dodge nascar winston cup quotes from pocono. Marlin leads Dodge with fourth-place finish, maintains 136-point lead in standings.

Sunday, June 9, 2002					              Ray Cooper
Dodge notes and quotes.				                            Golin/Harris International
Pocono 500.                                                                                              803-466-9085
Pocono Raceway

JIMMY SPENCER (No. 41 Target Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"We were terrible. I don't even want to talk about it."

CASEY ATWOOD (No. 7 Sirius Satellite Radio Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"We were pretty good. We weren't great all day, but we had a decent car and came out with an 11th-place finish and that's our best finish of the year.. We're happy with that. We should have been a little better than that. The lugnuts kept falling off on every pit stop, and that killed us. We could never get track position. We'd make spots up and go right back to the back under caution. It was nobody's fault. The glue just wasn't holding on the lugnuts and it got us back in the back. The Sirius Dodge was able to come back to 11th and it was a good finish for us. We're inching up a little more every week. I feel real good about Michigan next week. It's the Sirius Satellite 400, and we got in a good test up there. We're going to be strong." 

WARD BURTON (No. 22 Caterpillar Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"We had some transmission problems early and we only had third gear early. The car was loose, and we've just been having some rotten luck. The guys have been working hard, and I've been driving hard. We're not going to give up."

JEREMY MAYFIELD (No. 19 Dodge Dealers Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"We're not really sure what went wrong. We made a lot of changes trying to get the car better after Happy Hour yesterday trying to make the car better. I really like this track, and I think we were going to have a good run, but we just didn't quite make it today."

BILL ELLIOTT (No. 9 Dodge Dealers Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"I'm OK, but it's a little disappointing. The guys worked so hard on the car, and the car was capable of winning, but we'll just have to come back and try again next week."

KYLE PETTY (No. 45 Sprint Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"We're still doing what we need to be doing. We had a real good run today. We had real good pit stops. These guys changed shocks, rubbers, we made 10 million adjustments on the car because we were so far off when the race started. To make adjustments and keep track position and then at the end of the race to gain track position and to be in a position to finish good was great. Steven Lane (crew chief) made some good calls on pit road. That one call when John Andretti was pitting and the caution came out right behind me and he said pit, I was past the flag for the pit closure and I hadn't taken the yellow, so I came down pit road, that gave us a chance to run up front for a few laps. I pitted just shy of the start-finish line, so once I left pit road, I crossed the start-finish line. There was no way we could have got lapped. It worked out perfect. It was a good strategy call by Steven Lane and Marty our spotter. We've got to stay here for awhile. We do need to kick it up, but that comes in the last third of the year, not in the middle. We need to establish this. We had a good car last week and a good run last week. We had trouble and still finished 20th, and that was in our zone. This week we had a bad car at the beginning of the race and they worked and got it good. We still finished in our zone, so we can go from the back to the front or the front to the back. That's good for us. John had a good run going. I'm glad the chemistry in the change we made this week seemed to kick in a little bit right off the bat. We've still got to work a little bit on the 44. They struggled a little bit, but we'll get there."

STERLING MARLIN (No. 40 Coors Light Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"It was terrible early, and it took us about half the race to get the car going. It was pretty decent at the end, but we were no match for the Fords and Chevrolets. We were lucky to get fourth. We were loose early and then got it too tight. The guys never gave up and kept working on it. We're glad to finish fourth as bad as it was early. We didn't lose much speed when we put on two tires. Goodyear has got a great tire, and it never gave up much. We ran our fastest lap on two tires, and the crew made some good calls.
It felt real good to run in the top five again (his first top five since a fifth-place finish at Talladega). We probably had a 20th-place car early, and we just kept working on it. All the credit goes to the guys. They never gave up. We had been fading at the end. This was kind of different for us. We got going pretty good. Those two-tire changes got us some good track position, and we were running about fifth when we pitted. Some guys put on two and some didn't. All-in-all it was a good run for us."