MARTIN WINS 600, FORD CARS TAKE TOP-4

5/27/2002

Concord, N.C. — Mark Martin brought his 73 race winless streak to an end at tonight’s Coca Cola Racing Family 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. He and Roush Racing teammate Matt Kenseth, whose car is partially owned by Martin, battled for first through a maze of cars in the final laps.

Roush Racing has won the last four 600 races at Lowe’s. Kenseth earned his first Winston Cup victory at the 2000 Coca Cola 600.

The Taurus success continued with Ricky Craven placing third and NASCAR’s new Iron Man Ricky Rudd finishing in fourth place. Rusty Wallace topped off the top 10 with his finish.

MARK MARTIN –6– VIAGRA TAURUS –VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW "I never drove that hard in my life to win a race. I thought he was gonna beat me. It’s just great. This Viagra team, I’m gonna share a huge portion of my winnings with them because I can’t win this race with a slow car. The money don’t matter. We’re taking this trophy home to Florida and that’s what I care about. I want to thank these fans for coming out here tonight and let’s keep that Winston here at Charlotte."

WHAT ABOUT THE MOVE WITH THREE LAPS TO GO WHEN YOU SPLIT TWO LAPPED CARS? "I couldn’t wait. Matt was faster than I was and I had to go. I couldn’t afford to get him up on me. He could have beat me fair and square, but he was gonna have to race hard. He wasn’t gonna beat me in traffic. I would have rather wrecked that thing than just give it up, so I just stayed after it. This win is big for us. That was a good race. I hope everybody enjoyed it. We certainly did and we got us a millionaire here tonight."

MATT KENSETH –17– DEWALT POWER TOOLS TAURUS (FINISHED SECOND) DID THE LAPPED CARS GET IN THE WAY? "Well, a little bit, but they’re out there racing for position too, so if I’m in that position you’ve got to get everything you can get. I’m real proud of my DeWalt guys. We had an uphill battle all day. I think we broke a valve spring or something right at the end and I had to let off the gas a little early. I felt like we had a little bit better car than Mark, but he had a good car and I’m happy to see him win. Maybe that will put him in a better mood."

ROUSH RACING HAD A GREAT NIGHT. "Yeah, we ran really good. We were a threat to win it. The 48 was definitely the class of the field, but he had his problems in the pits. But the 6 was there all night and we were there all night and I feel real good about our DeWalt-AT&T crew, they did a good job."

WHAT DID THEY SAY TO YOU WHEN SKINNER SPUN? "I knew there was a car stopped on the bottom. They just said there was a lot of smoke and there was a car stopped on the bottom, but he was on the apron. So I didn’t on purpose back up, I just got into the corner too hard and I got loose. I was doing everything I could do."

WHAT ABOUT THE LAPPED CARS? "It was tough for Mark too, but those guys are fighting for everything they can get at the same time, so they’re all trying to get position so you can’t really blame them. Yeah, it was pretty tough out there. They were two-by-two-by-two. It would have been nice if it would have been at least single-file and we could have picked our way through there. It was pretty hairy there at the end, but I’m happy to see Mark win. I wanted to win worse than anything and I really thought we had a car to do it there at the end, we just had a couple problems that slowed our car up a little bit. But, all in all, it was a great day."

RICKY CRAVEN –32– TIDE TAURUS (FINISHED THIRD) "That was a great display of teamwork because we had a third-place car and the guys got me off pit road great. They made some great decisions and we just battled all night. I’m just really proud of this Tide team. They really gave me a hell of a run."

RICKY RUDD –28– HAVOLINE TAURUS (FINISHED FOURTH) "We were good. The front end got pushing at the end and I couldn’t run. If I drove it into the corner too hard, the front end would just take off. I don’t know, it seems like we fight that a lot and I’m not really sure what it is. That hurt us tonight. We were real good in the middle stages of the race when the track was a little greasier. When the track got faster and had a little more grip we weren’t as good."

NICE TO SEE MARK WIN? "Yeah, Mark has struggled a little bit, so that’s good. I’m glad to see it."

YOU BATTLED DOWN THE STRETCH ON THE LAST RESTART. "We were fading. We thought we were gonna get Craven for third and we caught him but couldn’t do anything with him. Then Gordon and Stewart came on at the end and we got into a pretty hard battle there at the very end."

YOU DON’T LOOK TIRED BEING THE IRONMAN. "Not really. It was pretty nice out there. I had the AC going tonight. I had it on cruise control. It wasn’t that bad."

