UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 - Ford Post-Race Quotes

KENSETH MAKES IT TWO STRAIGHT FOR FORD

· Matt Kenseth posted the ninth NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series victory of his career and second straight after winning at Rockingham two weeks ago.

· Kenseth becomes the first Ford driver to post consecutive wins since Kurt Busch in 2002 when he won at Martinsville (Oct. 20, Old Dominion 500) and Atlanta (Oct. 27, NAPA 500). Overall, he's the first to win back-to-back events since Jeff Gordon won at Martinsville and Atlanta last October.

· Kenseth is now tied with Richard Petty for 17th-place on the all-time Ford win list with nine. Petty won all nine of his races in 1969 in a Ford.

· The win was Ford's 546th all-time victory in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series, which is the most among manufacturers.

GREG BIFFLE - No. 16 National Guard/Subway Taurus (Finished 40th) - DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE PROBLEM IS? "No, we don't really know yet. We're not sure what happened, but it's obviously something internal. It could be the valve train. The National Guard car wasn't running that good, but we needed to make it to that first pit stop so we could do some work on it. The engine had plenty of power. It was running good, so I'm sure it's just one of those part failures that can't be avoided." WHY IS THIS PLACE HARD ON EQUIPMENT? "I'm not sure. It's flat. We're off the throttle a lot and on the throttle a lot. We pulled a little bit more gear than some of our other guys did and that could have been a contributing factor to what we saw here, but it was my choice to run the gear. They didn't want to run it, but I wanted to run the gear so that could be a contributing factor. The recall on the tach doesn't look like it's turning as many RPMs because the car wasn't handling as good, but we don't know what happened. I'm sure the guys will figure it out and we'll get her fixed up for next week."

MARK MARTIN - No. 6 Viagra Taurus (Finished 5th) - "A long green at the end was just what the doctor ordered for this piece. We had a good, long run setup in it. We struggled to get going on the restarts with all that traffic and those lapped cars racing so hard. It was really strong at the end of the run. It was easy to pass guys at the end, but we didn't get enough long runs. On that last run we did and that's what we needed. We had great pit stops by this team and I really love these guys." YOU KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO BE GOOD TODAY. "Yeah, I knew it. The race got going and I didn't know if we were gonna get to show it because of all the cautions, but later on the pit crew started stepping it up and we started getting it done." YOU GOT BETTER AS THE DAY WENT ON. "Pat Tryson and the Viagra team were awesome with the changes on the car. They made it better and better as the day went on. The pit stops were just fabulous and we got it racing at the end." YOU RUN WELL HERE. "Yes, we do. But I'm so thankful to have this team. These guys are just fantastic. I knew we were on the verge of doing that. We just needed a little wind in our sail and now we can go to Atlanta and try to qualify a little better. We've still got work to do. We weren't good enough, but we were sure better than we had been."

MATT KENSETH - No. 17 DEWALT Tools Taurus - VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW -- "It's fun. We won only one race last year and have come out of the box this year. Robbie and Chip and everybody that figured out these car over the winter when they built them under these new rules did a great job. My cars are really balanced. My engines are awesome with Jack and Robert's deal that they put together with Ford Racing. It's unbelievable. We've just got unbelievable equipment and an unbelievable team. It's fun to drive." YOU BOUNCED BACK FROM THAT ONE ROUGH STOP. "If there was a time to have a bad one that was the time to get behind a little bit. It actually didn't hurt us that bad because we actually adjusted on the car a little bit being behind. When we were in front we were perfect and when we were behind we needed to be a little freer and we were able to take care of that." THIS MUST FEEL GREAT. "It's pretty awesome. This is a race car driver's dream come true to come out and win two in a row. It's unbelievable to be able to have this good of a car and to be able to lead all those laps and kind of dominate the way we did the last two weeks is pretty cool. I just can't wait to keep racing."

KURT BUSCH - No. 97 Sharpie/IRWIN Taurus (Finished 9th) - "We just probably had a couple of things too aggressive on the car to make the car turn and we just burned the right rear. It would go fast for about 20 laps and then we'd burn the right rear off the poor thing. We've got a lot of work to do as far as understanding how we can use the four tires better with this new tire." JIMMY FENNIG SAID DURING THE RACE YOU GUYS WERE HAVING A BAD DAY EVEN THOUGH YOU WERE IN THE TOP FIVE. "Yeah, everytime we come here we're off just a little bit. Today we were a little better, but it just seems like we're too aggressive with our setup and we burn the tires off quicker than other teams. We need to do a better job of using four tires instead of just the right rear."

