Subway 500 - Ford Qualifying Quotes

DALE JARRETT - No. 88 UPS Taurus (Qualified 28th) - GOING OUT FIRST IS USUALLY NOT GOOD. "I don't know that it really mattered today. If we were gonna have to get our chance at being first out, this wasn't a bad place for it. We worked totally on race setup. We just ran in our qualifying tires right at the end and we really didn't know what it would do, but the car drove pretty good. We're pretty happy with it." HOW WAS THE LAP? "It went pretty good. We made some changes. We actually just scuffed in our qualifying tires, so that was pretty good. The car drove good and I'm pretty happy with that. We worked on a lot of race stuff and I think we figured out a little bit of what we need to do. Hopefully, it'll be good enough for 500 laps on Sunday."

CARL EDWARDS - No. 99 Office Depot Taurus (Qualified 18th) - "The qualifying lap is huge and we've got the Office Depot Ford in the top five, but hopefully that will hold up for a top 20 spot or top 15. That would be awesome. As you can see here, all it takes is a little tiny mistake and it can break your lap. If you lose a half-a-tenth, you can lose 15 spots so I hope that holds up. I screwed up a little bit here on the back side of the second lap, so we'll see. It'll be fun either way."

MARK MARTIN - No. 6 Viagra Taurus (Qualified 35th) - "I'm really disappointed. We qualified 19th and finished third the last time with this car here and we haven't really put a scratch on it since. It's been junk ever since we took it out on the race track. The guys worked real hard on it in practice there and I thought we made some headway, but we probably just made it worse. From the way things look right now, we must have just made it even worse. I don't know. I thought we had made it better. We got up to 26th in practice, but that's gonna be a provisional there."

RICKY RUDD - No. 21 Motorcraft Genuine Parts Taurus (Qualified 2nd) - HOW IS THE CAR? "It's been really good since we unloaded. The Motorcraft Taurus has been fast right off the truck. Fatback McSwain and everybody on the Wood Brothers team has done a heck of a job preparing this race car. It's hard to believe we're running in the 19.30s at Martinsville. I remember it wasn't all that many years ago that the modifieds didn't hardly run that fast. It's pretty impressive." HOW WAS THE LAP?"It was fairly uneventful because the race car was so good. It's been good since we got off the truck. This Motorcraft Taurus is just fast. It's driving extremely well and it's got a lot of grip. It's been a long time since I've been to Martinsville and had a car that could go like this one. I feel pretty good about it. We came up a couple weeks ago and ran 700 laps of practice for Goodyear - tire testing for next year's tires - but it probably didn't hurt any to get me a good tune-up here. I ran a lot of laps here and felt like it probably helped me to stay sharp." HOW IS THE CAR IN THREE AND FOUR? "The car has been very good. It's making good grip. I nudged the curb on the last of my timed laps. I don't know if we would have run quicker or not. All day in practice this is the only track we go to where they give you sort of three timed laps where the first one doesn't count. My car was very good on the middle lap, but the third lap has always been a little slow. At least I'll blame it on that because I hit the curb. Hopefully, it wasn't because of something that I caused."

KURT BUSCH - No. 97 IRWIN/Sharpie Taurus (Qualified 14th) - "Practice was pretty good for us and then our run we were able to make adjustments. We were still a little bit on the loose side and then in race trim we're on the tighter side, so we had to do everything at once today because we think there's gonna be moisture in the air tomorrow morning. That should give us top 15 and that's about where we normally qualify and then we usually race pretty good." CAN YOU MAKE UP SOME GROUND HERE? "I don't think you can necessarily gain ground here unless somebody has a bad day. Everybody in the top 10 usually can run pretty good here. Carl Edwards is a rookie, but he'll still be OK. You just can't have anything bad happen. We were running third with about 30 laps to go in the spring and we got dumped by Jeff Gordon. We finished 19th. We don't need that kind of run Sunday."

ELLIOTT SADLER - No. 38 M&M's Taurus (Qualified 9th) - IT'S NOT THE POLE BUT DOES IT FEEL LIKE IT? "It does. I remember us coming to Martinsville in seven or eight straight races and never even making a race, so to come here and get us a good top 10 qualifying effort is a great feeling. We've had some awesome race cars lately. This is by far the best car I've ever had here in racing trim. That's all we worked on this morning, so my guys are doing a great job. We've just got to keep people from running over the top of us. We've gotten wrecked pretty much three of the last five races, but we're running good. We're running up front when bad things are happening to us, so we can't hang our heads. We're still trying to get to 11th-place in points and we really need to get through here at Martinsville. This has been a weak spot for us, but I think we're better prepared today than we've ever been, and I'm looking forward to a good race on Sunday."

RICKY RUDD PRESS CONFERENCE
THAT WAS PRETTY FAST. "We're real pleased with that. I wish it would have been a little bit better than what Tony ran, but it didn't work out that way. These guys have nothing to hang their heads about. The car ran extremely well. It was good in practice. It's been good all day. It's almost been sort of an uneventful day. We didn't have to change a whole lot of stuff. The car was ready off the truck."

