Ford 400 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

Where the Raybestos Rookies finished at Homestead:
B. Gaughanm 6th
S. Wimmer, 13th
S. Riggs, 15th
B. Vickers, 18th
K. Kahne, 38th

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER QUOTES FOR THE FORD 400 NASCAR NEXTEL CUP SERIES RACE AT HOMESTEAD-MIAMI SPEEDWAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2004.

KASEY KAHNE, No. 9 DODGE DEALERS/UAW DODGE: Note: Kahne clinched Raybestos Rookie of the Year honors with his finish today at Homestead. "I just got loose. The car wasn't any good, really. We were just trying to fix it, trying to get better. Tommy [Baldwin, crew chief] and them were trying to do anything we could and I ended up crashing it. We were just tight. The front end just wasn't working at all and when your front's not working, it's real hard to drive it and once you get loose you can't save it. It's a bad day, not a good weekend." IT'S NOT THE WAY YOU WANTED TO END THE YEAR BUT YOU HAD A SENSATIONAL SEASON. "It's been a good year and we're happy about that. It's a pretty sad day today but other than that we're pretty happy about the year and what's went on. It's been a lot of fun to be able to work with these guys all year long. We'll get better for next year. We were terrible in practice yesterday, too. It looked like we were good because I could run one fast lap and after that I was junk. I wasn't too surprised but I thought that it would have been a lot better than that. It just wasn't any good. The guys tried hard but just didn't get it done, didn't get it good enough, I guess. I would have liked to end the year a lot better than this. Today obviously wasn't our day. We weren't very good from the drop of the green flag and it kept getting worse. Tommy started trying to fix it, doing things that he could out on the racetrack under a pit stop. It was a tough day. We didn't start out too good and I just lost it right there and put it in the wall. It wasn't a good way to finish the year but we've had a pretty good season. We'll think about it and we'll get better over the winter and get ready for next year." HOW DISAPPOINTING IS IT TO END THE SEASON THIS WAY? "It's disappointing that we didn't win. We came close a lot of times, just didn't get it done. Either way we had a good season. The guys did a good job and we'll be better next year for sure."

BRENDAN GAUGHAN IN THE No. 77 KODAK EASY SHARE/JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS DODGE WAS THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE RACE AT HOMESTEAD. Notes: Gaughan finished sixth, his fourth top-10 of the 2004 season. His most recent top-10 came at Kansas, seven races ago. At least one Raybestos Rookie has now finished in the top-10 in all six NEXTEL Cup races at Homestead-Miami Speedway:
1999: Tony Stewart, first
2000: Dave Blaney, ninth
2001: Casey Atwood, third
2001: Kevin Harvick, seventh
2001: Jason Leffler, 10th
2002: Ryan Newman, sixth
2002: Jimmie Johnson, eighth
2003: Jamie McMurray, ninth

GAUGHAN: "They gave us a racecar this week and man, the Kodak boys performed. Shane [Wilson, crew chief] did a good job of getting us in and out, strategy-wise, and the end I just tried to drive the wheels off it. We had a racecar and it feels so good to have one. I got Kodak a top-10 and man I wanted a top-five. I didn't care about the Chase for the Championship. I wanted to give Kodak another top-five this year and gave it all I could." THINGS GOT WILD AT THE END OF THE RACE. "I saw everybody fan out and I go 'Hey, let's go for second.' I was going to get as far us as I could. I drove into turn 3 and just over-drove and pushed up and at that point everybody fanned back down and settled back down. I just wanted to get fifth. I was wanting a top-five and I tried my hardest. Congratulations to Kurt Busch the champion and to Kasey Kahne, the Raybestos Rookie of the Year. They deserve it. Thank you for a racecar at the end of the year, I appreciate it." DID YOUR CAR GET BETTER AT THE END OF THE RACE? "We started doing a lot better once the clouds came over. When that cloud came over we really started to pick up speed and as it got later we were getting better. Shane did a two-tire stop but then backed it up with a track bar adjustment because you know it's going to tighten you up. It was a dead-on adjustment and it rotated [in the corners] and it went." IS THIS AN EXAMPLE OF HOW MUCH YOU'VE LEARNED, BEING ABLE TO KEEP UP WITH THE TRACK LIKE YOU DID? "You finally have a racecar that you can keep up with the track instead of trying to fix it. When you're struggling all day to fix you don't keep up with weather. When you've got a good racecar, then you can try to keep up with weather."

