the guy, he gets a little fine. A 25,000 dollar fine to Tony Stewart isn't much." WHEN YOU REALIZED WHAT HAPPENED, WHAT WERE YOUR THOUGHTS? "It's easy to get mad in this sport, it's easy to have fun in this sport. It can go from good to bad real quick. I was just mad. It just seems like a real bad spot to get turned around." WHY DO YOU THINK HE DID IT? "I don't know that he would just flat run into the back of me. Obviously he did, but I have no clue why he did it. His car is better and sometimes I think he forgets he has a brake in his car." WHAT ACTION DO YOU WANT NASCAR TO TAKE? "I don't know. Whatever NASCAR decides. They can do whatever. I agree with everything that Ray Evernham said." WHY ARE YOU SO RELAXED RIGHT NOW? "I'm mad but I don't want to sit here and talk a lot about anybody. I'm just frustrated with the situation." HAVE YOU TALKED TO TONY LATELY? "I haven't talked to Tony since Talladega when he took out about eight or 10 cars. I said that he run into us a couple of times recently, which he had, and I haven't talked to him since then. I helped him with the Tony Stewart foundation up in Wisconsin a few weeks back and was around him the whole time and he wouldn't say a word to me. He's obviously still upset about Talladega and what I said there, which was very little. I didn't say very much at all. I was upset too but I had to go to that care center. I don't know what I wanted to do but I had to go to the care center so I couldn't show too much emotion."

BRIAN VICKERS IN THE #25 GMAC CHEVROLET WAS THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE RACE AT CHICAGOLAND. Notes: Vickers finished 14th and took Raybestos Rookie of the Race honors for the sixth time this season and for the third consecutive race. "We gained a little bit on Kasey Kahne and are really going after Raybestos Rookie of the Year. All in all, I guess it was a good day for us but we had a lot of bad luck to overcome. We got hit in the rear at the beginning and it really made the car extremely loose. We had to come in and fix that and had to go to the back. We got back up to the front and we were running there at the end and then we got the flat tire and we had to come in and fix that. We had to go all the way to the back again and came back to 14th. We probably could have gone up a little bit more but we ran out of power steering fluid the last 50 laps and it was pretty tough to drive. But other than that, the car was handling good. The guys did a good job. The pit stops were great." DID THE POWER STEERING BREAK? "We don't know yet. We just know that it lost all the power steering fluid. Why we don't know, if something broke or leaked. A lot of things could have happened. Something could have bounced up and cut one of the lines. You never know but that definitely didn't help us any." YOU WERE LUCKY BECAUSE YOUR DAY COULD HAVE ENDED IN THE GARAGE. "Exactly. It could have been a lot worse. We had several close calls today with flat tires and people hitting us and just about taking us out to restarts where everybody kept slamming on brakes, who knows why. It was an exciting day but the GMAC Chevy team did a good job." WERE YOU CLOSE TO THE ACCIDENT INVOLVING THE KAHNE AND STEWART EARLY IN THE RACE? "Oh yeah, I was real close to it." WHAT DID YOU SEE FROM WHERE YOU WERE SITTING? "From where I was sitting it was hard to say but it looked like the 20 just drove into the back of the 9. I don't really know why. We're just grateful that the 9 didn't hit us and take us out, too." HOW CLOSE WERE YOU TO BEING HIT? "It was close. It was pretty close." YOU ARE TESTING AT INDY MONDAY AND TUESDAY. "I can't wait to go up there. Indy is a pretty amazing place. A lot of history there, a lot of stuff behind that place. I'm looking forward to getting up there. It's going to be pretty neat to get on the racetrack."

Note: A Raybestos® Rookie has led at least one lap in all four races at Chicagoland: Kevin Harvick (five times for 113 laps) in 2001, Ryan Newman (twice for 86 laps), Jimmie Johnson (once for two laps) in 2002, Jamie McMurray (once for one lap) in 2003, and Kasey Kahne (twice for 10 laps) in 2004).

SCOTT WIMMER, #22 CATERPILLAR DODGE: "We got a lap down early and the guys really worked hard to make the car better. At times in the race we were real good. We were good on the long runs. We couldn't go on the short runs; the car just wouldn't take off. We had great pit stops all day. We broke a transmission at the end; otherwise I think we could have been a little better. We came out of here in one piece and now we'll go test at Indy."

BRENDAN GAUGHAN, #77 JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS/KODAK DODGE: The Penske Jasper team can't catch a break right now, whether I make a mistake or we just have one of those racing deals. Today was a racing deal. I am excited because that was without a doubt the best racecar that we've had all year. Honestly, that racecar was even better than Bristol. Once we came back out after we changed our deal, we ran in that fourth place hole and I was running there like 'Wow, we're keeping pace for a change.' The guys have been working hard on getting us new equipment, better equipment and getting some of that technology and they are. We've just got to catch one of those breaks and start chipping away. We're really excited about the next bunch of races. At Loudon we have another brand new car. At Indianapolis we're actually going to run our first Penske chassis. So we have a lot of new equipment coming in the next couple of weeks and if this racecar is any indication, we're going to make a run for that Raybestos championship."

SCOTT RIGGS, #10 VALVOLINE CHEVROLET: "We had an awesome car today and I think we learned a whole lot. I've been telling everybody that we're coming, we're getting better and better and we're going to start turning the corner here and showing it and all of a sudden we're going to be a factor here in these races. We really thought we were there today. We felt like we were going to have a good finish and felt like we had an easy top-five today. I mean, we were running right there with the top-five cars and felt like if everything went right we could have it. It didn't go right for us. We had that big bobble on the restart. I practically stopped on the racetrack to keep from getting in it and still got hit in the right front. At a place like this where you're running so fast that right front fender is critically important to get it turned through the corner. After four or five laps, my car would get tighter and tighter and tighter and couldn't run with 'em. I hate it for all the guys at Valvoline because we're really starting to show what we've got and what we've accomplished." COULD YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENED ON THE RESTART BETWEEN STEWART AND KAHNE? "I couldn't see. A lot of guys took two tires that time and some guys came in and got gas. We came in and got four so we knew that we were going to be pretty good on that long run. All I know is that everybody bottlenecked and stopped. I stopped and cars started to clear and I'm coasting around the racetrack and I think the 30 came sliding down in front of me in my right front. Looking back at it, I wish I had just completely stopped, if I could have. Even if I had flat spotted four tires it would have been better than what happened."