MBNA 400: A Salute to Heroes - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

SCOTT RIGGS IN THE #10 VALVOLINE CHEVROLET WAS THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE RACE AT DOVER. Notes: Riggs finished fifth, his best finish in 13 career NEXTEL Cup Series races. Riggs took Raybestos Rookie of the Race honors for the first time in 2004. Other newsworthy items:

· The Dover race is the first time this season where two or more Raybestos Rookies finished in the top-10: Riggs and Scott Wimmer, who placed ninth.

· Both Kasey Kahne (once for 36 laps) and Brian Vickers (once for seven laps) led at Dover, the FIFTH race this season where two or more Raybestos® Rookies have led at least one lap. The other races: Las Vegas (Kahne and Vickers), Texas (Kahne and Sauter), Talladega (Wimmer and Vickers), and California (Kahne, Gaughan, and Vickers).

· This was the FOURTH spring race at Dover where two or more Raybestos Rookies have finished in the top-10: 1979 (Dale Earnhardt (fifth), Terry Labonte (sixth), and Joe Millikan (eighth)), 2000 (Matt Kenseth finished second and Dale Earnhardt Jr. claimed a 10th-place finish), and 2002 (Jimmie Johnson won while Ryan Newman grabbed a fifth-place finish)

· Top-five finishes by Raybestos® Rookies in the spring race at Dover (since 1975):
1979: Dale Earnhardt, fifth
1982: Mark Martin, fifth
1987: Davey Allison, first
1999: Tony Stewart, fourth
2000: Matt Kenseth, second
2002: Jimmie Johnson, first
2002: Ryan Newman, fifth
2004: Scott Riggs, fifth

SCOTT RIGGS, #10 VALVOLINE CHEVROLET: "It was a wild race. We've just been digging and digging as hard as we can and all the guys on the Valvoline Chevrolet have been putting in 100 percent effort but it took about one-third of the race before we finally got dialed in every race. We qualify well, we back up, and the whole race we're trying to recover from that first third of the race. It was the same way this race. We were trying to recover and kept making the car better. The main thing here was that we dodged all the wrecks. We were at the right place at the right time. We had a lot of luck on our side today and had a good finish. Hopefully we can build on this and keep everybody's head up and stay focused and get more of these finishes. I told Jay Frye (team general manager) that we had a golden horseshoe today because we got through a lot of those wrecks without a scratch. There were cars wrecking all around us and we were just somehow at the right place at the right time. Hat's off to all the guys back at the shop building great cars. Hendrick gives us great engines every week. We've got good equipment and good people, we're just steadily and surely learning as much as we can. As long as we keep learning and keep getting better, we're going to show 'em that we're going to win a race. We worked awful hard on the car. The first one-third of the race we weren't very good and that's how we've been the last couple of races. We worked awful hard and kept making adjustments and finally got the car pretty good there and just happened to be at the right place at the right time and able to make it through all those wrecks and took care of the car. It ended up paying off for us today with a good finish." WHAT CAN A TOP-FIVE FINISH DO FOR THIS RACE TEAM? "It shows us what we're capable of and gives us a good shot in the arm, a good boost in the arm for everybody on the team. All the guys on this team do a great job. It's not a lack of effort why we haven't had some better finishes before now. It's just learning each other, me learning the tires, and learning these cars. These cars are definitely different from the Busch cars. It's been a learning curve for all of us and now we're slowly but surely getting over that hill."

