Sirius Satellite Radio at the Glen - Chevrolet Post-Race Quotes

JEFF BURTON, NO 31 CINGULAR WIRELESS CHEVROLET: (WHAT HAPPENED OUT THERE?) "Stupid driver mistake. That's pretty much all I can tell you. The guys on our team did an awesome job. This Cingular Wireless Chevy was really fast. I'm just sorry for the guys at Cingular and for everybody on this team. They gave me a car today that we could get our business done with. We were fast. And I messed up. We were very loose. And I overstepped the boundaries. As long as I've been doing it, I shouldn't do things like that."

P.J. JONES, NO. 4 LUCAS OIL CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: (DID YOUR CRASH HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH EARLIER CONTACT BETWEEN YOU AND BORIS SAID?) "No, I don't think so. I think we had a bad brake rotor or something. When I got into the corner the brakes just went right to the floor. I just turned in left as hard as I could to make sure we could slow it down. I knew we didn't have enough tire to get it to the straightaway, so I didn't want to hit down there. So I just hate it for the whole Lucas Oil, Morgan-McClure team. We were having a good run and we're up inside the top 15 and we were looking for a strong finish."

MICHAEL WALTRIP, NO. 15 NAPA CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: (ARE YOU OKAY, AND WHAT HAPPENED?) "I'm fine. I guess the boy in the No. 9 (Kasey Kahne) didn't give me one inch. I look forward to the day that he needs an inch. That's four times I've gotten wrecked going down the straightaway this year -- two blown engines and four flat tires. And that's out of 22 races. That tells you how good of a team I've got. I've got the best crew ever and I just keep having problems. I'm very sorry about that."

DALE EARNHARDT JR., NO. 8 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: (IS THIS FINISH WHAT THE TEAM NEEDED TO GET BACK ON TRACK?) "It's better than what I thought we'd get, and I think my team is happy about the finish. I'm just real disappointed I got into Dale Jarrett in the race there, spun him around, he got in the wall. That's bothering right now more than anything, because we're pretty good friends. It's hard going out there and racing people you've got so much respect for. I should've been thinking about that when he was in front of me I guess."

(ARE YOU AWARE OF WHO YOU'RE RACING IN THE POINTS WHEN YOU'RE ON THE RACE TRACK?) "No idea. I can't keep up with that, hell, that's too much to worry about. I just try to get as many points as I can get, and then you get on NASCAR.com and check it out when you get home."

(WAS THERE A LOT OF BLOCKING GOING ON DURING THE RACE TODAY?) "There was a lot of blocking going on. Most of the time, you tolerate it. But towards the end of the race, I mean, it depends on the personality if you can handle it or not. If somebody keeps aggravating you, sometimes you need a deep threshold for that kind of stuff. I don't really block a lot. If a guy makes a move on me, I just try to out-brake him. I don't really drive in front of him, because you get spun out a lot of times."

JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DUPONT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: "We had a great car. It was just unfortunate we had that flat left front. That just did it to us again. It just doesn't seem like it's meant to be. We just can't seem to get things to go our way."

(WHAT DID YOU RUN OVER?) "I have no idea. I was just racing hard with Tony (Stewart) and Jimmie (Johnson) and I went down in the corner and the car just went straight. I thought that maybe I just picked up some rubber on the tire. I went into the next couple of turns and it did the same thing, so then I had to come in."

(ON HIS CHANCES FOR THE CHASE) "We're not going to give up until mathematically we don't have a chance. But I think as good a car as we had today -- we led a lap -- and knowing how good we could have been, this would have been a big day for us. I don't want to go into Richmond just having to win the race. That's a lot to ask for and a lot of pressure. We're a great team and we deserve to be up there further than we are, but we need to have everything going our way to do it."

(HOW FRUSTRATING IS THIS?) "Very frustrating. The guys that I'm racing in points were right in front of me. I had (Jamie) McMurray, Elliott Sadler, and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. -- I had them all right there in front of me. That was extremely frustrating."