JEFF BURTON - No. 99 Pennzoil Taurus (Finished 13th) - "We took off pretty good. In the middle part of the race we got terrible. We kept adjusting on our car and at the end we were actually pretty good. We were just way off in the middle and we lost all the track position we worked so hard to get. We finished 13th and I'm certainly not happy with that, but we're learning a lot. There's a whole lot to learn about the tires and the air package that we have now and hopefully we can take this and build on it."

ELLIOTT SADLER - No. 38 M&M's Taurus (Finished 6th) - "The car was just a little bit free all day. I could never really get it tightened up, but I'm so proud of these guys. I've never really done that well here and probably didn't know how to give feedback to them, but I learned a lot today and a lot yesterday in practice. A lot of guys on this team are giving me hints and giving me ideas. I'm getting a lot of help from DJ and it's just coming together. To start off the season with two top 10s in three races is what we need. We need some momentum. We're light years ahead of where we were last year and that's where we want to be." DID THAT LAST LONG RUN HURT YOU? "Yeah, I faded a little bit there at the end. I was getting way too loose. I just kept telling myself, 'Elliott, don't wreck this thing. We've got a good finish here.' So I just wanted to do what I could to bring it home in one piece. Maybe we'll carry thing over to Atlanta. I guess they'll let me know tomorrow what we're gonna do, but, all in all, it was a great day. We had great pit stops and it was a great day for M&M's. We want to try to top 10 these guys to death and we're doing that so far."

DALE JARRETT - No. 88 UPS Taurus (Finished 11th) - "We ran up there and I thought we were gonna have a good chance of maybe running ourselves into the top five, but we never got the chassis exactly right. It was a good effort, we just didn't get it all put together. It's tough out there. It's a handling race track. When you can get your car out in front like those guys you get an aero advantage. You look at Matt and he drove up through there a couple of different times, so you can't put it all on that. You've just got to get the job done and we've still got a little bit of work to do." AFTER ROCKINGHAM THIS WAS NEEDED. "We needed a decent day. We ran decent and we just have to keep working on it week by week. If you have decent days, then you can adjust on it slowly."

MATT KENSETH PRESS CONFERENCE - "It's great to come to Vegas. You don't always leave here a winner, so it's fun to come here and leave a winner. We had a great car all day. Obviously, we started in the middle of the pack and made our way to the front pretty quick. The car handled really great. We had a really awesome engine. We got behind one time and was able to make it back up, so we just really had a dominant car. It was a lot of fun to drive. It was as good as the car we had at Rockingham the other week and it feels good to come out of the box this strong." LAST YEAR YOU GOT CRITICIZED FOR NOT WINNING ENOUGH AND NOW YOU'LL GET CRITICIZED FOR WINNING ALL OF THEM. "I learned something. I'm gonna go home and watch the TV shows and see what some of the people said, but no matter what I learned it's always something. We ran the race at Rockingham and it would be hard for anybody to argue that we didn't have the dominant car and all you saw in the headlines was that the caution didn't fall right. We weren't on the lead lap and we shouldn't have won and this and that. It's always something, but I'd rather have them talking about us because we're doing so good than the other way around I guess." HOW HARD DID YOU HAVE TO WORK AFTER THE ROUGH PIT STOP? "We had a great car. It's really weird. At Rockingham and here we've had cars really, really fast on short runs. We've never had cars like that in my career. Usually we're better on long runs. Today, we had a car that was unbelievably fast on short runs and it was still as fast as anybody on the end of a long run, so that was really weird. On new tires I knew I had to get it done right away. The car would stick so good the first 10 laps on tires that I could really make the moves and get around there. I could run just about as fast as I could in qualifying, so I still need to learn the qualifying thing." WAS IT HARD TO STAY PATIENT WHEN YOU WERE RUNNING 7TH? "That's something I had to remind myself of somewhat. We've only run two open races, but with the shorter spoilers we have less drag and our engines run a fair amount better than they did last year. The tires are softer and wear out faster, so you're going faster at the end of the straightaway and it's really hard. You used to be able to drive way in there with the tire that you couldn't hurt and a big spoiler and it's hard to get yourself to lift early enough so you don't abuse your tires and not drive in too hard. So that was something. I drove really, really hard until I got into the third (place) and then I drove really hard until I got to Tony. As soon as I passed Tony, my car was getting tight just even from being behind somebody a little bit. I was worried about hurting the right-front and I ran hard for three or four laps to catch Kevin and then I could see Kevin was starting to struggle a little bit and his car was starting to slide a lot more. Then I just slowed down and tried to save my tires as much as I could because we still had 35 or 40 laps." WHAT IS THE SECRET FOR ROUSH HERE? "First and foremost, if there was one I wouldn't tell you (laughing). Setups and rules and tires and aerodynamics and bodies change so much that there's not four springs, four shocks and swaybar that we bring back here and run every time. I think Jack has had all of his success here because Mark Martin could adapt to new tracks really good. When he first came here he won right away. Jeff Burton can get through the corners really fast and is good at setting his cars up at places like this and won a couple of races right away. I just think over the winter - we've got good teams at Roush that have been really prepared and have come out of the box pretty strong. I don't think there's one thing that Jack knows that makes his cars all win here. I just think it's a combination of the teams and all the people he has in place and how hard they work and how good they're prepared throughout the winter to go out and do this."

