MBNA America 400 - Dodge Post-Race Quotes

JEREMY MAYFIELD (No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge) – Finished 7th

“We had a good car but had to battle all day. I lost radio contact with the crew early in the race. I couldn't tell them what the car was doing. We didn't get if fixed until the last caution. We had a couple stops that weren't up to par, so we had to battle back. We just have to dig down and make it happen as a team. We're capable of getting the job done, we just have to dig down, all of us. With the exception of the one long run, the car was good. Toward the end of the run, the car stopped getting through the corners the way we needed to and we lost a few positions on the track. After we made a chassis adjustment and got tires, we were right back running times with the leader. But we had traffic to deal with. After the restart after that last caution, we were 11th and worked our way back up to seventh. We'll take it and look to get everything together next week. We know if we dig down, we can and will get the job done. It's a lot better points day than last week, so we'll take it and head to Talladega.”

JAMIE McMURRAY (No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge) – Finished 8th

“I don’t know what was wrong. I didn’t sleep very well last night. The guys next to us had a little party outside my motorhome last night. I was up late and for some reason I woke up at 5:30. They gave me something out there, and it made me feel better. I don’t know what it was. It could have just been water, but mentally it made me feel a whole lot better. We started 10th and when I got to sixth I felt worse. That’s when I knew something was wrong. All-in-all it was a pretty good day. We struggled in the pits again. We really had a tough time in the pits, but other than that our car was pretty good. We fought back. We seem to pass more cars every weekend than anyone else. We go to the back and work our way back to the front, but it was a pretty good finish. I was happy with that. We felt that way when we didn’t make the top 10. It would be pretty cool to score the most points out of anyone in the last 10 races and show you deserve to be there. We’ve got to work on our program just a little bit. We’re a sixth to 10th place car right now and we need to step it up to be a top five car. It would be cool to get to go to the banquet and feel like you earned your way there (with 11th place finish in the standings). We’ll just keep digging and doing what we’re doing.”

RUSTY WALLACE (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge) – Finished 13th

“We run good every week and something stupid is always happening. I don’t know what it’s going to take to get that thing fixed and get it back to normal. I thought we were in real good shape. I’m mystified why I keep blowing right-front tires out. It was only pushing just a little bit.

“That was an amazing win last night at Bristol for my son Stephen. That was an engine Maurice Petty built and a Dodge Intrepid that Stephen and the guys at our shop built. The car looked great. He was prepared, and to have him win his first big race at a track where I won my first big race is pretty special. He had a horrifying wreck at Bristol a month ago and to come back from that to winning is really something. I wanted to do good for him today. We had a good showing today, but we should have had a much better finish.”

STERLING MARLIN (No. 40 Coors Light Dodge) – Finished 15th

“I don’t know what we adjusted one time, but it was terrible. We drove to 12th. All we did was change tires and a little bit of air pressure and went from top 12 to a 30th-place car. It was terrible.”

BRENDAN GAUGHAN (No. 77 Kodak/Jasper Dodge) – Finished 22nd, top rookie

“It was a long day, but we were the top Raybestos Rookie and that’s one goal we set for ourselves every week. We got it this week in ugly fashion, but we finished and didn’t do any damage and brought it home in one piece, and that’s something else we’ve been trying to do lately. Our team never could get the balance right, but we dug hard, the guys worked hard on pit road and we were the best finishing rookie. We’ll take it.”

KASEY KAHNE (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge) – Finished 42nd

“It was going down the frontstretch and it popped. I popped it out of gear, and it was still running pretty rough. I had to shut it off. The motor ran good all weekend. It ran really good all weekend, and it was running good today. They said it might be a flywheel, so they’re looking into that. We might be able to change it and get back out there. I’m not sure how bad it is right now. I think we had a good car today. I was biding my time. It was early in the race, but I think the car was all right. It was a little loose, but that’s a good thing. You want to start loose here, and it gets better as you go. We were getting better, but something broke.”

RYAN NEWMAN (No. 12 ALLTEL Dodge) – Race Winner

“It was a good team effort. We didn’t get a chance to come here and test. We’ve been busy testing at places like Richmond and Loudon and a bunch of other tracks. A lot of guys got a chance to come here and test. It felt good to get a chance to come here and run as good as we did. Our car was awesome. The pit stops were great, and that gave us good track position, which was important. We were able to fight our way through traffic quite a few times. I don’t know how many times I passed some of those lapped cars. It felt like every run we were passing them, but I guess that was a good thing.

“I really enjoy the racetrack. You can look at it and see how many grooves there are to work with, and it’s just a lot of fun to drive, especially when you’ve got a car that was hooked up like our ALLTEL Dodge was today. You can run the bottom. You can run the top. It’s a banked racetrack which I always like. It just leads to great racing, and that’s all you can ask for when that’s your occupation.

“It’s a big step in the right direction. We can’t finish 33rd and then first and then 33rd again. We’ve got to keep the top fives going. If we can finish in the top five in these last nine races, which was a good start today, then I can pretty much guarantee us a championship. We’ll just keep working in that direction.