RUSTY WALLACE –2– MILLER LITE TAURUS (FINISHED 10TH) "We just got behind early. We had to come from the back up to 12th or 13th like three times. We put way too much tape on the grille to start the race and I thought it was open plenty enough, but, man, I tell you what, it must have been humid out or something because it pegged the gauge at 240 and pushed all the water out. We came back in and filled it up with water and then Wilburn started saying, ’Man, every time you’re making a pit stop it’s dumping water out,’ so we came in that last time and really did a good jam-up job filling it up with water. We put some stop-leak in it to find out where the hole was at or whatever it was and filled it up again and it held the rest of the race, so that was good. We got it up to 10th, but there were two times I was out of control. I took a spring rubber out of the left-rear one time trying to make it turn better and then it was so loose I couldn’t touch the throttle. Then at the end there, I said, ’OK, let’s put the rubber back in and drop some air-pressure out of the right-front,’ and it did the same thing again. So it didn’t want to get messed around from the right-front to the left-rear corner, but we got a top-10 out of it and that was good. But, like I said, I feel like I drove the World 1000. I came from the back to the front so many times it was unreal. I had my son, Greg, spotting today and he did a great job. There must be something about your own kid, you understand their voice better."

DALE JARRETT –88– UPS TAURUS (FINISHED 19TH) "It wasn’t from lack of effort on the guy’s part. I mean, on every single pit stop they changed something. We probably just made a mistake on some shocks that we ran. The car just bounced around and flopped around all night. At one point we got it halfway decent and adequate and got it in the top 15, but then as things got faster and I tried to go faster with them it magnified our problem. We just couldn’t get after it. I don’t know how many times tonight I about wrecked. When I was out there at the end we made some adjustments just trying not to wreck, so it was just a bad night."

JEFF BURTON –99– CITGO TAURUS (FINISHED 40TH) "We had some sort of problem. We picked up a real bad vibration and pitted and that got us a lap down. At times we had a 10th-place car and at times a second-place car. We were never the best car, but we were a decent car all night. The darker it got and the cooler it got, the better our car seemed to be. We had a lot of bad luck this weekend with the Busch car and the Cup car, but what we do is hard. Not every week is gonna go your way and certainly this week didn’t go our way, but I was encouraged by the way we ran."

THE FACT THIS ENGINE WENT BEFORE 500 MILES MEANS THE ONE-ENGINE RULE WASN’T A FACTOR HERE. "We wouldn’t have made it 500, so I’m not gonna complain. The engine rule is the engine rule. You’ve got to build your engines so they last. If you’re building engines that can’t run 600 miles and run the practice, then you’re doing something wrong. You’ve got to be able to build your engines so they last. This engine would have broke in a 300-mile race. We had a part failure or something and it wasn’t because of the longer distance."

RYAN NEWMAN –12– ALLTEL TAURUS – RAYBESTOS ROOKIE (FINISHED 41ST) "I guess Charlotte hasn’t been my place for engine failures. I guess we made our money last weekend. I think we would have had a pretty decent car once this race would have started to draw out. We were trying to get our lap back, but our car was super, super loose all day. That’s just part of it I guess. They’re engines and they do break."

WAS THIS A ONE-ENGINE RULE CASUALTY? "There will be plenty of cars to finish and make a good race out of it. It’ll be fine. When the break this early, it doesn’t matter if it’s one engine, two engine, three engines or five engines. It’s just a mechanical failure."

WAS IT HOT OUT THERE? "The motor is hotter than I am, let’s just say that."

KEVIN LEPAGE –38– GEICO DIRECT TAURUS (FINISHED 43RD) "We had a battery go dead on us, which is unusual, but I can’t say enough for all the guys here. Mark Tutor came over to try and put this Geico Direct Ford in the field and we did that solidly the other night. Unfortunately, the motor let go. We came here to try to prove to everybody that we belong here and we had a good qualifying effort. We actually were running pretty good there. We made the right changes from the other day, but we’re out too early. We had two weeks to put this together and I thought we did a fairly good job at it. You never know, you might see us somewhere back down the road."

