Daytona 500 - Ford Media Day Quotes

Mark Martin, driver of the No. 6 Viagra Taurus, attended media day at Daytona International Speedway and answered a variety questions concerning his final Nextel Cup season and the Daytona 500.

Mark Martin

MARK MARTIN - No. 6 Viagra Taurus - HAVE YOU HAD A CHANCE TO REFLECT ON WHAT'S ABOUT TO HAPPEN TO YOU? "I have had a chance to reflect a little bit. I'm excited about opening a new chapter in my life and a little reminiscing of some great old times." YOU SAID IT WILL BE NICE TO FOCUS ON HAVING SOME FUN. "That'll start a year from now, but this year is all about work. It's gonna be all hard work - the hardest, most demanding year of my life and I'm all signed up for it and my family is signed up for the sacrifices and compromises and my race team is signed up for all that. Everybody stayed in place from last year in order to give me a shot at this championship." WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE DRIVING FOR THE LAST TIME AT THIS TRACK? "It doesn't seem like a big deal to me because this place has never been very kind to me. There is no special place in this place's heart for me and no special place in my heart for this particular place. I don't have any great memories or any wonderful days. I've had some good runs here and some good finishes. We won the shootout and won in an IROC car and things like that, but, for the most part, this is not at the top of my list." DO YOU THINK THE SEASON WILL FLY BY? "I don't think it'll go fast at all. These seasons are long and difficult and I haven't had any of them just fly by. It really, really wears you down." YOU'VE SMILED MORE THE LAST COUPLE OF MONTHS. HAS ANYTHING CHANGED JUST KNOWING YOU'RE NEARING THE END? "I think the smiles are because I can see the weight lifting and I can see the end of the tunnel. For so long I knew I was buried and could never see the end of the tunnel and now I see it. I really need to be out from under the pressures and the grind and I need to reclaim a piece of my life back for my family. These are things that are incredibly important to me at this time in my life, so I'm excited about the future and opening a new chapter. I'm excited about it." WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL BE GOING THROUGH YOUR MIND WHEN YOU GET IN YOUR CAR FOR THE 500? "I'll be thinking about how the car is gonna handle - what kind of things that we might do to give us our best chance at contending to win this thing. I'll be thinking about how I'm gonna try to put myself in positions to stay out of trouble, hopefully, so that I can be there at the end. This is a very important race for me to finish. Obviously, I'd like a top-5 finish. I'd love a top-5 finish. I'd like a top-10 finish. I'd be much happier with a 20th-place finish than a 43rd like last year, so it will only come down to an all-or-nothing situation after we take the white flag for me. It is very important to me to get off to a better start than last year." WHAT MAKES THIS RACE SO SPECIAL? "It pays a lot of money. It has a big trophy." WHAT DID THAT FIRST DAYTONA 500 YOU RACED IN PAY? "I don't know what it paid to win because I really didn't check. I didn't think we were gonna win the first time we came, but I do remember the first year I came down here I was in the Busch Clash and it paid $10,000 to start, which was huge. That was a lot of money to me and I was in it, so that was pretty cool. A lot of things have changed. The trophy is bigger than what it was then. The paycheck is much bigger than it was then and that's a great indicator of how important the race is. I always say that how much a race pays and how big a trophy is is a great indicator of how difficult the race is to win." WILL YOU EVER THINK ABOUT THIS OR THAT BEING YOUR LAST TIME AT A PARTICULAR PLACE? "It's really strange the things that go through my mind. You would think I would be agonizing over my last Daytona 500 possibly. I'm not. What does strike me is when I go into a press conference and I see all the faces of the people that I've known and worked with for the last so many years and I have this little fear inside that says I may not see these guys again. I know that's not true, but that's what I feel. That's what I felt at the media tour when I walked in and saw all those faces. I've truly been blessed with the opportunity and the privileges that I've had in motorsports and in NASCAR racing and the success I've had, but, really, at the end of the day, family and relationships are really much more important than the rest of that. That's probably the part that scares me the most." HOW DOES IT FEEL TO GO OUT WITH RUSTY? "Rusty and I have known each other since '76 and we've been racing against each other since '77 on a weekly basis and it's pretty cool because Rusty and I came from the same part of the country. We have battle for all those years - 30 years - and we have never once had a problem on the race track and that says a lot for Rusty Wallace and the kind of person, the kind of competitor that he is. I think it's really neat." WHAT KIND OF LEGACY WILL YOU GUYS LEAVE? "Rusty Wallace