GM Racing Winston Cup Notes & Quotes
Written by John Davison · September 29, 2003
Talladega, AL - Quotes from GM brand Winston Cup drivers following the EA Sports 500; Talladega Superspeedway
JOHNNY BENSON, NO. 10 VALVOLINE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: NOTE: Benson was one of several cars involved in the first caution of the day. His Valvoline Pontiac sustained severe front-end damage in the crash.
WHAT HAPPENED? “I’m not sure exactly what started it, but I saw the 19 [Jeremy Mayfield] sideways. It didn’t look like anybody got into him, it looked like he was just kind of by himself. Once that happens, everybody is just looking for a spot, trying to go somewhere, and unfortunately it looked like 10 of us were going for the same spot and we all got together. The Valvoline Pontiac went up into the wall, and it doesn’t look good at the moment. We’ll see what is going to happen.”
WAS IT A CASE OF WRONG PLACE, WRONG TIME? “I don’t know. I guess you could say that, but by the same token, I don’t think I’ve run more than 15 laps in the last three races here. That part gets pretty saddening for us, because these guys work extremely hard on these cars and here we sit in the pits with no laps, just hanging out and waiting to see what happens. We were fortunate enough to be quick enough in practice to have hopes for the race, so it’s unfortunate that we were involved in that.”
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: NOTE: Johnson was in the lead pack when his engine blew late in Sunday’s race. He also spun as a result of contact with Michael Waltrip while battling for the lead, but did not hit anything and continued.
WHAT HAPPENED ON THE SPIN? “I got hit from the right side by the 15 and it turned us around. I guess the 8 got into the back of the 15 and the chain reaction turned us around. Luckily, we didn’t hit anything. I thought we were going to come back through there and have a shot at winning, but something happened with a piston. I had the clutch in and the brakes locked down the whole time once I got sideways.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE NEW RULES NOW? “It was nice not racing back to the yellow. I think you need to earn your lap back, and not just have it awarded if you happen to be in the right place at the right time. I think to pit road and not racing back to the yellow is working really well.”
WHAT ABOUT THE AERO RULES? “I think they kept us all in a bigger pack. I don’t think it was as easy to pass this time. It was as a whole if you were running from 15th on back, but toward the front, it’s harder to pass in the corners.”
TONY STEWART, NO. 20 HOME DEPOT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 3rd: “It was typical Talladega. It was fun. If you don’t get excited about that, then I don’t know what there is to get excited about. Everybody was going left, everybody was going right, nobody knows where they’re going to finish. That’ s the great thing about this kind of racing.”
DID YOU HAVE ANY CONCERNS ABOUT FUEL MILEAGE? “I don’t think it was a factor for us. The cautions fell right. We had to come in with a big group of them there and when we came out we were the first off pit lane but we were about ninth on track position. There were some guys that could make it and we couldn’t. That got us a little behind, but we got a good run up there. We got with Junior, and every time Junior and I get together we always go to the front, so it was a pretty good time.”
YOU HAVE A SMILE ON YOUR FACE. “I’m just glad to be walking out of here. I always am.”
DALE EARNHARDT JR., NO. 8 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 2nd: “I’m real happy for Michael and the NAPA Chevrolet. They did a real good job all day long staying out of trouble. I’ve got to give a lot of credit to my crew. They patched this car back together and we were able to make up a lap. I have to apologize to Elliott Sadler. I kind of feel like I caused that crash. I hope he’s all right and not too sore tomorrow. It was just a wild and crazy-ass day. I don’t know if I can take too many more of them. That was too crazy for me, and I’m about the craziest one out here.”
COULD YOU HAVE HAD SOMETHING FOR MICHAEL AT THE END? “My car was fine. We patched it up and it was ready to go. I didn’t have the partners I needed up until the end. Tony came up and gave me a shove and got me out of that three-wide mess. He always works with me, and we worked together a little today, but Michael was real hard to pass. I didn’t have any partners behind me that were going to help me get by him. Me and Jeff Gordon raced real competitive. We’re not drafting partners, but we are friends. It was a great race. I don’ t think the aero package is the right way to go. You saw a lot of bumping and carrying on. I ain’t never ran into so many people and been run into so many times and not crashed, so hat’s off to everybody for hanging on.”
JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DuPONT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 5th: “I’m hoping we’re on a roll. That was an awesome run for us. We had a strong car all day, led a bunch of laps. Losing Jimmie Johnson out there hurt us a little bit; we had a great drafting partner with him and he and I were working real well together. There at the end we had to come in for fuel and we came in and I saw how far back we were and said, ’should we come and get tires?’ I wanted to go up through the middle. I knew that was the way to get back to the front. I didn’t know if my car would handle as good as I wanted it to to stay wide open up through there. So we got tires, fell to the back and it didn’t look good there for a while. But once we caught the pack we just blew up through there. Those last few laps were pretty exciting. There was a lot of bumping, a lot of banging going on. I had the momentum, I had the run and just got a little bit wide and Harvick got up underneath me and slowed my momentum. We’re glad to come home fifth.”
WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE AERO RULES? “I just don’t think we really need anything here at Talladega. We always put on a spectacular race. We’re going to bump-draft here with the old rules, similar to what they were today. We’re going to be bunched up if they keep the rules like this. They might work good at Daytona, but I just don’t know what they’re looking for at Talladega. As a driver, I don’t know if too many of us really enjoy getting out here, but when it’s all over, we can breathe again and we have the car in one piece, you’re ready to go on to the next week.”
MICHAEL WALTRIP, NO. 15 NAPA CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Won his fourth Winston Cup race. “On that restart my car was geared a little higher than I wanted it to be and I was afraid they’d get a run on me and that’s what Dale Jr. tried to do. I fought that one off. And then I saw Jeff Gordon get beside Dale Jr. coming off Turn 4 and I had to go for it. I had to go up high and hope that Jr. didn’t have a run on the bottom to get under me and come back and block him off. It was a good plan. But I was sitting on the back straightaway thinking, ‘Where am I going to put my NAPA Chevy? How am I going to position it to make sure I win?’ And when I drove off, I decided to just deal with it when it happened.
“I’m real proud of my team and Slugger (crew chief) and the continued dominance of DEI. Today it had a whole lot to do with a couple of guys willing their way to the front because I think the gap between the haves and the have-nots has drastically closed.”
HOW DID YOU LIKE THE NEW RULES? “My car was kind of slow in the globs. But if I got in the back and got a run up through there because of the way it was geared, I could make some good progress. It taught me a whole lot going to the back and coming back up through there. So every time I was a little bit better at it. I was shocked when I was in the front at the end. It had to do with great fuel mileage and a great team. I want to thank Coca-Cola and all the people that make this possible and of course, Chevrolet.”
YOU DIDN’T LIKE THE GEAR IN YOUR CAR AND YOU WERE REALLY FRUSTRATED IN THE EARLY LAPS, WEREN’T YOU? “I was. But I told them yesterday that if I was in the glob - in the pack - that it wouldn’t go. But if I got a run on people, I was all right. I whined a little bit more than I hope anybody heard. This place is frustrating and you’ve got your emotions out on your sleeve anyway. I was complaining a lot. But I’m thankful to put our NAPA Chevy in Victory Lane.”
KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 GM GOODWRENCH CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 7th: “It was pretty wild. It was pretty cool there at the end. Kurt Busch was on a mission there at the end. He had the old No. 29 GM Goodwrench Chevrolet going. I went in the middle there and thought we might have a chance coming to the line but everybody peeled off behind me and we wound up finishing seventh. But it was still a good day for the GM Goodwrench Chevy.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE AND HOW IT RACED? “It completely changed my opinion during the race. Our package wasn’t as strong as we had been in the last three restrictor plate races. But it’s a lot like the roof fin and you can pull up better. And I think the racing was a lot better.”
BOBBY LABONTE, NO. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 11th and was involved in a crash after the checkered flag waved: “I was pretty much on the bottom and somebody got me in the right rear. Bill said somebody got into him. It was just one of those deals where you start to check up. You roll out of the fall, you don’t check up you roll out. Everybody was going for that start/finish line and we got in a little bit of an accident. But hey, at least we made it past the start/finish line.”
