EA Sports 500 - Ford Qualifying Quotes

DAVE BLANEY - No. 99 Roush Racing Taurus (Qualified 25th) - "I was happy with it. Bob Osborne and the guys had a little game plan going in and they tried a few things in practice and most of them picked the car up. They didn't really tape it off or anything until qualifying, so that was a pretty good gain. I think that's what they were hoping for. Who knows where it will be, but that's a pretty good gain from practice so that's good." TOUGH TO JUMP IN THERE ON JUST A FILL-IN BASIS? "Here it's not too tough on qualifying day. You just kind of ride around and do what it will do, so here it's not tough at all."

ELLIOTT SADLER - No. 38 M&M's Taurus (Qualified 6th) - "That's great for this car. We kind of wanted to get a little bit more than that, but you always do. I know how good that car is gonna be in the draft. I loved it at the Bud Shootout. We had it in Daytona in February and it's gonna race good, so I can't wait until we start the ultimate equalizer tomorrow with some drafting. The M&M's Ford Taurus is fast. It was a good lap for us, but I'm looking forward to drafting practice tomorrow." HOW HARD IS IT TO HARNESS A DRIVER ON SUNDAY AT THIS PLACE? "It's tough, but a lot of the guys that have great success on this track do that and my teammate is one of them. They understand what's going on the whole race and know where to put themselves in a position so they'll be good at the end of the race. I don't know what to do yet. We haven't gotten that far. We definitely want to be somewhere near the front towards the last of the pit stops for Sunday and to do that you've got to get kind of aggressive during the middle of the race. We haven't played that card yet. I don't really know what to do and I probably won't know what to do until we're halfway into the race on Sunday. But we definitely want to try to get up there and lead some laps and run up front some, but if it gets too dicey, we'll definitely be patient and make a run there at the end." WAS IT IMPORTANT TO GET COMFORTABLE IN THE CAR ON A DAY LIKE TODAY? "The racing doesn't start here until Sunday. This is qualifying, you're all by yourself and there's really not much here at Talladega. We know we're gonna have a fast car. I know it's gonna drive good and it's my favorite speedway car, but so many things can happen here that aren't of your doing. We know we've got a good car. We know we've got a good motor and a good package, we're just gonna do the best we can and hopefully run all 500 miles and go from there."

HERMIE SADLER - No. 02 East Tennessee Trailers Taurus (Qualified 11th) - "I'm ecstatic. I have to give a big thank you to Robert and Doug Yates, Eddie D'Hondt and everybody at Robert Yates Racing for allowing us to lease this car from them. It's been a pleasure to unload and be competitive all day. My guys are having fun and everybody is smiling. That will get us a decent, solid starting spot and I'm looking forward to doing what I can to help the other Yates cars out on Sunday. I'll be trying to finish all 500 miles and get us a respectable finish also." IS IT NICE TO SEE GUYS TURNING THEIR HEADS AND SEEING YOU GO SO FAST? "Especially at a place like Talladega, where it's all in the driving skill (laughing). That really makes me feel good, but it's been great. We've had a lot of fun and we're gonna have a good time with it this weekend. I'm glad to be a part of starting the process of getting Robert Yates Racing back to the top of the charts on the superspeedway races, so it's been a good weekend for us so far."

MARK MARTIN - No. 6 Viagra Taurus (Qualified 17th) - "That's a good run for us. This is just a great race team. They reached into the trick bag and pulled out a little bit. That will be a middle of the pack start, but that's OK. We're right up there with a bunch of good race cars. I guess there will be 43 good race cars out there, won't there?"

MATT KENSETH - No. 17 DEWALT Tools Taurus (Qualified 7th) - "We're real happy with that. The guys working on the Ford engines have done a great job giving us a lot of power - Doug Yates and those guys. Robbie and the guys that built this car - the people in the fab shop - and the people that go to the wind tunnel and do all that stuff have done a good job with this car. This is the fastest speedway car we've ever had and that's pretty exciting." IS IT REALLY THAT EASY TO DRIVE THIS TRACK? "For qualifying it is. I always thought we should draw straws and let different crew guys qualify them, so qualifying is pretty easy for a driver here and pretty uneventful. Racing is a different story when you get 43 cars out there and it's three and four-wide. It gets pretty busy out there and pretty hectic, but qualifying is usually not too exciting here."