(YOU HAD AN IMPRESSIVE RUN BY FINISHING 14TH) "Okay. But what good does it do to be impressive if you're passing the most cars coming from the back every time and you still get to 14th. We're not living up to our full potential. We should have been in the top two or three today. And we're not doing it. That's why we are where we're at in the points."

(ON TRYING TO BEAT THE CAUTION) "We tried to get ahead of the caution coming out. Right as I hit pit road, the caution came out and the light came on on the entry to pit road and I knew we were in trouble. I saw it when we went by. But I was already committed."

(TOWARD THE END OF THE RACE, IT DIDN'T SEEM LIKE YOU WERE PASSING AS MUCH AS YOU DID EARLIER. DID SOMETHING HAPPEN?) "When you're further up the front the air is a lot different the way it moves around the cars and I used up the brakes quite a bit during the day making those passes. To be honest, most of it was because I was racing Ricky Rudd. He was a pretty good car. He was making a few holes for me, but he was also holding me up. I fought with him for so much of that last part -- it was fun racing him -- but at the same time it was costing us a lot of time and positions."

GREG ZIPADELLI, CREW CHIEF, NO. 20 HOME DEPOT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Winner: "This Home Depot Chevrolet was awesome. We had a great test. We've had an awesome for a couple of months. It's kind of like a fantasy. I hope it lasts -- I think I've got another 14 more weeks of it. I keep praying. The good Lord keeps shining on us. Everybody has been working hard. Smoke (Tony Stewart) has just been fired up. I haven't this guy this focused and this fun to be around in seven years. I can't say enough about him and all these guys."

(ON HITTING YOUR STRIDE AS THE CHASE APPROACHES) "Yeah, like I said, we've got another long stretch, so we need to be able to maintain it and keep our chins up and don't get complacent because things are going so easy. We need to work even harder right now I think so we don't fall behind. I know everybody else is."

BORIS SAID, NO. 36 CENTRIX CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Finished 3rd: "For a while I thought I could finish second behind Tony (Stewart). I hated to see that last caution come out. But Robby (Gordon) got a good run on me on that restart and I couldn't hold him off. I tried. And yet the Hendrick motor in this thing is so fast. It's great to have the horsepower. I wish I'd had that yesterday in the Busch car. We've always had bad luck here at Watkins Glen. Finally maybe that's gone now. A third place finish feels great. I love this place. Watkins Glen rules."

(WAS THE CAR BETTER ON THE LONG RUNS?) "Oh, yes. It was definitely better on the long runs. Frank Stoddard (crew chief) had some great strategy to get me some track position. We put tires on with about 50 or so laps left. The Goodyear tires worked great. I didn't win, but for me it's like a win coming from the back. It was my first time in the top five and I'm happy."

ROBBY GORDON, NO. 7 JIM BEAM CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Finished 2nd: (ARE YOU HAPPY OR DISAPPOINTED?) "Well, we're a little bit happy but at the same time we're disappointed. We came here to win the race. When it rained yesterday, it put us at a huge deficit. But we fought our way all the way up to the front. I was coming in on the lap that the caution flag came out and it jut put us back there far again. Tony and that Home Depot team is tough to beat when we start way back like that, but there even tough when you start side by side. We ran out of fuel all the way around on the last lap."

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE'S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Finished 5th: "That was a great performance for us today. We had some troubles in practice and (crew chief) Chad Knaus and the guys worked hard to get the car to handle for me in the braking zones. I didn't get a lap yesterday (qualifying cancelled due to rain), which was nice in one respect because we started up front and had track position, but I didn't know what to expect today. We changed a lot of things. But from the very first lap the car was right on the money and off we went. We had great stops and it was really what we needed after last week for this Lowe's team."

