Phoenix-Subway Fresh 500 Notes & Quotes
Written by John Davison · April 24, 2005
Here, courtesy various teams and manufacturers, are collected notes and quotes from Saturday evening’s Subway Fresh 500. The race, for 500 kilometers or 312 miles, was delayed at the start by rain at Phoenix International Raceway. Kurt Busch won the race, leading 219 of the 312 laps. Michael Waltrip placed second.
Robby Gordon #7 Harrah’s Chevrolet YOU’RE A ROAD RACER, SO CAN’T WE JUST PUT WETS ON AND HEAD OUT THERE? You know, a lot of our road race tracks have runoff. Where if you happen to get loose, there’s some runoff room. Street circuits are like this. We don’t have straightaways like this on street circuits, though. These are long straights, heading down into a 90-degree turn.
WHEN THE TRACK DRIES, WILL YOUR STRATEGY CHANGE AT ALL KNOWING WATER HAD BEEN ON THE TRACK? Obviously pit lane is going to be wet and we’re all going to know that. We’ve learned a lot over the past few years about what it takes when you have a wet pit lane. It shouldn’t be a big deal, really. NASCAR is never going to send us out on a track that’s wet. I don’t know what the history is here, but hopefully it doesn’t have a lot of what we call seepers. Seepers are down under and the water seems up from the bottom. But I don’t think we have that much rain here-it seems to be just surface rain.
Bobby Labonte #18 Interstate Batteries Chevrolet HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE WEATHER AND HOT IT MIGHT AFFECT THE RACE? It doesn’t matter, as long as we get done tonight. If it’s moist, we’re not going to be racing. If it’s dry, we’re going to be okay. I don’t know about this one here (Phoenix). I’ve only been here once when it’s rained. You know, if the track gets dry, I think everything will be okay.
Jeff Burton #31 Cingular Wireless Chevrolet 3rd position / started 20th Well, we had a good car. We kind of, based on Friday’s practice, knew that we were going to be good in the dark. We kind of had to suffer through the daylight. We kept ourselves in position really well. And once the track did cool down and nighttime came, the car got a whole lot better like we thought it would. It just wasn’t quite good enough to be up there in the sun. So, we restarted 12th or 13th and had to come back up to third, which didn’t give us much of a chance to win. I’m really proud of my guys. Last week and this week were really when we’ve gotten what we deserved. That’s our fault and nobody else’s, but I’m really proud of everybody keeping their heads up and not giving up and coming here and focusing. Like I said, last week and this week, we got what we deserved. And those are the first two weeks we did that.
HOW BAD WERE THE CONDITIONS ON THE RACE TRACK? Oh, you know, I didn’t feel any wind. We didn’t have any problems with the wind. We struggled a little bit with our handling. We were a little bit too loose at the end, but we were fast. We drove up and got to third but we were just a little bit too loose. When I got out of the car I realized it was windy. I didn’t realize it until then.
SETTING SUN A CONSIDERATION As far as visibility? No issue whatsoever. All the talk about the sun setting and all the problems, there was absolutely zero problems. I never had the sun in my eyes and never felt like my visibility was jeopardized at all. Actually, the sun is further-maybe because it is this time of year-the sun is further this way than it is when we come in the fall. In the fall it seems like it sets a little bit closer to turn 1 and over here it seemed like it set near the straightaway and that was a help. Different times of year. But it really wasn’t an issue at all.
DID YOU THINK THAT IF A CAUTION CAME IN THE LAST LAPS, YOU’D BE ABLE TO TAKE THE LEAD? It could have been interesting. Those top three cars I think were pretty much equal. We just had too far to make up. I knew I wasn’t going to catch. I got far enough back ahead of the #8 car where I knew he couldn’t make a run back on me. I just laid down a little bit because I knew I wasn’t going to catch him. Because to run on the edge, for those last two laps with nothing to gain-actually the last 15 laps-it wouldn’t have done me any good. I could see I wasn’t catching him. I could see I was running the same speed but I wasn’t catching him. So I just kind of laid down and finished the race. But had the caution come out, I don’t know what we would have done as far as pitting. Who the hell knows. I think we would have had to pit. It would have been interesting.
