GM RACING NASCAR NOTES & QUOTES--HOMESTEAD

GM RACING WINSTON CUP NOTES & QUOTES; FORD 400; HOMESTEAD-MIAMI SPEEDWAY; NOV. 16, 2003

 

MICHAEL WALTRIP, NO. 15 NAPA CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: NOTE: Waltrip was eliminated when a tire on his Monte Carlo cut down. "The right front cut down on me. Experience told me that I was fixing to get hurt, but I went up there and hit that nice cushiony wall and I didn't get hurt. We had a really strong car and I need to thank NAPA, DEI and Chevrolet. It was a really good year, but this isn't the way we wanted to end it."

 

BRIAN VICKERS, NO. 25 UAW-DELPHI CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: NOTE: Vickers was also eliminated when a right front tire went down on his car on lap 122. "Thanks to Homestead and ISC for the soft walls. That hit was a lot easier than it could have been. I don't really know what happened. It felt like it just cut down. Goodyear did a great job with this tire for the little time they had to get it ready, since the track wasn't paved until very late in the game. I can't wait for Daytona to get here."

 

KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 GM GOODWRENCH CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 2nd: "The GM Goodwrench Chevrolet was good all day. I hate that I was passing Ryan and those guys and got loose, but I guess that's part of it. What a way to end the year. I hate it for Bill Elliott, man. He means a lot to our sport, and I want to congratulate Matt Kenseth and his entire crew on everything they did this year. They deserve to be champions." TALK ABOUT THE SEASON. "We've had a great season. I hate that we had to have a wreck down there and for the most part it was a great season for us. These GM Goodwrench Chevrolet guys have done a great job all year, and to come back from what we were last year, it should mena good things for next year." MORE HARVICK TO FOLLOW

 

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE'S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 3rd: "When we got the lead early, I knew it was too easy. Something had to come up. We had a problem with the left rear tire or something on the left side, and we had to come in and pit. We had to fight to get our lap back, but we had such a great race car and such good work on pit road that we were able to advance and then on top of that, we had a fast race car. We got our lap back and were able to finish third." MORE JOHNSON TO FOLLOW

 

JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DuPONT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 5th: "It certainly was an awesome finish for us. We had a bunch of top-5s, a couple wins in the last few races and I couldn't be happier with the effort we put out today. We didn't have the best car, we 

got real tight and we just couldn't get it freed up enough. It seemed like the track kept getting tighter and tighter. We were adjusting and adjusting. The guys in the pits had a great last stop. I just have to thank everybody on this entire team and everybody at Hendrick Motorsports. They just put so much effort into us having competitive cars all year long and having a car to battle in the points all year long like we did. I also have to thank Winston for all their support over the years. I have had the pleasure to benefit from a lot of that support and I'm very thankful for what they do. I wish Matt Kenseth congratulations on his championship."

 

JOHNNY BENSON, NO. 10 VALVOLINE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: Finished 4th in his final ride in this car, and he was the highest-finishing Pontiac: "It was a great drive. I really have to thank Valvoline, MB2 and Hendrick Motorsports for giving us the opportunity to go and run this car. I hate that they're breaking it up. It's a great race team, and Jay Guy has done a tremendous job. We had a semi-bad year. We had some changes throughout the year. James Ince has done a tremendous job with this team and he needed to take a leave. I hate it. I think we all suffered from it, them wanting to make a change. I'm not going to complain. We had 15 top-5 finishes and a win for the team, and that's great. They can't take that away from me and no one can take it away from them either, so that's cool."

 

DALE EARNHARDT JR., NO. 8 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: "We should have run better. We wanted to run better, but the car wasn't good enough. We had a good year, had a lot of fun. I just want to go home and take some time off."

 

TONY STEWART, NO. 20 HOME DEPOT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Finished 7th: "It was a pretty uneventful day other than the start of the race. It was pretty exciting having a bunch of race car parts lying in the middle of the race track. I ran over a spring real hard and tore the front end up. The guys did a great job getting it put back together. The car was never quite as good as it was yesterday. We ran good all day, so I can't complain too much."