PRESS CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS:

ROBBY GORDON, NO. 7 JIM BEAM CHEVROLET: (ON THE PASSING HE HAD TO MAKE) "We went from 39th to first in 22 laps. I ran hard and then the goal was to take it easy in the middle half of the race and then I got hung out on that caution and had to run hard again from 30th all the way up. It was a decent run for us but not the run we wanted. But second place is a good points day for the Jim Beam Chevrolet. Our goal now is to get in the top 35 in points so when we show up for Daytona we don't have any worries."

BORIS SAID, NO. 36 CENTRIX CHEVROLET: (ON HIS DAY) "It was a really good run. It felt pretty good to be in second. I didn't want to see that last caution. On that last restart, Tony kind of bogged me down a bit and Robby got a run. He made a clean pass. There was a little bit of contact, but that was good racing. I'm pretty happy in third. It seems like I finally got the monkey off my back. It seems like I've always run fast enough for the top three, but something always happens. This is good payback for Centrix. When you start back in 41st, this was a long way to go."

(WHERE WAS TONY STEWART BEATING EVERYBODY?)
GORDON: "He had track position. When you have track position it's a lot easier to run wide open through the esses. Guys in second get aero push a little bit and it's enough that you have to crack the throttle. I don't know if he was beating everybody on lap time. I feel pretty confident that we could match his lap time. We just didn't have enough time to get there. Those last three starts, he kind of did to me what he did to Boris the time before and jabbed the brakes right at the last second and got me checked up and then he took off. That was the difference in him winning the race probably."

(YOU MUST BE SATISFIED WITH YOUR PROGRESS) "Thanks. We're trying to prove all you media wrong who said I couldn't do it. We're getting closer week in and week out. This is our best result, but we've run inside the top 10 quite a bit and had some engine failures. Menard is making some big gains on their motors. We ran it hard today and it was a good run for us."

(WHEN THE LEADER STABS THE BRAKES AND TAKES OFF, IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH THAT OR WOULD YOU DO THAT?)
GORDON: "Well, we're race car drivers so I'm going to say we're going to do it. You do everything you can to sucker your competition. I thought I was ready for it because he did it one time and got me going and then he did it again and he caught me on the second time."

(ON HIS FORMER BAD LUCK AT THE GLEN)
BORIS: "I've always run good here, I've just had bad luck whether qualifying gets rained and I've gone home two of the last four years because of that. In the races I've run good but had motors blow up or had some contact near the end of the race. So to finally get a good clean run -- especially coming from the back -- it's a good feeling. I love this place. Maybe they could add a few more road courses to the schedule."

(AS AN OWNER, WHAT DO YOU TELL YOUR DRIVER ABOUT HIS PERFORMANCE TODAY?)
GORDON: "He didn't win. He came here to win. So he's probably on rocky ground right now. (ARE YOU GOING TO LET HIM SLIDE ONE MORE WEEK?) "It depends on how his attitude is on Monday (laughs)."

(HOW FRUSTRATING WAS IT NOT TO BE ABLE TO GET CLOSE ENOUGH TO MAKE A MOVE ON STEWART?)
GORDON: "Well, he flat beat us. What more can you say? He's leading in the points and got to start first and just beat us. We did everything we could to beat him, but it wasn't enough today. We'll be back for next year's races."

(ON GOING TO MICHIGAN NEXT WEEK)
GORDON: "I look forward to Michigan. We qualified 8th there. We sat on the pole for a long time there and got beat toward the end of the day in qualifying. We were running fifth when we lost a coil. I thought the second half of the season our team would really come into play and hopefully this will jump-start us."

(HAVE YOU BEEN IN THE ZONE LIKE TONY STEWART IS RIGHT NOW?)
SAID: "I've never won five out of seven races, so I don't know. Maybe in TransAm, but there, you're really not racing against anybody. What he's doing is just unbelievable. I think I'm going to go home and buy a used hearse and drive it around. Maybe that's the ticket (laughs)"

GORDON: "Yeah, he's got his confidence up. Obviously the communication between he and Zippy is working really well. It's going to be tough to beat him. These guys are going to have to really go to work if they're going to beat him for the championship in the last 10 races. Yeah, I just bought a Cadillac three weeks ago and it didn't help me."