DID YOU SEE WALTRIP HITTING THE WALL? Michael does that a lot. He runs that high line. He’s really really good about that. If it’s out there, he can find it. From what I saw, he was the highest on the race track for sure and that’s what you had to do. I just can’t tell you how competitive the racing is today. If you’re going to run fast and in the front, you’ve got to run every lap on the edge. Unless you’re just like the #16 was last week. He didn’t have to run his car on the edge last week because it was just so much faster. I just can’t tell you how competitive. It’s unbelievable. It probably doesn’t look any more competitive than it was six years ago, but it is unbelievably competitive. It’s amazing how fast you have to run to run in the top 5.
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE SMALLER SPOILER? You know, if we would have shown up here and we would have just come here and raced, and told me we had a shorter spoiler on it, I wouldn’t have known it. It’s gotten to the point now where we’ve run it enough, we’ve tested it enough where we don’t think about the spoiler anymore. It’s a conversation for the media and it’s something to talk about but we don’t, I don’t think about it. I don’t go to any race track thinking that, “Well, we’ve got less spoiler than we did last year.” We’re onto new setups or whatever, based on the short spoiler and the new tires. We’re not thinking it’s different. I’m serious. I wouldn’t have known a thing about it. We’re only a couple of tenths off qualifying than we were last year. I just don’t think it had much impact on today’s race at all.
HOW PHYSICALLY DEMANDING WAS THE RACE TONIGHT? It wasn’t bad. The temperature came way down. It wasn’t a really physically demanding race. It’s pretty normal. It is extremely competitive and you’ve got to be on the wheel every lap. It ain’t anymore physically demanding than it’s ever been.
Michael Waltrip #15 NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet - 2nd position - started 28th - TELL US ABOUT HOW YOUR CAR WAS HANDLING I had a car that was handling the total opposite. I would go into turn 1 and 2 and it would push. I’d go into turn 3 and 4 and it felt like I was over at. It would back into the turn severely and I couldn’t figure out how to help that problem. I just wanted to win really bad. I felt that when Kurt caught me from so far back, I knew that he was going to catch me like that, I knew that there wasn’t any reason for me to work on messing my car up trying to hold him off, so I let him go. When he go out there, I could match his lap times and was eating into this lead, so I was patient until I couldn’t hardly be patient anymore, until I had to push the envelope. And when I did, it didn’t quite stick good enough. I’d rather mess up trying than wonder. I did everything I could do, that’s all I can ask of myself.
JUNIOR SAID THAT YOU SHOULD WIN EVERY RESTRICTOR PLATE RACE. DO YOU SHARE THOSE FEELINGS? Yeah, I think that. I hope it works out that way. We feel that we’re good enough to win anywhere. And, you know, this track is a whole lot like Loudon and Richmond and those are good track for me so we look forward to those. You know, Texas is a whole lot like a whole lot of other tracks and we were good there. So, I don’t have any doubt in the fact that we can win. If you want to know the funniest thing that ever happened, back in October, November, December, whenever they decided they were going to switch teams, Richie said that Tony Jr. said, ‘Hell, we can win with anybody! We’ll take Michael!” and I said, “If you can win with anybody, I’m you’re guy.” And they’re right. They are that talented and smart. DEI put two groups of people, two cars and two teams that just believe in their drivers. And when you have that, you almost feel like you can’t be beat. You have a lot of confidence and you know everybody has faith in you. And not looking over your should we and wondering what they’re saying about you. Last fall, I don’t know what I was going to be happy about if I ran into 2005 like I was doing in 2004. Those boys that worked on my car, I just don’t think they thought I was their guy. So, that’s hard and you can’t be successful like that. Jimmy Fennig would setup the car backwards if that’s what he felt Kurt wanted, and that’s the kind of relationship you need to have between team and drive.
CAN YOU CONFIRM IF YOU HIT THE WALL, AND DID IT IMPACT THE HANDLING OF THE CAR? Yes, I hit it several times and I don’t know if it affected it or not. Because I continued to catch him and hit it again. It wasn’t pretty.
