Elliott Wins Again - Dodge NASCAR Brickyard 400 Notes and
Quotes
Elliott wins second straight, third straight for Dodge
Bill Elliott's victory on Sunday in the ninth annual Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway was his second straight triumph, third straight for Dodge and sixth of the season for the Intrepid R/T. Elliott's No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Intrepid R/T won its first race of the season last Sunday at Pocono Raceway. Elliott made his 680th career start Sunday and scored his 43rd career victory. Elliott's win in the Evernham Motorsports Intrepid was the first ever from the front row in the Brickyard 400. It pulled Dodge closer in the manufacturers standings. Ford leads with seven wins and 139 points. Chevy is next with five wins and 118 points. Dodge has 113 points and six victories, while Pontiac follows with 92 points and three wins. Elliott led 93 of 160 laps and moved from ninth to sixth in the series standings, 210 points behind leader Sterling Marlin, driver of the No. 40 Coors Light Dodge Intrepid R/T.
JIM JULOW (Vice President Dodge Motorsports and SRT Marketing)
"I'm an Indiana boy, and I couldn't be more pleased about that. I think more importantly for the program, this is the second major win and this is one of NASCAR's grand slam events. We won the Daytona 500 this year, and now we've won the Brickyard 400. The wins are coming and we've really got this program on a roll. People forget we're less than two years old. So it's a child prodigy right now. Three in a row is fine. Four in a row is fine. We've got Michigan coming up in the home court. A lot of good races are coming up. Bristol is coming up and everybody wants to win that one. We're going to enjoy this one today."
BILL ELLIOTT (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"The car was absolutely awesome. Ray and Mike Ford and all the guys make it fun to drive this race car. I was so proud of them yesterday afternoon I couldn't stand it. I hated to give away the pole, but I'd rather have the win any day of the week. To come here and win at Indy is incredible. All these guys on the team make it happen week in and week out. That's what it's all about."
MIKE FORD (Crew chief No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"This guys worked extremely hard this week. This is the same car we won with at Pocono, and they turned it around quick. Everybody executed their jobs perfectly. Hats off to the whole crew."
JEREMY MAYFIELD (No. 19 Dodge Dealers Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"We broke something in the engine. From the start it didn't seen like we were going anywhere. We missed the setup a little bit. We kept working on it, but it just didn't seem like we were going. All of a sudden something broke loose and broke something in the motor. The heat was fine. I think everybody is a little bit hot, but inside the car these guys did a real good job. They take care of me. I feel good right now. I was coming in the pits and the 10 was pulling out. Pit road is real tight, and I was pulling it thinking I had enough time. I thought they'd see me, but they didn't. We were running a little bit hot. Then the tape came off and it was one thing after another. We'll get it though. I'm happy with it. Believe it we're still making improvement that are not showing up yet. I think they will."
MIKE HAWKINS (Head engine builder Evernham Motorsports)
"These are extreme racing conditions. It doesn't get any more extreme than this. You've got a big race track, and you're in the throttle here a tremendous amount of the time. They're just barely out of the throttle here. You've got long straightaways. This is very hard on engines. They run a lot of tape on the cars here to get the aero packages to work to get the downforce so they can go as fast as they're going. If you look at the race pace right now, they're running faster than they were running last year."
CASEY ATWOOD (No. 7 Sirius Satellite Radio Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"We had a great car. We had to come through the field and couldn't get track position. We went inside Dale Jr. He raced me pretty hard on the outside. I got loose and everything was fine. Then I got tapped from behind and got sent into the wall. I hate it for everybody at Sirius Satellite Radio. Everybody on the team was pumped up about the race. We just can't seem to get any luck right now. I think the 28 hit me from behind, but we just hate it. I'm really disappointed. We were going to have a good finish. We weren't going to win, but I think we could have got a top 15 and that would have helped us a lot. It was a hard lick. That's the worst way to hit, driver's side first. Everything is fine. Hopefully they'll find out some stuff on our recorders and see if the wall helped any. Maybe we can learn something that will help in the future. It still hurt. I couldn't tell any difference. It's hard to say because I haven't hit like that in a long time. It was a hard hit, but I'm fine. I'm not hurt anywhere, so maybe it helped. I was fine with the heat. My seat was getting hot, but other than that I was fine. It was hot, but it was bearable."
