Where the Raybestos Rookies finished in the Second Gatorade Duel:
Carpentier 19th
Villeneuve 23rd
Franchitti 26th

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER QUOTES FOLLOWING THE SECOND GATORADE DUEL AT DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2008, PAGE 3.

JACQUES VILLENEUVE, No. 27 BILL DAVIS RACING TOYOTA: WHAT HAPPENED? “The car was real loose all day and there we got it three-wide and just got loose one time too many. It’s a shame because the car was actually quite quick and the whole crew worked really hard to get us here. That’s very annoying but that’s the way racing goes.” THAT HAS TO BE A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT FOR YOU TRYING TO MAKE YOUR FIRST DAYTONA 500. “Yeah, well it won’t happen this year so we’ll have to wait a little bit.” HOW DISAPPOINTING IS THIS FOR YOU? “It’s very, very disappointing but we had a terrible day yesterday. The car wasn’t working. We found the problem, we fixed it but then we weren’t really sure what the balance was going to be and it was just a little too loose. I got sideways quite a few times and one of those times it was going to catch me out.” COMMENT ON THE PRESSURE OF HAVING TO DO WELL IN THIS RACE TO MAKE THE 500. “Oh, it’s a lot of pressure but you’re going to have to race hard.” DID YOU HAVE TO GET IN THIS RACE TO LOCK DOWN A SPONSOR? “I don’t think it makes a big difference. At least there won’t be any angry sponsors. When you’ve got a perfect setup it’s not too bad but when you start sliding they are a handful, mostly in the traffic. My car was quite quick, it was just a little bit too loose and I just got caught out there. I just stayed in the middle there and it started sliding and that was it.” DO THE CARS JUST MOVE AROUND A LOT? “Oh yeah, they move around a lot but that’s not really a problem.”

DARIO FRANCHITTI, No. 40 DODGE JOURNEY DODGE: WHAT HAPPENED? “Jacques in the 27 got really sideways through three and four and it looked like he tried to chase it and eventually the car bit and turned him hard right. And unfortunately for McMurray and myself we were the two on his outside and he just wiped us out in the wall. It was very frustrating because our mission all day was to stay out of trouble and learn stuff and we were doing that just fine and got caught up in somebody else’s accident. It’s frustrating.” HOW BIG OF A LEARNING CURVE IS IT TO LEARN HOW THESE CARS DRIVE AND MOVE AROUND? “Oh, it’s a big learning curve, but it really had nothing to do with the accident. We weren’t doing anything wrong. As I say, I was hanging back with guys like Dale Jarrett and try to learn from them and watch what him and Tony Stewart were doing. That’s what I was doing.”

STEVEN LANE, CREW CHIEF, No. 40 DODGE JOURNEY DODGE: WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS REGARDING A BACKUP CAR? “We tested two cars down here back in January, and the other car was just as good. We’ve got it sitting by the gate and NASCAR will let us unload it as soon as this race is over. We’ll just put the same setup under it and go from there.” DOES THAT PUT A PREMIUM ON HOW WELL ORGANIZED YOUR ENTIRE COMPANY MUST BE? “Absolutely, because as soon as we wrecked, I don’t even think we got done wrecking good yet and the guy that brought us a spare car down here was on the phone to me. I said ‘Yeah, bring it on in the gate.’ I looked up as soon as I walked in the garage and there sat a red truck with Ganassi on the side of it. He had the back door down and we’ve already got a backup to the backup sitting here. So he’s loading this thing up and it’ll be in Charlotte in the morning. In 15 minutes after we wrecked he was sitting in here in the infield with a truck running. You know this stuff can happen and he was ready. Pulled right in, dropped the gate and we unloaded the backup to the backup.”

PATRICK CARPENTIER, No. 10 VALVOLINE DODGE: “That was a lot of fun and I was hoping to be in the field at Daytona. I thought we had a car to do it and the car was pretty fast the whole time. We went to the back and came back to front. The car was good. But that last five, six laps the car started to push like crazy. I just kept riding the top of the wall there and kept hitting the wall on top there. One thing I’ve learned is that there is a cushion out there so once it gets really high on top there it kind of stops the car from going the wall. Besides that, I’ll take it as experience and we’ll go to Fontana and dig deeper. I love driving these things. I would sit back in it tomorrow morning. It was a lot of fun. I just wish I would have done 500 more miles on Sunday.” DID YOU MAKE THE RIGHT DECISION COMING TO THIS TYPE OF RACING? “I love it. I want to be here to stay and that’s what I want to do. I always wanted to do ovals and it’s the place for me where I want to do it. We’ll keep working harder and I think we’ll stick to it but this is where I want to be.” DID YOU HAVE ANY WARNING BEFORE THE ACCIDENT? “Yeah, the last six laps the car was really, really pushy and I hit the wall about four times. I hit it a couple of times pretty hard down on the back there, one time down there between three and four and just kept riding the wall. I knew something was going to happen but I was hoping we could make it to the end before. Robby Gordon came behind me to help me at the end there but it was too late.” HOW MUCH OF A CHALLENGE IS DRIVING THESE CARS IN TRAFFIC? “It’s fun, I love it. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a heck of a challenge but the team put me in a car every week since last year. I’ve been pretty much sitting in that car every week testing and feeling a lot more comfortable than before and did a lot to learn. You know, every track you leave and you think ‘Oh, I think I’ve got it’ and you to the next one and you know absolutely nothing so it’s going to be a fun, long year but we’ll learn.” YOU WERE IN THE HUNT TO MAKE THE 500 BEFORE YOUR ACCIDENT. “Yeah, we were still, but I mean it was getting worse and worse. I could see pieces of rubber flying off and I knew my time was counted. But hey, at least we had the speed to do it.”