JACK ROUSH, Car Owner - No. 17 DEWALT Tools Taurus - "As usual I'd like to comment on something that I really don't know much about, I guess because I didn't hear the question. But I heard Matt's answer and I glean from it that it's a query as to why we've been successful here. Mark Martin is a pillar of Roush Racing. He's helped me build this thing. He brought to my attention that there was a young driver out there by the name of Matt Kenseth that thought very much like Mark. Mark is doctor superior at high-banked - realizing this is not real high-banked - but fast race tracks, race tracks that you can use a lot of grip, get on the gas early and go looking for the bottom of the race track. Mark has a real good sense for that and he saw in Matt much of the same modems and much of the same interest that he had in his race tracks. Matt is more like Mark than he even recognizes in terms of the way he faces the problems of a race track. They'll be very good at similar tracks because they have such a similar outlook."

MATT KENSETH CONTINUED - WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE FROM LAST YEAR TO THIS YEAR AS FAR AS WINNING? "I think if you really look at the numbers from last year and look forward as a group, we started off fairly strong last year. Not trying to make excuses, but throughout the year none of us as a group ran as good as we did in the beginning of the year and the end of '02. I think we just got a little bit behind aerodynamically and maybe on our cars a little bit, too. Over the winter it would have been easy to sit back and say we had a good year last year, we ran good and won the championship and we're not gonna change anything. But Robbie and everybody in the shop, I'm so proud of those guys because they cut everything apart. I was so busy this winter I was gone one time for about five days and when I came back to the shop he had the body cut off of every single race car I had. I flipped out. I was like, 'Those were a couple of our good cars I thought we were just gonna fix for the new rules.' So he really worked hard to get these cars balanced for this new aerodynamic package and figure out what we need to go run good. This car here that we won with today was my old favorite car that we won with last time. This car was together two months ago and it went to the tunnel and he hated it, so he cut the whole body off just because it wasn't what he wanted. We looked at it and it wasn't what we thought was gonna be the best and we cut the entire body off after it was already built and ready to go and primered and everything. We put a whole new body on it and did it again and sent it back to the wind tunnel and made it better, so those are the kind of things that lead you laps and win you races - preparation and hard work and research and dedication. Our pit crew is together for the second year and they've been doing a great job. Right now we've got really good stuff and our communication is really good. So far for these two weeks we've been able to figure out what we need to do to our cars to make them go fast." DO YOU REVISE YOUR GOALS NOW AND THINK YOU CAN WIN A LOT OF RACES THIS YEAR? "I can't say I'm not a goal-setter, but I'm not a number setter really. My goal is to do the best job that we can and to go out and be competitive and put ourselves in position to win races. So many things can go wrong or go right in 400 and 500 mile races. So many pieces and parts moving inside the car, debris on the track, flat tires, me making mistakes - whatever. You just never know, but I will say that this winter is the most optimistic and the most excited I've ever been about a racing season. Jack and I talked about that, and Robbie, in New York about how this was gonna be the year that we really got the tools to go out and do great things as a group at Roush Racing. That's how I felt in the winter and that's how I still feel today. I feel like we've just got awesome equipment - the best stuff I've sat in in my life and I think we've got a lot of great opportunities this year."