STERLING MARLIN (No. 40 Coors Light Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"I've never seen the track change so much from yesterday to today. Our car was real good yesterday. Then we started racing and it was so tight you couldn't turn it. We about ran out of adjustments trying to free it up. Once it got going pretty good it blew up. I don't know if it was the heat or what. It's weird deal the way things are working out this year. It really could have been a bad day in the points, but the way it worked out wasn't too bad. Jerry Nadeau locked the brakes up on pit road for some unknown reason. Everybody was running 30 mph dead on his butt. I ran into the back of Nadeau and the 48 ran into the back of me. Rusty ran second and we outran him most of the day. We didn't have anything for Bill. He was gone. That Dodge was in another league today. They've been working hard, and they've been running good."
JOHN ANDRETTI (No. 43 Box Tops for Education Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"We had a gear or something that was messed up at the start of the race. We had to change a gear after Happy Hour. It was making the car snap, and it was difficult to drive. I think if it hadn't been for that we could have been better. I'm OK. I'm just cooling off. I wish we could have been better today, but all three Petty Dodges were right there together."
HUT STRICKLIN (No. 23 Hills Bros Coffee Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"I'm OK now, and I was OK in the race as long as we were under green. There wasn't enough air in there to keep things flowing when it was under the yellow. It was pretty cool all day in the car until I stopped. I was pleased with the run. I wish we could have finished better, but we had a decent run. We adjusted on the car and kept getting it better and better throughout the whole day. The guys made a great call at the end to stay out. There early on we took two tires when a lot of guys took on four. We kept working on it all day and getting it better and better. We finally got it better at the right time. We had some good luck go our way for a change. We needed that. I'm really glad to have that. Hopefully this will get us turned around."
BILL ELLIOTT (No. 9 Dodge Dealers Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"I'm so proud of my guys it's unreal. They've worked so hard, so dedicated. We came here and tested and we ran every lap we could possibly run in the two days we tested. When I walked out of here I was a whipped puppy at the end of the day. To come here and dominate like we did.... It still wasn't as good as Dale Jarrett did a couple of years ago, but at least we're chipping away at it.
"The 20 car was good early. The 2 car was good there at the end. The 88 seemed like he had an awful good race car. He had a little misfortune there on one of his gas stops, but it seemed like he was coming along there late in the race. My guys have worked so hard and put so much dedication into this.
"There was a lot of emotion here today. It seems like it's been a lifetime getting here, and I don't know how to describe it. Even the years when I had my own deal, I came here and ran well but I never could make the right decisions to get into victory lane. Every time it was always a hard luck story why we didn't win. Now we know in our own minds that we can do it each and every week. We've just got to keep that momentum rolling. I feel like we're going in a stretch that will wear a lot of guys down. This race team is a viable race team. As good as the morale is and as good as these guys are working together, as good as Mike Ford and I are communicating together, certainly we're not going to get what we want every week, but I think this is a great start to a great future and a great building block for Ray Evernham and what he wants to build this race team into down the road."
"In this deal, you're going to ride the roller-coaster up and down. I don't care who you are. Guys who have had the most successful years have had a very stable foundation. I look back on my past years and I was stable in the 80s doing my own deal, but if I had to do that today I couldn't keep up. The 90s came along and I went to Junior (Johnson), and I walked in on a great team the first year with Tim Brewer and all the guys. It was already an established deal and I won races and nearly won the championship. Then Tim and Junior didn't see eye to eye and that kind of put the end to that team. Mike Beam and I spent the next two years trying to put it back together. In '95 I decided to do my own deal. I just kept going down different roads. I never could put things together in the right direction. Mike came along with me in late '99 or the first of 2000. We had some awful good runs with our deal in 2000. I didn't have the money to do it like it needs to be done today. They provided dedication behind me. When Ray came along, we turned top 20 finishes to top 15s and top 10s and top fives. Last year, maybe we finished a lap down. Now we finish in the lead lap. That goes to show you the dedication of the team and what these guys have done week in and week out.
