NASCAR NOTES & QUOTES--SUBWAY 500 QUALIFYING

 

JASON LEFFLER, NO. 0 NETZERO PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: "That's right where we practiced, and it was an uneventful, smooth lap. We ended up like 29th in practice and we didn't make any mistakes, so that's about all you can ask for."

 

DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 8 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: "I don't know if that's going to be good enough, but it was fast. We had a great car, and we've always done really well here. I'm excited about Sunday; I have a good enough car to win, as long as I don't make any mistakes. We'll get us a good starting spot; hopefully it'll get us in the top five." WAS THAT 20.35 A PERFECT LAP? "Naw, never. I don't know if anybody's ever run a perfect lap here."

 

TERRY LABONTE, NO. 5 KELLOGG'S/got milk? CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: "We weren't very good in practice and we made a lot of changes and are trying to get a little better. That's the fastest we've run right there, so it got better for us."

 

BOBBY LABONTE, NO. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: "That was a pretty fast lap. I'm not sure where our Chevrolet is going to wind up, but it shouldn't be 39th like it was the last time we were here. It was pretty good. We ran about that in practice, pretty close to that. We'd have liked to have picked up some more, but."

 

JOE NEMECHEK, NO. 25 UAW-DELPHI CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: "I think that's pretty good. We were fighting what I call the 'cold tire syndrome.' The car just really wanted to be loose there at the start and it's just trying not to spin the rear tires too bad. It's a very fine line between trying to go fast, and if you bust loose, you kill your whole momentum. You have to work on it really hard."

 

JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DuPONT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: "It's not over yet, but it's been a great day for the DuPont Chevrolet. We were pretty good in practice, but when we went to make our qualifying runs, we didn't pick up as much as I hoped we would. We made some adjustments and the guys did a great job. The laps were good and smooth and I just tried to get as clean a lap as possible on that last lap. Temperatures cooled down a little bit for qualifying, and last time we were here we picked up two tenths from where we practiced and I was hoping we could do that again, and that's exactly what we picked up. 

 

MIKE SKINNER, NO. 01 U.S. ARMY PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: "Yeah, I was really hungry. I wanted to go out with a good qualifying effort, and I'm happy with that lap. That's the fastest we've been and it more than backed up what we'd run earlier. We made a couple of subtle adjustments to the car and I let them free it up a little too much for me. I'd been a little tight and I usually get loose qualifying. I didn't, so it's probably driver error." DESCRIBE YOUR TENURE HERE WITH THE U.S. ARMY PONTIAC TEAM. "Ryan Pemberton and Jay Frye and all these guys on the MB2 Army car have just been like family. It's just gotten better and better every week. We've gotten our act together a lot better on Fridays, and we're just starting to learn each other for our racing stuff. It's a shame that every time I get really good chemistry with a crew chief and a team, we seem to get the rug jerked out from under us. I guess somebody at Hendrick Motorsports wanted another driver in here, so I wish them all the luck and a lot of success and a lot of success to this race team. I want to see them do really well. I have a bunch of new friends, and friends are hard to find these days."

 

RICKY CRAVEN, NO. 32 TIDE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: "It was OK. It wasn't what we had hoped for or expected, but it was OK. The Tide Pontiac really hadn't driven that good in practice, but I feel really good about it in race trim tomorrow and Sunday. The Tide car has led a lot of laps here. I'm looking forward to it and I really appreciate the guys' efforts on it today, because the Tide Pontiac just didn't unload that fast."

 

DALE EARNHARDT JR. POST-QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE:

 

Earnhardt Jr. will start third in Sunday's Subway 500 in his Chevrolet. He was fastest in the morning practice session and held the pole much of the day. It is his third top-10 start in four short-track races this season, and he was on the outside of the front row here in April.

 

TALK ABOUT YOUR LAP. "We got a real early draw (5th), and I don't really know if that had any effect on it being better or not. We tested at Greenville-Pickens, and we've been running real good here lately, but we went and tested anyway. I'm really trying to go after the win this weekend. I think we have a great opportunity. The car seems to be on par as far as where it was last time we were here and it was a race-winning car then."