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED - "Can I jump in just a second? Last year there was a lot said about if we won the championship in style or if we backed into it. We didn't have much to work with last year. The Taurus - we got our templates for our Taurus in 1997. In the meantime, the only consideration we've gotten since '97 was to revise the front air dam by one inch. In the meantime, the Chevrolet had been improved three inches and had gotten two body revisions two sets of templates after that and the Chrysler had gotten a new front end in addition to having a chance to work on our car for 18 months before they submitted their original Dodge set of templates. In 2004 we have the first chance to get meaningful improvement to our car since '97. When we started last year, the engineers and aerodynamisists and the shock folks knew everything about that car. It was optimized when we started the year and we did do very well with the car early in the year before everybody else figured out how to use their new Dodge nose, use their new Pontiac and their new Chevrolet. Toward the end of the year, we were dead meat. At different times when some people didn't understand that I would hold my nose to get through the year - take the abuse we would get for looking like we were not racing hard and wait for a new set of templates that would give us a chance to catch up. We've got an aerodynamically equal car, as far as I know, as it relates to drag and downforce. The change in the tires and the change in the spoiler really made it a jump ball to where the things that people understood about the cars - that they didn't have to change over the winter, the Chevrolets and the Dodges, they understood about those. They had to come back and adapt to the tire and the spoiler, so that really put it on a level playing field. We've got an equal car and we started off with nobody knowing exactly how to address the tire. Matt and Mark and the guys have raised to the task as they always do when they have a chance." DO YOU LOOK AT YOUR DOMINANCE HERE LIKE DEI HAS AT DAYTONA? "What I said about Mark and the way he addresses a race track and the things he instinctively looks for and the inspiration he is to all the crew chiefs and to the shop managers and everything sets the signature and the personality of Roush Racing. We like to go at race tracks where we can attack the race track and where you don't have to be real tentative with it and you can go for it. By the same token, a race track where you recognize you've got so much life in your tires and they're gonna go for so many laps so hard and if you go too hard too early, you won't have enough for later - that's also something that's Mark's meat. The things that he has asked for over the years - this is our 17th year and the things that we've built into our program address the problems that you face on this race track very well. The first time we came here we were able to win. That was great. The first time we went to Texas, a brand new mile-and-a-half race track we were able to win. That was based on the strength of Mark's wisdom and his approach to these race tracks that are so similar."

MATT KENSETH CONTINUED - ANY CONCERN ABOUT THE SCORING SITUATION THESE DAYS, ESPECIALLY AFTER THE BUSCH RACE SATURDAY? "Being in the race, I don't really know what all happened yesterday with the scoring and everything. Mike explained it good at the driver's meeting today. There was a chance for confusion when you do this because a lot of different things happen under green flag pit stops, so I'm comfortable with it all. I've never been a fan of the lucky dog rule. It's not just because I've never needed it because I am gonna need it at times. I'm sure I'll use it plenty of times and I'll like it when I do use it, but I just think maybe it's a little bit too much of a gift and not really based on performance. But I understand why they do it. Not racing back to the caution is definitely 100 percent the right thing. It's a lot safer for us as competitors and it's safe for the fans if something happened over the fence or whatever. It safe for the safety crews getting out to get us. It's better for everybody."