(EVEN THOUGH YOU GOT PUSHED TO THE BACK BECAUSE OF THE RAIN, DID YOU THINK YOU COULD FINISH THE WAY YOU DID TODAY?)
GORDON: "We came from the back in the Busch race yesterday. That builds our confidence and shows we can do it. The hardest part is getting by everybody clean and not damaging your fenders and having a race car to race them later on. It's easy to get caught up in wrecks when you're in the back."

(WITH AS FAST AS THE NO. 20 CAR WAS TODAY WITH WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT ROAD RACING, IF YOU'D BEEN DRIVING IT, WOULD IT HAVE BEEN UGLY?)
SAID: "I think my car was just as good as his car. I don't think it was any better. I have Hendrick motors and there is no better out there. My car was just as fast. He just had track position. You just kind of burn your car down a little bit coming from the back. I had a little damage with P.J. Jones. No, I don't want his car. I like the color of my car better anyway."

(ON HIS DETOUR THROUGH THE GRASS)
GORDON: "I was trying to pass in the grass. I was trying to get by somebody and it didn't work out. I didn't concern me at all because we went straight through the grass and there weren't any dips or bumps or anything like that."

(DOES THE TRACK RACE BETTER SINCE THE CHANGES?)
GORDON: "I don't know what it's done as far as race-ability. It's made it easier for two cars to get through the chicane is probably the only thing. But it's the same race track. The changes in Turn 1 have prevented us from having more cautions where we have to take cars out of the sand. But it's a great race track to pass. It's easier to pass than Sonoma."

(WILL THIS TRACK BE GOOD FOR IRL RACING?)
GORDON: "I haven't driving the IRL spec cars but it should be good. If they're going to use the whole course, it would be great. It would be a lot of fun. Maybe they should add a few foam barriers or something down there in Turn 1 in front of the wall. They're going to be going down in Turn 1 at 200 mph or something. I think there's enough room. That's the only place that really bothers me."

PRESS CONFERENCE:

WINNERS: TONY STEWART AND CREW CHIEF GREG ZIPADELLI:

ZIPADELLI: "It's pretty awesome to be going through what we're going through. As good as we've been in the past, we've never been anywhere near this. It's exciting. Obviously anybody who has the opportunity to win five races in the NEXTEL Cup season is blessed. For us to do it and last eight or 10 weeks is really awesome."

(CAN YOU TAKE US THOUGH HOW YOU SEEMED TO TURN THE CORNER ALL AT ONCE?) "We had a really good test at Michigan. We learned some stuff. We built a new car that we took to the All-Star race. We wrecked it, but it was really good. We took it to the Michigan test later. We learned a lot with it. We've learned from the bigger tracks. This is the car we had at Sonoma. It's the car we won with here last year that we did over. It's neat that we've been able to do it on the superspeedways, short tracks, and intermediate tracks. That's what's really cool about this."

(PEOPLE ARE EYEBALLING YOUR CARS TO FIGURE OUT WHAT'S DIFFERENT) "I've heard a lot of that and seen a lot of that in the past couple of weeks. We're going to have to start carving some eyes out. In all honesty, we didn't look around at what other people were doing. We went home and went to work. We relied on my guys back at the shop. We tested. We built a lot of race cars this year to get aero balance and some things we wanted at the bigger race tracks. As long as they're looking at our stuff, they're not working on their own stuff."

(IS THERE A SENSE THAT IF YOU KEEP THE CAR ON THE TRACK AND TONY DOESN'T MESS UP, THAT YOU'RE GOING TO WIN A RACE?) "From the outside right now, it looks like that. But it's not really that way. Our stuff has been good. Our driver has been focused. Our pit stops have been great. Every aspect of our race team has been strong. And that's what it takes. There were a lot of other teams that were that way at the beginning of the year. Now we're going back to Michigan and Bristol with a little different tire. There are a lot of things coming up that could change things very easily."