 

DO YOU FEEL PRETTY GOOD ABOUT YOUR CHANCES ON SUNDAY? "Yeah, I feel real good about it. We had a real good chance of winning the last time we were here and was second to Bobby, and the 32 had the rights on the lefts and the lefts on the rights and kind of doored us down in the corner on the restart. We felt like we would have been around Bobby in 

no time and took off and won that race, but track position is everything. We just have to keep good track position. I'm interested in how the new free-lap-back rule is going to work and we'll just see how the race unfolds. It'll be pretty interesting."

 

IT SEEMS LIKE NOBODY HAS NOTICED HOW WELL YOU'VE RACED ON SHORT TRACKS THIS YEAR. "That's all right. They noticed our road-course racing that we've done this year and that made me feel pretty good. I think it isn't necessarily the driver here; a lot of credit goes to the cars, our willingness to improve every time we come here to test or go anywhere else to test. I feel like you go somewhere and you run real bad and you chase the car all day long. Then you show up the next time and run real good, it's not like you've learned a whole lot as a driver. You just have a better car, and that's what we've done. We've improved out car a whole lot, learned a lot of things that we weren't doing that other teams were, and that has us up to speed and competitive. We have a real good long-run setup. We're about the same as everybody for 20-30 laps, and then I feel like we start to come on and they start to go away, the longer the green-flag run is. That's kind of where we've been a little snake-bit here the last several races. It's always come down to a 20 or 30-lap run to the finish, and we're no better than anybody else at that point in the race. Our strong point seems to be the long runs here. I'm real excited and happy that we are running good here. It was a real struggle for us when we first came on to this track when we came into the Cup series, and I'm glad we have our program here figured out."

 

ARE WE SEEING MORE MATURITY FROM YOU? "I just think my car has gotten a lot better. I feel like I've grown up a little. I don't act quite as foolish as I used to, but I don't know if I've gotten any better on the track. My car has gotten better. Maybe we are communicating a little better. They take me a little more seriously, they put a little more effort into what they do because of how much more seriously I take my job and what's on the line. That all kind of evolves over the years and hopefully, we continue to get better and better and better. We learn a lot at our tests, and we've tested really hard over the last three or four years, and that's why we're a little better every time we come here."

 

WHAT IS YOUR OUTLOOK ON THE POINTS? "I'd like to beat Kevin [Harvick] for second and I would like to close on Matt, but he's going to have to have a disastrous last several races and I don't see that coming. We'll just take what we can get. We've got some guys that are real close behind us and we could finish as low as 6th or 7th place in the points, so we have to be 

very guarded and very careful not to make any foolish mistakes and be pretty aggressive at the same time to catch the 29."

 

YOU WENT TO HOMESTEAD RECENTLY. WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE NEW TRACK? "They did a good job on it. The backstretch is a little higher than the frontstretch, so the entrance into Turn 3 is a real nice entrance. It's very similar to Turn 3 at Atlanta, so over time, of course, not this race. I told them there wasn't any chance in hell that there'd be anything but a one-groove race track this time around and that's just the way it's going to be. It's brand-new asphalt and the bottom is going to be where it's at. The transition in banking from one degree to another, you can't really see that. You can't tell it driving around in a car, you can't feel it that much. Maybe at higher speed you might be able to a little, but I can't see a big difference. Turns 3 and 4 are very good-looking corners. There's a lot of opportunity for passing on exit. The track is very wide right there. I'm not sure exactly whether it'll be a situation where you have a lot of race track or the car feeds out to the wall real fast and you don't have a lot of track, but it looks like there's going to be a lot of room. I drove on it in a rental car. The entry into Turn 1 is higher than the fronstretch, so it's kind of like driving up a hill. I'm not sure if that's going to be very susceptible to two-wide racing. It doesn't make any sense to go in and drive up the corner to go faster. From the center off it'll be two-wide racing, because it's very wide and it feeds out to the wall and you have a lot of racetrack out there. Turns 3 and 4 you enter down into the corner because the back straightaway is higher, so it should be interesting. It's going to be different racing on each end of the track. I was pretty impressed myself. It was really amazing. You go out there and you've seen it flat for so many years, and you walk in and it's like this big-assed, super-sized Dover before they concreted it."