DALE EARNHARDT JR. POST-RACE PRESS CONFERENCE: CAN YOU SUM-UP THE DAY? “We started in the back because of the (rules) infraction in qualifying and had a pit stall that was way down pit road. We had an early caution and came down pit road. A lot of guys gassed and nothing else and pulled out in front of a bunch of us coming on to pit road and a bunch of guys checked up and I ran into the back of somebody and tore my car up pretty bad. We lost a lap when I lost the draft.
“We just got lucky. I came up behind Michael (Waltrip) and pushed him. I hit him pretty hard and he turned sideways and turned the No. 48 (Jimmie Johnson) down across the track. The caution came out so I got my lap back. I was just trying to stay in front of whoever was a lap down behind me and ended up causing that problem a little bit - that was kind of my fault. I was expecting Michael to kind of hang onto it but he didn’t do too good a job. We just raced after that. It was hard. I ran into people. People ran into me. Some of them held onto it and some of them didn’t.
“Coming out of the back straightaway I moved over and apparently the No. 38 (Elliott Sadler) was coming up the middle there and he went down into the bottom lane and turned himself and I kind of spooked him there so I feel a little responsible for that (crash).
“It was a rowdy day. I feel real lucky to finish second in the race. I would have liked to win, but Michael knows most of my tricks. He’s seen them either behind him or in front of him one time or another over the last three or four years. Plus, I really didn’t have much behind me that was going to work with me. Tony (Stewart) didn’t come there until the last lap. Jeff Gordon and I are buddies, but we’re not drafting partners. So we don’t draft together too much. We always try to pass each other. We’re competitive. So I finished second. We have a lot to be proud of. We had a tough day. It would have been nice to win but DEI won anyway and that’s cool.”
WHAT’S YOUR IMPRESSION OF WHAT HAPPENED ON PIT ROAD WITH THE NO. 43 DRIVEN BY JEFF GREEN? “I don’t know what you could attribute it to when a car that has pitted pulls out in front of a few cars that are still coming down pit road. He pulled out all the way to the outside instead of pulling out to the middle where we normally pull out because you don’t know who is coming or what’s going on. He just came to the outside, and everybody that was there had to stop. With the new rules all the drivers are confused and screwed up and we’re coming down pit road like a bunch of idiots - like we’ve never done it before.
“So I’m kind of disappointed. I feel like the pit stall we picked was a big factor in that because it was way on the other end of pit road. If I’m starting in the back, I ought to have a pit stall earlier on pit road. I feel like some of the problems I had today were because of the pit stall I had. So that was our fault.
“The small fuel cells allow guys to come on pit road, get gas, and take off and not worry about tires because you haven’t run but 30 laps. So that’s why a lot of guys are just gassing and going and that causes a lot of problems on pit road. And the rule that we’ve all got to be in single file coming down pit road caused it. I was really upset the whole time I was in the car because of it. And I couldn’t figure out what would be the one thing to point the finger at. It was just frustrating. I don’t like the new rules.”
HOW DID THE CHANGES YOUR CREW MADE IN THE CAR - THE SEAT AND EXTRA PADDING - HELP YOU TODAY? “I did change all my headrests and I’ve got to get used to that. It’s definitely different. But I was fine.”
ON THE RULE CHANGES FOR TALLADEGA AND ON HIS INVOLVEMENT IN JIMMIE JOHNSON’S ACCIDENT “You’ve got the bigger blade so there’s a larger hole for the guy behind you in the draft and you get quicker, faster runs. I got a good hard run by Michael and hit him by the flag stand. Both of us were going straight.
“Typically when you do that - I probably did it maybe 45, 50, or 60 times today - you normally don’t have a problem. But it just caught Michael’s car and turned him sideways. And the No. 48 (Jimmie Johnson) was trying to draft off of the side of him. He was really close. They were about to hit tires. Michael just knocked the heck out of him and sent him on down the race track. It was kind of funny, but I’m glad he didn’t hit anything. It was comical because he was trying to draft on the side of Michael and he was asking for trouble in my opinion. He’s asking for trouble. That was kind of stupid to be running that close to him. If you got passed for the lead, you just get passed and get on in second and just try to pass him back. But I’m glad he didn’t hit anything. I would have been bothered if he had gotten taken out of the race. They had such a good car.”
