WARD BURTON WINS 2002 DAYTONA 500

Burton won Sunday's race in the same car that led the most laps in last year's Daytona 500. He led nine times for 53 laps but finished 35th last year after being involved in an accident late in the race. In fact, Burton's winning chassis competed in all four plate races in 2001. Burton won last year's Mountain Dew Southern 500 and finished 14th in the 2001 NASCAR Winston Cup Series. A 40-year-old driver from South Boston, VAa., Burton has 251 career starts. Today's victory was his fourth career triumph.

Ward Burton (No. 22 Caterpillar Dodge Intrepid R/T)

"We appreciate the support from all our sponsors. We can't do it without them. It's a lot of fun to have all these red shirts here with Dodge, too."

Bill Davis (Car owner No. 22 Caterpillar Dodge Intrepid R/T)

"What a wild race. It looked like Martinsville. Our car got real good at the end, and Ward drove a heck of a race. I'm sure he didn't like that red flag delay, but he drove like a champion today. The team did a great job, and after all the problems last year, maybe this will finally get the monkey off our back."

CASEY ATWOOD (No. 7 Sirius Satellite Radio Dodge Intrepid R/T)

“I think the aero package is safer than last year. It’s separated the cars a little bit. We weren’t running three wide the whole time. That stuff happens every year. Everything was going good all day. I didn’t see what happened in that incident. I was about three-quarters of the way back in the field. I never saw anything. The track smoked up, and I never saw anything. I just drove into somebody. The car wasn’t too bad. We took two tires on that last pit stop and we couldn’t make up any ground. We were able to get through the pack pretty much all day and thought we were going to have a pretty good run.”

KYLE PETTY (No. 45 Sprint Dodge Intrepid R/T)

“I don’t know if we burned a piston or dropped a valve, but whatever it was put us out.”

JOHN ANDRETTI (No. 43 Cheerios Dodge Intrepid R/T)

“I saw all the smoke and went into the smoke and started hitting things and getting hit from behind. It’s unfortunate. There’s still plenty of laps to run. They’re going to try to fix the car, but obviously it’s not going to be anywhere near what it’s supposed to be. We had an awfully good car and we did some pit stop strategy that got us back. We came back to the front, and I thought our car was handling well. It was only a matter of time before we got in the group we needed to be in. We kept getting backed up by cars that were struggling.”