NASCAR - Newman Takes Martinsville Pole

Todd Bodine, driver of the No. 26 Discover Card Taurus, was put on probation by NASCAR for the rest of the season after being involved in a multi-car accident last weekend at Lowe's Motor Speedway. Bodine reacted to the decision before Friday's NASCAR Winston Cup practice session.

TODD BODINE --26-- Discover Card Taurus -- AFTER THE ACCIDENT LAST WEEK, DID YOU EXPECT IT TO GET TO THIS POINT WHERE YOU'RE NOW ON PROBATION? "No, not at all. You've got to have a punishment that fits the crime. If this was standard punishment for this crime, then I would understand it a little better. There isn't a driver on the track that hasn't made a mistake, and then there are some that have made big ones like I did. If they had the same punishment, so be it. Everybody has an opinion. NASCAR has its opinion and they felt this was what was necessary. Do we agree with it? No. Do some people agree with it? Probably. Regardless, we've got to abide by what they tell us to do." WHEN YOU GOT OUT OF THE CAR YOU REALIZED THAT YOU WERE GOING TO BE BLAMED. YOU FELT IT WAS A RACING ACCIDENT AT THE TIME. AFTER HAVING SOME TIME TO THINK AND VIEW THE TAPE, HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND AT ALL? "A little bit in that I don't feel like I did wrong, I feel like I made a mistake in judgement. It wasn't a thing where I said, 'Hey, I'm gonna go three-wide and pass both of these guys because they're messing around.' I was gonna run into Ward or I was gonna go below him. I chose to go below him and that wasn't the mistake. The mistake was I gave him too much room and got in the grass. I've only watched the tape once and it made me sick to my stomach to watch it because I feel that bad about it. There was plenty of room between Ward and myself and that's what I was trying to do. I tried to give them plenty of room so I wouldn't get into them. I was trying to do the right thing, but it ended up I was too far over and into the grass. It wasn't an intentional thing. That's where I think people are going to make the judgement and say things like, 'He was driving over his head,' or 'He was being too aggressive,' and it wasn't that at all. You go back to the run before that when we were fifth on the restart. We started backing up and I was pulling over letting people go. I was trying to do the right thing and trying to do the right thing in this situation turned out to be the wrong thing." DO YOU FEEL AS THOUGH YOU'RE GETTING THE KIND OF REPUTATION WHERE YOU'RE ALWAYS GOING TO GET BLAMED FOR AN ACCIDENT? "A little bit. This year, in particular, I've been involved in some incidents. There have been three in Winston Cup and four or five in Busch, but there have been only two times where I've made the mistake and caused the wreck. I think in some incidents when a driver gets in an accident and then goes on TV and runs their mouth, that has a ripple effect. People remember that for a long time. So, the next time Todd Bodine is involved in an accident it's like, 'He's always in something,' because they remember what was said before. It's just a snowball and ripple-effect that keeps going." HOW DO YOU CHANGE THAT? "Just by hard work and trying to stay out of trouble and doing the right things. Honestly, I've been trying to do that but it seems the harder I try, the worse it gets. It's like I said about the run before that accident. I was getting out of everybody's way. I was slower than them and I wasn't holding anybody up. I was out there just trying to drive sensibly and do the right things. Then in one split second in time I made a mistake." YOU COME TO A PLACE LIKE MARTINSVILLE NOW WHERE THERE'S A LOT OF BUMPING AND BANGING. MENTALLY, HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THIS PROBATION? "I've got to put it all out of my head and do what I normally do and what I've been trying to do and that's race clean and courteous. I've tried to do the right things and that's what I've got to go out and continue to do. The only way to get respect back is by earning it and I feel like I've got to earn it."

