Samsung/Radio Shack 500 - Rookie Post-Race Quotes

BRENDAN GAUGHAN, #77 KODAK EASY SHARE DODGE: "We had a really good Dodge today. I think we proved it out there. We blew by the leaders on the restart. The car was a little too free on the early going and a little too tight as we got running. Shane and Kodak team had great pit stops, great adjustments. We were getting closer. I'm not sure what happened. It looks like we lost a cam or something inside the motor. I'm not exactly sure what. The Penske Jasper horsepower shop, they make plenty of horsepower, just like Kevin Croyer last year. I lost one motor in something like 14 years. You don't loose many Penske Jaspers so we'll allow them to have one every once in a while." WAS THE ANY WARNING THAT YOU HAD A PROBLEM? "Just barely. I drove into turn one the motor changed pitch and the oil pressure went down and at that point that's where a lot of oil tends to get on your tires and it's going to hurt real had. I got lucky, saved the racecar and with the Kodak team as new as we are it's nice to save a racecar and put any oil on the track for anybody else. Being a Raybestos Rookie, they'd probably come bark at me." ARE YOU ENCOURAGED BY HOW WELL YOU RAN TODAY? "Absolutely. We thought we ran great. We were top-15 at least. We were faster than some guys but way far back far in the field. I had to just keep digging away. There's not quit in the Penske Jasper team. We'd have been pretty good."

KASEY KAHNE IN THE #9 DODGE DEALERS/UAW DODGE WAS THE RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE OF THE RACE AT TEXAS. Kahne finished second, his third second place finish of the 2003 season. He joins Kurt Busch as the only other Raybestos Rookie to finish in the top-five in seven NEXTEL Cup races at Texas. Busch finished fourth in 2001. Unofficially he increases his lead in the Raybestos Rookie standings to 32 points (102-70) over Scott Wimmer.

· Kahne has more top-fives (four) and more top-10s (four) than any other Raybestos® Rookie this season.

· A Raybestos® Rookie has finished in the top-five in five of the seven NEXTEL Cup Series races this season.

· A Raybestos® Rookie has finished in the top-10 at Texas in each of the last SIX consecutive races: 1999 (Tony Stewart, sixth, and Elliott Sadler, 10th), 2000 (Dale Earnhardt Jr., first), 2001 (Kurt Busch, fourth, and Kevin Harvick, seventh), 2002 (Jimmie Johnson, sixth), 2003 (Jamie McMurray, tenth) and 2004 (Kahne, second).

· Kahne joins Dale Earnhardt Jr. as the only Raybestos® Rookies to lead the most laps in a NEXTEL Cup race at Texas (Kahne led six times for 148 laps). One or more Raybestos® Rookies have led at least a lap in five of the seven NEXTEL Cup races at Texas.