"I don't think anybody can put it in perspective. I look back and I feel like I've had a second chance at life. I tell you one thing about Ray. Regardless of how we ran all last year, he'd call me on Mondays and say he'd get me a better race car the next week. You don't know how good that made me feel. That made me want to come back and drive the car a little bit harder. I feel like I've had a second chance and every bit of the struggles and trials and tribulations you went through in the 90s, I'm glad I stuck through it.
"It seems like everybody is too easy to count you out, and then you stop believing in yourself. When Ray came to me, I couldn't understand with my past record why he would want to hire me. At that point in time, I hadn't done much of anything. I thought maybe he needed a psychologist. First off for owning a race team, and secondly for hiring me. Mike had brought something to me that I'd lacked for a number of years. It's that consistency and foundation that every driver needs out there. That solid foundation gives me more confidence on the race track and gives those guys more confidence in the decisions they make every minute of every day. That's a two-way street. It's a never-ending evolution. I learn something new every time I come to the race track.
"It's been a long time coming, and it's just like I keep telling these guys. I'm on the short end of the stick than the younger guys. They've got a lot of future left and a long way to go. Regardless of how long I driver, whether it's next week, next month or 10 years from now, it's going to eventually push you out. That's part of evolution. I'm just as proud of where I'm at today. Everybody has been so good to me. I feel like it's a joy to come in the garage and drive the race car. I want to focus on the race car. I want to focus less on doing other stuff. I think I've got a good balance in my life right now, not only from my family side from my professional side. I've been able to put things in perspective. With all that said, that gives me the confidence to come in each and every week.
"A couple of things were going on yesterday. We were scuffing a couple sets of tires in and we were going out and the race track kept getting cooler and faster. It almost started to rain down in three and four and I think it eventually did. The race track had already started cooling off. I think that goes to show, just like qualifying transpired on Saturday. We got the luck of the draw and we ended up second. I was proud of our run, but still, this old race track changes a lot. That's the biggest thing the guys had to decide yesterday afternoon, how we were going to start this race to keep the car under us all day long."
MIKE FORD (Crew chief No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"We came and tested a few weeks back. We had a plan. We were going to sacrifice a little bit in qualifying trim. A lot of people come here and spend two days trying to qualify. We had our eyes set on the trophy. That's what we wanted to accomplish. We had a plan set for it and it took a few weeks prepare. We spent a lot of time on the race track trying to answer the questions that our race cars have left us a little bit short on in the past. We answered some of those and it panned out for us last week at Pocono. We were able to learn a little more coming here and we found a little speed in race trim."
RAY EVERNHAM (Car owner Evernham Motorsports Dodge Intrepid R/Ts)
"I built a team when I built the 24. I feel like I'm building an organization now. A turning point for them at the end of last year when they started to run good, Mike got his guys together. They had had some setbacks, but he went into this winter with a plan about how he was going to approach the season. I like that because that's the way I used to be. He's very methodical. A team's got to be built around leadership. Mike has some great guys on his team, and he's matured very much as a great leader. I don't know that it parallels anything at Hendrick. I don't compare it to that. Mike does things differently than I did at Hendrick. Mike respects Bill, and all the guys know that Bill Elliott will drive the car hard on Sunday. They work together well. It wasn't that we said we want to make it like Hendrick. We want to make it like Evernham Motorsports with Dodge being new and Mike's got a group of young guys and they're going to do things in different ways."
"I really still can't believe what these guys have done for me. Bill and Mike are two of the first people I hired. You dream about days like this. I know how hard these guys work. Mike had a plan coming here and it was something everybody knew would work for Bill. They put it together and for the past two weeks they have put a heck of a car on the race track. Mike is very methodical and very intense, and I'm just very proud. I feel like a parent today. When I won here as a crew chief, it was all mechanical. You were proud of you mechanical accomplishments. Today I think it was overwhelming to know how happy it would make him and what it meant to Mike. I know what it meant to me and all the 9 guys."