 

THIS IS YOUR FOURTH YEAR IN WINSTON CUP. ARE YOU HAPPY WITH YOUR PROGRESS? "Yeah, I'm pretty happy with where I am as a driver. We thought we were going to come in here and do so much better that first year, and we really set ourselves up for such an upset and such a disappointment. We haven't had to struggle back. That was just how good we were when we came into the series. We've worked and worked and improved little by little, and I feel like we're really gaining in areas where we need to be gaining. I would be really upset and disappointed if I couldn't fix something that was broken, and it seems like every time we find something or an area where we need to improve, we can improve on it and we find a way to do better there. I feel like I'm with a team that can make things happen and win championships. That was one of the things that I based my decision to stay around on, was whether they could win the championships that I wanted to win before I retire."

 

YOU'VE HAD SOME CONFLICTS WITH THE TEAM IN THE PAST. HAVE YOU GOTTEN OVER THEM? "Yeah, we've gotten over some of our differences. There are still days when I walk in the shop and I'm not a very happy person with some of the people in there, but the thing about it is, I tell them all, even the new guys that come in, first off, to work here, you have to be my friend and that's first. If we can't be friends, then they need to find somewhere else to work. I can't work with people I can't get along with and don't want to hang out with and don't want to go do other stuff with. I want to work with people that have, not necessarily common interests, they don't have to like the same things I like, but I have to be able to get along with them. We've learned that over the last four years, especially. Me and Tony Jr. want to work together for a long time. Two years ago, we'd have told you we weren't the best match for each other. It could have been like Jake Elder and my father, who worked together for a point in the Busch Series. It was a great match. They did great and ran great, but they didn't do nothing but cuss at each other on the radio, so it didn't last too long. Me and Tony Jr. didn't want to see ourselves split up and we wanted to work it out, and we kind of got to where we can work together and do just fine. That goes for pretty much everybody on the team. If I can't get along with somebody, I grow pretty distant, and that doesn't work very well for you in this business."

 

HOW IMPORTANT IS STARTING NEAR THE FRONT FOR PIT POSITION? "It's pretty important. Pit location is pretty important at this track. Bobby Labonte was in the 22nd pit last yea rand he finished 2nd, but that was on a two-tire strategy. The No. 1 pit is probably the best, and any other pit down there in the curve in 1 and 2 is good because it's easy to get in and out of. There's several good pits here, where normally there's only about three or four optimum pits at most tracks. This track has a few extra pits that are pretty decent, so we'll just go ahead and take the third-best pit."

 

JEFF GORDON POST-QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE:

 

YOU ALWAYS SEEM TO RUN GOOD HERE. WHY? "We've had a pretty strong Martinsville package here, especially on qualifying day, for a number of years, but when we signed Robbie Loomis, I remember one of the things I was really excited about was going to Martinsville because of the success he had here with the Pettys. We hoped that we could take our package and his and blend them together and get even better here and we've been able to do that. We've been able to sit on poles and win, and we've led a lot of laps up here. We ran well here and won the race earlier in the season, but you know guys are going to come back and test. We didn't, but we hoped with a few little things we learned all year long that we could step it up a 

notch and it seems like it did. We were able to maintain a really good pace out there for qualifying."

 

IN 21 RACES HERE, YOU'VE NEVER HAD A DNF. "I don't know how that could be possible at this place. We have certainly run into our obstacles at this place. I remember the day the power steering pump broke, and I wanted to pull out with a DNF. But we were able to fight through it and get a pretty decent finish out of that day. It's hard to explain, other than that our team just focuses hard in all different departments, whether it be the engines, chassis, bodies, everything, just trying to make a foolproof car that gets all the way to the finish whether it's a 500-mile race or a 500-lap race. That's how we've won championships over the years. If you look at how awful our August and part of September was and still to be in the top 10 in points I think is pretty amazing."