(HOW SERIOUS WAS THE ALTERNATOR PROBLEM?) "Anytime you have a problem with anything, it's serious. We've had some alternator problems. We thought we got them fixed. We're asking so much out of them now with all these brake fans and cool boxes and everything that we're overloading them. Last week, the one we had looked good. We put a new one on here just for the race. And I don't know. We missed it a little bit. But we had that second battery in the car and that's what that's there for to give us a little bit of reserve. This is probably one of the worst, if not the worst places, with the amount of fans and things we have on it."

TONY STEWART: (YOU LED FOR 83 OF THE 92 LAPS...WHAT WENT WRONG ON THE OTHER 9 LAPS?) "I don't know what went wrong either. I'm going to have to talk to Zippy about that and put a little heat on him. We had an absolutely flawless day today with the exception of the alternator. I don't know if we had a big problem or not. I know it wasn't reading what it was earlier in the race. I didn't tell him until the caution came out. We had just about every fan turned off I felt like I could safely shut off without hurting the race car. I just told him on the yellow in case maybe there was something I could do to. Other than that we had a pretty flawless day. The only two challenges we had were on re-starts getting in Turn 1. Jeff Gordon got under us once. And Robby (Gordon) was the one I was really concerned with there at the end. He is one of the best at braking when it comes to getting into the corners here. So this is a hard track on restarts to be the leader. You're really a sitting duck. Guys will sit back and lay back and it's probably hard for NASCAR to police it because they haven't done anything to this point. So I'm sure it's because it's really a hard deal for them to be able to see. But guys are really taking advantage of being able to roll the restarts and get a run. They can carry it all the way down the front stretch. That make the restarts very critical for us today. If I could make it through Turn 1, I didn't have any concerns."

(HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN A ZONE LIKE THIS?) "I'll be honest. I've had zones where I've finished in the top three when I was in Midgets and Sprint Cars where I could go week in and week out and not fall out of the top three. But to win five out of the last seven and be in the top five for the last eight weeks, is a pretty good record. I know Zippy is proud of it. I'm extremely proud of it. For us to win at Daytona, Indy, Sonoma, Watkins Glen, and Loudon -- to win on all those different disciplines really shows how diverse our program is. It's a tribute to Zippy and the guys and the good job they're doing. From a driver's standpoint, you pray that you get good race cars like this to drive every week. But it's not me making the difference. They find the right package to make us go fast."

(ON HIS HOMETOWN PARADE TOMORROW) "I'm a little nervous. I'm not sure what's going on other than I'm going to be in the parade. I'm just scared there will be kids throwing darts at me. I don't know what's going to happen. But I'm excited about it. For a town that's only got 38,000 people and they're expecting 50,000 people -- I don't know where they're going to put them. But it's flattering that the town cares enough and knows how much the Brickyard 400 means makes me free very honored."

(WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU COME OUT OF RICHMOND 400 POINTS AHEAD OF EVERYBODY ELSE?) "Who cares? Nobody else is going to."

(HAVE WE SEEN THE END OF FENCE CLIMBING?) "No, this place is not good for fence climbing. The grandstands are there but the flag stand is there. But there were only going to be about three people that would be able to enjoy it with me. So, I looked at it and thought man, I really don't feel like wasting my time going up this fence today. I'm convinced I'm still going to fall off one and crack my head wide-open. Considering I want to go to Knoxville tonight, I was better off just grabbing the flag and doing a couple of burnouts for the fans. I didn't forget about them; it just didn't work into our normal plan."

(WITH A SECOND PLACE RUN AT MICHIGAN, YOU MUST BE VERY OPTIMISTIC GOING BACK THERE) "Yeah, I'm really excited. That's where this run really started. It's just one of those string of tracks that that we started to run well at, going. I'm excited to go back there. I can't think of a better place to go back to a second time after the run we had there in the spring."