"We had the best car all day long and ran second. It's disappointing, really. It's hard to be disappointed running second but we were the best car. That's all there was to it. I just got tight when I got to the back of him [Sadler]. We needed a couple more laps. Maybe if NASCAR didn't have so many yellow flag laps we could have won this deal." YOU FINISHED SECOND AGAIN. "It really is disappointing. Tommy Baldwin [crew chief] and this UAW Dodge Dealers team gave me the best car. We had the car to beat all day long. We got back under that whole deal that happened and then NASCAR ran so many yellow flag laps that we couldn't get back to the front. We had them covered and just couldn't get back there. It's disappointing but Ray Evernham was spotting for me. We had a good race. It was exciting and I just about won it there at the end." YOU HAD A CLOSE BATTLE THERE AT THE END. "I was thinking the same thing that I was thinking when I caught Matt Kenseth at Rockingham: just don't make mistakes, just keep going and going. The 38 was a good racecar and was ours. Ours was better if it got in front of his but to pass it was another thing and that's why I tried to get the top to work. It just about worked for us. I gave it all I got. I knew that I didn't win that one. I knew it wasn't ours but it was close. It was closer than I thought it was going to be, actually. With about two or three to go I had a run off of four and he used up the whole track and I don't know if we touched but it was real close and then it went back to that final lap." ARE YOU TIRED OF SECOND? "I don't know if I'm tired of it but I'm tired of running second by .1 [seconds] or .01 or whatever it ends up being. Hopefully next time we can be the winner on that side of it." HOW BIG OF FACTOR WAS "AERO PUSH" AT THE END OF THE RACE? "It was huge. That's why we didn't pass him. We were definitely better. If we would have passed we would have definitely pulled away and that was the story of the day. I tried making the top work and just about got it but he as just a little too fast for the center of the corner. I couldn't quite get beside him soon enough." YOU HAD AN UP AND DOWN DAY BUT YOU FINISHED ON THE UP SIDE. "It was really an 'up' day all day long except for that yellow that put us at the tail end of the lead lap. Actually, we got it back on the lucky dog rule. It was a tough day but man, we had a great racecar." YOU ARE A FACTOR TO WIN RACES EVERY WEEK. "It was another great run for us. People wondered if we would come back after Bristol and I think we did. We qualified third, led the most laps today, and ran second. We're definitely going to be a team to beat this year." ON THE AMOUNT OF CAUTION LAPS. "I didn't see any debris half the time. They're putting speedy dry down the bottom of the backstretch where nobody even runs. It's just ridiculous how long they took. That's something that NASCAR really needs to look into. They do the safety rule, the one lap safety rule, and that's great, but the extra eight, 10, and 20 laps that they run, that was ridiculous. I felt we were the best car all day. We caught him there at the end and I just got a little too tight. We needed another two or three laps and we didn't have it so we ran second. Martinsville is going to be a really tough race. I don't know when we'll get another opportunity to win, hopefully Martinsville." FRUSTRATIING OR SATISFYING TO BE SO CLOSE TO THREE WINS THIS YEAR. "It's satisfying but a little frustrating today." IF YOU HAD ANOTHER FEW LAPS, COULD HAVE YOU PASSED HIM? "I didn't need much longer. I mean, once I got to the outside of him we were going to go by him. It was just a matter of getting there and I got there coming off of corner. I don't know why I couldn't have got there the lap before." HOW MUCH OF A FACTOR WAS JOHNNY SAUTER AT THE END OF THE RACE? "He actually helped me a lot. He helped me a lot, I guess. He couldn't pull over and stop. He had to do something. We came into the corner and I wish Sadler would have tried to pass him on the outside and maybe something different would have happened. It was so exciting." YOU CAME FROM A LAP DOWN TO FINISH SECOND IN THE CLOSING STAGES OF THE RACE. WHERE DID THE SPEED COME FROM? "I think we had the speed all day long. Nobody was really close all day. Tommy Baldwin and everybody on the team did a great job. We got behind because of that one caution and other than that, we would have been out front." DO THEY NEED TO REVIEW HOW MANY CAUTION LAPS THEY WERE BURNING? "I think one is great for the caution deal so the safety workers have their time to get out there and nobody scares them or hits them." IS THIS SECOND PLACE FINISH MORE DISAPPOINTING THAN THE OTHER SECOND PLACE FINISHES? "A lot more painful. The other ones were great, this one kind of sucks [laughs]. That was still cool. I mean, we still gained a lot of points today." WERE YOU HOPING THAT SAUTER WOULD HELP YOU AT THE END? "He either could go low or high and he went low and that's where he'd been running. The 38 chose to follow him and gave us a chance to just about win the race."

SCOTT RIGGS, #10 VALVOLINE CHEVROLET: Notes: Riggs scored his best career NEXTEL Cup finish in seven career starts at Texas, a 15th place effort. "That just shows that we are getting better. We showed up here and we were so frustrated about how are season is going so far we tried some real radical differences. We worked on it and worked on it all weekend and it was not the right way to go so after happy hour was all over yesterday we decided to go with what our teammate Joe Nemechek had and that seemed to be a pretty good setup for us. We ran pretty good today, just a little too tight and we kept freeing it up and could never get it free up enough until the very last stop. Of course by that time, we were a couple laps down. We had it freed up and we able to get up and run with the leaders and keep up with those guys and have a good solid finish. I think we're making gains." IS THIS ANY INDICATION WHAT WE CAN EXPECT ON THE 1.5-MILE TRACKS FROM THIS TEAM? 'I hope this is a good indication what to come from this team to get better and better the rest of the year."

TOMMY BALDWIN, CREW CHIEF, #9 DODGE DEALERS/UAW DODGE: "We're pleased with second. Everybody knows that we're good enough to win a race and definitely let one slip away from us today. The cautions came at a bad time today and that's what really hurt us the most: the cautions. We came in leading and the 24 and the 38 car stayed out the next couple laps trying to get that caution. That's what happened, that's what buried us today." YOU'VE SAID ALL SEASON THAT YOUR GOAL IS TO FINISH IN THE TOP-15, BUT ARE YOU FRUSTRATED THAT YOU HAVEN'T WON? "This one is very frustrating because we had the dominant car all day. I mean, this should have been our race but we finished second. Two, three, four year from now it doesn't matter. You look at the record book, we finished second, and no one knows how close it was or how good our car was or how much we dominated the whole race. We haven't lost the momentum. We just got wrecked by the 42 car last week running second and missed pit road running second at Darlington. We'll take it and move on. It was a good points day. ARE YOU HAPPY WITH YOUR INTERMEDIATE PROGRAM? "It's been good. We've got a good program all around: flat tracks, short track last week. Martinsville will be our biggest test. We've got a lot of work ahead of us for us to get there and be a little bit better than we were testing last week." DOES THAT MEAN THAT YOU GO BACK AND REWORK THE CARS? "We're going to do everything: rework the cars, rework the driver, and we're going to do some testing this week and try to get ourselves a little bit better situation. We'll head to Martinsville and cross our fingers and toes and hopefully get a decent finish out of there and get to Talladega, get a decent finish there and go racing again."

Unofficial Raybestos Rookie standings after Texas
Kasey Kahne 102
Scott Wimmer 70
Johnny Sauter 60
Brian Vickers 60
Brendan Gaughan 55
Scott Riggs 53