RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER RAIN DELAY QUOTES FOR THE AARON’S 499 NASCAR NEXTEL CUP SERIES RACE AT TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY, APRIL 30, 2006.

MIKE FORD, CREW CHIEF, No. 11 FEDEX FREIGHT CHEVROLET: YOU HAVE A BUSY WEEK AHEAD WITH THE TEST AT CHARLOTTE AND NOW A RAIN DELAY HERE. “I could care less. You can’t control it and I’m not really going to worry about it. We’re planning on testing Monday and Wednesday but if we’ve got to test Tuesday and Wednesday it’s really no big deal. We’re still going to be racing at Richmond. I always make sure that the testing never affects the racing. If you got to cut it short or whatever, you have to do, adjust your test to make sure that you still race strong and that’s what we’ll do. You can’t control the weather so I’m not going to really even worry about thinking about it.”

HOW DIFFICULT IS IT FOR A RACE TEAM TO DEAL WITH A POSTPONEMENT? “It really doesn’t change it because the cars will be impounded and you’ll come back. You hate to get excited and prepared for a race and then it get pushed off a day but again, you can’t control the weather. You deal the best you can with the elements at hand. If it comes to racing on Monday then we’ll just use tomorrow and get prepared again and go race as hard as we can.”

IF THE RACE IS RESCHEDULED, WILL YOU SEND THE RACE DAY GUYS BACK HOME AND BRING THEM BACK ON MONDAY? “Actually, that’s what I came back to the truck to see if anyone was around to discuss all that. We’ve done it both ways. Sometimes we’ll leave the guys down; sometimes we send them home. I would imagine that some of the guys would stay. Talladega here there is limited rooms so some of them would go back but we’d leave a few guys down to prepare the pits and things for the standard 11 o’clock start.”

COULD THAT AFFECT PIT STOPS IN THE RACE? “No, not really. You kind of sway your decisions on who comes and goes and who’s prepared. These guys, if they come in and have an 11 o’clock start, depending on what time we would be able to get them home, they still get a good night’s sleep and come back in the morning. The biggest thing is just getting prepared and getting in your ‘race zone’ a second day in a row.”