GM RACING NOTES & QUOTES--NASCARE NEW HAMPSHIRE POST-RACE

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GM RACING WINSTON CUP NOTES & QUOTES; NEW ENGLAND 300; NEW HAMPSHIRE INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY; JULY 20, 2003

JOHN ANDRETTI, NO. 0 NETZERO PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: NOTE: Andretti,, making his first start for Haas CNC Racing, was involved in a crash on the eighth lap with Jimmy Spencer. The Pontiac sustained severe damage to the rear and left side. "It drives me nuts to think that another guy would do that. He hit me three or four times down here [in Turn 3 and 4] and I thought, 'well, he just got in deep.' I made a mistake trying to get around Dale Jarrett and got sideways, so he got a run on me. But I was still on the outside of him. When we went down into Turn 1, he hit me once and then a second time and got me all the way around. The last time he hit me, it was like it was to get me out of the way. It's really disappointing. He's got a full-time job. He's not making life any easier for me, I'll tell you that. I'm really, really disappointed for the team, disappointed for me, disappointed on the day. We had a good car and we got taken out for no reason. It's not right. When you're on the outside, you're the helpless guy, and it's going to happen more today. The way I feel, I think it was real intentional."

MIKE WALLACE, NO. 01 U.S. ARMY PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: NOTE: Wallace hit the wall off Turn 2 after contact from Ward Burton. "I was racing with the 22 [Burton] and I guess he decided he needed the position worse than I did off 2 and he turned me around out there. I tried to keep the car spun around to keep it off the wall, but it actually caught and got into the wall. So that part is my fault, but I guess you can't race with the 22. Sorry."

DALE EARNHARDT JR., NO. 8 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 6th: "We were real happy about that. It didn't look like we were going to get that spot there. Halfway through the race we really started losing the handle on the car. Then we got fortunate with our track position. We had some great pit strategy to help us out at the end. We stayed out, then we took two tires. We ran about 100 laps on the rights and 170 or 175 on the lefts. It was a nice job on paving the track. I applaud Bob and the family for what they're doing here, keep on keeping on and making it better." IT LOOKED LIKE YOU AND RUSTY GOT TOGETHER? "Rusty checked up or something and I ran over him. It was my fault, but I don't know what I could have done anything else different. I know he's real mad, he's a pretty hot-tempered guy. He's known us for a long time, so I hope he knows it wasn't intentional."

JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DuPONT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 24th: "I am really, really disappointed. We weren't going to win the race no matter what. Our strategy.the cautions didn't fall right for us. I made a call on pit road to put four tires on when I saw everybody was staying out because I knew we weren't going to win. I just wanted to give us the best chance to give us as many positions as possible. It was a late call and those tires had the pressures up on them a little bit. I don't know if the tires just killed it or something broke. I really don't know what happened. I'm completely in shock right now. It was probably one of the best cars I've ever driven. At the end, I was just holding on to stay on the lead lap." IN THE MIDDLE YOU COULD LEAD AT WILL, IT SEEMED. "When you get a car that's that good out front, you're going to drive away. But even in traffic, we were really good. We were able to pass and drive by guys. It was an amazing car. I don't know what happened there. It just went away." IS YOUR FRUSTRATION TEMPERED IN ANY WAY BY THE FACT THAT JIMMIE JOHNSON WON THE RACE? "I'm happy for Jimmie, but I'm just so devastated in our own performance right now. I'll celebrate and talk with him later. But right now I'm just completely drained from the devastation. It's not the points, it's not that. It's just that we had the car to either win or finish in the top five. I just wanted to put pressure on these guys, I wanted to put the heat on them. I want to lead laps, I want to battle for wins. We were doing that today and it all went to hell."