IT SEEMS IT TOOK KURT A LONG TIME TO GET AROUND MIKE WALLACE. WAS THAT AN OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU? No. Mike Wallace was two down. If he was one down right there, he’s in a position to get a free pass. So he was in a position to run hard against Kurt. I caught him first and couldn’t pass him, then Kurt passed me and couldn’t pass him. Mike was a gentleman, though. When Kurt got by him, he rolled out of my way and I was back after Kurt. Mike was alright and he races hard. I like Mike Wallace.
ARE YOU THRILLED ABOUT GOING TO TALLADEGA? Yeah, I am. I thought I was going to win the Daytona 500. I mean, I can’t explain to you how good my car was. I decided that I didn’t see any of Dale Jr. that race and I was going to glue myself to Tony Stewart and we just became partners and we ran 1-2 the whole race. Our car was perfect and I was going to have fun at the end. So, we’ll go to Talladega and see what happens. Restrictor plate races-it’s harder to win those than people think. I think people have said, “Well, Michael won it, so anybody must be able to/” They’re really hard to win, so you can’t really predict what will happen there.
HOW DOES THIS FINISH IMPROVE YOUR CONFIDENCE? We had a great race last week. We got crashed at Martinsville and thought we had a great car there. My confidence is good. We had a great day here on Thursday. My boys told me when practice was up, we could win that race. They believed it and they’d done it two years in a row. I was like, “That’s so cool, I’ll roll with you all on that one.” And then Friday I qualified the Busch car 30th and the Cup car 28th and felt like I was unworthy of riding in that car. And that’s just race car drivers. If you’re not that critical of yourself and your team, I don’t feel like I’m being fair to the team. I was bitterly disappointed on Friday. It was cool to rally and go to the front.
HOW WAS YOUR CAR EARLIER? It was great. It was fast at the start. It makes it good. I told them what it was doing on the first stop, they made an adjustment and that made the front end stick better but it made the back end stuck worse. We made an adjustment on that, and pretty much just a little loose all the way through. Maybe at the end it was a little bit tight here and that probably hurt me as much as it did down there.
IS THIS THE SAME CAR THAT JUNIOR WON IN BOTH RACES HERE LAST YEAR? I can’t confirm that, but I strongly believe it. When you say the same car, it is the same chassis, but it’s got a new body on it. Because with the new spoiler deal they changed all the bodies. It definitely had four different springs in it. I don’t know about the shocks. It had a different sway bar in it. It had a different gear in it. I can’t really tell you anything else.
COMMENT ON THE SWITCHING OF THE TEAMS Pete, Greg, Shawn and the boys that work on the #8 car are smart, talented individuals. I knew that when you put Dale Jr. with them, they would have success. And, I saw what Tony Jr. and those guys did with Dale Jr. If you can picture this, when we would run last year with the #15 and the race would be over and we’d finish 16th or 17th, they’d look at me like, “What’s wrong with you?” and I’d look at them like, “What the hell makes you sure y’all isn’t messed up?” And nobody knows the answer. But when I got in my car this year, I looked at my crew and I said, “I’m yours. Take me. Mold me. Make me one of you.” I wanted those guys to pour their knowledge on me and let me suck it up and be one of them. And I know Pete and those boys looked at Dale Jr. and said, “Take us to the promised land. We can do it, and you can lead us there.” So, it was two different situations with the same basic scenario. I believe what will lead to the same results.
WAS CRITICISM OF YOUR TEAM UNFAIR?
You know, I don’t know. Y’all have to write whatever you have to write. Your opinions are yours and you write them down on a piece of paper and share it with thousands of people. I’ve been criticized enough where y’all can’t hurt me. You can’t write anything that’s going to make my day any worse. And you can’t all of a sudden tell me I’m smart and great and make me feel any better. Because I didn’t believe you when you said I sucked and I’m not going to believe you when you say I’m great! I’m just going to keep on being me.
Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
#8 Budweiser Chevrolet
4th position / started 15th
Yeah, I was real, real happy. I was trying to concentrate to myself and watch Mike at the same time to see if he was going to get the win. But, it was a good day for DEI and definitely a good finish for this company and team. We worked really hard to get what we got tonight. I’m just really proud of everyone wearing a DEI uniform tonight.
