MARK MARTIN - No. 6 Viagra Taurus (Finished 2nd) - WHAT HAPPENED ON PIT ROAD? "I don't know. We just had to come back. Some days it just goes that way. We're in this thing together. I've got the best race team in the business and we just had a small problem in the pits and we had to come back in. That's the bottom line. We didn't have any cautions to catch us back up. One caution in there would have made all the difference in the world. We had an incredible car. We came from the back of the pack with no cautions to run second and I applaud Pat Tryson. He and I wanted to win the race so we took two tires. We knew that we could only run second if we took four and we knew if we took two we might run second or we might have a chance to win. As it turned out, we didn't have enough tires on the left side to run with him, but we did everything we could do considering we didn't get a yellow flag." TALK ABOUT THE FIGHT IN YOUR TEAM. "I said I've got the best race team in the business right now and I mean it." YOU DROVE RIGHT THROUGH THERE AT THE END. "Well, we had an incredible car today and it really made me look good. That's good once in a while. My race car made me look good today. I always want it really, really bad. Sometimes I'm racing for 25th place and I'm fighting like that. This time we were showing them something, so I like that."

MATT KENSETH - No. 17 DEWALT Tools Taurus (Finished 8th) - "It was OK. We didn't run very good. We finished eighth with a 25th or 30th-place car, so that's pretty good but we didn't run good. We had a jack break on pit road. I was afraid we were gonna run like this yesterday. We didn't run that good in practice either, and just couldn't get the car to be into the track all weekend." DID YOU EVER GET THE CAR GOOD? "We didn't have it very good. The last two runs were better than what we had it before, but we got it too tight. We were almost too loose the whole race and then had it too tight at the end, so we were just searching all day."

ELLIOTT SADLER - No. 38 M&M's Taurus (Finished 32nd) - "What happened today is what we dreaded all year long. This hurt us. A blown tire pretty much took off the left-front fender and damaged the radiator. First time for this M&M's team behind the wall this year. I'm disappointed, but proud of my team for changing the radiator and fixing all that damage in 20 laps. We hope to get a better finish at Bristol, but this if very, very disappointing."

DALE JARRETT - No. 88 UPS Taurus (Finished 3rd) - "We were hoping we would be a little better than that, but it looked like Mark and Biffle were the class of the field. Congratulations to Greg. He did a great job. We just never could get the car to feel like it was down in the race track to where I could really hustle it, so we just had to hold on and get what we could. That's another top five for us, so it just shows even now whenever we're not at our best that this team is capable of running in the top five." A LONG GREEN FLAG RUN AT THE END. HOW MUCH DID THE TRACK CHANGE? "As it got a little bit cloudy and cooler there it tightened up a little bit, but, as I said, we just couldn't make our car stick right through the center to carry the speed that I needed. That's typical Michigan. I think that's why drivers enjoy this place because as a driver you can make a difference. You have to chase this thing around and search for different lines and we did a good job of that today. The guys in the pits did a great job and Mike did a good job of adjusting." YOU HAD A CLOSE CALL WITH BUSCH SPINNING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU EARLY ON. "Yeah, because I actually wasn't in any position to try to miss him. I had gone underneath maybe the 10 car and I never even saw Kurt up there and he spun right in front of me. I was wide open, so that's just one of those you can count towards good racing luck."

KURT BUSCH - No. 97 Sharpie/IRWIN Taurus (Finished 6th) - "It was an all-around great day for Roush Racing and all of our Fords. The engine program was fantastic. We hit on it and we able to march down the straightaway. We were just chasing loose early on thinking the track would tighten up and we ended up getting aero spun off the 19. He got us in turn two where we were the loosest and then we made some adjustments but at the end of the day we were too tight. That brought us behind the 88, the 42 and the 9 and, therefore, we didn't get a top five effort. But sixth place was a great day for us in our points. If the two leaders - the 24 and the 48 - have some more bad luck, we're gonna have 13 or 14 of us in this title chase. Hopefully, they can have some good luck and we can still continue on our program and make sure there are only 10 of us racing."