is one of the greatest that's ever been. He's won fifty-some races and a championship and he's quite a character. He's one of the most distinct personalities in NASCAR and has been for a long time. He will leave his legacy and I guess I will mine as well. It's different. Mine is different and I'm not sure how I will be remembered. I'm sure it will be for being a determined competitor and a fair competitor." ARE YOU LEAVING THE SPORT IN GOOD HANDS? "Absolutely. I'm very excited to see the young guys coming along. You see young drivers that are in the sport now, but there are some that are outside waiting for the door to open that are just incredible as well. The sport is in great shape." WILL YOU SEE YOUNG DRIVERS COMPETE AS LONG AS YOU AND RUSTY HAVE? "Absolutely not. No way. The demands are so great now. In the days before Rusty and I, you got a later start because you had to wait for a good car to open up. You had to prove yourself and then wait for a good team. That put you in your early thirties before you got in a position to really race for a championship, so you raced much longer. But now the demands are so great. I don't think that anybody who started at 20 would want to be doing it at 50." HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHAT COMPANIES YOU WANT TO REPRESENT? "I think it's mutual. First, you have to look at your options. You have to look at who is interested in you and then you choose. Everybody is different and everybody has the things they believe in and that they stand for, so I think you have to look at your options and decide where you want to stand." WHAT DO SPONSORS GET AND WHAT DO YOU GET FROM THAT? "We as drivers or teams get the funding that we need to be able to race our hearts out and realize our dreams. What they get is a commitment from the team to do everything possible to promote their products and help them sell their products and make it a good value to them for what they're putting into the sport." DO THE FANS TRULY UNDERSTAND THE DEMANDS OF A DRIVER? "I don't think they truly completely understand because I don't think that we've done that good a job of educating the fan on the day-to-day, week-to-week demands on the driver's and team's time. The teams have it even worse than the drivers. It's hard for anyone to imagine that everybody that works on one of these Nextel Cup teams travels in a private aircraft because it's impossible to do commercially. That should say something because private aircraft is way more expensive, but you can't get the work done. We can't get do what we need to do any other way, and I'm talking about all the guys that work in that garage and work on these teams, so that's just one small indicator or how demanding it is on everyone." YOU'RE LISTED AT 135 POUNDS. HOW DO YOU STAY SO SLIM? "I have a blessed metabolism. I only weighed 130 when I started lifting weights in 1988 and I traded a lot of body fat for some muscle, but I didn't really gain any weight. My weight fluctuates from 130-135. I'm just a little guy. I've tried to get big. I would have liked to have gotten up to 150 or 145, but I don't have the body type for that. I just can't get that heavy. I guess I could get fat if I wanted to, but I wasn't able to put the kind of weight on that I had hoped to when I started lifting heavy weights and stuff like that. At this point, at 46 years old, I can't strength train in the same lunatic fashion that I did in the early nineties. I strength train, but I don't bench press 230 pounds anymore. I don't squat 275 pounds anymore and those kind of things. Even those kind of things didn't render me with great weight gain, just strength gain, so I've tailored my fitness routine and my workouts to something that makes more sense for a guy my age." WHAT KIND OF MUSIC WOULD YOU LISTEN TO IN THE RACE CAR IF YOU COULD? "AC-DC." WHAT ABOUT IF YOU COULD GIVE SOMEBODY A RIDE IN THE CAR? "Bernie Mac. I'd like to look in his eyes when he was riding with me. He's funny." CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE PRESSURE YOUR TEAM MAY FACE CHASING A TITLE? "I'm sure it will later on but I'm not worried about that right now. As that gets closer to a possible reality, obviously there would be great pressure because we know this is my last opportunity, but there's a lot of pressure in this business and it would be almost impossible for there to be anymore pressure on me this year than there was in 2004 for many reasons that most people don't know. That was, by far, the most pressure that I'd ever experienced, so it would be hard for me to imagine it being even more in 2005." WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE SAFETY IMPROVEMENTS IN THIS SPORT? "It's so incredible and it's filtered down to short track racing, too, which is so incredible to see. You go to the local short tracks and you see the seats coming along, head and neck restraints on many of the drivers. So much of the safety equipment has improved and that's just a trickle down effect that started at the Nextel Cup Series level." HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF DAYTONA ENDED THE