HOW WAS IT DIFFERENT BEING UNDER THE LIGHTS?
A whole lot of fun. We ought to run more of them at night. Maybe we ought to run the whole series at night! But, it was fun. Plus we got tomorrow off and that should be fun. It was a good finish and a good time.
I got to running on it there in the first 50 laps and the car wasn’t working and I just stepped back and slowed down a little bit. Man, that’s when it started working and that’s when I started passing people.
THIS IS REALLY GOOD FOR DEI
It’s working, you know. I just can’t believe how hard of work it is! Things have become a lot easier, but man, we’re all working really, really hard. There ain’t nobody in that shop that ain’t putting forth the hardest effort. It’s amazing. Sometimes, you know, when you don’t get those finishes like we got tonight, it’s real disappointing. It just feels good to get a good finish.
MAYBE IT WILL BE EASIER IF YOU CONTINUE TO DO WELL
Yeah, I mean, regardless of this year or whatever, you get what you give. You party hard, you play hard and that’s what we do. We put a lot into it and we enjoy the good stuff and hate the bad stuff and that’s part of it.
Brian Vickers #25 GMAC/ditech.com Chevrolet - 5th position / started 5th - TELL US ABOUT THE RACE It was a great day for us. We had a chance there at the end. This means a lot to finally get our first top 5 for this GMAC racing team. We ran out of tires there at the end.
We’ve had good cars, we just haven’t had the finishes. Lance and the guys have put good cars on the track and had good pit stops. We just had luck on our side today
HOW DID IT FEEL TO LEAD? It was great to get out there. We haven’t lead this year, so it was great to get out there and lead. And not only did we lead a lap, because a teammate helped us get there, but we stayed out front for a long time through some cautions and pit stops. I’m proud of the GMAC Chevy racing team. They did a great job and we got a good finish.
Bobby Labonte #18 Interstate Batteries Chevrolet - 6th position / started 4th - HOW WAS YOUR RACE? It was good. The guys did a good job. We were a little too tight in the center all night. We got to sixth-place, so it was a good run for us. We can go home with a smile tonight. The guys did a good job tonight, and they’ve done a great job all year. We just haven’t been able to smile at the end of a race.” (About the racing surface, with the rain): “The wind wasn’t bad. The rain was — the track’s probably going to be different anyway. It was day-to-night. The racetrack always has a couple grooves here. We stuck on the bottom, we were just a little too tight in the center. I’m glad we got a top 10, it was a good shot in the arm.
Joe Nemechek #01 U.S. Army Chevrolet - 10th position / started 13th (Note: first top 10 finish at Phoenix) Overall it wasn’t a bad performance, but it could have been much better. When we were running second in clean air the Army car was awesome. But a glitch on our last pit stop really hurt our chances for a great finish. We did battle back to the top 10 even though it was a struggle to pass here. I drove the car hard and ate up the tires pretty good at the end. Being on the right side of the pit cycles tonight was critical and I thought Ryan (crew chief Ryan Pemberton) made some great calls. We’re not where we want to be but we’re gaining with two top 10s in the last three races.
Jimmie Johnson #48 Lowe’s Chevrolet 15th position / started 12th - TELL US ABOUT YOUR RACE It was just a frustrating night. We just didn’t have a good driving car. The thing was bouncing all over the damn place. It was tough to drive. It’s still top 15, so to have a bad day and end up in the top 15, all in all it’s good. But we’ve got to get some things turned around. We’re not doing what we need to be doing right now.
WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN YOU AND TONY STEWART? That’s a good question. The last three or four weeks I’ve raced with him, when I get to him he’s mad that I’m going by and he starts flipping me off and chopping me and running me all over the place. He started doing the same thing again (tonight), I haven’t been around him all race. Shoots me the bird running down the backstretch and runs me all over the place and then goes in the turn and stands on the brakes to mess with me. I ran out of room and got into the back of him. I don’t know why he gets so irate whenever I’m around him. I end up being the whipping post every time I get to him, it seems like.