(WHEN YOU HAVE A DOMINATE CAR LIKE YOU HAD TODAY, DOES THAT MAKE IT LESS STRESSFUL RUNNING A ROAD COURSE?) "Absolutely. As much as brakes are a factor -- especially as fast as we run here -- we're harder on the brakes here than we are at Sonoma because we run so fast. There are three really hard braking zones here. At Sonoma, there are only really two. This is one of those places where it's very easy to abuse your tires and the brakes. When you can run the pace you want to and lift when you want to and do the things that you know are taking care of your equipment, it makes for a lot better day. If you can do that on the first half of the race and save your brakes, you've got them at the end. Guys like Robby (Gordon) had to work hard all day and didn't have that luxury of saving brakes. I'm sure that probably hurt him those last two laps staying with us a little bit."

(WAS FUEL AN ISSUE AT ALL?) "Not at all. Zippy is pretty good at planning ahead and knowing exactly how many laps we can go and planning ahead for a green-white-checkered. He told me not to worry about it, so I never had to think about it in the car."

(DOES WHAT YOU LEARNED AT MICHIGAN TRANSLATE OVER TO ROAD COURSES AS WELL?) ZIPPY: "Some of the things we learned at Sonoma translated back over here. We bought them here. But,not really. Everything is so completely different."

(ON RUNNING WITH GOOD ROAD RACE DRIVERS) "There are a lot of guys who are better than me. Robby and Boris and Ron Fellows -- you learn a lot running with guys like that. It's kind of a good deal to have these guys here. You can learn a lot just by practicing with them. As much as I'd like to think I'm a pretty decent road racer, I'm getting better, but I can still get better than I am right now."

(DID YOU LAY BACK ON THOSE TWO RESTARTS OR WAS YOUR CAR STRONG ENOUGH ANYWAY) "Most of the race, every time we had restarts, guys were close enough that if they really wanted to force the issue they could do something. The second to last restart, we had Boris behind us. He probably laid back two car lengths and just started rolling up. It's hard to see. You can see the distance close up and you think he's really not gaining that much.

"But if he rolls you one or two miles per hour and can get in the gas when you do, by the time he carries it all the way into the straightaway, he's beside you or by you. So yeah, I was very concerned.

"The first time he was rolling up, instead of getting into it when I wanted to, I just slowed down a little bit and made him have to get on the brakes to where I stopped his run. The second time, it was the same thing with Robby. He was hanging back two car lengths. I had enough of a gap between me and the pace car that I actually sped up a little bit to make him have to come up to me or it was going to be blatant that he was laying back too far and got him out of time that way. They were playing the game. I was playing the game as the leader. I was hoping I wouldn't have to do all that stuff because that's definitely a worry. But they're doing what they have to do to try to give themselves an advantage to try and win the race and I did the same thing."

(ROBBY GORDON SAID HIS CAR WAS NEARLY AS GOOD AS YOURS) "I would say he had a better car than what he got to show at the end. He probably had to use a lot of it up to get to the front. It's hard to do that. If you had to be in that situation, Robby Gordon is the guy I'd want in my car if I was an owner and had to go to the back like that because he's the one who can do it efficiently without beating the daylights out of his race car. We never ran harder than we had to. We never really had to show exactly how fast that car could go today. We had more left if we needed it."

(WITH YOUR FAST QUALFIYING LAP YESTERDAY, HOW CONFIDENT WERE YOU GOING INTO TODAY'S RACE?) "I had a high confidence level -- not that I was going to win the race, but that I had a shot at winning the race. There are so many things that can go wrong. You just never know. I felt like I had a car capable of winning the race if all the variables worked out and we didn't have any problems."

(ARE YOU STARTING TO FEEL LOVED WITH ALL THE CHEERING GOING ON?) "I'm feeling a lot of love. I'm enjoying the love too. It's a lot better than dodging grenades. It's definitely a good feeling -- especially when there were four or five kids with Tony Stewart hats and shirts on and that probably means more to me than having four or five adults."