SEASON? "I think that NASCAR would be the one to make that decision because they're so much smarter than I am. I think it would be ridiculous for me to make any comment on it because they have done such a great job in building this sport. They know what is best much better than I do. I would pretty much support them on whatever they decided, whether it was to leave it like this or to make a change. I support them 100 percent because I feel they've come a long way the last 50 years." HOW DID THE HENDRICK TRAGEDY AFFECT THE SPORT? "It was a devastating affect on everyone involved because we knew the members on board and knew the surviving family members and team members. It was a devastating accident for everyone in the sport. It's something I hope we don't have to go through again anytime in the future." WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF A PENSION? "Who is gonna pay for it? I'm not taking a hard line on that. I think if somebody figures out how to get one, it'll be the greatest thing in the world, but I don't know who would pay for it. Nobody wants to pay for it. I think it's the driver's responsibility to take care of himself. I think there's been a lot of shortsightedness along the way on a lot of things. First of all, the drivers don't make that kind of big money like baseball players and some of the other things that even do have pensions, first of all. But we really have to be smart with what we do make." SO THE ONUS IS ON YOU GUYS? "It has always been on the driver's shoulders and if I was in charge of NASCAR, I don't know how much one of those pension plans would cost for all of those drivers, but I know I sure wouldn't want to be paying for it and I don't know who would. You can't compare ours to baseball or football - what we do - for many reasons. I don't even know what I'm talking about, but a lot of the stadiums they play in they don't have to pay for. Is that right?" SOME OF IT IS A MIXED BAG. "Racing is different. It's just like if kids want to go play little league. They can go play little league because there is a baseball team for little league provided by the city or whoever. But if you want to race cars, somebody has to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make a race track. It's different. This sport is different. A pension plan would be awesome for these drivers, but if they continue to get the money up for the drivers where it could be and what some of the other professional sports are, I don't see any problem. I certainly don't have any problems with my situation because I've known that someday I wasn't gonna be driving these cars ever since 1988 when I signed up with Jack Roush and I've been working on it ever since. I think you have to have that kind of discipline all throughout your career, and I hope that making all this noise helps and I hope someone figures out how to do it, but certainly I'm not smart enough to figure it out." WHY DON'T YOU GUYS MAKE AS MUCH HAS FOOTBALL PLAYERS OR GOLFERS? "Golfers just have a couple dollars worth of golf balls and some clubs that surely they can get for free. We've got millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars to be able to go out and put our show on. It takes 15-20 million dollars to run one of these race teams, so a lot of the money has to go towards that, and then you have $100-200 million race tracks and someone has to be brave enough to make one of these tracks and put it out there and try to make a piece of business out of owning a race track, which is a frightening situation. It's not a business that I would go into, so the tracks have their operating costs and expenses. So to put on one of these shows there's a lot more cost involved. It's more different than any sport that I know in all those ways. If you took time to look at all those aspects, you'd realize that there's a reason why the money doesn't filter down to any one person like it does as much - I still don't know how baseball players get paid what they get paid. I don't understand it. I don't know where the money comes from. But I do know that in order for his team to operate, he doesn't have to round up a $15 million sponsor in order to be able to go play ball. There are other ways that it all works." THEY DO IT WITH A FRANCHISE SHARE OF THE TV CONTRACT. "And the race tracks share a big piece of the TV contracts now, but the race tracks have probably, in a lot of ways, they may have a bigger investments than the stadiums that these guys play ball in." THEY'RE NOT OPEN 80 TIMES A YEAR. "So I don't know. I'm not near smart enough to have this conversation, I'm just trying to bring up the fact that it is so different. You can't compare. You can't just say, 'Drivers, you have a pension plan like all those other guys.' Well, there are reasons why there is not one, and I hope they figure out how to have one. And I hope that everyone contributes - from the drivers to the sponsors to NASCAR to the tracks - I'd love to see that, but I don't know. That sounds pretty complicated to me." WILL YOU RACE TRUCKS NEXT YEAR? "Nothing is finalized. Obviously, we'll have a big