Where the Raybestos Rookies finished at Darlington:
Busch, 23rd
Barrett, 31st
Kvapil, 35th
UNOFFICIAL Raybestos Rookie standings:
Busch, 118
Kvapil, 107
Barrett, 33
McClure, 11
RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER QUOTES FOR THE DODGE CHARGER 500 NASCAR NEXTEL CUP SERIES RACE AT DARLINGTON RACEWAY, MAY 7, 2005.
KYLE BUSCH IN THE No. 5 KELLOGG’S CHEVROLET WAS THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE RACE AT DARLINGTON. BUSCH FINISHED 23rd AND TOOK TOP ROOKIE HONORS FOR THE SIXTH TIME THIS SEASON. HE UNOFFICIALLY LEADS TRAVIS KVAPIL BY 11 POINTS (118-107) IN THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR STANDINGS. YOU RAN WELL BUT HAD A CUT TIRE THAT WAS VERY COSTLY. “We had a tremendous racecar. The Kellogg’s Chevrolet ran awesome all night long. Up until I cut the tire, I thought we had a pretty decent shot. Not really for the win but I know for a top-five finish and it was really going to be a good race for us. It was going to bring us up a lot in the point standings but as usual my bad luck keeps killing me, dude. I don’t know what I’ve got to do to change it.” DOES RUNNING WELL HERE TONIGHT GIVE YOU CONFIDENCE FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF RACES? “Yeah, it gives us a lot of stuff. We had a really good test last week in Charlotte so we’re looking forward to going out there and having a good time. This was going to be our all-star car so we’re going to change some stuff on it and get it ready to go there. Winning at Richmond last year in the Busch Series was great and hopefully we can be pretty good there. I didn’t have a mark on that thing until I hit the fence. I was just trying to bide by time and pace myself and keep all the wheels under and keep the tires on the thing all the way up until the end. I can’t believe we had a tire go down and we killed that son of a gun. It’s just a shame because these guys work so hard. I don’t know what happened but we just screwed it up.” WERE YOU SURPRISED HOW STRONG YOU WERE THIS WEEKEND? “We were definitely one of the best cars here. We had a good shot to perform really well. We were excited to be able to do that and we weren’t able to do that.” HAS IT BEEN TOUGH TO KEEP YOUR CONFIDENCE UP? “It has been but it hasn’t been. We’ve had really fast cars and we’ve had really good cars for every race so far this season. We just haven’t had the finishes to prove it. It’s really been a shame that we haven’t been able to finish where we should. We were running right behind Newman pretty much all day and we probably could have passed him at any point so we would have finished third. We were running all over the 24 pretty much the whole day and the 16 was coming to us on those long runs. Today would have definitely been a top-five day.” THIS COULD BE A GOOD STRETCH OF RACES FOR YOU. “We’re ready for these next few weeks. I just don’t know what I’ve got to do to change my luck.”
TRAVIS KVAPIL, No. 77 KODAK/JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS DODGE: “It was a bad night. It was the driver’s fault. The car was off but I made a bunch of mistakes. I was pitting under the green flag and went right past the commitment cones. I knew that pitting under green here is tough and I still messed up. I was a couple of laps down and I was trying to ride it out and get a good finish and got the car pretty good for a while there. I got inside the 10 car going down the front straightaway. Basically I was hoping he would give me a little room getting in there and we both drove in there the same and I got up into him and caused a wreck. That was my fault. I just screwed up. We can’t make many mistakes and I made two pretty big ones tonight.” HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO KEEP YOUR CONFIDENCE UP? “I know and I hope the guys know that we’ve got good racecars and we’ve been doing some testing and we tested here and we felt fairly confident when we left here. We were decent here in practice. We need to keep digging along and things will turn around. I’ll make fewer mistakes and we’ll have the racecar a little better and we’ll just run better. I think that’s part of a Raybestos Rookie driver and a growing team. Hopefully the second part of the year we can come on and get some top-10, top-15 finishes.”