MARTIN PRESS CONFERENCE WHAT ABOUT THE LAST COUPLE LAPS? "The last couple of laps really boiled down to one thing. If I gave Matt the opportunity to get beside me, we were gonna lose. That wasn’t gonna happen that way. Now, if he was fast enough to pass me, then we were gonna run second and we were gonna hold our heads high. But, based on lapped cars, it wasn’t going down that way. I couldn’t waste any time. I had to keep the momentum up and I had to put the car somewhere and I had to plan ahead of time because the car doesn’t change directions as fast as people think watching – especially when the tires get hot and slick like that. So, direction changes aren’t made on the spur of the moment, you have to plan them. It put a lot of pressure on me. That last 40 laps, we wanted to win bad. It’s been a long time since we’ve won. I probably wanted to win for my team worse than I even wanted to win for myself or for Matt and my family. It was really, really important to win this race. There are so many guys on this team that either hadn’t been to victory lane or hadn’t been in the capacity that they’re working in and they wanted it really bad. When we got invited into the No Bull Five after the Vegas run for Charlotte, everybody knew that I run good at Charlotte. Everybody knew that I loved this place and they wanted to do it all and they did it. This is their win, it’s not mine and I told them if they could win this race for me, they would share in my portion of the million dollars that we win and that seemed to be an extra-special motivator for them. They built a new car. They practiced pit stops. They came up with the idea to come and test here, which I hadn’t planned to do – just a lot of things. I like to see people motivated to the max. We could have held our heads up if Matt would have beat us, but it wasn’t gonna go down easy. Matt is a friend of mine, but he was gonna have to race me like an enemy there at the end. He was fast, but my team had put me out front on four new tires and we were fast too and we were able to pull it off."

WHAT MADE YOU MORE DETERMINED THIS TIME IN THE NO BULL FIVE? "These guys. I mean, I can’t do it by myself. I can’t win anything in a slow car. They seemed to be especially motivated to go after this thing and I like that. Hey, as long as I get to take this trophy him, I don’t care and that seemed to be special motivation. I wanted it for them and, obviously, it’s done my career good too, but we made a fan a millionaire tonight for about the 12th time. Thank you Winston. I salute Winston for that. I think at the same time we should throw in and say that I feel we should keep The Winston at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. There is no better race track to have that race at than this place and there are no better race fans than what we get at this speedway. This is what it’s all about. You need to get your share once in a while. These guys have worked really hard and they deserve this win. I would have hurt for them more than I would have hurt for me if Matt would have beat us."

BEN LESLIE, CREW CHIEF –6– VIAGRA TAURUS WHAT WENT THROUGH YOUR MIND THE LAST FEW LAPS? "The last few laps was a pretty nailbiting situation. I know how good Matt is. He’s real motivated. He gets up on the wheel really hard. He won the Coca-Cola 600 here in his rookie year and I was fortunate enough to be a part of that deal. It was a gut-wrenching situation because, like I say, Matt is nobody to be fooled with."

HAS HE SAID HOW HE’LL SPLIT THE MONEY? "No. I haven’t even asked. I don’t care about it."

MARTIN CONTINUED TALK ABOUT YOUR POST-RACE CELEBRATION. "I’m more tired than I’ve ever been. I will tell you that I’ve never won a race and drove that hard. There have been a few times I drove that hard, but I got beat. Those last 40 laps and even about 40 before that we were coming big time. I think even without that caution we could have won the race. We were reeling the 48 in just a ton per lap. We had a great set of tires on the car, but look, let’s all remember I said in 2000 that this may be the last one and I’ll say it again. This may be the last time I ever stand down there. I don’t know. I feel pretty good about it now. I think we’ve got a good shot at next Sunday at Dover to be honest with you, but, still, yeah, this is special. I don’t know, there may not be 32 or 33 of these things waiting for me in my career. You’ve got to be honest when you look at it and it is special. It is special to see these guys go for the first time and they’ve really dedicated themselves to me."

WHAT DOES THIS WIN DO FOR YOU? "I don’t really know. I’ve had a lot of great accomplishments and I’ve had a chance to reflect on the major accomplishments in my career and in my life and I’ve had more success than I deserve, in my opinion – not less than I deserve, but more. I’ve been very fortunate. This is a big win. This is big for these guys. This is a good year for us. We’re top-five in points and if we can start racing like this, week in and week out – we just have one more little step and we’re probably not there yet – but if we can keep picking it up and keep having good luck, we could even contend for the championship this year. I don’t know. I can’t tell you. It hasn’t made my career, but I’m the happiest man on Earth right now and so is that fan."

WHAT ABOUT WHEN THE 4 CAR SPUN? "I didn’t let off. It was real intense, man, I tell you. Matt had a strong car. We stretched it out and kept it out on him for a long time, but with about 15 to go he closed in pretty good there. How do you drive faster than you can go and not make a mistake. This is a very tough situation. I wasn’t fast enough and if I went any faster I was gonna make a mistake, so there was a lot of stress and strain but we kept the pedal down and kept hunting and searching for things. Certainly lapped traffic, I couldn’t let that deter my chances, so I put a lot of pressure on myself to be lined up with something and not delay."