RICKY RUDD - No. 21 Rent-A-Center/Motorcraft Taurus (Qualified 2nd) - DID YOU KNOW YOU WERE GOING TO BE THAT FAST? "We really didn't know. We didn't get all the practice in that we would have liked because the lines just were not working out like we wanted to. We needed one more run to find out what we really had, so going into qualifying we didn't really know exactly how fast we could run. I think we ran a 50.80 in practice, but we knew we could run at least three or four tenths better. We didn't know we'd run five or six tenths better." YOU SAT ON THE POLE IN APRIL, DID YOU NEED IMPROVEMENT AT THESE PLACES? "Our qualifying effort on these restrictor plates, the one thing that wasn't broke was our qualifying efforts. The new rule changes where everybody has to run the same springs has sort of set some of the teams back a little bit. It hurt us and it hurt everybody, but Fatback was able to adjust to it pretty quickly. I'm real pleased on how fast this Rent-A-Center Ford ran today. We never could get the car to drive good in race trim and it was driving exceptionally well, so I'm thinking not only do we have the speed, but I think we've got the drivability to run up front." IS THIS THE SAME CAR YOU WON THE POLE WITH HERE LAST TIME? "Yeah, but we did quite a bit to it. Body-wise, it's pretty much the same. They worked on the chassis quite a bit to get it to where it would drive good for the race. The car would always pick up a push and they got into it and dissected it a little bit and pretty much figured out why it was pushing and they fixed it. So it should race well as good as it qualified, but we'll see."

GREG BIFFLE - No. 16 National Guard/Subway Taurus (Qualified 12th) - "Here it's all the guys working on the race car - the crew and everybody has worked hard on the National Guard car. This is the same car we sat on the pole at the 500 with and we've been running this restrictor-plate car all year. My gut feeling was we were gonna be a little bit better than that - maybe just sneak into the forties, but, still, that's a pretty good lap for us. The car seems like it's running real good, so I'm excited for Sunday." WHAT'S THE CONFIDENCE LEVEL OF THIS TEAM AT A RESTRICTOR PLATE TRACK? "It's really good. When we ran here in the spring time, we had a bad radiator and there was nothing we could do to get it cooled down enough. We couldn't run in the draft. We had a really fast car then, so we got the radiator problem fixed and we're looking forward to being able to run up in the top five most of the day with this National Guard 16 car."

DALE JARRETT - No. 88 UPS Taurus (Qualified 3rd) - "We knew in practice that we had left a little bit there. There were a few things that we wanted to save just in case somebody else was and I guess the 21 saved a little bit more than we did. I'm a little surprised. We did some work on this car and, really, everything we did was to make it drive better and handle better in the race. I wasn't really thinking that it was gonna be something that would make it go faster, but it seems to be driving better and it's going faster too, so that's a good combination." AND YOU'RE UP FRONT, WHICH IS THE PLACE TO BE. "Yeah, that's a good place to start. You're gonna be in most of the positions at some point during the day, but if you can start up front and maybe get a lap led or a number of laps lead - I'd like to keep it out front all day, that would be the ultimate. A lot less happens up there at these places, even though I've seen the front group wreck before. We'd like to keep it in the front if we can, so, hopefully, when we get into drafting practice we'll see that this car is driving a lot better than what we did here the last time and that will allow us to run up front."

KURT BUSCH - No. 97 Sharpie/IRWIN Taurus (Qualified 8th) - "That's a great improvement from where we used to be and now it's the same old deal - we just go into race trim and do the best that we can. You either get the pole here or you're not anything." WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON SUNDAY? "You just hope you miss the big one. It's just very difficult to know when things are gonna happen out on the track. You just have to look ahead and absorb all the rest of it in your peripheral vision."

