Pop Secret 500 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

Where the Raybestos Rookie finished in the Pop Secret 500 K. Kahne, 2nd S. Riggs, 7th B. Vickers, 13th S. Wimmer, 21st B. Gaughan, 42nd

Raybestos Rookie standings after the Pop Secret 500 K. Kahne, 277 B. Vickers, 193 S. Wimmer, 191 S. Riggs, 181 B. Gaughan, 173

BRENDAN GAUGHAN, #77 KODAK EASY SHARE/JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS DODGE: WHAT HAPPENED? "Ask the 11. The kid will go back to running a sprint car and be fine. You don't try to save it 50 times. You either lock it and go down, when he hit the wall one of the things I've learned a long time ago, Wayne Auton taught it to me long before John Darby ever did: you go up and you hit the wall and you stay there. You can just brush it. There's no damage, and you keep going. He had it locked, brought it down the racetrack, and I started to go low. And then all of a sudden he decides to try to save it again and takes it back up the track and I was going high and got me again. A mistake by somebody else. That's the story of the Kodak team this year. We have great racecars a bunch of times this year but just don't have the great finishes. It wasn't our fault. He's going to blow by the cameras and blow it off, act like it didn't happen, but some of us are out here not driving sprint cars, trying to drive NEXTEL Cup cars, and it's going to hurt us."

KASEY KAHNE IN THE #9 DODGE DEALERS/UAW DODGE WAS THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE RACE AT CALIFORNIA. Notes: Kahne finished second in the Pop Secret 500, his ninth top-five and 10th top-10 of the 2004 season. Unofficially, Kahne moves into ninth in the NEXTEL Cup points, 11 behind eighth place Ryan Newman and nine in front of 10th place Mark Martin. Kahne took top Raybestos Rookie honors for the 13th time this season and for the sixth time in the last seven races. Kahne finished second for the fifth time this season. The last time a Raybestos® Rookie scored more than four second-place finishes in his first season was in 2002 when Ryan Newman had five second-place finishes. MARK MARTIN SAID HE THOUGHT YOU WERE THE CAR TO BEAT. "And I thought Mark was the guy to beat. Elliott beat us both there at the end. It was a little surprising. I think both our Dodge car and Mark Martin were a little better than the 38 for most of the race. He did a good job. He held his own and he had the car to beat there at the end." YOU MOVED INTO THE TOP-10 IN POINTS. NOW WHAT'S THE GAMEPLAN? "We've got to stay in there. We've got a big race next weekend. We had a good race tonight. I look forward to Richmond next week to try to stay in that top-10." WHAT DID YOU NEED TO HAPPEN FOR YOU TO HAVE A BETTER SHOT TO WIN THE RACE? "To have a little bit looser car there at the end. Tommy [Baldwin, crew chief] and the guys freed it up the entire race and that's where we were at the end. Elliott beat us there. Mark was coming. He was probably a little looser than us, just waiting to get through there. We just needed to have it a little better on the exit of the corner. I was waiting a little too long to stay with Elliott on those opening laps." DID THE CAUTIONS AT THE END OF THE RACE WORK FOR YOU OR AGAINST YOU? "I think they helped us. I don't think it hurt us. It was good either way. Either way I think we would have run second or third. Mark was pretty strong on the long run." ARE YOU TIRED OF THESE SECOND PLACE FINISHES AGAIN AND AGAIN? "I was getting tired of them but I guess it's a good thing. We have to keep running second until we get our win." THERE WAS SO MUCH HAPPENING AT THE END OF THE RACE. "It was exciting. I was real surprised that the 38 was as good as it was. I was thinking the 6 was going to be really strong there and Elliott was pretty darn good there at the end. It made for an interesting finish, a lot of fun. I wish there was one or two more laps." WAS IT FUN? "I had an exciting race. I wish the car could have been a little looser and I could drive it a little more but we had what we had." YOU ARE BACK IN THE TOP-10 IN POINTS. DOES THAT CHANGE YOUR APPROACH TO RICHMOND? "No, we've got the same story different week. Every one of these weeks it's been so close. Everybody has been within just a few points and I know that Jamie probably gained some good points, Mark Martin's right there, I'm right there, Jeremy [Mayfield, his teammate]. There's a lot of us. We'll see what happens. It will be exciting. IS THE PRESSURE OFF? "No. It's not going to matter. It's going to be that final finish." IS THERE ANY STRATEGY NEXT WEEK AT RICHMOND? "Wide open again. It's really all we can do right now. We have one chance to get in that top-10 and we ought to finish good next week. If we don't finish good, we're not going to be in it."