STEVE PARK, NO. 30 AOL CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 8th: 'The AOL guys did a great job calculating the fuel mileage and we got our last set of tires and we could make it on gas. Mike Beam said, 'have a good time, I'll see you after the race is over.' That was with about 110 to go. The track is in really good shape, the best I've seen it in a very long time. That bottom line opens up and it teases people to put a wheel underneath guys. If they can't hold it, they end up sliding up into guys. That's what I saw today. There weren't too many accidents by attrition. It was guys trying to advance. Track position was so hard to keep, and guys were being aggressive on restarts. They were doing whatever they could to try to gain positions. It was really hard to pass. The track had plenty of room, but these cars are so damn equal.you get frustrated when you feel like your car is maybe a tick better but you can't get around a guy. I'm really thankful to Richard Childress, AOL and all the people who have just stuck by me. I lost my ride and got picked up by RCR, and you couldn't ask for a better situation. I'm very thankful. We're kind of building this team up to where it needs to be. This just raises your confidence. I was running third once when the caution came out and I called Richard on the radio. I told him this was the first time I've been able to see the pace car in about a year and half. Three RCR cars finished in the top 10, and that's great. We made wholesale changes in happy hour. We changed four shocks, four springs, rear sway bar, truck arms.it put it better. Everybody put their heads together and gave us a great car compared to what we had yesterday. It would have been a really tough day if the car was like it was yesterday."

JEFF GREEN, NO. 1 PENNZOIL CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 30th: "We changed some stuff since yesterday's practice and we thought we made it better, but it made it a lot tighter and we never could overcome that. At this track, track position is everything. You're only as fast as who you're around. We got up front, but we never got a really good chance to get our lap back. All in all, we learned a lot today, but we just didn't run very good. It's a lot better than we've been and I'm excited about that."

KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 GM GOODWRENCH CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 2nd, the first of three Richard Childress Racing cars in the top eight. It was his best finish at NHIS. "My car was dead sideways for five laps and I just had to hang on and get what I could. For the most part we didn't make but a half-pound air adjustment in the right front tire all day. Jimmie [Johnson] just got so far out there at the beginning of that last run. We'd catch him a little bit each lap, but it wasn't enough to get up there. We were hoping for a yellow, but we'll take second. It was a good day for the GM Goodwrench car." COULD YOU DESCRIBE THE NATURE OF THE RACING TODAY, INCLUDING THAT GREAT SIDE-BY-SIDE DUEL WITH JIMMIE? "Yesterday I said that the track wasn't much different, but the groove moved way up today, My car worked really well right at the top of the groove. Some of the guys had their cars right down on the first dotted line. Jimmie had a really good car on short runs and a good car through the whole run, and he was able to run right down on the bottom side-by-side with me for quite a few laps. Finally, I just decided that was enough, and he kept inching up and inching up. It was better to just let him go at that point." COULD YOU HAVE DONE THAT LAST YEAR? "No, because you'd have made a mistake. If you were the guy on the top, you'd 

go straight up the track. You couldn't afford to. It's kind of like Daytona and Talladega, where everyone was fighting to stay down. You had to leave room for error." DID THE TRACK HOLD UP ALL RIGHT? "It was great all day long."

THE BAHRE FAMILY HAS TRIED SO MANY THINGS TO FIX THIS TRACK IN THE PAST/ HAVE THEY FINALLY HIT ON THE SOLUTION HERE? "I think they've done a great job. Today you could run two grooves up the track pretty easy, from what I call the first lane. Passing has always been a battle for the bottom. If you bank every race track, it's not really fair to call yourself, I don't think, the best in the series because you don't race on all different styles of tracks. We need flat-track racing, I enjoy flat tracks and they've done a good job to get the side-by-side racing."

TALK ABOUT THE TRUST FACTOR THAT'S INVOLVED IN A BATTLE LIKE YOU HAD WITH JIMMIE? "You just try to hold your line and hope that the guy underneath you doesn't make a mistake. I don't know how many laps we ran there, four or five, but at some point he's going to get a little bit impatient. I know I would, and you'll slowly creep up the track. At that point, it wasn't worth tearing up the car."

WHEN JIMMIE GOT PAST YOU LATE IN THE RACE, WHAT WAS THE DIFFERENCE AT THAT POINT? THAT ENDED UP BEING THE PASS FOR THE VICTORY. "I told Todd [Todd Berrier, crew chief] on the radio, 'I hope that wasn't for the win,' and it turned out that it was. I had the same problem I had yesterday [in the Busch race]. I couldn't get my car going for four or five laps, and Jimmie was able to get going. The farther I pushed the issue, the worse it got for me. I just couldn't keep the car from spinning the tires. It was really loose on new tires." 