DALE JARRETT PRESS CONFERENCE - No. 88 UPS Taurus - HOW IMPORTANT IS QUALIFYING UP FRONT HERE? "I'm sure there are guys in the back that say qualifying doesn't matter and I've said that too here, and, really, I'm not sure how much it matters, but, certainly, what it tells you is that you have a good car aerodynamically and that's important. It's important to know that you can be the leader of a pack, instead of if you have a car that doesn't run very fast, you're gonna have a hard time leading a group and being able to stay out front - they're gonna go by you. I think it's nice to know that we have that. We have a great engine package and it's gonna be a matter, as it always is, of being in the right place at the right time here and that's different places for everybody. Some guys might want to be in front right at the end while others may feel they need to be third, fourth or fifth, so getting our car to drive good tomorrow in practice will be important, but starting up front is nice. It's a good boost for the guys, too. We've worked extremely hard on these cars and our engine department has done just an incredible job, not only for here but all year long." YOU RAN WELL AT DOVER LAST WEEK. CAN THAT CARRY OVER? "I think the biggest thing is we know we're starting to get pieces put together at a lot of different type tracks. Obviously, the plate races were something that for a number of years we felt like when we showed up we were definitely one of the four or five cars that you had to beat to win these races. Since that time, we haven't been quite as good. I think we've worked hard in trying to make that better, so this is a good direction for us. We feel like we've worked extremely hard at the mile and the mile-and-a-half and two-mile tracks, and that program is good. We still have some work to do on the three-quarter-mile and the half-mile tracks and the flatter tracks. We're going to Phoenix in a couple of weeks to test and hopefully get that part of our program in order, so it's just a matter of getting all of those pieces put together so that when we get to the end of this year that we've got a majority of our questions answered so we can start off 2005 on a strong note." CHEVROLET HAS WON 11 STRAIGHT AT THIS TRACK. CAN THAT BE A COINCIDENCE? "It's no coincidence. I think that they've had a better product to race with here. They do a good job with their product. Aerodynamically, I think that they've had the rest of us outclassed in that respect and that's not to take anything away from the driver ability because you can have a really good product - you know there are other Chevrolets that are out there too, but they don't win the races. You put the guys that have won here in those cars, with what I think has been a superior product, then they're gonna take advantage of that and they're gonna be out front when it's time. You haven't seen Fords or even the Dodges lead much at these restrictor plate races lately and it's because Chevrolet has that total package. They've worked hard to get that and, hopefully, we're getting closer to them. I think that our engine program is definitely much closer to them. Hopefully, we're showing that our aero package is getting better, so it will be a matter of if we can get together and work together to try to put a halt to that. I think someone said today the Fords haven't won since I won here in '98 or something, so that's a streak that needs to be put to an end on Sunday." HAVE THE SHOCKS AND SPRING RULE LEVELED THE PLAYING FIELD? "They might need to explain that to me how that did that and I might agree a little more, but I think I'll have to see what happens on Sunday a little bit more. We've qualified pretty well in the restrictor plate races here and this year, for the most part, we've had OK qualifying runs and a number of the other Fords have. I know Ricky (Rudd) has, but when it came race time, we still weren't in the ballgame. Maybe we could get to the front occasionally, but you haven't seen a Ford stay in the front very long. I don't know exactly how that package, it's certainly making everybody more equal - there's no doubt about that - so if that's an area the Chevrolets had an advantage and what they could do with the springs and shocks, then, yeah, that's taken that away from them. We've gotten almost to the point of 43-car IROC race here if we're not careful and I'm not sure that's exactly what we want. Still, if that's helping to close the gap, then we'll see that on Sunday." IT SEEMS WHEN A CAR GETS THE LEAD ON SOME TRACKS THAT OTHER GUYS CAN'T PASS HIM. IS THAT A CASE OF THERE BEING A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD? "I'm not sure that I have a good answer for that. Maybe you guys do. I guess with the aero package that we have and aerodynamics playing such a big part of it, and as radical as the setups are this day and time, it's a very fine line. If you're on one side of it or the other, then it can look like you're really off more than what you are, I think. Then if somebody happens to hit on that, they make everybody else look kind of foolish. I don't know. That's as good an explanation as I have. To me, it's such a fine line. I seem to be able to make my car be extremely loose or extremely tight in the same race and not make a big adjustment. So I think if you get someone that hits on it, that car gets out front early and there's no catching him then."