WERE YOU SURPRISED TO RUN SO WELL ON THE OUTSIDE? “The middle came into play early in the race. The people just shut the middle down and stopped allowing cars to get into the middle. It was just frustrating. The bottom wasn’t good. If you weren’t leading, the bottom was no good. If you were in the middle in the top, you were just kind of in a battle the whole time - beating and carrying on turning people and getting run into. So it was whatever you want to do. It seemed like guys like Mark Martin were in the bottom lane and guys like myself were in the top lane. It just depends on what kind of racing you want to do.”
IF YOU HAD JUMPED OUT, JEFF GORDON WOULD HAVE POSSIBLY GONE WITH YOU. IS YOUR LOYALTY SO GREAT TO DEI THAT YOU WOULD GIVE UP A CHANCE TO WIN? “I didn’t give up anything. Believe me, I was looking for every opportunity to pass Michael. But I wasn’t going to make a move unless I was sure I would be able to get by him. We worked real hard to get to that point. It was either first or second. I knew I could get second. If I knew the push that I was getting would send me past him, then I would have made that move. But I really never got a push that I could even pull up beside him.
“The guys behind me were moving around quite a bit. I was hoping the No. 22 (Ward Burton) would stay where he was, but he kind of got passed there. I was not in a very good spot. I would have rather been leading I guess.”
ON THE RADIO, YOU WERE PRETTY ROUGH ON YOUR CREW TODAY. WILL THAT BE SMOOTHED OUT? “I’m always rough with them. I expect 100%. I feel like due to our sponsorship and our program and the prestige that they get lackadaisical. I don’t want them to relax. I want them to be on edge and 110% and wide-open all day long. Sometimes they don’t seem like they’re in the game and I’ve got to shout at them. And they can do the same to me. It’s a lot of fun and we’re getting really good results out of it.”
TONY STEWART POST-RACE PRESS CONFERENCE:
TALK TO US ABOUT YOUR RUN TODAY, ESPECIALLY WHAT WAS GOING THROUGH YOUR MIND THAT LAST PART OF THE RACE. “It was pretty tough for us, as a team, considering I didn’t get to practice the car yesterday. I was sick with a migraine and really was going through a lot of pain. I didn’t even get in the car. I want to thank my teammate, Bobby Labonte, and Kyle Petty, who drove it the car about six laps total. I just didn’t know what to expect today. I didn’t get any practice yesterday with the new spoiler and didn’t know how well the car would or would not suck up to the cars in front of us. For the most part, it was pretty uneventful for us. When we came in on the first stop, the water temperature was real hot. We pulled some tape off and it killed our car as far as the ability to draft up to cars in front of us. From that point on, we weren’t really that strong a car. We pretty much stayed at the back of the lead pack. We made a couple of good charges up to the front just to see if we could get up there. We could get part of the way there, but if we ever got stalled we were stuck and we’d fall all the way to the back of the pack again. The crew had a really good stop on our last pit stop, got us out first of the cars that pitted. We restarted ninth or something like that and got up to fourth or fifth, something like that and just stayed around the top 10. We got the red and we knew that we were going to have to take everything we could get. If you had a little bit of a run on a guy, you had to take it.”
WAS THERE ANY EFFECT FROM THE MIGRAINE TODAY? “It really wasn’t bad. When I woke up this morning, I opened the windows and everything was fine. Yesterday when I opened the windows I was like a vampire bat. It hurt to look at direct sunlight. Today, I was fine. The people at the infield care center came over here yesterday before the first session in the morning and gave me a shot to knock me out for what they said would be about 4 or 5 hours-it ended up being about 7 hours. It knocked me out and took about 90 percent of that headache away. The remainder of the day I stayed in the bus and just laid around and watched TV. By the time I went to bed it was all but gone and then this morning, when I woke up and got a shower, it was totally gone. During the race, none of it came back. I felt good in the car all day, I was very comfortable in the car and never had the headache come back or anything.”