CARL EDWARDS - No. 99 Roush Racing Taurus (Finished 10th) - WHAT WERE YOU THINKING AT THE END COMING TO THAT LAST PIT STOP? "I was just thinking that if I'm gonna screw this up this is where it's gonna be. I just decided to take it a little bit easy. A little bit more of a veteran driver would have picked up a couple seconds getting into the pits, but our mission today was to be anywhere in the top half of the field. This is unbelievable." TALK ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS? "I'm very fortunate to be in the ride that I'm in. Jeff Burton and this team has done a lot of work this year to make these things this good. I think it speaks for itself that I'm the last Roush car in the field and I'm 10th. These cars are great. It's great equipment. Bob Osborne, the transition from my Truck crew chief, Cowboy, to Bob Osborne has been seamless. I've got two different teams at Roush Racing and both of them have great personnel." YOU DIDN'T GET IN A CUP CAR UNTIL LAST TUESDAY. HOW WAS IT TODAY? "It's just a different intensity level the whole day. Everyone races a lot harder. We were running around 20th most of the day and racing with Dale, Jr. and Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton and those guys. I raced harder for 20th there than I have for most wins ever in my life. It's just a lot of fun." YOU HAD NO PLAN ON WHERE YOU WANTED TO FINISH, BUT YOU MUST BE SURPRISED WITH THIS. "Absolutely. This is a victory for us. We determined earlier that 10th-place would be a literal victory. I thought we would be about 20th, to be honest with you, but the car came on. It got to be a lot of fun and the thing handled great, and we ended up 10th."

PAT TRYSON, Crew Chief - No. 6 Viagra Taurus (Martin finished 2nd) - "My opinion is it was there when it left and that's all it had to be. He flipped it and put it on there and that's all it had to be. When we came in it was still there. In my opinion they blew the call and it's just a shame. There's nothing we can do about it. We finished second and that's the way it goes. That's racin'. My honest opinion is that it's a call they shouldn't be allowed to make because half the guys call it and half of them don't. If you've got a loose wheel, you'll be coming back in." NASCAR SAID THE LUGNUT MUST BE INSTALLED. WHAT IS YOUR INTERPRETATION OF THAT? "The rulebook says it doesn't have to be tightened, it just has to be on the stud and that's where it was when it left. Everybody has a different opinion of what went on. That's mine. They've got theirs, but from what I saw on TV it clearly showed him flipping it to straighten it up and hitting it with his gun so I don't know. That's all we can do."

RICKY RUDD - No. 21 Motorcraft Taurus (Finished 24th) - "The car was real loose. It got loose halfway through the race and finally at the last pit stop they got it better, but it was too late. We couldn't do anything after that."