announcement if and when we do. We're working on sponsorship at this time. Jack Roush and Geoff Smith and I are working on something to do the Craftsman Truck Series." DO YOU FEEL THE TRUCK GUYS HAVE MORE FUN THAN THE CUP GUYS? "They say that they do." WILL THE TRUCK SERIES LOOK LIKE A REUNION SERIES IN A COUPLE OF YEARS? "Right now it looks like it. It looks like it would be fun. I'm not done racing. I'm way too young to stop racing. I'm very capable and very passionate about racing, but I'm done with what I'm doing. I've got to close this chapter. It has grown to the point where I can't sign up for another year." ARE YOU JUST TIRED? "I have other things that are important to me, that I have put off for 30 years, they weren't important to me then. But it is time for me to develop some personal relationships, to spend more time with my family, to be more accessible to my extended family, to be under less pressure, to have some Sundays to do what I choose to - a lot of different things." WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO ON SUNDAYS? "Watch the race on TV, I guess. Go to a family reunion. I haven't ever been to a Martin family reunion in my life. I didn't go to my granddad's funeral. I haven't done anything. You guys should know better than anybody that if you've got a day off and it's Monday, and your kids are in school and everybody you know is working, what good is it? It's not the same as a Sunday, when you can go and have dinner with your family. Sunday is a totally different day than a Monday, it just really is and it's something that when you haven't had any for 30 years, it's a different day." WHEN DID YOU DECIDE THIS WOULD BE YOUR FINAL YEAR? "I signed this contract that I'm currently driving under in 1999. I knew then that this could be it and I told my accountant and I told my wife and my financial advisor and they laughed at me. I told them in '99. I always knew that I would have the option to put something onto the end of that contract, but I also knew that there was a good chance that I wouldn't. It would have been a lot better for Roush Racing and it would have been a lot better for Jack Roush if I would have gone on. Jack really wanted me to. He gets tears in his eyes everytime we talk about it, but I have to do some other things. I have to start having some fun. I have to start having some fun." WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE NEW POINT SYSTEM? "I did not like the new point system at all when it was announced and as I lived it, I realized that it was one of the brightest things that NASCAR has ever done for the fans and I'm a big supporter of it now." ANOTHER THING ABOUT GOLFERS IS THAT THEY CAN TAKE WEEKENDS OFF WHENEVER THEY WANT. YOU HAVE TO BE IN THE WHOLE DEAL FROM START TO FINISH. "Let me tell you guys something, I have never, ever called in sick. I have driven with broken knees and wrists and ribs and bruised this or hurt that and everything else under the sun. That's the kind of commitment it takes to do this and I'm not willing to make that commitment for 2006. I've done it and I'll do it every single day. I will not miss a day of work in 2005. You can count on it. If I'm alive, I'll be there because that's the kind of commitment that I have towards my team and everything. But I'm 46 and I have some things that I want to do that I haven't been able to do and I don't want to wait until it's too late. I'm not gonna look around some day and wish I would have taken some extra time with my son or with my wife. It's just time. I'm not gonna be caught hanging on to something I can't hang onto and not being competitive out on the race track. That scares me to death. It's really, really important to me to go out of this thing as close to the top of my game as possible. I just want to be remembered for being as competitive as I have been the last 10 years. I don't want to be remembered as the guy that raced for 25th every week." BIRTHDAYS, ANNIVERSARIES, THOSE ARE THE KIND OF THINGS YOU'VE MISSED? "I missed my granddad's funeral in 2004, for example. I'm excused from every kind of family event, except the ones that they schedule around my schedule and that's OK. I've done all that, but I've got to have some time so that I can reclaim some of my life to do some of the more simple things in life that a lot of people take for granted. I'm interested in spending more time with my wife and my son. I'm interested in spending more time at Mark Martin Ford in Batesville, Arkansas. I'm interested in spending more time with the fans. I'm interested in spending more time with the media. I haven't had time for any of that. I'm interested in reclaiming a life. I'm interested in racing for fun. I'm not gonna choose where I race or what I race based on business starting in 2006. If I race a truck, I'll race it because I choose to because it's fun. If it's not fun, I'm not gonna do it. That's how I'm gonna make my choices. I'm not gonna go do that thing if it's not gonna be fun, and if I don't do that, I'll go short track racing around the country and sign autographs and see the fans. I'm gonna have some fun."