HAVE YOU DECIDED ON YOUR PLANS FOR NEXT YEAR? "Let's talk about Martinsville. I know what's happening at Martinsville (laughing). No disrespect to everybody, it's just not time to announce anything yet."

WHERE DID THAT LAP COME FROM? "I'll be honest, it really started in the spring race earlier in the year. It was a new car built for this race track and we ended up seventh or eighth - something like that. It was a good, solid run and it really starts there because I don't think that car has been run since then. It wasn't destroyed. We came up here the other day. Goodyear needed somebody to run a tire test for them and they usually go to cars that run pretty solid here, so they chose us and we ran 700 laps of practice in two days, which is pretty brutal. I guess the only thing I can say we learned out of that is that our car is gonna be good on long race runs because when you do that they don't let you adjust your car. You sort of leave your car set and throw the tires at it, but our car was extremely good in long runs and didn't have a clue how fast it could run. I'm more excited about race runs than I am anything based on the tire test, but you say where does it come from, it comes from bringing a car back that we ran here earlier. They learned something during the season - the guys do - and you always get a little bit better hopefully and they're able to put some of the stuff they've been learning recently into this car and it's good."

HOW MUCH DO YOU AND FATBACK BRING TO THAT? "This has actually been a pretty good race track for me and it's always been a good race track for Fatback. I think you couple that together with the unbelievable Yates horsepower that we've had all year long and it clicks. It really depends on the chemistry of who you've got working. By the same token, when the Wood Brothers were off at Martinsville they were kicking everybody's butt at Michigan and Charlotte and placed like that back in the old days. They didn't run a full schedule. I don't think they ever ran a full schedule years ago back when Pearson was driving, so they probably didn't even have a real good built short track car back then."

THEY STRUGGLED WITH SADLER. "Yeah, I don't have an answer for that. This has been a good track for me. Fatback is just a good nuts and bolts type of guy. This is kind of like going back a few years in racing. This is more about chassis and aerodynamics aren't that critical here. He's really good at getting these cars to go around these slow flat race tracks."

WHAT IF THERE ARE A RASH OF CAUTIONS SUNDAY? HOW DO YOU COMBAT THAT? "Probably nothing really. It's kind of weird because it seems you always have to weigh that decision out in practice. Do you want to be good in the long run, or do you want to be good in the short run. There are a lot of things the crew chiefs can do on these cars to compliment that. This race, I've never seen it hardly fail where you get a lot of cautions early and all of a sudden you get to about lap 300 or lap 350 and the thing goes green for usually a good bit of the time. The whole first part of the race is almost a throwaway - just save your equipment until it comes to lap 300 and then let it go. Hopefully you've got brakes and fenders on it at that time when it does come time to go. But I'm not smart enough to know how to adjust the car to be good on a short run or a long run, but these crew chiefs today are pretty good and they know how to do that. But our car seems to be good on a short run, long run. It stays on its tires a very, very long time and that's the key when you get to the end of the race. Instead of going 30 laps and have a caution; 40 laps and have a caution; it generally goes a pretty good ways. That long green flag run is really what puts guys laps down or makes guys look good or not. It's those long runs at the end."

DOES YOUR FAN BASE WEIGH IN YOUR DECISION AND WHAT THEY MIGHT THINK? "Let me say this, I've got a really good group of fans that have followed me through thick and thin over the years - second and third generation fans. We're very aware of the support we have from them and the last thing we want to do is make it appear like we're snubbing them or dusting them off. It's not intended that way. When everything comes out and all the hands get played, I think everyone will see there were reasons why things needed to kept under wraps. The time has not come to divulge that. I wish I could. I wish I could tell everybody what's going on, but it's not time to do that. I just hope the fans that have been with me through thick and thin will understand that when the day comes. There will be ones that maybe we'll alienate because they didn't get the scoop early when it wasn't time to give them the scoop."

WOULD YOU RACE BUSCH OR TRUCK NEXT YEAR IF YOU RETIRE? "No."

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THIS RACE ON SUNDAY AND WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU TO STILL GO OUT AND WIN EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE NOT IN THE CHASE? "To sit here and tell you that I'm glad I'm not in the chase wouldn't be a true statement. All of us started the season with that hope in mind, ours just didn't work out. But by the same token NASCAR has created this cut list of 10 to create some excitement. I think they've succeeded in doing that, but I guess I'm old school. I come to race. I've always been if you race and you race well, your points will take care of themselves. That's not quite exactly true the way it works now with the new system, but, really, I don't know of any fan that has ever come to the race track with five races to go and they're sitting up there in the stands counting points. The media and mainly TV is doing that for you, but I think these guys come to see a race. They want to see side-by-side racing, bumping, shoving. Excitement is what they're here for. They're not here to count points. That being said, if we can go out and win a race or run really well at Martinsville, it's been a successful year for us even though we didn't make the top 10."