MARK MARTIN PRESS CONFERENCE - "It's just such a privilege to drive for this team and work for these guys. They put me in a race car that could contend to win and the car made me look good today. I'm very grateful for that." DID YOU HAVE A CAR TO CATCH GREG? "We needed to be on the same tire sequence as Greg. We were gonna run second if we came in and got four at the end - no chance of catching Greg because he was eight seconds ahead of us, or it's about an eight-second savings to leave the left sides off so we chose to do that. We knew we would come out neck-and-neck with him and we're praying for a miracle. The car didn't run as good on two as it would have on four, so it wasn't good enough, but we rolled the dice and took a chance. We figured we were gonna run second either way, so I'm proud of Pat for making the call to go for the win." IF YOU LOOK BACK AND SEE YOUR BAD LUCK. PEOPLE SAY IF YOU GET IN THE CHASE TO LOOK OUT FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM. "You know me, I don't look back. I can't remember because I don't think about that. I don't know." WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU RAN THIS WELL? "I don't know. We had a pretty good year in 2002. I had a great year in '98." YOU'RE SO COMPLIMENTARY OF YOUR TEAM. "You know I raced for 25th a lot last year and I drove just the same as I did out there today. People just notice it a lot more when you're in cars like that and, believe me, it's a privilege to drive them. I'm just incredibly grateful that I get to drive stuff that will run like that. I've just dreamed of having an engine like that. Man, it was unbelievable and the car handled, too." ANY IDEA WHAT HAPPENED ON THE TIRE SITUATION? "That's your story. Don't get me in it. I don't know. I didn't ask. I didn't have time to worry about it. It wasn't my deal to sort out for them. What I had to do was my job, which was to come from the back of the pack and try to win the race. That's what a team does. I don't know. I don't question. I know everybody wants to know that, but leave me out of it. I don't know. I didn't ask. I focused on the job at hand and I think we did a good job to come from the back and run second. I tried real hard to lead one of those laps when we came out with Biffle, but we just couldn't do it. It seemed like there was a caution every five laps all race long and then just when we could have used just one caution, we didn't get it." LOOKING FORWARD. IS THIS TEAM PEAKING AT THE RIGHT TIME? "That's your story. Please don't drag me into all that. You know I can't stand over-optimistic people (laughing). Don't make me hate myself (laughing). If you start that and we start blabbing all that stuff and I don't make that cut, then I'm only left with a broken heart. Right now I'm planning on not being broken hearted if that happens, but go down with a fight. That's my style. That's the way I want to do this thing. I want to go down slugging as hard as I can and if it doesn't work out, then I don't want to be broken hearted. I've had enough to those." CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THESE LAST THREE RACES IN THE CHASE? "We have a top-five race team and if I wind up being a spectator at the banquet, so be it. I have to look at things from a positive standpoint and say, 'Golly, at least we didn't run 14th every week and make it in.' I'd much rather not make the cut and run like I ran today and at Indy and at Pocono and at the Glen. That's real special to me. I've always said that that is the glue that keeps a winning team together."

DALE JARRETT PRESS CONFERENCE - WHAT ABOUT THE LAST THREE RACES IN THE CHASE? "I'm not sure that the format is gonna make Bristol and Richmond anymore wild than it has been. I think it's the competition that's gonna do that. There are 43 cars at Bristol and you've got at least 30 cars that are very competitive. When you have a situation like that you're gonna have a wild not, it usually is. Obviously, what all three of us are thinking about trying to do is just run as hard as we can and be lucky. I think that's the best thing you can hope for is to be lucky there. I think we've all run well there. I think Kasey (Kahne) has only been there the one time, but I think he was running extremely well the first race when somebody maybe took him out. Again, the points deal, I don't think, is gonna have any effect. I think it's just gonna be a wild night anyway."

MARK MARTIN CONTINUED - IS THERE DISAPPOINTMENT THAT YOU DIDN'T WIN TODAY? "Yes, I'm disappointed. No doubt, but you know what, it would have been fun. Greg ran fantastic all day. I'm disappointed that I didn't get to make him work for it. That's the only thing. I'm not a total hog. I don't have to win everything, but I like to make it interesting anyway. Those guys were awesome today. I'm very happy with the performance of my team and I am disappointed with the way it turned out, but I love Pat Tryson and I love every guy on my team. I've told them that almost every race this year and nothing is gonna change that. We'll just go next week and try to get us another one." FIVE ROUSH CARS IN THE TOP 10 TODAY. "I've really seen the 6 and the 16 take different paths and almost wind up at the same location. We are not working as closely together as the 99 and the 6 might have, but we're arriving toward the front of the pack with a lot of the same things. They're two great teams sort of traveling a little bit different path to the end result, but getting great results on the race track. It's fun. It's fun to outrun people. I think that's why we do this."