One of the topics at media day was Saturday night's Budweiser Shootout. Ford drivers Ricky Rudd, Dale Jarrett, Greg Biffle and Kurt Busch spoke about that race.

Dale Jarrett

DALE JARRETT - No. 88 UPS Taurus - "This kind of signals to us that it's time to go racing. We've worked all winter to get ourselves prepared for this race and these events in Daytona, so it's a pretty exciting time. If I wasn't under the weather, I'd be a little more excited about it, but all of that will pass and I'll get really excited. As I come here each year with the opportunity to try to win another Daytona 500 is a pretty exciting time." YOU WON THE SHOOTOUT LAST YEAR. "Yeah, it should be exciting. I think I actually have the same chassis that I had last year in winning that race. We've reconfigured the body quite a bit and the car tested very well. It's an exciting race with 70 laps of fun and excitement. You kind of throw everything out the window because no points are involved, it's just a matter of who gets in Victory Lane and gets that trophy. We've been fortunate to do that three times, so it's a good start for you. It doesn't necessarily signify exactly what's gonna happen for the 500, but in two of the three years I've been fortunate to win it, I've gone on to win the 500. So I think it's a good morale boost for your team if you can go have a good Bud Shootout."

Ricky Rudd

RICKY RUDD - No. 21 Motorcraft Genuine Parts Taurus - WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE BUDWEISER SHOOTOUT? "I'm anxious to get the season going. Let's find out if we're good or bad or let's go to work. Let's roll our sleeves up and see what we've got. We had a good test down here. We elected to spend most of our time in race setup. Our restrictor plate program qualifying was really good last year. We qualified first, second, and, I believe, third and fourth. The one car we ran never qualified worse than fourth last year, so we brought it. Obviously, it's a pretty fast car. We ran it more or less against the new car that was built. The new car was not as fast, so we made a decision. We probably forfeited our chance at the Daytona 500 pole by making the decision that the car we're gonna run for Speedweeks drives really good. We ran 500-plus miles of testing in race trim and identified that we've got one car that drives really, really good but it's not particularly fast by itself, so that's the car that's gonna go to the 500. Our Shootout car, I wouldn't say it's your worst car that you put in the Shootout, but I think in our case we have three cars built and the car we would probably identify as being the car that has not been tested yet. We don't know what it can do, so that will go to the Shootout. There's a big question mark there." WHAT BENEFIT DO YOU GET OUT OF RUNNING THE SHOOTOUT? DOES IT GIVE THE PIT CREW A CHANCE TO KNOCK SOME RUST OFF AND MAYBE THE DRIVER TOO? "I think it's exactly that. It sort of accelerates. The Daytona 500 is what we're all here for and then you have the 150s now and then you have the Bud Shootout. Qualifying doesn't really mean a lot, but the tempo tends to build so being able to subject the pit crew and everyone to sort of a dress rehearsal for the Daytona 500 is good. The 150s are a final rehearsal for the 500, so I think it's a big plus to be able to come in and sort of get tuned up before the big race. Something that took place and it's the first time I've seen it in 30 years of racing that I really liked was back to our testing deal. NASCAR gave us a two-for-one test out at Vegas and California. We did that and I think we ran 1200-and-some miles of practice in four days and, not only for me to get tuned up or the pit crew, but for the mechanics working on the car. Each day you could see things get a little sharper. Guys that were maybe doing things one way, before the test was over they'd find a more efficient way to do that job. It just sort of started to flow. It wasn't that it was bad to begin with, but the final day at California it just really meshed and flowed and I said that it was a really good thing. I'm surprised no one has ever done this before like this, so I have to commend NASCAR for giving us that two-for-one deal."