RICKY RUDD - No. 21 Rent-A-Center/Motorcraft Taurus - ON AERO. "I think Dale said it pretty good. I don't know what to add to it other than these cars are having to depend on the air way too much and that's what makes 'em handle now. If you're not leading and you're out second, third or fourth, you're not getting the air as good as you do when you're out front, so you've lost 10, 20, 30, 40 percent of your downforce and all of a sudden now the cars don't handle. To me, it's black and white what the issues are. I don't know how to fix 'em, but that's what the issues are." HOW MUCH WORK HAVE YOU DONE ON THE BODY OF YOUR CAR? "It's ongoing. All of the teams never stop. I guess they never leave well enough alone because well enough, if you left it alone - this was the pole-sitting car from the last time we were at Talladega. Some of the new rules that they made with bigger springs and things like that took a little speed out of our car and took some speed out of everybody's car, but we really didn't know what to expect. Bernie Marcus and all the guys at Ford on the aero package have worked really hard within the box to try to get these cars as slippery as they possibly can. Obviously, aero is a big, big part of it. That Yates horsepower under the hood doesn't hurt matters too much either. That's a pretty big deal. It takes the whole package, obviously, here. Like I said, we're real pleased. We felt like our problems in the past, we've been able to run fast, but the cars haven't driven good in traffic or haven't driven good in race trim. That's what Fatback McSwain and all the guys have been working real hard on the handling package. Some of the things they did to make it drive better - to make it not push, which is what it's always done in the past, it would get an aero-push - they worked on it and thought they gave up a little bit of speed. As it turns out, we didn't give up that much speed and we've got a whole lot better drivability." DOES THE NEW SPRING RULE MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN QUALIFYING? "It makes a lot of sense what they're doing. It tends to even things up a little bit. That's an area that guys were spending quite a bit of money on - rear springs and stuff. To be honest with you, I gave up about five years ago trying to keep up with the latest rules. I don't know how Dale is, but it's gotten so complex. Guys are having to come in a day ahead of time. For NASCAR to be able to stay one step ahead of the competition, they need a lot of time to look at these cars. That new spring rule, I guess, is just another one of the quality control checks that they have to make sure that someone doesn't have a little bit of advantage over the other. But it definitely slowed the cars up. I think we were on the pole the last race, we ran around a flat and today the pole was a .20, so it took two or three tenths out of the speed. You can't really tell it from a driver's standpoint. I don't notice any difference from the last race. I don't know about Dale, but the cars, to me, seemed about the same. It should have made the field more even, I think, but I haven't looked at the end results of qualifying to see if accomplished what NASCAR was looking to do."

DALE JARRETT CONTINUED - "I think Ricky is exactly right. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out for the race, but I think we have equaled up the speeds. Any advantage anybody was getting, it has been crazy. Trying to keep up with the type of springs that we're running now. The costs of these things have gotten totally out of hand and it's just crazy what was going on. Everything that we do is predicated on how it's gonna affect our car aero-wise - not only here but the other tracks. Any spring change, any swaybar change, anything that we do, we talk about how it affects the car's aero now. That's what we had to look at with this here. What was it gonna do to us aerodynamically? How did we need to get the balance back? So that's what we'll work hard on tomorrow, but I guess that's what they're trying to accomplish is tightening things up. I don't know how we could get much closer than what we've been running here, but, speed-wise I think it has gotten us closer."