 

YOU'VE LED THE MOST LAPS ON SHORT TRACKS THIS YEAR WITH 711. "Yeah, we've led the most laps overall, total. We've actually performed a lot better than our results show, and that's frustrating because I feel like we should be higher up in the points. We've had some trouble and the way the point system is now, if you have trouble you're not going to finish up there in the points. We're trying to get it back, with four or five top-fives in a row now and we're trying to do everything we can to finish out the season on a positive note and keep getting those top fives. Hopefully, with a great start like this, we can get a finish like we had here last time. A win would be awesome for us and continue to move our momentum forward in the right direction instead of the momentum we had in August."

 

YOU'VE ALWAYS QUALIFIED WELL HERE. WHY? "Qualifying has become important everywhere we go. We talk about track position, pit stops, pit strategy being important, and I can honestly say as far as pit road is concerned, there's nowhere we go where that No. 1 pit stall is more important than here. This place, it's crucial. It's so narrow, so tight. I think we do focus a lot on qualifying here, but I can't say that we put any more effort here than we do anywhere else. It just seems like our car does the things I like it to do, and whatever it is that I do here seems to work for the car as well. You don't have to worry about aerodynamics and a lot of other things that we have to worry about at other tracks. You just worry about the chassis setup and how that car rolls through the corner and drives up off the corner. I always put my effort into my second lap. Some guys do it on the first lap, and it's paid off for us."

 

IS THE QUALIFYING SETUP HERE CLOSER TO A RACE SETUP? "I think we're getting closer to our race setups at a lot of tracks. We used to have huge differences in setups from qualifying to the race and I don't see them changing near as much now as they used to. Most of it is just nose weight, things like that, air pressure. When you have the grip in the tires and you run that car hard into the corner and you get it to turn for a one-lap run, if you tried to do that five or six or seven laps in a row, the car would never turn. You're basing it off the grip level of the tires. We still do have to do some things different, but everywhere we go, the setups are getting closer and closer to the race setups because of the amount of downforce that we have in these cars, we're able to get away with it."

 

YOU USED TO WIN EVERY THREE RACES. HOW HARD IS IT TO HAVE JUST ONE VICTORY IN 2003? "The thing you have to realize, all you guys are paying attention to is Winston Cup. I've been racing a lot longer than in Busch and Cup and I didn't win a lot of races then. I would go on streaks where we would win and then we would go on losing streaks, whether it would be quarter-midgets, sprint cars, midgets.I look back throughout my career at things that would happen and it's like you ride the wave when it carries you and keep your chin up when it's not going your way. To me, even though I wasn't sitting in a room with the media and had fans out in the grandstands and the sponsors and all that, racing is still racing. I know that we have been very fortunate to win the number of races we've won in this series and the championships and I try to respect and enjoy every bit of it. But I'm also realistic about it. You can't keep that kind of momentum up all the time, and sometimes you have to get knocked down a little bit before you can climb back up there and be on top. We showed that in 1999 and 2000 and proved it in 2001. Here we are a couple of years later, and we have to get back up on top. A year like this year is a great year to be able to give us what it takes to be hungry and get back out there and get the momentum back on our side. I think we've put good cars out there this year and we've put a team out there that's good enough to win the championship, but we just haven't had the results. We can't blame anyone but ourselves when that stuff happens, but there are little areas we can improve on, but as a whole we've been a pretty solid team this year other than a couple of things."

 

DID YOU KNOW IT WAS INEVITABLE YEARS LIKE THIS WERE GOING TO HAPPEN? "I saw you guys building the expectations up and I was trying to push them back down. I won my 50th race and everybody was like, 'OK, when are you going to pass 200?' I'm like, 'come on guys, give me a break.' Throughout history, there are teams that have gone on rolls and we are one of them. I'm proud to be one of those teams because not a lot of them do it, where they go for a couple of years and do double-digit numbers or championships or whatever. 