CAN YOU SUM UP YOUR WEEKEND? YOU FINISHED SECOND ON SATURDAY AND AGAIN TODAY. "Obviously, we want to win, but two seconds is something that if you're not happy with it, you're getting spoiled. It was a good points day for us in both cars and it's exactly what we need to do."

LAST YEAR YOU FINISHED 33RD HERE IN THE SECOND RACE. WHAT WAS THE DIFFERENCE? "I finished eighth in the first one. We ran really well then and we spent a lot of time testing all our flat-track stuff and had a good car."

WHAT WAS THE CLOSEST YOU CAME TO WRECKING? "I think it was with the 88 and somebody else. They got into each other. I was able to check up and just drove on by."

ROBBY GORDON, NO. 31 CINGULAR WIRELESS CHEVROLET: Finished 5th, the second of three Richard Childress Racing cars in the top eight. "My hat's off to everyone at RCR - to Kevin Hamlin (crew chief) for making that call. We probably had about a 10th-place car but we snuck a 5th-place finish out of it. We're real pleased with the results and gained some points and we'll move on to the next one.

"We will keep taking every weekend with us and keep moving forward. We thought we would be strong here but for some reason we just struggled all day. We couldn't get off the corner very hard. That was a problem all day. We couldn't get into the corner or get of all day. We will work on that for next time. The track is different from when I was here. We have a bit of work to do."

(YOU LOST A GEAR EARLY ON - HOW DIFFICULT WAS THAT?) "It was really hard on the restarts because I didn't have second gear. So I was restarting in third. It's a decent run for us and I'm happy for the whole team and I'm happy for Kevin Harvick to finish second as well."

RICKY CRAVEN, NO. 32 TIDE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: Finished 21st: "It's unfortunate that the pit strategies worked out the way they did. I think we had a car capable of finishing in the top-five, but we just weren't getting the fuel mileage some of these other guys were getting. We thought a lot of those cars in front of us would run out of fuel or have to stop again, but it just didn't work out that way. We're very disappointed with the result, especially when we were running so strong earlier in the race."

JOHNNY BENSON, NO. 10 VALVOLINE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: Finished 26th: "You know we were good on one set of tires and then bad on the next set. Sometimes we had track position and then sometimes we didn't. It was real hard to pass. I think we had a good car and there at the end we ran out of brakes and just kind of brought it home."

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE'S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: "Winning on a flat track? I never thought it would happen."

"It was a great day for us. I can't believe that when fuel strategy came into a win, we were able to capitalize on it. Everybody knows it takes horsepower, but it takes the fuel mileage to go with it. I'm excited we were able to do what we did. Chad (Knaus, crew chief) made the great call to get us out and kind of cycled through and wait it out. It worked. The race was really with the No. 29 (Kevin Harvick) and I was able to get that done and then get by the No. 12 (Ryan Newman) and here we are."

(ON THE EXCITEMENT OF SIDE-BY-SIDE RACING AT NHIS WITH KEVIN HARVICK) "The race track is in much better shape. The thing that's hard is that the bottom groove is a little off camber. So when you go down there it pushes you out into the outside car. The track stayed together. You could run multiple lanes and we had a great race. I'm just excited for the whole Lowe's team. We needed this today. It's obviously going to help us with the points and we're ready for the rest of the year."

HIGHLIGHTS OF JOHNSON'S POST-RACE PRESS CONFERENCE:

"We had a great race car today. We started sixth and right away moved up to second and ran behind Jeff Gordon for a long time. We led some after that just based on how all the pit strategies played out. Throughout the day, we would fall back to fifth or sixth based on pit strategy that other teams were playing out and we would still find ourselves in second or first after it all just because we had such a great race car.

"I was able to stay patient and not hurt my race car and not wear the brakes out and not cause problems. It's taken me a few years of running here to get used to it and a few years of running in these bigger cars from the Busch Series to Winston Cup. I'm very excited and proud to win on such a technical race track and such a flat race track and a short track. I'm very pleased and very happy. 