OLD DOMINION 500 QUALIFYING QUOTES

KURT BUSCH --97-- Rubbermaid Taurus (Qualified 36th) -- "We didn't slip a tire on the qualifying run, so I thought it would be a lot better. The track is in good shape. The weather is nice today. Hopefully, we won't have to use a provisional. That'll be the only good sign." DID GOING OUT FIRST HURT? "No, not really. I mean, at this place you can go out first or last, or you could go out on seven cylinders and just about run the same laps time. This place is very difficult to get a hold of and I just haven't quite found the knack for qualifying yet."

MARK MARTIN --6-- Viagra Taurus (Qualified 20th) -- "I think that'll be decent. We were 16th in practice and it looks to me like, hopefully, we ought to be able to be that good in qualifying. The car really worked good and I let the car do its job. Now that it's over with and the lap was so slick, I wish I would have tried harder. But the car was working and it was hooked up OK. That was better than practice. I would have liked to run a .59, but that will get us a top half of the field starting spot."

RUSTY WALLACE --2-- Miller Lite Taurus (Qualified 5th) -- "I'm pretty satisfied. I ran a .59 in practice and that was a .51. I thought that was pretty steamy, that's pretty good. We'll see how it holds up right now, but that's a good run for us." HOW IS THE TRACK? "I think that the track is controversial at the moment. It was real bumpy and real rough and now it's smooth but has no grip because it's so porous as far as the grind job. I really think it's better than it was honestly."

RICKY RUDD --28-- Havoline Taurus (Qualified 18th) -- "We're a little disappointed. We just got extremely loose under acceleration coming off the corner. It turned good. The hard part at Martinsville in qualifying is getting the car to turn and it turned really good, but when I jumped back in the gas it was really loose. I'm not really sure what the deal was to be honest with you. It's a different track. There's no grip. It's Martinsville with no grip. You've got to work on forward bite and trying to get off the corners and not spin the tires like we just did."

TODD BODINE --26-- Discover Card Taurus (Qualified 32nd) -- "That's terrible. We fought a forward bite problem all day as everybody has. The guys that have it figured out are gonna go fast. That's Martinsville. That's what you've got to do is get off these corners and get down the straightaways and we didn't do it." HOW DIFFERENT IS THIS TRACK? "From the way it used to be to the way it is now it's just terrible. There's just no grip. The times show it. They're almost a second off of what we had last time for the pole, so they definitely didn't do us any favors by what they did."

DAVE BLANEY --77-- Jasper Engines Taurus (Qualified 30th) -- YOUR SECOND LAP WAS BETTER THAN THE FIRST. "Yeah, but the bad part was I got sideways off of four and that killed my speed to start the second lap. But the car was a lot better. We struggled a little bit in practice, but Ryan and the guys re-grouped a little bit and got it going back the right way and got me driving a little better. I would have liked to have gotten another half-tenth or three-quarters-of-a-tenth out of it, but that will be mid pack I guess." HARD TO FIND GRIP? "Yeah, it's hard to find grip off the corners. I've been struggling bigtime all day trying to get off the corner at all. I feel like I'm really good through the center, maybe too good, and I just can't get off the corner. I don't know. We're still hunting around here. Maybe we'll find it."

MATT KENSETH --17-- DEWALT Power Tools Taurus (Qualified 17th) -- "I thought I could have done a lot better than that. The guys did a good job preparing our DEWALT car for Martinsville. We went out and scuffed a set of tires that seemed to be a lot tighter than the rest. I was hoping we'd be OK qualifying, but it was just a little too tight and when you have to wait on the car to turn in the middle of the corner here it just costs you a lot of time."

DALE JARRETT --88-- UPS Taurus (Qualified 15th) -- "I was trying not to get too out of hand and abuse the tires one the first lap because I had been watching some other guys and they seemed to pick up on the second lap. We ran faster than what we practiced by a little over a tenth, so that's always good." HOW IS THE TRACK? "You have no grip up off the corner. The entrance into the corner and down to the center is really good, you just have to really work the throttle up out of the corner. That should get better. I'm sure as the weekend goes on that's gonna probably get better, but it's a real challenge right now."