Tony Stewart #20 The Home Depot Chevrolet - 33rd position / started 6th WHAT HAPPENED ON PIT ROAD TO THE FRONT OF YOUR GRILLE? I don’t know how it (the front grill) got pushed back. (Greg) Biffle and I pulled out and had already got our stops done, but I think there were some cars that were still coming in and one of them stopped in front of Greg and he had to check up and then we ran into the back of him. I didn’t know the guy was stopping. I don’t know what it did to the grill, but it made the water temperature build up. It’s like I told the motor guys, this is a pretty good payback from last week - to sit there and have a motor that was running 260 degrees with an oil temp at 275 and run lap after lap while still putting out pretty good power. I thought the motor shop did a pretty good job.
DID THE #48 GET INTO YOU? Yeah. The only way you spin out like that is when a guy jacks you up like that going into (turn) three. I don’t know what he was doing. He was running guys up and down the race track. He about ran Junior into the wall and I about ran into Junior because of that and then he finally put me backwards. So I don’t know what was wrong with him tonight.
Carl Long #00 Buyer’s Choice Auto Warranty Chevrolet - 43rd position / started 41st Note: Long pulled into the garage area on lap 52 after reporting problems with his engine WHAT HAPPENED? We had a valve spring break on us in practice, and we changed it. And I think that’s what happened again, I’m not sure. It just started skipping on seven cylinders. The setup I had in it was a little bit too aggressive for race conditions. So, we came in and made an adjustment. We were running behind Gordon and thought we could maintain it and then the motor broke. Like I said, it felt like a valve spring or something. It just started on seven cylinders. I was right in front of Bobby Labonte so I know he had to do a fair amount of driving to keep from getting into the back of me. —–
RUSTY WALLACE (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger) “The 48 got into the 20 car and spun him going into turn three, and when he spun him all heck broke loose. They were getting wild going down into three. They were getting mad at each other. The 48 punted the 20. The 20 went around, and that was it. I was running real good. We started off bad and got a lot better. Then we stayed out and we never should have done that. That messed us up. We knocked a big hole in the right front of the car on the restart. Something fell off somebody’s car and blew a hole through the right front corner. That made the car pushed and that messed up my day. The last thing with Stewart and the 48 is what got me. We’re trying to get a radiator in so we can get back out and pick up as many points as possible. I’m sure we were headed for another top 10, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.”
JEREMY MAYFIELD (No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger) “We got a lap down and finally got it back. We had a pretty good run going with Ryan Newman there at the end. I think we had a top 10 car, but we ended up 13th so that’s not exactly what we wanted or needed. The guys are working hard and everybody is pulling in the same direction. We’ll go back to work and get ready for Talladega next week.”
KASEY KAHNE (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger) “That’s not what we wanted. It pushed in the front and slid in the back. We just never got it right. We worked hard and got back on the lead lap. We had some good pit stops, but we just didn’t get the job done tonight.”
JEFF GREEN (No. 43 Cheerios/Betty Crocker Dodge Charger) “It was OK. We got on both sides of the fence and never could get it right. We’d push on one run and were so loose the next run I couldn’t drive it. We couldn’t get track position because of it. We were better than last week. We’ll get back where we need to be. We’re getting better. The guys are working hard at Petty Enterprises. The Evernham motors are helping us every weekend. We’ll get that Dodge Charger handling like we want it to one of these days and we’ll be competitive.”
CASEY MEARS (No. 41 Target Dodge Charger) “We broke a U joint. Usually when things break on a restart like that people think you missed a shift. Then after that we cut a right front tire down and hit the fence behind the 37. Before that we were really, really slow. Nothing went right. We brought something back we didn’t have here last year, but we didn’t know it was going to be that far off. We’ve got to go back to the drawing board.”
RYAN NEWMAN (No. 12 ALLTEL Dodge Charger) “We’ve been doing that a lot this year (racing hard for a top 15 finish), and I’m getting pretty tired of it. We had a good car for points in the race and ran in the top five, but we could have done better. We brought the car home in one piece and got some points. We lost the handling for sure, so we’ve got some work to do.”
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