"Some strategy played into it at the end with us pitting at the last minute and being able to stay out and go the rest of the way. But I still had to pass the No. 29 (Harvick) and I knew that was going to probably be the pass for the win and it looks like it turned out that way because he finished second. 

"But I had to run down Ryan (Newman) and he had a straightaway on me. We were able to run him down. After we took the lead from him, I started to drive in the mirror and conserve fuel and keep a safe distance between whoever was in second and myself so that if I caught lapped traffic I wouldn't have somebody too close to me where I'd get in trouble and have a chance of losing the lead. I was able to ride around and save fuel and pull into victory lane. It was just an awesome day for us."

(AT WHAT POINT DID YOU PASS KEVIN HARVICK AND WHAT WERE THE CIRCUMSTANCES ON THE TRACK THERE?) "I got underneath him and cleared him right before the last caution came out I think. I was just passing him when the caution came out and I remember being relieved that I got it done because that was probably the pass for the win."

(DID YOU THINK HARVICK WAS GOING TO BE ABLE TO PASS YOU BACK AFTER THAT PASS?) "I wasn't really too worried about him. The biggest thing I was worried about was making a mistake myself. You don't understand how easy it is to blow the entry of the turn. If you get in too hard and use too much brake, you'll spin the car out getting in a corner or move up a lane. Someone like Kevin Harvick won't miss that opportunity. He'll dive in there and take it back from you. So I was more worried about myself making mistakes. Once I could get a couple of laps under my belt and get a rhythm, I was in good shape. But I was surprised that I have four or five cars in front of me that were trying to stretch it even further then we were. I thought when it cycled around and I passed Kevin, I would be the first car on the track. But I still had to pass several cars."

(ON HOW THE TRACK HELPED EVERYONE RACE SIDE-BY-SIDE THIS TIME COMPARED TO LAST YEAR?) "What happened last year was that it seemed like little stones were pulled up out of the racing groove and were sitting in the second and third groove. You would have to run below those so that you could run on clean race track. And before we knew it, our racing groove went from two or three lanes down to one lane and using the apron. Today, that didn't happen. We were able to really dive into the corners. Guys could go in and slide up to probably the third or fourth groove in the center of the turn, rotate the car, and drive off. 

"I know last year, when you got inside someone, you just leaned on them a little bit and got their right-side tires out in the marbles and that was the end of them. There was no competition and you could not run side-by-side. You had to be careful who you put yourself in that situation with because just one little nudge from them and you were in big trouble.

"I think the track held together and it's still one of the toughest tracks we come to. It's one of the hardest places to run side-by-side without running over each other and one of the hardest places to pass. So it's hard work for us, but I imagine it puts on a great show for the fans."

(HOW SLICK WAS THE RACE TRACK TODAY?) "It wasn't too bad on new tires. But it's always been a characteristic here - from my experience - that the first three or four laps takes a few hard laps to get the tires up to pressure and temperatures so you have grip. After that, everything was fine."

(DO YOU SENSE THAT A LOT OF THE OTHER DRIVERS WERE HAPPY WITH THE TRACK EVEN THOUGH THEY DIDN'T WIN?) "I think so. I know when we pitted and I was back in the traffic and had to come through, you'd get two cars that would run side-by-side and you'd be stuck behind them and be losing time. So I think there might be frustrations. As drivers, we're going to complain if we're not the winner everybody else has a problem. It's just the nature of us. When I finish second there was something wrong that didn't work out for me (laughs). But we're competitors and that's how we are. But here, I think it equates a lot to Martinsville. You've got side-by-side racing and you can maybe pick up a car length a lap on someone. You've got to patient and you've got to work hard to be smooth and to clear somebody because it's tough. Just the competitiveness of the race track reminds me a lot of Martinsville."

(WHAT IS YOUR HISTORY OF FLAT TRACK RACING BEFORE WINNING HERE?) "I think we finished ninth here. At Phoenix, we had a good run but had a broken engine. I've been okay. I've been good at times but not as competitive as we were all day today."