“I knew after the first hundred miles that we had a car that was capable of the top five for sure. After that it was just a matter of tuning on it here and there, freeing it up a little bit for late in the run. I think a lot of people were fighting with that. It was just a matter of getting the laps in. Something could have happened on the last lap that took us out even though we led a lot of laps and were a dominant racecar. Fortunately we were able to make it to the end, and we’ll go into Talladega with the same mindset we came with into here. That’s to try to lead the most laps, have a good qualifying effort and try to win.

“We still gained a lot of points, especially with leading the most laps and for leading a lap, which other drivers didn’t do except Kenseth and Busch. I think it was about the same number last week that finished in the top 10 or top 12 or whatever it was. We just do the best we possibly can. If we don’t deserve it then we don’t get it.

“I can tell you for sure if they didn’t have restrictor plates at Talladega we’d take our Dover car, but it’s a totally different type of race, totally different strategies. We’ve got smaller fuel tanks to try to break up the field. Everything about Talladega is against racing. You’ve got out of bounds lines and things like that. We’ll just go in there with an open mindset and try to do the best job we possibly can. It’s going to be a unique experience I think. There’s a lot of potential heat that can flame up and be fire with the points’ chase and everything else at a track like Talladega where teammates (play) such an important role.

“The last five laps (time to relax). That’s all it was. That long green flag run I got stuck behind the 88 car and I was a little bit tight. I think he was a little bit tight. That allowed Mark to stay about eight seconds behind us, but I ran really hard there that last run, last 65 laps with the exception of the last five for sure.

“I don’t know, but I think the bottom line is everybody got in this position because they were capable of running in the top 10 and they had done it several times. If you look at the pure numbers, everybody in the top 10 going into Loudon had won at least one race and had quite a few top 10 finishes. I wouldn’t expect anything different. I guess some teams put more into this. We put the same amount of effort because we try as hard as we can every lap of every race.

“I think the probability of how the season goes and how many things are out of your hands and out of your control when it comes to crashes at Talladega or getting spun out at Martinsville and places like that. Cutting a tire at places like Atlanta. That’s where that stuff comes from. There’s a good chance one team will have no DNF’s or no bad races, no runs outside the top 10 in the last 10 races, but I guess just looking at the historical points in the series the past couple of years, usually in 10 races a team has at least one bad race.

“After what happened in the first race here (spinning out coming into pit road), I was going to feel real stupid if I did it again. I was really, really slow. I was joking when I said it, but I said it in the media center yesterday. If this race goes without any green flag pit stops we’ll have a shot at the win. It turns out we had to do one, but it’s definitely a tricky pit road. The veterans have a problem with it. I guess they haven’t learned something.

“We ran (winning Dover Dodge) at Rockingham and Atlanta. We ran second with it at Bristol. I think the first four poles of the season, I had three of the four poles with this car. It’s been a real good qualifying car. It qualified second on Friday. It’s been a really good car for us. This car was actually the backup car for the car that won four of the eight races for us last year.

“The bottom line is when you can win like we did today, you don’t need a pep talk. Everything takes care of itself. The guys were really pumped up going into the race today, and they’re overpumped right now I’m sure. The bottom line is we’ve got to forget about today right now and focus on next week and the coming weekend and preparing for Talladega. At the same time, Martinsville and all the other races. You almost can’t take the time to enjoy the wins when you have the schedule we do and have to focus on so many kinds of racetracks and brake packages and downforce and drag and those types of things. If you spend time celebrating, you’re not spending time working.

“It’s nice to have clean air. Because the corners are so fast and the straightaways are relatively short you don’t get much drafting advantage. The clean air is important because you’re in so much of a corner here. The good thing about Dover is you can go off line and work and try to get some clean air. When you get four or five cars lined up on the bottom and you run the bottom you lose a lot of downforce. Good pit stops and good track position was definitely a good thing. I think we had a really fast racecar and could have worked and done some passing had we fell back to fifth or sixth at some point.

“I didn’t know what happened (to Matt Kenseth). I saw he hit the inside tires. I heard somebody say he was trying to get to pit road, but I never saw a replay or anything. It’s a really tricky pit road, but I don’t know his situation. We’ll just go on. He’s a friend of mine, so yes (sympathize with him) in a way, but you can’t think about those things.

“I think I was a very big critiquer of the points’ system through the entire season. I always spoke of it from the competitors’ side because that’s what I am, a competitor. I think from a marketing standpoint it’s probably a good if not great strategy, but that’s not everything. I don’t know what the fans like and dislike. I know they like competitive racing, and it’s definitely made the racing more competitive from a points’ perspective, but I don’t think it was fair to the competitors and we’ll leave it at that.

“I can say a lot about that (pit road speeding), but the bottom line is it’s not a very direct system, it’s not a very concise system. You’re basically relying on someone’s thumb and mind hitting the right mark at the right time. Because it’s timed over a short span, it could vary over three mph, the hesitation of your thumb. I wish there was a more direct or refined process to use. You can only go so fast on pit road. I know Johnson got caught there working in the first stall at the end of pit lane. From what I saw, it had to be pretty obvious because we had some awesome pit stops and he came out right behind us. I had to cut him off on pit road just to do that. I wish it was a little bit more refined.

“I didn’t notice anything different today from how any driver has competed against me or each other throughout the entire season, before the chase or during the chase or last year. I don’t think anybody’s changed the way they drove. You can only do so much. You can only try so hard. Outside of that we become reckless. I didn’t see anybody being reckless today.”