WHAT THOUGHTS DID YOU HAVE ABOUT BEATING THE DEI CARS AFTER THE RED FLAG? “I told Zippy, I didn’t think we were strong enough when we pulled the tape off, it must have killed the cowl pressure or something. Whatever it did, it slowed the car down. It wouldn’t suck up like it did before. I knew we weren ‘t strong enough to lead the pack. The whole day, Dale and I had never got together and at the end of the race, when it all comes down to it, we always find a way. Sure enough, at the end.you know that the 15 and the 8, they’ve got their restrictor-plate program down. They are the top restrictor-plate team in NASCAR right now. You know the odds are against you when you’re behind them. Dale and I have run together religiously for 2 years now when it comes to plate races. He knows when he’s in front of me, if he pulls out I’m going with him and I know if he’s behind me and I pull out he’s going with me. It’s an advantage for me because we work so well together that he has the confidence to go ahead and pass cars and have security knowing he has a partner. That’s something that was hard today. You didn’t always have a partner when you pulled out. To get with him, I knew if we could stay together at the end, and it didn’t really work until the last lap, but that last lap was a big lap for me, getting back up to third. We tried to get him a win, but we couldn’t get him past the 15 car.”
HOW WILD A DAY WAS IT? “It’s always been crazy. That’s what restrictor-plate racing has been about. You throw us three-wide together, 11 or 12 rows deep for 500 miles and make us run that close to each other because of the rules package, what do you expect? That’s the result. We’re all smart enough to know what we have to do with our cars to pull up in the draft. When you’re beside a guy, you know what effects hurt you. You know that if you get a run and you can push the guy in front of you, you have to physically push the guy in front of you. There’s a bunch of things we do here that we don’t have to do anywhere else and shouldn’t have to do here anyway. It is what it is, this is what we signed up for, so this is what we do four times a year. We just hope we walk away from this place every time we come here.”
MICHAEL WALTRIP POST-RACE PRESS CONFERENCE: NOTE: Waltrip earned his fourth career victory today, leading six times for 16 laps. It is the ninth victory for Dale Earnhardt Inc. in the last 12 restrictor-plate races.
YOUR IMPRESSIONS OF THE DAY? “Today was so much fun to be a part of, because we qualified 18th and we were right in the middle of the pack. Our car, in the middle of the pack, just didn’t run like we needed it to. We dropped to the back a couple times because moves I made didn’t work out, and then we had a pit penalty that got us in the back, but every time I got to the back I learned so much as I shot back up toward the front about what I needed to do to pass guys and make moves. In doing so, when it came down to the end of the race when I needed to get from the back to the front, I knew exactly how to pull it off. It’s just a testament to Slugger. This is a brand-new car we built to race here.I think we built it for the Daytona 500 but we tested it at Daytona in the NASCAR tire test and I liked it so much they said we could bring it here. It’s just a testament to them for building me such a good race car and to Richie Gilmore and all the people that build our engines. It ’s just so cool to get in a car like this and try to figure out how to beat the best in the world when you start the race. Today it was a team effort. I think I did a decent job on the track and the crew did a super job with our strategy and so forth in the pits. I’m just grateful that we figured out how to win this race today.”
CREW CHIEF RICHARD “SLUGGER LABBE: COMMENT ON FUEL MILEAGE AND HOW THAT PLAYED OUT: “Fuel mileage is always big, and we knew that once we got to lap 150, we could make it to the end of the race. We topped off, with the NASCAR penalty that we had, on lap 147, and we stretched it. It worked out OK. I figured we wouldn’t make it. I figured we would run out. We had two-tenths of a gallon left at the pumps after the race. It was definitely close, for sure.”
CLARIFY WHAT HAPPENED ON THE PENALTY. “The rule is, if the gas man is putting gas in the car, the catch can has to be plugged into the car. What happened was, they filled it up with gas and the guy with the catch can had pulled out and as the car was pulling off, the gas man had plugged in to top it off and the catch-can man did not have his receptacle plugged in and that was the penalty.”
30 LAPS INTO THE RACE, SLUGGER WAS APOLOGIZING TO MICHAEL ABOUT THE GEARS IN THE CAR. DID YOU THINK THE RACE WAS OVER AT THAT POINT? “No, but I learned a lot from that point to the end of the race. That changed the way I drove the car and the way I raced the car. The drivers are a little bit nervous or on edge when you race at Talladega. When things don’t go right, you get all mad. You don’t have anyone.your wife isn’t beside you to yell at, you’re all by yourself, and you don’t have anybody to talk to. You come up with crazy ideas and things that you say that you don’t mean. I was venting about the fact I couldn’t get my car to run right. Through that, and the way the race unfolded, I figured out how to make it run better than it probably would have had we had the other gear in the car. I learned a lot. I’m too stupid to quit. There’s no way I’m going to quit, ever, and they know that. So we just keep on trying and trying to figure out what it’s going to take to be successful.”