SO YOU THINK YOU COULD HAVE CAUGHT THE 48? "Well, I can’t see. I only see what I see out my windshield. When Ben was calling the lap times to me and we were never worse than two-tenths a lap faster. They called leader at the line one time and before I got to turn three they called leader at the line. I was sitting there looking at him and the way I gauge it, with 40 to go, it was gonna be a no-brainer to catch him based on the speed our car was running and the speed his was running. I can’t see much, but that’s what I could see. Now, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t riding around on a Sunday drive and maybe set up when he saw me coming, but I think his car was backing up and I don’t think he had a very good run going there. It was my opinion that we were gonna catch him. Ben can answer that. He should know. I didn’t ask him if we were gonna catch him, I was pretty sure we were gonna catch him based on the first lap time they told me where the leader was and then the second time, and we still had 40 to go. I was convinced we would get him."

LESLIE CONTINUED "He was like a tenth-and-a-half to two-tenths of a lap faster when I started calling lap times and we finally cleared and got into third place. We were about six-and-a-half second back and then before the caution came out we were about 2.7, so he was closing a great deal and with 40 laps to go it was a no-brainer."

MARTIN CONTINUED "Forty laps is a long time. I mean, I could see him now and he had been way ahead, so, I don’t know what would have happened, but, in our little world, that’s what we saw."

COULD YOU HAVE WON THIS RACE IF YOU RAN 500 MILES AT INDY EARLIER? "I don’t know how those guys do it and I also had a lot of people ask me how I ran a Busch race – 300 on Saturday and 600 on Sunday. I just kind of shrugged it off and said it’s no big deal. I believe that you spend what you have. If you’ve got a dollar, you spend it. If you only spend 75 cents of that dollar, you weren’t trying hard enough. If I’m not tired after a race, I haven’t raced hard enough in my opinion and I sure used everything I had tonight."

WAS IT IMPORTANT TO SEE YOU SON, MATT, SEE YOU WIN AT THIS STAGE OF HIS LIFE? "He wasn’t even there at Martinsville. He and Arlene weren’t able to be there. He was there for many, many, many wins – many wins – Winston Cup and Busch wins and it was just part of the routine and we haven’t seen as much of that. His racing career is going real well. He’s won a lot of races and I want him to be able to be proud and he should be able to be proud of what happened tonight, so, yeah, it means a lot. Between what it means to my family and what it means to Ben Leslie and his team, my team, these guys, I enjoy going to the race track with and to quote Matt Kenseth, I’m in a better mood, but I have been in a better mood just for getting to work with these guys."

WHAT DID JACK ROUSH HAVE TO SAY ON THE PHONE? "I really couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I know Jack Roush real well. I’ve been with him since the middle of ’87, so I know how happy he is. I know that brought tears to his eyes, that he couldn’t be hear. We’re all so blessed. I think he was a little bit crushed. He takes breaking engines personally and he was crushed last week in The Winston because we were running so well. I think he’s real pleased with the result. He and I have a special relationship. He loves all the people that work for him and all his drivers, but he and I have a lot of history and I’m sure that he’s very happy about it."

WHAT WERE YOU FEELING AT THE END THAT YOU DID DONUTS? "I wasn’t gonna do any donuts on the asphalt because those kids know how to do it and I don’t. We didn’t do that back when I won 32 of these things, so I wasn’t gonna make a fool of myself, but I felt like it might make good pictures – tearing up Humpy’s painted grass. It might make for some good exposure for the folks that are making us millionaires tonight. I again salute Winston for making a fan a millionaire and doing all these special things. I’m not a donut kind of guy, but I can’t be guaranteed that I’ll ever win another race and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I just don’t know, but I also think we can win Sunday at Dover. But, you know, I wanted to celebrate this one. I’ve thought about it for a while and if we get another one next week, I might be a little more subdued, but this has been a long time coming and it was real special for these guys and it was real special for me. I’d like to touch on one other thing to about Ben. I’ve had the good fortune of working around Ben for probably 10 years. It’s been a long, long time he’s worked at Roush Racing. He’s worked on Ted Musgrave’s car and Matt Kenseth’s and he’s been around. He’s a tremendous racer. There was no chance of making this team switch fail. The only thing I was worried about was I was afraid that Kurt might be mad at me because I got what I thought was gonna be best for me in these guys. Kurt got what turned out to be best for him too and what a fantastic season they’re having. It’s worked well and I’m real lucky. I’ve known Ben for a long, long time and we didn’t take any chances when we made that switch."