RIGGS POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE

"We still didn't have the car that we needed. It seems like the last couple of races as soon as the green flag drops it takes us about one-third of the race to get our car dialed in. The same thing happened today. We fell back and got a lap down and kept making the car better and happened to be at the right place at the right time to get through all those wrecks. We didn't pit there with those green flag cycle pit stops. We stayed out as long as we could because it seems like every time we pit the caution comes out the next lap. So we stayed out and happened to get a break there and get one of our laps back. Then we got the lucky dog there at the end and got back on the lead lap and had a decent finish. But the big thing was staying out of the wrecks and missing all the melee there through three and four." HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANYTHING AS WILD AS THIS RACE OVER THE FINAL 80 LAPS? "I've seen massive crashing like that but most of the time it was the short track back home where everybody is driving over the top of their head and wrecking each other. That's what it felt like out there, just sort of top-toe around and drive hard when you got clean racetrack in front of you. You top-toe when everybody is two-wide, beating and banging. I was wondering what was taking so long. I think they should have stopped it and given us some more laps and figured out where they were going to put the 12. I understand that it's a pretty unfortunate situation for the leader to cause the caution so I'm sure it's a pretty complex situation the way the rules are. We'll go back out there and run 20 more laps, that will be fine with me. I'm sure it was pretty confusing to figure out what was going to happen. It's better for them to take their time and figure it out now than to do something like what happened to Carl Edwards the other week and come back and say 'I'm sorry we messed up.' At least they did take the time to figure out what needed to happen." WHEN EARNHARDT JR. PASSED YOU LATE THE RACE AND GOT THE FREE PASS, DID YOU THINK YOU WERE GOING TO HAVE ANOTHER SHOT AT IT? "I didn't really know. I didn't know if we were going to have another caution. The way it was going, I didn't want to be in the front. It seemed like whoever was leading was going to have bad luck and get their car torn up. I just didn't have the car to be able to hold him off and Dale was able to get by and as soon as he got by we had debris and he got a chance to get back on the lead lap. We were fortunate enough to have another caution later on and get ourselves back on the lead lap. I'm not complaining about it, for sure." HOW BADLY DID YOU NEED THIS FINISH? "Team-wise, we needed a finish as bad as anything else. We've been struggling awful hard all year and it's not because of lack of effort on anybody's part. There's a lot of new guys on the team, a Raybestos Rookie myself. These tires and these Cup cars are a lot different than the Busch cars were. It's just taking a lot of time to figure out what the car feels like and what it needs to feel like to be competitive. It seems like it we have so many variables that change the way the racetrack is and the way the racecar is from the time we leave happy hour to the start of the race. That's the part that we've been missing. We can get a good lap in for qualifying and qualify decent but when the green flag drops it's like we throw out the parachute out and slow down the last four or five races. We did the same thing today. We just happened to work our way back through. We're still striving to be better. It's a good shot in the arm. It lets us know to keep your head up and never give up and it will pay off sometimes. We still need to be better when they drop the green flag and we work on that every single week."

RAY EVERNHAM, CAR OWNER, #9 DODGE DEALERS/UAW DODGE: "I feel bad for the guys, more than anything for all my guys. They work really, really hard. They came here and they were so close to getting something and got nothing for it." DID YOU KNOW THAT THE 41 WAS PUTTING OIL ON THE TRACK? "There were people screaming about it on the radio." CAN YOU BEGIN TO DESCRIBE YOUR FRUSTRATIONS? "I can't right now. I'm frustrated but again, I'm happy for the way things ran. I know how hard these guys work and to be that close and have it taken away from you is really tough." ARE YOU SURPRISED THAT A CAUTION WAS NOT THROWN? "We run so many races, lots of different circumstances, and you've got to be able to adjust and unfortunately when you get caught up in things like this you don't even have a chance to play the game."