THE POST-RACE CELEBRATION, COMING THROUGH THE ROOF HATCH, WAS THAT PREMEDITATED? “Yeah! I told them when we tested it at Daytona, ‘I hope I can win so I can get out my roof hatch and wave at everybody.’ Whoever would have thought? I was the only guy to have one today. I thought that was cool. I’m a redneck, you know, get out the sunroof every now and then.”
TALK ABOUT THE MOVE YOU MADE IN TURN 4 QUITE OFTEN, SWEEPING OUT WIDE AND CHANGING LANES. “That was the result of a lot of horsepower that we have at DEI, with Richie Gilmore and his guys, and the gear choice that we made. If I kept the car wound up I could really make some progress. What was difficult about it was, when I’d make one of those runs, I could pass three or four cars, but I needed to get back in line and regroup and go at it again. Sometimes you’d make that big move and pass three or four cars, but there would be no way to get back in line. So I’d lose those spots. As a whole, our team just gave me a car that was really fast and that allowed me to make some crazy moves and get it to the front. I really feel like this is a great win for our team, because it came on a day when we were all working so hard to get everything we could out of our race car, and then to have a restart with three or four to go and hold off Dale Jr. and Jeff Gordon and come home victorious, I know it was a real pleasure for Slugger and the boys on the team to sit there and watch. As a driver, you do all that work and when you take the checkered flag, it’s almost anti-climactic. You’re so into what you’re doing that when you go under the checkered, everybody else is celebrating and you’re like, ‘man, I’m glad that’s over.’ When it was over, I had a great feeling inside because as a team, we dug down inside and figured out how to win.”
YOU AND DALE ARE TEAMMATES. HOW NERVOUS WERE YOU ON THE LAST LAP WITH HIM ON YOUR BUMPER? “You ought to see my bumper. He tore it off. Dale Jr. is the perfect teammate. I think we have a great relationship. I do know that he’s not going to do anything to jeopardize us both, but I also know he’s going to beat me if he can. Therefore, in my mind, I know what I got. I don’t have any doubt about the fact that he’s back there to win the race and that he’s not going to screw us both in order for him to win the race or me and him both not to win it. That’s enough information. That’s all I need. When we stack it up late in the going, it’s so cool that both of us wind up there. We have great cars, but golly, to continue to get them both to the front at the right part of the day is great.”
HOW WOULD YOU EXPLAIN DEI’S DOMINANCE AT RESTRICTOR-PLATE TRACKS? “The car is a big piece of it, and Dale Jr. and I do our jobs.”
SLUGGER LABBE: “You look back to last July at Daytona. We weren’t the dominant cars there, and we got beat on fuel mileage, so we decided to go ahead and build a new car to come here with the best car and best fuel mileage we could have. As it ended up, fuel mileage won the race today. We take plate racing very seriously. We have five speedway cars, and that’s an awful lot, but when you take something as serious as the whole company does, it’s a good team effort for sure. We’re so competitive, myself and Tony [Eury] Jr., that we’re always working real hard on our speedway stuff.”
WALTRIP: “Remember this: Dale Earnhardt was the best at Daytona and Talladega, and he knew that to be the best, you had to have the best cars. When he started DEI, he made sure that everyone understood that he would have the best restrictor-plate cars. He was going to have cars that were faster than everyone else’s, to give the drivers a chance to win. That was his signature at DEI. We’re going to do whatever it takes to have the best program. He left his fingerprints all over DEI when he left us, and we just understand that it is our job to continue to execute and perform and build the type of equipment that he would be proud of. Dale is gone, but he is such a presence at our shop, and a presence when it comes to plate racing.”