WHAT DOES THIS DO EMOTIONALLY FOR YOUR TEAM? "For the 6 car it’s real special because Matt’s won twice and Kurt’s won once. We’ve been very consistent, but we really haven’t been in a position to go win one of these things – I don’t think. Maybe close at Richmond, but I can’t think of another race where I really thought we were in shape to do that. So it’s good for all of us. It gives us that trophy and a little bit of confidence. Our guys are charged up because that gives a lot of them their first win and a lot of times the next ones come easier than that first one and I’m hoping that.

"I think we have a great race team and these guys proved to me the last two weeks that we can go out and race like I used to race in the mid-nineties and drive really spectacular cars and beat people on pit road and beat people on the race track. It’s good for all of us. We were doing pretty good before tonight, but we needed that shot in the arm. This is why you work so hard. These guys all make big sacrifices in their lives to do this, big, big, and you need to taste it once in a while. It’s the reward for all the blood sweat and tears."

KENSETH PRESS CONFERENCE IS THERE ANY YOU COULD HAVE CHANGED THAT RESULT? "Not really. The problem was my car was pretty good. When we were single-file my car was pretty good and I think I could have made a move on him. We caught that lap traffic so much faster than I anticipated and we were two and three-wide and all over the place, and they were side-by-side. I almost spun out two or three times the last three laps trying to get around those lapped cars."

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN MARK MARTIN DRIVE LIKE THAT? "I knew he wasn’t gonna let me win, especially with me behind him. I knew he didn’t want me to beat him. It was a lot of fun racing with him. He was in the gas. He always is, but he needs the car to do it, obviously. It was a lot of fun chasing him down. I sure would have liked to have gotten alongside of him and raced him side-by-side to the end, but it was still fun to put a little pressure on him and scare him a little bit. He was pretty determined to win that race and he told me in victory lane that I was gonna have to spin him out to get by him, so he was gonna be tough."

THIS IS THE FOURTH STRAIGHT YEAR A ROUSH CAR HAS WON THIS RACE. WHAT’S THE SECRET? "I don’t know. I have no idea. Our car was pretty good a lot of times, but the 48 car had us whipped – it was just circumstances during the race where something happened and he got in the back of the field. That opened the door for Mark to take the win. We usually have pretty good cars at Charlotte and for some reason we seem to run a little bit better at night than we do in the day always."

DID MARK BOBBLE A BIT AT THE END AND DID YOU SEE THAT? "I felt pretty good when I was catching him. He moved up a couple of times and it looked like he got a little loose getting in and chased it up the hill and I was able to really close on him. One time I was seven or eight car lengths behind him and I was able to make up three or four of them just coming off turn two and then once I got close he made sure he slowed up real early and got it to the bottom and pulled up in front of me again. He took away the lane that I wanted, so he knew what he was doing out there. He was driving real hard. He was a little loose it looked like at the end of the race and I was real loose at the end of the race too and I did everything I could do. We were both hanging on."

CRAVEN PRESS CONFERENCE DID YOU THINK YOU COULD HAVE CAUGHT THE 48? "Early on in the race I challenged him on the outside and got the lead for a couple of laps and he came scrambling back. We actually went through that process a few times the first couple hundred miles, but the kid is really doing a great job. It’s interesting to see him go to different race tracks every week and run the way he’s run. I think another aspect of that that’s pretty impressive is his team – a new group of people. I assure you that he wouldn’t be able to run that fast if the car weren’t driving good. I’m not taking anything away from him, but I’m simply saying this is a team sport and it’s just remarkable to see how well those guys have come together in no time. He was absolutely the car to beat and I regret to tell you we wouldn’t have beat him tonight. He was just that good. You also got a great illustration of how important track position is in this business because the cars handle one way out by themselves and then they handle another way when they’re in traffic. That is a miserable feeling, to have a car that went as well as he did all night, but then you put yourself in a completely different scenario – car in front of you, perhaps a car behind you – and it changes the balance. We’ve entered into a world of downforce. These cars love downforce and the better you are, if you get a car in front of you and behind you, it takes a percentage of that away."

WHAT’S IT LIKE GOING THROUGH A WINLESS STREAK? "It’s like life before and life after. Jimmie didn’t have to wait very long, but I’m sure he could support that. I began racing at 15 and every one of us began at an early age. The further you go, the more realistic it seems that you might get to Winston Cup. Along that path you say, ’All I care about is winning a Winston Cup race,’ and that’s really been my mentality for several years. I just want to win a Winston Cup race. I want to join that exclusive group and when it happened my whole opinion changed and I wanted to win two, but that’s the competitor. It is, it’s like life before winning and life after. Personally, it didn’t change me at all. Tomorrow I’ll be wrestling with Everett and Riley. They’re the joy of my life, but professionally it’s unbelievable and I’m happy for Mark because he had quite a drought. Mark’s always been one of the best in the business."