Greg Biffle

GREG BIFFLE - No. 16 National Guard/Subway Taurus - THOUGHTS ON THE BUDWEISER SHOOTOUT. "I'm really excited about it. I'm curious to get a look at the race track and what it's like. How the race track is gonna react this year with this tire and all the things that could be different - our restrictor plate is a little bit different, so I'm really looking forward to it." WILL IT BE A BENEFIT TO GET A RACE UNDER YOU BELT WITH THIS NEW PACKAGE? "I have to think so. This is my first Bud Shootout, but I have to think that it's gonna give us a little bit of a look at the race track prior to getting going." IS THE SHOOTOUT JUST A BATTLE OF BACKUP CARS? "I would have to say yes, but one thing that I will say that's kind of neat is that my Bud Shootout car was fourth-quick testing and my 500 car was third-quick. So I never, ever have had two restrictor-plate cars that close together and I was real excited about that." WHICH WAS A BIGGER THING FOR YOUR CAREER - WINNING THE DAYTONA 500 POLE OR YOUR FIRST WIN? "I think the first win because a win means you won the battle. Getting the pole for the 500 is a big prestigious deal and we'd be really excited to get it again. That's something I'll always remember as well, but I actually think my first Truck win in Memphis was probably the most special wins for me. And the probably next to that I'd have to say my win at Michigan in the Cup car was really big because of the manufacturers always butting heads in Michigan all the time and battling for who is the best. It was also our first non-restrictor plate win, where we proved we had the fastest race car and were capable as a team to win at a race track. Even though, quote, our first win was won on fuel mileage or whatever, even though we came back here and sat on the pole for the 500, that (Michigan) was a statement."

Kurt Busch

KURT BUSCH - No. 97 IRWIN/Sharpie Taurus - CAN ROUSH RACING WITH THREE TITLES IN A ROW? "That's definitely the goal. We've got a long road to hoe ahead of us, but just being able to make the right decisions and now that our people have won those championships, they're more valuable. They're gonna be lured away by the other teams with the high-priced dollar, so it's a matter of just keeping everybody together and making sure we all pull the rope in the same direction." HAS IT BEEN A WHIRLWIND FOR YOU LATELY? "It's been busy. We had Homestead, New York and went back to Vegas right after that for a big parade in my hometown. I had some time for a vacation, but it just seems like I should be doing something. Now it's caught up. Every day this week we're doing something. I met the President on Monday. On Tuesday I was in New York opening up the NASDAQ with the Checkers group, which is now the official drive-in with NASCAR. And then yesterday there was a full tilt photo shoot with one of our sponsors, Crown Royal, so it's been as busy as busy can be." ARE YOU HAVING FUN? "Oh yeah. It's something that you want. It's something that you always think can happen and now every day the plate is full with something to do. I can't wait to get into the car because that's the stuff I'm most familiar with, but yet there is some stuff to do outside the track as well." DID YOU TELL THE PRESIDENT THAT HE SPELLS HIS NAME WRONG? "We did talk about that for a while and we realized that neither one of us are from the right Busch family because the group in St. Louis is bigger than both of us." CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE BUD SHOOTOUT AND IF IT HELPS FOR THE 500. "It can give you a good indication of who has done their homework and who has brought the best drafting style of car. The Shootout doesn't have anything to do with qualifying, so it gives you two or three extra practice sessions for the 500. Last year we weren't in that race. For me, it was a tough bullet to bite just because we weren't out there driving while the group of drivers - the all-star kind of guys - were out there. So this is a good chance to get ahead of the game. We've got our Crown Royal car that's gonna be all dressed up in purple for this race, so we can't wait to get into the drafting sessions."