 

BOBBY LABONTE, NO. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: Winner: "Honestly, I had just told Fatback the lap before that, 'man, he [Bill Elliott] is just playing with us. He can go wherever he wants to.' He was fast all day, and it was just bad luck on his part. I'm not sure what happened. Either he ran out of gas like Michael said, or a tire 

was going down or something like that. He just started wiggling and I just started screaming on the radio. It was a gift. It was way cool for us to win a race. We've been a long time without it, since Atlanta the first race, so we just had a good day, a good car all weekend and we had a lot of fun." WHAT DID YOU DO TO FIX YOUR CAR EARLY IN THE RACE? "They just talked to me and that fixes it, uisually [laughter]. At the start of the race, the car was just terrible. We ran over the debris when the 97 wrecked, so we battled back. It was one of those fun days. Sometimes you can't do that. This is a great race track and you are able to do that here. Your tires will give up enough and you can set your car up for a longer run. It was a good race for us because we were able to counter back and get something out of it." MORE LABONTE TO FOLLOW 

 

POST-RACE PRESS CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS:

KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 GM GOODWRENCH CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO:

 

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON BILL ELLIOTT AND THE LAST LAP? "It's one of those deals where you shake your head for a guy who dominated a race like that. I've been there. It's probably the worst feeling in the world. It's never over until it's over, that's for sure. That's why most of the people stay in the grandstands and that's why our sport is so exciting to watch because it isn't over until the checkered flag falls."

 

DID ANYTHING HAPPEN TO YOUR CAR AS A RESULT OF THE LAP 5 SITUATION THAT MAY HAVE AFFECTED YOUR CAR LATER ON? "I don't think so. I think we got really lucky where the impact was on the side and it just caved the side in and not damage the hood or the front fenders. We were pretty fortunate in that whole mess."

 

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE THINGS YOU'LL BE WORKING ON DURING THE OFF-SEASON? "Well, Phoenix and Atlanta we were obviously in the wrong place at the wrong time. We were running in the top 10. But we've just got to get going at the beginning of the year. That's our main focus. We've got to come out of the box strong. We've got to do what we did in the second half of this year in the first half of next year because that's the reason Matt Kenseth was the champion this year. He came out of the box strong. He was consistent all year long and did what he had to do to run in the top 10 and the top five."

 

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE'S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO:

 

CAN YOU SUM UP THE SEASON AND THE RACE TODAY AT THE NEW HOMESTEAD MIAMI SPEEDWAY? "It was just a great year for the entire Lowe's team. I never in my wildest dreams expected to have six wins, The Winston, all the poles, and a fifth place finish last year and a second place finish this year. But we're here and it's been a reality to be this competitive through the midway point of last year. I'm just getting all I can every day every lap and so are Chad (Knaus, crew chief) and the entire team. We have a great relationship, great equipment, and great sponsors. You hear everybody saying that stuff. But it really is the truth. Our sport is about people. The top teams all have the same equipment. It's all about people. I'm so fortunate to have the crew that I do. They've made a sophomore finish 2nd this year."

 

CONSIDERING THE POINTS CHASE FOR THE TITLE AND TODAY'S RACE RESULTS, WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT THE NEW BREED OF DRIVERS? "Maybe in the last few years, the speed has been with these younger drivers but maybe not the consistency. Everybody out there is very smart race car drivers in learning the do's and don'ts and how to be consistent and not get into wrecks and have problems. I think the young faces you see will continue to be there. But at the same time it's not about look at Bill Elliott. He's been strong for the last three months. It's about communication and it's about people. It's going to be exciting for NASCAR next year with the new sponsorship with Nextel and what they're going to be able to do with regard to marketing and advertising of the sport and the young faces and even veterans of the sport. It's going to be even more competitive next year."

 

FINISHING SECOND, HOW FAR OFF WAS THE CHAMPIONSHIP? "Being the first loser doesn't bother me too much. I didn't expect to be in this position. Of course I wanted to win the championship this year. I wanted to win it last year and do something that no one's ever done. It doesn't mean that we're not putting in everything that we can. But we're in a position where we don't need to put any additional pressure on ourselves. If you look at history, it usually takes three, four, or five years to get the driver and the team into championship form. Maybe next year will be that special year for us. It takes a lot of luck. If you look at Matt Kenseth's year, he's been fast and done all the great things but he's had flat tires at the right point in time and only been caught up in one or two wrecks and blown one engine. That's hard to do. We'll give it one hundred percent next year and see what happens."

 

HOW BAD WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE TALLADEGA BACK? "Oh, there are a few of them. Talladega, Michigan - where we ran out of gas, Dover - where I was doing just fine but got greedy and tore my car up. So you look across the board and there are a lot of those out there. At the end of the year, the guy with the shortest list of 'what ifs' will be the champion. The competition is too close. Everybody is going to win. Everybody is going to win poles. Everybody is going to be up front. It's that 'what if' category at the end of the year."

 

DID YOU EXPERIENCE ANY TIRE PROBLEMS AND DID GOODYEAR WARN YOU AHEAD OF TIME? "Based on yesterday's race, the left fronts were blistering on the Busch cars. I was trying to take care of that while I was on the track today. But the only problem we had was one right rear started to chunk up on the longest run that we had. I didn't pick up a vibration or have any problems from it. I noticed that we needed to scuff to sort out which tires were tighter and which set was looser so we'd know how to put them on the car and not tune ourselves out of the race. But this race track is so fast, you're in the gas 70 percent of the time around here in race trim, if not more, in race trim. That's just pushing the race cars into the track and tearing the tires up and building a ton of heat and you're going to see things happen from that. Fortunately we didn't have any problems and I knew when I was making the tires mad and I laid off them a little bit to save my stuff at times."