(ON THAT LAST STOP WHEN YOU TOOK FOUR TIRES THAT YOU JUST WALKED AWAY?) "You keep doing two tires repetitively so you don't lose any track position and can stay up front. But sooner or later you've got to put the four on. You need the new left sides. Chad worked his strategy a couple of times and put four on. We had such good (pit) stops that we'd come out still inside the top 10. At the end, at the last stop, we knew we did not need to put four tires on that car - let alone two. All we needed was enough fuel to go the distance. And that was our plan. That last stop is the most important one for track position."

(ON RUNNING SIDE-BY-SIDE WITH KEVIN HARVICK) "It's just as exciting for us as it is for the fans - probably more so. At that point in time, I was a little curious as to why we were racing so hard. Kevin is going to race you hard. I respect him for that and I enjoy racing with him because you can have trust in him and you know he's not going to drive in over his head and run into you. He's not going to give you an inch, which is good. But he knows how to not cross the line. On the situation we were in, he probably had to put more trust in me."

(HOW MUCH OF JEFF GORDON'S DATA DID YOU PUT IN YOUR CAR AFTER HIS TEST HERE?) "Our set-ups are a little bit different based on styles, but him coming here and testing and Chad (Knaus) having data to look at and understand what he wanted to do with the race car really helped. The No. 24 (Gordon) has normally been one of the best cars here every time. The last few times it hasn't been in that situation. So I think it helped all of Hendrick Motorsports to come here and test. All the crew chiefs were able to look at the information. But I think something happened to his car there at the end. I think he had a shock issue. Chad was telling me there in victory lane that it just made the car really, really tight because he should have been up there in the top five when it was all said and done."

(WHEN YOU CAUGHT RYAN NEWMAN LATE IN THE RACE, YOU MADE A REFERENCE TO MIRROR DRIVING. CAN YOU EXPLAIN THAT?) "Mirror driving is basically when you are the lead car and you roll into the turn and you have one eye in the mirror and one eye out the windshield and you're blocking where the guy is trying to set you up. You do it and it's part of the game. 

"I was getting frustrated because one lap I'd try the bottom and he'd almost knock the car out of control trying to yank the wheel and get down to block me on the bottom. I'd try the top and he would commit to the bottom and try to move to the top and block it. But that's racing. It's part of it. It puts me in a bad situation because I'm in a bad aero situation and I struggled to get by him. He was doing his job. At tracks like this you wouldn't think that defensive driving would pay off as much but it does when the cars are this competitive."

(WHAT CAN YOU TAKE FROM HERE TO POCONO IN TERMS OF SET-UP?) "Nothing really. There's not much. The place is so long and so different. There's probably not much that we'd take."

(HOW DICEY WAS IT AT THE END AS FAR AS FUEL WAS CONCERNED?) "I'm interested to see how much is in the cell when they pump it out. Once I got in front of the No. 12 (Newman) I did everything I could to save fuel. I don't know if I really made a difference or if we had enough to go the distance. Kevin (Harvick) slowed down and the No. 12 (Newman) slowed down and everyone was worried about fuel. I did the best job I could in the mirror and listen to Chad at the same time on the splits and try to keep that distance the same and conserve fuel at the same time. There were a lot of times where I was lifting really early and just coasting into the corner and changing my braking points to still run quick times but save fuel in the process."

(WHICH WAS MORE IMPORTANT TODAY - PASSING OR PIT STRATEGY?) "At Chicago last week, strategy was very important. And it's becoming more important every week. With the tires that Goodyear brings today, they're great tires. They don't give up. You come in and you get tires as soon as you can and you get as much fuel as you can in the car and hope you can go the distance. In a way, that's what we structured our day for. But, we were still able to pass cars. If I didn't have a good enough car to pass the No. 12 (Newman) or the No. 29 (Harvick), I would probably be on an airplane now. It took a blend of both."

(WHAT WAS YOUR FUEL WINDOW AT THE BEGINNING OF THE RACE COMPARED TO THE END?) "Chad said the first stop would be at lap 85. We made it to lap 97. So we definitely picked up a few laps by changing my driving style."

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