RICKY RUDD CONTINUED - ANY IDEA HOW THIS WILL AFFECT THE RACE? "I don't really think it's gonna make a great deal of difference one way or the other. I think the biggest change is when you're out there by yourself because the stiffer rear springs hold the rear spoiler up in the air more. It puts more drag in the car. When you get all that turbulence going out there in the draft, you can run with a spark plug wire off and still keep up. That's how much that draft sucks you along. I don't expect to see a lot of difference. Maybe I'm speaking out of turn, but I think a little bit of it was maybe a cost expense - that the teams were spending a lot of time. I'm not sure what the old spring rule was - just say it was a 350 - they would by 30, 40, 50 springs and go through them to find ones that were just right and then you can only run them once or twice and you had to throw them in the trash can because they would lose a little bit of strength and they wouldn't meet NASCAR's tech. I think it just simplified the tech line up a little bit. Everyone is equal, so, if anything, it's made it a little simpler and maybe saved the car owner's a little bit of money and aggravation."

DALE JARRETT CONTINUED - "And if indeed anybody was getting something - a spring or two rear springs that were a little bit of an advantage, that were getting through tech, then as the race went on lost maybe a lot of what they had and it became a much softer spring throughout the day, then that would be an advantage. I guess they feel like what they have done here is to try to keep that from happening and knowing that everybody's got the same type of springs here. If it can get any closer out there, it may make it that and it may play into more of a drafting situation that could make it interesting."

RICKY RUDD CONTINUED - "I didn't think about that, Dale brought up a real good point. Some of these springs have been known to start off at say a 350, but before the race is over they're probably a 250, which means the back of the car gets down closer to the ground as the race goes on and that means the car gets faster and faster. It is a real good point. As a matter of fact, it could change major results in the way the race is run as far as maybe some of the past dominant cars maybe won't be as dominant if the springs are handed to them in the spring line."

DALE JARRETT CONTINUED - HOW MUCH TIME DID YOU SPEND ON THE TRACK AND WAS IT A WASTE OF TIME? "I won't go as far as to say it was a waste of time, but it was a long day. I think this is a perfect example where we need to look that - OK, the teams could come in on Friday, go through inspection. We could go and practice for a couple of hours on Saturday and qualify just like you're gonna race it and impound them and be ready to go on Sunday. We could definitely cut at least one day out of this. I was in the car for two hours this morning. I sat in the car the whole time and never got out, but I think I ran eight, maybe 10 laps or something like that, and then two laps for qualifying. I think we could cut this down."

RICKY RUDD CONTINUED - "I think I made three runs, which means I got three timed laps in. I got about a two-hour nap somewhere along the way. I like the idea of what Dale said. The Busch Series did it at Daytona when you qualified and the cars were impounded and that's how you raced. It would be real productive if you did it that way. I guess we wouldn't have this qualifying day quite the same, but it's something that maybe needs to be looked at. You could make it a two-day event pretty easily."

DALE JARRETT CONTINUED - WILL THE RACING BE ANY DIFFERENT SUNDAY BECAUSE OF THE CHASE? "There's always been a championship battle going on when we came here, so that part of it is no different. You may have a few more guys involved in it now, but you always had people that were racing for the championship when we ran this race. You race and I don't see how it could possibly be anymore wild than what it's been from a driver's standpoint out there. I know it's a great show on TV and from the stands, but there's a lot happening out there from a driver's perspective and that's what this racing is all about. But as far as racing for 11th or anything like that, it's racing as usual. Everybody has somewhat different agendas, although everybody is here to win the race. Regardless of what you're racing for, points-wise or anything else, you're here to try to win or put yourself in that position."