From 1995 through 1998 and you add in 2001-we won seven in 1999-we won a bunch of races. I think that just because we haven't won as many races, we've still been top-5 in points and still done a lot of good things, but we haven't been as spectacular as we were in that stretch. We were one of those teams in history that went on a roll and won a bunch of races and it's hard to maintain that, especially these days. It's just hard to win that many races and when you do, how do you keep it going year after year? I'm more in amazement that we did it as many years as we did, and I fully expected that we weren't going to be able to maintain it. But that doesn't mean I don't expect for us to continue to challenge for championships and continue to win races, but not 10, 12 or 13 races. Ever since 1998, when we won 13, I've always been all about the championship. I don't care if I don't win any races, it's all about the championship, and as long as the points stay the way they are, you can win one race, no races or a couple and still win the championship,"

 

DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE THE PEOPLE TO GET BACK TO THE TOP OR ARE YOU CONSIDERING A MAJOR CHANGE FOR 2004? "I'm not sure what you think is a big change. I think everybody thinks there's a major change coming, but I know there aren't from what I see. If I evaluate this year or even last year, I can't put blame on any one person or point a finger at any one thing that has kept us from winning the championship. I can tell you that we were second, 135 points out in June, so there's no reason to make a major change when you go into August and all of a sudden you're backing into the fence a couple weeks in a row. Yeah, if we made some mistakes, maybe our fuel mileage and some of our gambles on fuel mileage has hurt us. That's the major change I'm thinking of, how I get better fuel mileage. It's not necessarily personnel changes. We do need a pit crew member. We have a fill-in guy in that role, and we need to find one that's not just good, solid and fast but who jells with the other guys out there. Does that mean we're going to change all the guys? Who knows? We're looking at it right now as we need one guy. Other than that, I just want to keep putting solid, fast race cars out there on the track. We put top-five race cars on the track almost every weekend, and we're in contention for the title in June going into July and then we had our troubles. Look at the last four or five weeks. We've been solid enough to win the championship, Just because we're not winning five or six races is what's got people's attention. That's not coming from me or the team."

 

WHAT WOULD YOU DO TO CHANGE THE CURRENT POINT SYSTEM? "I don't remember ever saying I wanted it to be changed. I'm just saying if they did make changes, it might not be a bad idea to spread out the top five or 10 positions, spread those points out a little 

bit more in between them, so that a win or a top-five means a lot more so that we can throw out some of these 30th and on back positions. One thing I don't like is that we come in and wreck a car and we patch it back up and go back out and ride around to finish 35th. At one time, that was necessary because not as many cars finished the race or finished on the lead lap. We don't have that problem any more and I think it's unnecessary and I think as close as the points are right now, it really is about consistency. If consistency is an issue, if people say we want the guy that wins the most races to win, that might be a way to go about it where you can throw out some of those bad finishes and the wins mean more. I'm going to race the series however the points are and I'm very proud to have won Winston Cup championships the way it is because I think it's more difficult." 

 

HAS THE TRACK HERE NOT GOTTEN BETTER OFF THE CORNERS AFTER THE GRINDING? "When I'm out there, it doesn't look like they ground the track, they grooved it. It's two totally different things to me. It looks like there are grooves in the track, not necessarily grinding. What happens is, the rubber gets put into those grooves and the car really sticks good on certain directions of that grooving. It has taken away any forward grip off the corner and any braking into the corner, but it has helped the cars turn in the middle of the corner. If you think about it, the grooving is adding side bite in the middle of the corner. It's almost like an airport runway thing, and what it has done is taken surface away from the track, so it actually has less grip down there, believe it or not. It grinds tires up a little more and has less grip, so it forces you to start running a higher line and opens up the bottom lane. Anybody can drive down there, but to pass a car you have to be a lot better than the car in front of you. It makes for great side-by-side racing, but not necessarily side-by-side passing."