TOMMY BALDWIN JR., CREW CHIEF, #9 DODGE DEALERS/UAW DODGE: "Everything went well today. I wish we could have got it freed up a little bit more but we'll take it. It's a big momentum boost going to Richmond, which is a place that we like really well. We didn't run well last time but I feel like our short track has picked up. We ran real well at New Hampshire and we're taking the same car. I'm stoked. This is what we do. This is why we do what we do to get in these positions and we'll see where the cards fall." THIS IS YOUR FIFTH SECOND PLACE FINISH. "I didn't even think of that. But no big deal. We're doing what we need to do. The wins will come. We ran good all day and made good adjustments on the car all day and had decent pit stops most of the day. In another couple of laps who know what would have happened." YOU HAD NO NIGHT PRACTICE HERE THIS WEEKEND. HOW WOULD NIGHT PRACTICE HAVE HELPED YOU FOR THE RACE TONIGHT? "We kind of have an idea where the track is going to head from day to night, what's going to happen from the Richmonds and Charlottes and places like that but now we do. Now we know how this place is going to act for us for the future and so does everybody else. We'll be coming back next year much more prepared on what the car is going to do and we'll see what happens next year." ANY STRATEGY NEXT WEEK AT RICHMOND? "Just run our tails off and do the best we can. Run in that top-10 and get to that Chase." IS IT A BIG DISADVANTAGE NOT TO TEST THERE? "No, I think we're all right. I think we are pretty confident on what we need to do there. Like I said, we all go do our jobs Friday and Saturday night and go race. Those guys are tough. Six out of the top eight [at California] are fighting for the eighth, ninth, and tenth spot right now and that's where they finished tonight. Nobody's giving up. The 18 and the 29 had a bad night but they'll be back next week." SHORT TRACK RACING IS WILD BUT WILL IT BE MORE INTENSE AT RICHMOND? "I hope it's awesome. This is what we do. This is why we get hired to do these things, to get in this position. I love it. I thrive on it."

SCOTT RIGGS, #10 VALVOLINE CHEVROLET: Notes: Riggs placed seventh, his second top-10 finish this season. The Pop Secret 500 was the third race this season where two or more Raybestos® Rookies finished in the top 10. The others:
MBNA 400: Scott Riggs (fifth) and Scott Wimmer (ninth)
DHL 400: Kasey Kahne (second) and Brian Vickers (ninth)
"We had to chase the track all night and all day, I should say. During the day we were way too free and tightened the car up some and fell back a lot of positions because we were working on it plus it was too loose to make really good ground and race 'em hard. As soon as that sun got down to where the billboards were, man it tightened up so bad and we lost a lot of positions and had to make a lot of changes. I actually came in one extra time in the pits to free it up some more and make some big adjustments. We went back out and we were like 28th or something like that we drove up to about 15th or something and just kept working our way back up inch by inch." WERE YOU SURPRISED HOW MANY CARS YOU PASSED? "The good thing about California, and I knew it coming in, is it's so wide that you've got a lot of room to work with. Man, I was all over the place tonight. I could run on the bottom, I'd run it against the top, smacked the wall off of four one time with the outside of the car. I was working all over the place trying to figure out what was good for our car." IS THIS A TURNING POINT FOR THIS TEAM? "I feel good about it. I look forward to the next couple of weeks. I feel good about going to Richmond. I felt good about coming here and everything worked out. I'm just going to keep on the positive note and we're going to keep on creeping up. We have a long ways to go. We want to get in the top-25 and we're not there yet. That's a reasonable goal that we can obtain this year. We just want to be competitive and have nights like this where we're frontrunner and we're racing those guys all night."

BRIAN VICKERS, #25 GMAC CHEVROLET: "We started great. The car was unbelievable. The guys did a great job. They were busting off 12, 13 second pit stops and we were staying out in the front. A bunch of guys took two tires there at the beginning and we mowed by 'em and was running the leaders down. About a quarter of the way through the race something happened to the car. We don't know. It's hard to say right now until we get back to the shop and examine everything. They measured some of the heights from the right front. It was down a lot and it could have been a collapsed spring. Something could have happened there or something could have happened to the shocks. There's a lot of things that could have happened. It's just our luck again. Every time we have a real good car it seems like something goes wrong. It's not anybody's fault. I hate to blame any particular part at this point because we don't know for sure but something drastically happened. The right front is dramatically lower and it took all the bit out of the car and we were just out to lunch. We fought it and fought it and then finally we crunched the car up enough and got it tight enough and put enough bite in it that it was decent but we went so far that it was too tight. We took two tires, got back out front there at the end. We were good at the beginning but the car got too tight there toward the end, the last five laps, and that's when we lost 10 spots. I'm proud of the guys. I'm happy that they knew we were here. We had the fastest car in qualifying, had the fastest car whenever everything was right. Jeff has had this problem a couple times this year. We had a jack screw back out and they didn't realize it so it could be anything like that. It's very disappointing because we had a shot to win this race but at the same time it's good to know that when everything was right with the car before whatever happened we were the car to beat." DID THE TRACK CHANGE DRASTICALLY WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN? "It's hard for me to tell because we had some of the problems that we had with the car. It changed some but it really didn't change a lot. I think it just gained grip. At first I was thinking that the track instantly and dramatically loosened up but come to find out that we had other problems that was causing it to be that loose. That was my speculation at first and it may have freed up a little bit but I think the biggest thing was there at the end the track just gained a lot of grip in general. Right as the sun was going down it started to get a little slick, but then it got better. I think it was a good race and I look forward to doing it again next year."