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED - "It's all of that and the whole issue of NASCAR scoring is really not being fair to NASCAR. They're doing the best job they've ever done with regard to knowing where the cars are. I know in the first five years that I was here, starting in '88, there was at least three occasions where they'd stop the race for maybe three to five minutes to sort out what happened as they looked at everybody's cards. Right now we've got enough electronics involved that they're able to count the cars. They're able to see on the cameras and they're able to count electronically. All they have to do is go back and make sure that one of these electrons didn't miss a chance to connect when it should have and just make sure that the cards back up what the electron measurements say. They're doing a great job with it. The race drivers and the race crews are obviously at some kind of risk when we go to the race track. If we didn't want to be at some risk, we wouldn't get in our airplanes and fly out here and we wouldn't get in our cars and go do this, so we accept some risk. But the folks that come to help us - the medical people and the people with their towing rigs and the people who clean the race track and all - they don't need to have risk. We don't need to be running over them. We don't need to be scaring them. We just need to slow down and get ourselves organized and get ready to go racing again. That's what NASCAR has done. However they count who is on pit road and when they decide the thing gets frozen is really arbitrary and as long as they do it consistently, it's fine with me. It was for a good reason and they're doing a great job."

MATT KENSETH CONTINUED - HOW DID THE NEW PACKAGE AFFECT THE RACING TODAY? "There's definitely a difference in feel. When you're behind a car, you're still getting aerodynamically tight somewhat. No matter what they do, as long as there is car in front of you, you're gonna a little bit because when you set your car up, you set it up basically in clean air to be balanced. When you take any air off the front, it's gonna be a little tighter. But I didn't think it was nearly as tight as it was last year. I liked the tires a lot better because if you abuse them too early in the run and wear them out, like when I was trying to catch those two, if I would have gotten the right-front worn out, I would have backed up and the cars that were handling better would have passed me at the end of the run. So it not only makes you set your car up aerodynamically and go out and run as hard as you can run on those tires and beat them the whole time, it makes you have to think a little bit and know how hard you can use them and know how long you're gonna need them and what they're gonna be like at the end of the run. So I think it brings the chassis setup - the springs, the shocks and the swaybars more into play than what it did before because a lot of times last year at tracks like this and Kansas and Chicago - you could get the car aerodynamically how you wanted to. Even if the chassis wasn't set up right, just get it so it has the most air on the car and you could run really, really fast and never hurt the tires. Whereas now I think you've got a better chance of hurting the tires if you do that. If you just set it up aero and don't set up the chassis with consideration of saving the tires, I think you can hurt them. As a racer, it makes a better race."

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED - HOW DOES IT FEEL TO GET OFF TO A GOOD START? "It certainly means that we spent our winter well. With a chance to get a new set of templates for our Taurus. The Ford engineers and all the engineers on the team that were involved did a nice job. I think we have a competitive car and that feels good. We went testing. We built cars with different aerodynamic signatures over the winter and they were obviously different and they all weren't right, but we've hit on some things that are OK. We'll have lots of that as the year unfolds, unless we find something that looks better to us. It's great to have success. It's great to have the guys feeling like they didn't miss an opportunity to improve themselves and it's great to have Matt winning two when there was a criticism that we all felt for whether or not we'd race as hard as we could even though we were racing our guts out all year - whether we were really doing enough to deserve the championship we got last year." ARE YOU SEEING THE BENEFITS OF THE NEW CYLINDER HEAD? "Let me ask that question as part two to a question I'd like to answer. On the engine program that we've got going this year, we have had a chance to put together the best elements of Robert Yates and Doug Yates' engine program and the best elements of the Roush engine program. They were different and there were distinct strong points on each. We're about 80 percent of having the best elements put together. I'm not gonna tell you which things we lack, but one of the things that happened today - the 16 - leads me to believe that we don't have something in our program as good as we had last year as it relates to durability in that part. I'm guessing what failed and I'll know more about that Tuesday or Wednesday, but we're 80 percent of the way marrying those two programs together. There was more improvement realized by both of us by putting our programs together than there was for the single consideration of a new cylinder head. The cylinder head is big because it provides geometry that we didn't otherwise have that the Chevrolets had and the Dodges had and that Toyota is gonna have in the truck program, so it got us on the same page as far as geometry. But we have made a great improvement in our programs based on every Ford car having the 20 years of knowledge or so that's gone into building these engines apply to last year's standards. Having said that, the new cylinder head is better. It is gonna be an improvement for us. I suspect that we'll be ready to race it at Fontana. We might have it at Texas. Certainly it won't be at Atlanta, but the big thing we've got to concentrate on is making sure we don't have an epidemic of broken parts and we've got to move slowly in trying to make that next step."