DALE JARRETT CONTINUED - HOW MUCH WOULD YOU HAVE LIKED TO HAVE STARTED THE SEASON FOUR RACES AGO AND CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE LAST TWO MONTHS. "That would have been nice certainly, but that's not the way this business works. You have to make the most of what you're dealt. I think that this credit needs to go to Mike Ford. He'd be the first to tell you that he stepped into a situation and a job that was way more of an undertaking than what he envisioned at the beginning. He's done a terrific job of getting us to this point to where we can be this competitive. I told the TV and radio people outside that whenever we come in here and not be at our best and finish third says a lot about how far this team has come. Earlier in the year and certainly last year when we wouldn't be at our best, we couldn't finish in the top 15 basically. So we have come a long way. I think the thing Mark wasn't wanting to speak of on the question about momentum, I think that says a lot about the teams that are working their way into the top 10 and that are fighting right now to end up there. I think those teams such as Kasey's and Mark's and if we can position ourselves there somehow, we have a lot of momentum going and we could be very dangerous in a 10-race shootout. It's a lot of fun as Mark was saying. It's a lot more fun to race up front, so we're having a good time." IS THIS ROUSH-YATES ENGINE PACKAGE COMING TOGETHER AT THE RIGHT TIME? "I don't think there's any doubt that that's a big factor in it. We all would have benefited if it could have come to us at an earlier time, but, obviously, there's only so much that you can get done. I think that, yes, we're all benefiting from that and that shows when you get to a place like this in particular, where horsepower means a lot. Doug Yates and his people have done a tremendous job. I don't know how many people we have from Roush over there, but there are a number of them and they're all working very good together. Certainly, that has to help their program and it's benefited ours, too, so that's a big part of the success that some of the Fords are having right now." WHAT ABOUT CALIFORNIA COMING UP, IS THIS A GOOD TEST FOR THAT TRACK? "Yeah, we can. I think we've learned a lot about our program to this point on these type of race tracks. We didn't run very good at Fontana the first race, but I think with the type of cars we're building right now and with the engines, it seems that each week Doug finds a little bit more. I wouldn't necessarily say that he finds more horsepower, but he finds things that are more pleasing to him to see to make the cars run better. So when we get to Fontana, I would say that would have to work to our advantage greatly. I'm looking forward to going out there and being able to compete and that being another race that we can find ourselves in the mix." CAN YOU DO ANYTHING DIFFERENT AT BRISTOL? "It's no different. We can't try any harder, first off. We keep getting the question every week, 'What are you gonna do this week to try to get yourself in the top 10?' We can't try any harder. I promise you, we're doing everything we possibly can, but as far as going and I think everybody is trying to make it like we're going to Bristol and gonna go to Richmond and hunt down whoever is ahead of us and take them out. Well, if that's the way I have to get in the top 10, then I'll quit. I'm gonna race them and race them hard. I've never done that and I'm not gonna start now. If we can go in these next three races an outrun everybody that we're racing back there and somehow get in the top 10, that would be great. But there's no way. The guys that are in the top 10, they're not gonna hunt the guys down there 11th through 15th and turn them just to make sure that they get in. We're gonna race hard and it may come that the guys in eighth, ninth, 10th and 11th all end up in the same accident or are banging on each other, but it's not gonna be because of the point system, it's just because of the nature of the race track and how close the competition is."

GREG BIFFLE WINNING PRESS CONFERENCE - "I'm real excited to get the National Guard car in victory lane. I know all of the soldiers over in Iraq watch the races. They can't wait to see NASCAR NEXTEL Cup racing on TV. It's really exciting for the first time ever to get them in victory lane and I'm real excited about that. The Ford Taurus body is something we've come a long way with and our guys have worked really hard on it. Our engine program is unbelievable. Our engine program has come so far. I lost the timing belt last week and probably got some debris in it. The engines have run flawless all season for us. We've had a little bit of trouble, but today everything worked perfect. Doug gave me a great race car. The guys did a great job in the pits and I didn't make any mistakes, which is pretty unusual for me to race an entire day and not make any mistakes, but I managed to do that today. I'm pretty excited about it with Flash on the car, the fastest man alive. I think I'm gonna wear this driver's suit at Bristol if they let me. Maybe it'll bring me good luck."