RICKY RUDD CONTINUED - DO YOU FEEL GUYS OUTSIDE THE TOP 10 ARE NOT GETTING ENOUGH PUBLICITY FROM TV AND PRINT MEDIA? "Let me just say that was part of what I said. I also said that we had an equal opportunity as every team here had to be able to make it to the top 10 cutoff point. We didn't make it. We have no one to blame for that but ourselves. We just didn't get the job done. But that being said, I think everybody in the garage area realized that when you got to that point where you got your top 10 locked in that, pretty much, I wouldn't say write the year off but we're using it as a training session. We want to come out here and win every race, obviously, but we've got an agenda that we need to get running better on the race track. We haven't been very good. The last four or five weeks we've run very well. We're getting a lot better and making a lot of improvements, but even if we come out and run - we had a seventh-place finish shaping up at New Hampshire and we ended up breaking a motor there. Last week at Dover, we ran inside the top 10 quite a bit and, granted, that's not leading races but compared to where our team has been, TV wouldn't have even known we were there, but that's almost to be expected. No bitter feelings about it, but this is part of the new NASCAR that we're gonna have to deal with. There's a lot of pressure to make the top 10 cut and we didn't make it, but, again, our goal is to get our team where we can come out of the box next year strong without floundering around the first half of the year or three-quarters of the year. You're gonna have to come out of the box running so you don't get yourself in a bind and, hopefully, have a shot at making that top 10. There are no hard feelings, but that's just the way it is."

DALE JARRETT CONTINUED - ANYTHING TO ADD? "I probably shouldn't because anything that I say is gonna sound like sour grapes and I don't want it to be. The guys that made the top 10 and are in the chase are the ones that deserve to be paid attention to and everybody wants to know what's going on with them. I know in one major publication after last week's race that I finished fourth in the race and my name was not even in the article and it wasn't like it was one paragraph, it was a regular article. It's not for my sake, but give my guys that read the paper, that work their tails off, it's for them. It doesn't make any difference to me, but give those people that work hard some credit for the job well done that they did and my sponsor that spends millions of dollars in this sport. They're the ones that deserve that."

RICKY RUDD CONTINUED - HAVE YOU HEARD THAT YOUR SPONSOR ISN'T HAPPY WITH THE AMOUNT OF EXPOSURE? "I personally haven't, but I can sit in the sponsor's chair a little bit and kind of put that hat on and see where they're spending millions of dollars in this sport and they signed a three-year agreement way back before this new championship format was even mentioned. The only thing I can say is that if you're outside of the top 10 and you're having a great day - Dale had a great run last week. We tend to look at our own selves and say, 'Well, gosh, we had a great run. We were inside the top 10 quite a bit,' but you wouldn't have known we were there. Like I said, it doesn't matter for me personally. Our guys that work so hard on these cars, they need a pat on the back. We're trying to egg these on and pump them up and keep them excited. At the same time, the sponsors have to be able to see something. They're spending money and they at least want to see their car on TV. If you finish fourth in the race and you run good like Dale did last week, by golly you ought to be covered. It's black and white. Don't let the TV turn around and build a script out of this thing and cut the guys out of it that need attention and deserve attention. It's not so much the top 10 format, it's what NASCAR has allowed the television network to do and that's all I'm gonna say."

DALE JARRETT CONTINUED - ANY ISSUES ABOUT THE FACT YOU CAN'T MAKE THE TOP 10 NOW? "I'm not really concerned about that side of it. I think that what they've done with the chase has brought a lot of excitement to our sport and a lot of attention to our sport. You hear it and see it probably in areas that weren't before, so it's working and I'm all for that. I'm all for whatever is best for our sport, but what is also good for our sport is that we have plenty of sponsors and plenty of teams out here. If people that are having good runs other than those 10 aren't talked about and these sponsors aren't given some of their due, then they might find another place to spend their dollars. That's what concerns me. That was said before that it wasn't gonna happen and, hopefully, it won't be the case that it will. Again, this isn't a personal issue. This is about what's best for my race team and for my sponsors and what's best for this sport in general. If the other 33 of us didn't show up and you had a 10-car race, I'm not sure you all would get very excited about that. Maybe you would, I don't know. I don't think a lot of people would get very excited about that, so let's just make sure that everybody is taken care of - not necessarily just my sponsor. There are a lot of people out here that spend a lot of money to be involved in this sport and it takes everybody to make all of this work, so let's just make sure all of that happens. As far as being able to work my way into 10th or something, I knew the rules before the season started and we didn't perform well enough to get within those guidelines so we have to work harder to make that happen. Again, there are just a lot of other people out here that spend a lot of money and they deserve the credit that's due to them."