SHANE WILSON, CREW CHIEF, No. 77 KODAK EASY SHARE/JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS DODGE: "It was a great day. When we unloaded this car, it was just awesome from Friday morning all the way through the weekend. We got off a little bit in the race just like everybody else did. We were just a little bit tight. We made some adjustments, they didn't really work and we kind of went backwards. We tried some other stuff and by the end we were as good as anybody. Well, maybe not as good as Biffle but we were top-five maybe at the end. We played track position right to give us a chance at the end. There were a few good cars at the end that just didn't make the right decision but it was a good day. You run up in the top-15 all day and you give yourself a sixth, a fifth, or a fourth and that's what we were able to do today." YOU AND BRENDAN KEPT UP WITH THE TRACK ALL DAY AND MADE GOOD ADJUSTMENTS TO THE CAR. "The car worked really good for us all weekend and that makes it easy. You're just working on the small stuff. The car was good. It's a year's worth of experience now. We're not rookies anymore so I think we'll perform a lot better. We performed a lot better the last 10 races of the year and I expect the same next year." WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED THIS SEASON TO MAKE THIS TEAM BETTER IN 2005? "All meshing and doing the right stuff. We did the Orleans truck deal for two years and I feel like this team is about where we were at the end of that first year full time. It's just all chemistry. We've got all the equipment, just like everyone in the garage has good equipment nowadays. We've just got to get it all to mesh and know what we need for body builds, know what combination we need for our driver to excel." YOU HAD A TOUGH DAY LAST YEAR HERE WITH THE TRUCK. THIS YEAR YOU NEEDED A GOOD RUN ENTERING THIS RACE AND YOU GOT IT HERE. "And it was just a little bit different luck from this year. We were good last year and we were good today. He's real good at places like this and we were able to get it going again." WHAT'S GOING TO BE THE FOCUS DURING THE OFFSEASON TO MAKE THE TEAM BETTER? "Build more cars like we had today [laughs]."

SCOTT WIMMER, No. 22 CATERPILLAR DODGE: "I'm real happy with that run. The guys did a great job. We had a couple bad pit stops but they rebounded and had a couple real good ones. I'm real proud of this team. They built a great racecar for down here. We had a great test down here and the whole weekend went real well. We had a good shot at a top-10 there and let it slip out of our hands. Next year we'll get 'em." WHY DID YOU SLIDE BACK THERE AT THE END OF THE RACE? "I just got real tight. We didn't adjust enough. We were afraid we were going to over-adjust on the car. We did that last week at Darlington and it really bit us there. We ended up going a lap down and we didn't want to do the same thing here so we were doing small adjustments. We just could never get the car right and then with the cloud cover and it cooling off quite a bit we just got way too tight. In traffic it was just even tighter. I'm proud of my guys. We just didn't adjust enough. I didn't tell 'em to adjust the car enough and we ended up 13th so I'm happy with that." DO YOU THINK THINGS ARE STARTING TO TURN AROUND FOR THIS TEAM? "I definitely think so. Bill Davis is a great car owner and he's willing to change things around and get things straightened out and we're running better. I think communication is a lot better and everybody in the shop is communicating a lot better and building better racecars and that's what makes me excited. When all the guys are happy, I'm happy."

SCOTT RIGGS, No. 10 VALVOLINE CHEVROLET: "That's not bad. It sure was a lot easier up front. Seemed like when you're up front, in the front pack, you've got a lot more air on your car and the car would turn a lot better. As soon as you got past 12 cars back, it was hard to make up any ground. Just didn't have quite good enough of a car to really drive up through there and get back to the front in clean air. All the guys did a good job. We had good pit stops, good calls in the pits. I just wish we could have had a little different pit strategy and put ourselves up there a little closer to the front we might have had a little something for them because in clean air our car was really good." DID THE TRACK CHANGE A LOT NEAR THE END OF THE RACE? "It got a lot cooler and it seemed like the track got a lot tighter. We just didn't adjust enough for it right there at the end to really have enough to charge back up through there. It was a good job on everybody's part. We had about a 15th place car and that's where we wound up."