JACK ROUSH, Car Owner - No. 16 National Guard/Subway Taurus - "Greg and Mark were the fastest cars in the field. A number of cars had trouble. Of course, Ryan Newman was off a little and Rusty was fast and he had trouble. The 48 had trouble, but the fact is we're very proud of our cars. Our Tauruses were well prepared. We have great support from Ford Motor Company from the engineering work that was done behind the scenes. The crew chiefs did a great job and, of course, the engines ran flawlessly. With the 88 car, we had six of our Ford engines in the top 10, so this is a banner day for us - racing in front of the home crowd for me in Michigan is always one of my favorite things. Greg has been ready to go to victory several times this year and we've had things happen that were beyond his control and we all felt terrible about, and I'm relieved that we've got one down and now we'll go see if we can get some more."

GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED - TALK ABOUT THE CAUTIONS EARLY AND THEN THE LONG GREEN? "Yes and no. My car was really, really fast right when the green fell and I started moving up real fast. I started 24th, so it took me a while to work my way through there. Actually, it didn't take very long. I think we were in 13th when the first caution came out and the car was just so fast. Those cautions at the beginning we good for us because I got to adjust on the race car and make pit stops. Unfortunately, we had radio trouble today and I lost radio communication during the first part of the race. I could hear them, but they couldn't hear me talking. I had to switch to my second radio, which just has an antenna on it that's inside the car, so I could only talk to them on the frontstretch. It made it difficult because I couldn't talk about what we were gonna do when we pit because I'm driving down pit road already. The track is so big we don't get one time by before the pits are open, so I can't discuss the changes I'm gonna make to the race car. That's why I got off a little bit. Mark was faster than me. I was running third, fourth, and the car was really loose. Finally, we got some communication and got the car tightened back up again. I just can't say enough about Doug. Doug has done a fine job for us with our whole team - personnel and everything. He doesn't miss a lot. He executes really well and stays calm, and I don't, which is good for me to have somebody like him. It really worked out for us today, but we've been coming. We were fourth at Pocono, sixth at Indy. We've run like that. We were running fourth at Texas - just all over the place. We were leading California when we had a transmission problem, so we've been coming but we just hadn't got there yet."

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED - HOW HARD IS IT TO GET FIVE CARS RUNNING WELL? "I liken myself to the nursery rhyme about the old lady who lives in a shoe, she had so many children she didn't know what to do. It's really tough for me to bear the experience that I have, which has been considerable coming up on 40 years of being involved in professional racing. To bring that history to bear and at the same time not get in the way of the guys as they do what is current and what is timely going forward, I try to bring forward a democratic process that brings out the best that everybody has and challenges the things that are not sound that would get them in trouble. But to watch Doug Richert come down and be able to help Greg build this team is just an awesome thing. I can't tell you how proud I am. I'm proud of the resurgence of Mark Martin with regard to what he and Pat Tryson are doing right now. Of course, Robbie Reiser and Matt and Jimmy Fennig and Kurt, it's an awesome thing that I'm a part of now. As a youngster trying to race my own little drag race cars and all when I got started as a teenager and seeing what it's grown up to be is just a wonderful thing. I feel very lucky." WHAT ABOUT CARL EDWARDS TODAY? "I pulled a page from Junie Donlavey's book. I had the good fortune to share some space and some years with Junie Donlavey. I built engines for him and some of his rookies and some of my rookies. The people that I had road racing drove his cars for awhile. In fact, I think three of them did at different times, including Kenny Schrader, which I can't take credit for. I built engines for a guy that he drove for in USAC before he came, but, anyway, Junie and I were hanging around and we had a lot of rookies go through. Of course, Junie was really adept on letting his rookies tear his cars up because he had to repair his cars and he didn't want that happening. So we were real careful with Carl in practice. We kept him in a car that was tight to the point of bringing tears to his eyes and then we started feeding that back and giving him a little relief from it when we thought that maybe he had enough feeling for it that he wouldn't let the back end come out from underneath him. He got the wall once today I understand. I've got to look at the tapes and understand how that happened, but here we had a situation where the track tended to be looser in one and two than it was in three and four, and, of course, it starts off looser than it finishes. So if you started off where you should be, at least that 99 car, it was deathly loose in one and two to start with. Bob Osborne struggled with him trying to understand what he was saying and they did a great job. They kept him in a car that was reasonably fast, that he was able to keep under him and that will be the challenge going on to Fontana and some of the other places we go to for the rest of the year."

GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED - WERE YOU CONFIDENT FOUR TIRES WAS THE RIGHT CALL AT THE END? "Oh yeah. I've been beat by four tires so many times I can't even count. But you look at where Mark was running before he put the two tires on, that was his strategy. He was trying to win, but Mark wasn't trying to win - Mark was trying to get track position and finish right up there and come back from whatever happened to him. Definitely taking two probably catapulted him at least eight to 10 spots on the race track that he wouldn't have been able to make up with even four and coming back out where he was. But I didn't think he had any chance at all about coming and messing with me with only two tires." HOW FAR IN THE RACE WERE YOU WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOU HAD A CAR GOOD ENOUGH TO WIN? "Yesterday before the Busch race. It was that good in happy hour. I felt pretty strongly about this car. I told a couple people that I felt I had a car to win with. I've only felt that way a few times, not a few times, but felt as strongly as I did that we had a car. I knew we had a car that could run in the top five hands down. I knew I had a car that I was gonna finish fourth, fifth, sixth, third - something. I felt really good about the race car."

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED - DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE ISSUE WITH THE 6 CAR? "I was residing with Doug Richert trying to make sure we didn't miss strategy on Greg as far as when we could stop for fuel and that sort of thing. As soon as we got that down and we agreed on our options, I went down and the inspector wanted to tell me what had happened from his point of view. It was noisy and I said, 'I don't need to hear right now.' So I went up and rubbed Pat down and tried to say, 'Alright, now you need to think about the next stop and figure out what we can do to save this thing.' As it went on and eventually the team members came to me and whispered in my ear that there was a lugnut that they didn't get tight. They said it had fallen off and got it back, but didn't get it tight. The inspector said that it wasn't on the wheel. I talked to Pat and he assured me it was on the wheel. I don't think he was down there where he could see exactly what was going on, but he was sure it was on the wheel. I talked to the tire changer and he said it was on the wheel when it came back. He said that all he had to do was straighten it with his hand. I guess the glue was holding it or something, but he said he straightened it with his hand and hit it with the wrench. But the inspector said to me that it was not on there. Even though I didn't tell Pat he couldn't go protest the result, I will go with the inspector. I tend to think that it probably was not right or they wouldn't have called it that way. But if they've got videotape that shows, and Pat says the videotape shows that all he did was hit it with the gun. If that's true, then they didn't do the right thing. I suspect that was not the case. I hope that was not the case, but, in the meantime, we'd have to come back to see if Mark would have come back to beat Greg and if it would have meant leading the most laps, which I haven't seen the math on it. I'm not sure it would have, but it only would have been 10 points from where he is today and if it wouldn't have moved him into leading the most laps it would have been only five. The strategy that Wally Brown and Pat came up with to put two tires on the car, I think he moved from eighth to third, but by doing that from what I saw he improved by six spots. That was a nice save. You close the chapter on this and you get ready and go to Bristol and the races that follow."

GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED - CAN YOU CLARIFY YOUR SITUATION WITH THE TEAM? "It was obvious that earlier in the season we weren't getting the results that we set out to get. I was unhappy with the performance that we were putting on the race track and anybody that was happy with the performance needs to quit racing because the performance wasn't there and the results weren't there both in the Busch car and the Nextel Cup car. We've got those problems solved. That's all I want. I want to be able to have a chance to compete every week and compete to win. That's what any driver wants. I think there are 43 drivers and if you ask them they will all say the same thing. I was to the point where if we can't fix it, we've been trying to fix it, but if we can't fix it, we can't fix it. But, obviously, over the last three months we've been working very hard at it, everybody has. Jack has been involved and Doug has been a big part of it. We haven't really made a lot of changes, but we made some changes and we've gotten the problems fixed. The Busch team, we still have some little issues here and there. That gets real frustrating for me. We had kind of a miscue yesterday. Everybody has a miscue every once in a while, but it always seems to come when you're running the best and that's tough. But we've got our team where we need it. We're capable of winning races. We're capable of winning the championship. We're definitely capable of getting in the chase next year for the championship. I feel totally confident and I think that we'll win another race this season. I'm pretty danged sure of that. That's what I want to do. I like driving the Fords. It makes me mad when anybody else beats us, but it should. A guy wants to win, he wants to win."

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED - "This business ebbs and flows - people that have watched it a long time. This is Greg's second year. This is the second crew chief that we've had, but from the time early in the year when we were all frustrated because we weren't getting the results, we haven't changed an engineer, we haven't changed pit people or crew people. We haven't changed the crew chief, we haven't added people and we haven't made anymore effort. We were making a Herculean effort at the beginning and we weren't getting the results we wanted. As we've stayed the course, it's shown that it has turned and we're on a definite upswing right now. It looks like that Greg can do his business and realize his potential and that was my goal for the year. In fact I told Greg as we started this year that I was gonna spend a lot of time with his program making sure that if we did go upside-down with it that I couldn't look back at it and say that I hadn't done my best."

GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED - WHEN YOU SAID THE BEST CAR EARLIER, DID YOU MEAN JUST CUP? "Just in Cup. For instance at Indy, I felt like I had a good car. I felt like I could run in the top five. I wasn't sure if I could beat the guys at the top of the board. We go back and look at the lap tracker after happy hour and it shows every lap that a guy runs. Well, the 38 car was a half-second a lap faster than us. Our teammate, Mark, is a little bit better than us. A couple of other cars are faster than us, but I know we're right in there and I know we're gonna be right in there. Now between tonight and tomorrow morning is my car gonna be able to beat all those guys? Probably not, but I'm gonna be right there. You've got to be running in the top five to win a race. You've got to be there in the top five and the wheels could fall off. The two guys in front of them could wreck and the third place car could get in it. Anything can happen, so if you're running in the top five you've got a chance to win. So I don't say that I didn't have a chance to win, it's just that this car here in happy hour I felt a balance that I have not ever felt before and the car turning all the way around the corner is what I felt. And it was a fairly stable turn all the way around the corner on a hot, slick race track. I looked at my lap times and everybody else's lap times and I thought I was gonna be good. About 20 or 25 laps in the race today I was being bold and said these guys might be in trouble today when I was chasing down the second place car. I was bringing Gordon in four-tenths a lap, which is pretty danged fast. I just felt like I had a car today that was gonna be tough to beat. I didn't suspect Mark to be up there messing with me like he was, but he had a fast car, too. I don't know what would have happened if he would have not been penalized."

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED - CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE 16 TEAM PROBLEMS EARLIER VERSUS THE 99 NOW? "The 99 team is more mature as a group. They've been together for eight or 10 years and has been pretty much the same. Bob Osborne is a prototype of what a crew chief of the future will be. He's out of the Matt Borland, Ray Evernham mold. He's a mechanical engineer and he's got a lot of racing experience, so we made a change for the 99 for Jeff Burton by moving Bob over from being manager of all the engineers to the crew chief for the 99. That program is more mature - the tire changers, the car chief - everybody in place has a pedigree. They've been doing it for a while and doing it well. With the 16 team starting last year, we literally built a brand new team. We built a new addition to our building and everybody in it was new. That has involved some sorting, so I'm confident that unlike when Greg came in as a rookie, that with the 99 I've got a basis of people with an understanding of what the car needs to do and a respect for how to keep it inside the box from the setup parameters. Carl will have a better shot at doing his business in his first year than Greg had based on the maturity of the team."

GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED - DOES THE BONUS FOR 11TH PLACE IN POINTS GIVE YOU EXTRA INCENTIVE? "Yes and no. Certainly, one is we're gonna trying to finish as high in points as we can no matter what, whether they're even gonna pay us. If they say there is no money for 11th, we're gonna try to be 11th in points - that's as high as we can be. We're gonna work just as hard or maybe a little extra probably to get to that 11th spot. We're going to be thinking with points in mind and doing the best we can. It just depends. We can't have any failures or any problems from here on out. If we get a flat tire or get a lap down where something happens. Last week we were gonna finish ninth or 10th and lost the timing belt and lost three more spots in the points. Those kind of things can't happen to us if we're gonna make 11th in points. It's gonna be a stretch already to get there, but I think it's possible for sure. We're gonna work our hearts out. We've got an opportunity to win at California. We've got an opportunity to win at Bristol. I think we've got an opportunity to win at Darlington. I think we can win in Atlanta and I think we can win at Homestead and Phoenix. Those race tracks we've run good at. We were leading a bunch at Atlanta. We were leading California last time when the transmission broke. We would have won the last Southern 500 ever at Darlington when the flywheel broke because it was dragging the ground. We've been there at all these places and been really close. Last year I felt I could have won at Phoenix and I hit the wall coming off turn two and messed the whole car up on the right side. So we're gonna test at a lot of those places too, so I feel pretty strongly about being tough and getting ready for next year to be where Jimmie Johnson is today."

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED - "This chase for the Nextel Cup points thing for the last 10 races is breaking new ground for all of us. I'm a racing dog. If somebody wants to put together a race and I've got a tricycle or a bicycle or an airplane or a locomotive that fits the rules for it, I want to go race it and see how we can do. So to race for 11th, to race for first, those are all races that are worthwhile. The money that goes with that is a necessary component to what we do. It's like air. Money goes through these things. We spend all that we can get on whatever we think is most important to us at the time. It is gonna be important to generate as many dollars as we can and having the highest average finish we can have for all of our programs to have as much resource as we can to do all the R&D things and get ready for next year." YOUR THOUGHTS ON SEEING JEFF IN ANOTHER CAR? "Jeff Burton is a great friend. When I hurt myself two years ago he was the one that was there, that had the presence and the composure to tell my mother what was happening to me at the time. I've been there when both of his children were born - not in the room, but standing by his side figuratively. And I was there when he had his inner ear problem and his wife wanted to get the doctor out with the knife and start cutting on him right away because she wanted it fixed right now. So we've been through an awful lot together. He was a very key component in demonstrating to Mark and the rest of the world that what I wanted to try to do - my vision and my dream for having multiple teams - was not a foolhardy thing. Jeff Burton is one of my heroes. He's one of my friends. I wish him well and I wish him success and God's speed. To see him run by all comparison, he ran better than he's run lately in my cars. Of course, Carl Edwards ran better than he's run in the 99, so it was a win-win thing. Sometimes you change things around and combinations go back together better than you think - you get something extra for it. I think that the Richard Childress organization is gonna benefit from Jeff being there. I think he'll find success, and I think we'll find success with Carl moving forward in the 99. I was a Jeff Burton fan pulling for Jeff today to get the highest finish he could. I didn't want him to be in the top 10 if we had a top 10 full of our cars. I didn't want to give up 10th for Carl to put Jeff in there, but for him to do as well as he could without diminishing my programs. I'm a supporter."