WHAT WERE YOU THINKING ABOUT AS FAR AS THE TURN 4 SITUATION GOES? “I firmly believe that if I just stayed on the bottom of the track and tried to ride to the checkered flag, Gordon would pass me. He got a run on the outside, and he was coming up strong. Dale Jr. was on the inside and I was on the inside, and as I exited Turn 4, I felt like I had to drive up to the top of the track and stop Gordon’s momentum, then cut back to the bottom to keep Junior behind me. In doing that, the simplest thing to do would have been to just hold on the bottom and hope Gordon couldn’t get there. But in order to win, I felt like I had to go up there and block him off, and the risk of that move was that when I came back to the bottom, Dale Jr. would already be in the hole that I left open. Fortunately, the way I had it figured out worked and we were able to win. It’s important that you put your car in position to block off the other guys during a plate race. It not only blocks them, it shoots you out and gives you momentum too. I didn’t think I could sit still and hope I could beat Jeff back, because he had a good run on the outside. The guy on the outside, as you come to the start/finish line here at this unique speedway, it seems like he has a little advantage because it seems like he swings a little bit ahead right at the line.”
TALK A LITTLE ABOUT THE BUMP WITH JIMMIE JOHNSON? “After I see it on TV, I could analyze it for you, but I don’t have any idea what the hell happened. We were swerving at each other a little bit. If I had to just recollect as to what I think happened, I think Dale Jr. and he might have got together, and then he hit me, or else Dale Jr. hit me. Somebody hit me and then Jimmie hit me. I don’t think I ever changed direction, I think I was going straight when it all happened. I know we kind of came together leaving the tri-oval a little, and then I got my car straight and then for some reason we came back together. Hell, I don’t even remember how we got the lead. I don’t remember passing Mark [Martin] and the 97 [Kurt Busch]. They were ahead of me, and then I was leading. It’s just very tense and it all happens very fast, and you’re in a zone, and you’re just really into what you’re doing.”
JUNIOR SAID THAT YOU KNEW ALL HIS TRICKS. ANYTHING TO THAT? “I felt pretty confident about my situation. The main thing, as a driver, I was thinking sitting over on the backstretch is, to win this race, it’s not going to take an action from me, it’s going to take a reaction, just to react to what they were doing. I didn’t really have a plan, because my whole plan hinged on what Junior and Gordon or those guys behind us did. I know everything there is to know about this gig, I believe, so I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t intimidated, I wasn’t worried. I was just thinking, whatever they do, I’ll deal with it then.”
HOW DO YOU AS A DRIVER HAVE AN ACCIDENT LIKE ELLIOTT SADLER DID AND THEN CONTINUE TO DO WHAT YOU DO? “Fortunately, I didn’t see Elliott’s accident and I didn’t know he turned over. You just know that obviously we are risk-takers as a group and we feel like we do everything we can to be safe inside our cars before the race ever starts. I tell everyone all the time that one of the things that drives me craziest in this world is if someone says, ‘it’s going to rain next Thursday.’ Well, OK, great, if it does, we’ll get our umbrella out. I don’t worry about stuff I can’t do anything about. When I start at race here at Daytona or Talladega, I figure that the chances are better than 50-50 or maybe even 75-25 that I ain’t gonna wreck. I’m going to be able to miss all the wrecks and finish, so I’m not going to worry about a 25-percent chance of rain or a 25-percent chance of wreckin’. I just don’t live my life that way. You just work and put so much trust in Slugger and your team and then you trust that whatever God’s will is, that’s how it’ll turn out.”
WITH ALL OF YOUR VICTORIES COMING AT RESTRICTOR-PLATE TRACKS, IS THERE A THOUGHT THAT YOU’D LIKE TO WIN ON ANOTHER TRACK? “I want to win everywhere. If I get hung up on Daytona and Talladega for the next four or five years, you’re not going to see me be too worried about it. I think Slugger knows that I can win anywhere, and the drivers in the garage area know that I can win anywhere and I know that I can win anywhere. It’s people’s job to try and say, ‘hey, look, he hasn’t won anywhere but a plate race, he must not know how to do that other stuff.’ I went 0-for-462 and didn’t win anywhere, and I got told for a long time I didn’t know how to do anything right. So now, at least I can do restrictor-plates right. I’ve got that going for me.”
SLUGGER LABBE: “Michael had the race in New Hampshire pretty much won, and we let him down as a team in the pits by leaving the gas can in there. Michael can drive; he had that race almost won. We just didn’t finish our job to seal the deal. We just have to keep working with him and give him good stuff.”
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