KASEY KAHNE, #9 DODGE DEALERS/UAW DODGE: "It's too bad. Ray Evernham brought two awesome race teams here. Tommy Baldwin [his crew chief] and my whole Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge race team did a great job to make that car perfect there at the end. Nobody was going to touch us." HOW FRUSTRATING IS IT TO COME SO CLOSE SO MANY TIMES? "It's disappointing. I mean I didn't know what to think. I hit the wall and it all happened so quickly. There was oil. I didn't get loose or anything, it just swapped ends. I don't know what else to think, other than we'll try again next week." NASCAR LET YOU GO ALMOST A FULL LAP BEFORE THROWING THE CAUTION. "I'm not real sure. It was wild looking on at everybody coming at me after I had already hit the wall. There were other cars spinning so there was obviously something on the track." HOW HARD DID YOU HIT? "I hit pretty hard. It spun around and there was no slowing down. I had just got into the corner so it was about wide open at the end of the straightaway." WAS THERE A LOT OF CARELESSNESS OUT THERE TODAY? "I'm not real sure. There was some crazy stuff going on. When we started back a ways and I was running second and Jeremy and Newman and Jimmie Johnson and a bunch of good cars got in that wreck before that there was people missing shifts and running into each other going down the backstretch causing wrecks so there was something going on but we made it through that one; didn't make it through the next one. They said how did you get through that wreck and I said 'I don't know how I got through there' [laughs]. I just floored it. I didn't know what to do, what to think. There's cars everywhere and somehow my car made it through and nobody else really did." YOU WERE JUST 15 LAPS OR SO AWAY FROM A POSSIBLE WIN. "I was looking in my mirror watching us pull away from the 6 car. It was feeling good. The car was the best that it had been all day and now we just came out of the care center. That's what happens in racing. Our accident there was just oil. There was oil all over the track. There's nothing a driver can do to prevent that. Maybe NASCAR couldn't see the oil. We had a great car. We were coming down the backstretch and the car was perfect. We were pulling away and it just swapped ends when we got there. There was something on the racetrack, oil or fluid, because there was no grip when we got there."

BRIAN VICKERS, #25 GMAC CHEVROLET: "The GMAC Chevy team has been doing a good job all day. We got our five points for leading early on and we were on our way to a top-five and somebody blew up and was riding around in the groove putting oil down and a couple of us ended up getting into it. You're going to have that. It would have been nice to have had the soft walls there, I can tell you that. That was a hard hit. We were going to have a solid finish there and it was going to be a good points day for us Somebody put some oil down and we got into it and wrecked. There wasn't a whole lot we could do there." DID YOU SEE OIL ON THE TRACK? "I had no idea whatsoever, no warning, nothing. I didn't know there was any oil there. I don't know what happened. A caution would have been nice but I don't know when the oil was put down or why it was there. I didn't see it. If I saw it I wouldn't have run through it. They were both pretty bad, the one before this one and that one. But what can you do? We're going to go the next race and do the best that we can. I'm fine, just a little pissed off that we don't have soft walls here, to be honest with you. I can't control that. I don't know why they're not here but I hope they're here next time. Luckily I'm OK. I'd hate to see 'em have to wait until somebody gets hurt but maybe that's what it's going to take."

TOMMY BALDWIN, CREW CHIEF, #9 DODGE DEALERS/UAW DODGE: "It was us, the 19 and the 20 car and we got really good there at the end, and that's where you need to be; really good at the end. I felt that we were pretty good, just had to make it those last 15 or 16 laps or so. NASCAR hasn't done a good job today at all calling this race. They should have threw the caution way before they threw it. The 41 car started dropping oil in turn two and they didn't call the caution until we were getting into one and wrecked some more good racecars. Cost everybody about half a million dollars and that's just the way it is." TODAY'S RACE AT DOVER SEEMED WILDER THAN NORMAL. "Dover is always odd for me. Personally, I couldn't believe that we were in the position that I was. We made some good decisions today working on the car and the handling aspects of it and we just came home with junk." DO YOU FEEL SNAKE-BITTEN? "No, not when we're only 14 races old. This team has only been together 14 races and we should have eight or nine top-fives already and some stuff has happened, California, last week at Charlotte, Darlington, here, and Bristol. There's four or five races right there that we were running in the top-five with less than 20 laps to go and stuff is happening. We'll get 'em. We're just going to do one race at a time. We're still Raybestos Rookies here and we're still learning. I just can't wait for the future of this race team."

Unofficial Raybestos Rookie Standings
K. Kahne 166
S. Wimmer 126
B. Vickers 123
B. Gaughan 121
J. Sauter 117
S. Riggs 111