JEFF BURTON --99-- Citgo Taurus (Qualified 35th) -- "On our first set of tires the rear wheels wouldn't hook up at all. Then we put on set two and it pushed really bad. So we had two different set of tires with two totally different characteristics for whatever reason. We didn't really know what to do and, sure enough, we were too tight on our qualifying run. It's been a struggle all day. We unloaded and weren't good at all and we're still not very good. I don't know. The track is a lot different than it normally is and we just never caught up to it."

BRETT BODINE --11-- Hooters Taurus (Qualified 33rd) -- "We should have been better than that. I messed up. I've got to carry the blame there because I just messed up. I touched the curb and that upset our lap and that's the lap that needed to be the best one. We probably should have been in the mid-sixties, but, hopefully, that will get us in without using a spot. That's really critical to us right now."

RICKY CRAVEN --32-- Tide Taurus (Qualified 14th) -- "It was about what we expected. I'm really looking forward to the race on Sunday. It was one of my favorite race tracks before we won last fall and now it's obviously more of a favorite. It's back to the good old days of racing where you can lean on one another and mix it up and go at it for 500 laps and have a lot of fun."

RYAN NEWMAN --12-- ALLTEL Taurus (Qualified 1st) -- "Gordon has had the pole for the first three half-mile race tracks -- two at Bristol and one here at Martinsville, I think. Knocking him off the pole here was pretty big. I'm happy we did it and happy for ALLTEL." DID YOU HERE THE ROAR FROM THE CROWD? "No, my dad came down and said, 'You should have heard the applause.' That's cool. It's good to be here. The track is a little different, but it's the same for everybody and we're just out there trying as hard as we can." YOU LOOKED GOOD ALL DAY. "It's kind of a half and half deal. The driver's got to have finesse for the what the race car's got grip for and Matt and the guys just did an awesome job. They brought a great race car and that part of it was pretty good today." HOW MUCH DIFFERENCE IS THERE THIS TIME? "About three tenths. That's the bottom line is just grip in the corners and mostly grip coming off the corners. It's just something we'll have to work with, but, like I said, it's the same for everybody. We'll see what the race track does. I told Matt that this track took a 20.1 to sit on the pole here in the spring and now we're trying to get down into the forties (20.40). It's just kind of wild how things can change so much."

RYAN NEWMAN PRESS CONFERENCE -- "We've had a great season so far. The guys have done an awesome job in the shop and out of the shop -- on the race track and off. I'm just happy to have had the qualifying effort we had today. It's important to start up front at every race track, but it's more important sometimes on the shorter tracks. I'm looking forward to Sunday and looking forward to getting in race trim and, hopefully, we can be just as fast there." A LOT HAS BEEN SAID ABOUT THE TRACKS. YOUR THOUGHTS? "I think you look at a race track like that and you think, 'Man, that's what they do to road just before they pave 'em,' and a lot of people have that mentality when it comes to looking at the race track -- saying, 'Man, we shouldn't be racing on that. That's what you do before you lay down black top.' I think a lot of drivers look at it that way, but sometimes it makes more grip and sometimes it doesn't. Like I said before, the curb is in the same spot, the wall is in the same spot. It's the same old concrete, it's just ground up a little bit in some spots. It still takes the best car and the best driver to get the best lap in on a given day." HOW MUCH WAS THE LAP YOU AND HOW MUCH THE CAR? "It's no different than you and writing, if you didn't have a pencil it would be hard to write. It's all about having a good team and a good car and great people behind you. It takes a whole package. There's no one thing that makes it the best. There's a whole bunch of things and if one thing isn't there, then nothing is there." DO YOU THINK THIS COULD BE A BIG DIFFERENCE IN POINTS WITH TONY? "Points-wise, we'll just have to see. There are so many things that could happen, but Tony is a great racer. This isn't the first time he's started towards the back of the pack and he, of all people, knows how to pass cars. We'll just have to see how things go. All it takes is for one little thing to go wrong to ruin your day or your day and a whole bunch of other people's. So, hopefully, we can stay out in front of everything and have a good day."