 

HOW WAS THE RACING ON THE NEW HOMESTEAD MIAMI TRACK? "For a first race with the new asphalt to have as many grooves as we did out there, this is going to be a very exciting track for years to come. When it gets a summer or two on it, it's going to start to lose grip on the bottom and you're going to see that top groove with the extra banking coming into play. Typically, new tracks are single-file racing around the bottom. It's a parade. I don't think that was today's case. I went to the back three or four times and worked my way through there. I think they've done a great job. The only thing I would like to see happen is for us to use the race track to come into the pits and not the access road. Unfortunately we didn't have to pit under green because we would have had cars spinning and sliding up the race track."

 

CAN YOU ADDRESS WINSTON'S CONTRIBUTION TO THIS SPORT? "With only having two years in the Winston Cup Series, I've gotten to know the faces but I haven't really been able to see what they've done. When they entered into the sport, I was just a twinkle in my mom and dad's eyes. I wasn't even here (laughs). But I can say that I've wanted to race in Winston Cup all my life. Good or bad, I didn't realize that it was a cigarette brand. I thought it was just what NASCAR called it. That's all that I've ever known. That's what I've wanted to do and it's more popular than ever now.  But they've done a lot for the sport and some of the veterans can speak better to that than I can. I'm thankful for everything that they've done." 

 

BOBBY LABONTE POST-RACE PRESS CONFERENCE: NOTE: Sunday's victory in the Ford 400 was the second of the season for Labonte and the 21st of his career. It was also the 19th for Chevrolet this season, more than all the other manufacturers combined. He finished 8th in the final Winston Cup point standings.

 

HIGH DRAMA HERE IN THE DEBUT OF THE NEW HOMESTEAD-MIAMI SPEEDWAY. TALK ABOUT YOUR DAY TODAY. "Anybody know how much I won? It's usually a high-paying race and I want to make sure it stays the same after the repaving [laughter]. Our day was definitely up and down, or down and then up. Our race car was noit very conducive to the track early on. It just seemed like we couldn't get a hold of the race track. It was really greasy. I'm not sure why the first caution happened, but there was a big wreck on the back straightaway. I don't know what started it and things like that, but we ran over some stuff, had to come in and fix the nose a little bit, put some tires on it and get back going. On that restart, we were second-from-last. We had a good race car after that, it just seemed like at the start of the race there wasn't any grip. We took off, and then we had an air wrench break on us and we dropped back after getting to 7th. We came back up there, fought hard all day and Michael McSwain made some good adjustments to the car. I hope I gave him some good feedback. The track kind of came to us, our race car got better. On the last lap, it looked like I was going to finish second unless something happened to Bill Elliott, and lo and behold, it did. He had a dominant race car. Did he lead every lap? It looked like he should have or did. He pulled away from me a lap or two before that happened off Turn 2, and he came off Turn 2 and that thing started getting loose. I thought, 'man, I hope he isn't running through oil because I'm going to run through the same thing.' But evidently his tire started going down and we were able to get by him. You can see my emotions on that last lap went from low to high pretty quick, because I didn't think we had any chance to beat him. I couldn't believe it after that happened, but his misfortune was our good fortune."

 

DID YOU HAVE ANY TIRE PROBLEMS? "Yesterday in practice, we didn't have any problems. Our car was pretty comfortable, I thought, and it wasn't the fastest but it felt pretty good. The temperature wasn't going up and we didn't see any blistering or chunking, so that was pretty good. I don't think there was much problem today, although there was a cut tire on Bill 

Elliott's car, probably, and Michael Waltrip might have had a problem. Our car was pretty good and I thought we had a good hold on it. We didn't want to be too aggressive because it is a pretty fast race track and you can get in trouble if you do that."

 

TALK ABOUT THE EXCHANGE BETWEEN YOU AND MICHAEL AT THE END. "That restart, my car was probably a little bit better on the end of the restarts than it was, obviously, at the beginning. We ran a few laps there, probably at the same speed, he might have pulled me a little bit and I might have gained on him half a tenth and he'd pull me a tenth and I'd gain on him a half a tenth. The last two laps before that, he just ran through the bottom of Turns 1 and 2, and he hadn't been doing that. I was like, 'whew, he can just get down there and go.' His car has been good for 10 weeks in a row, now. It wasn't like it was the first time. He was good all day, and he led 189 laps, in case you don't know that. He was just motoring away. With two to go, I said, 'I want this win more than he does, maybe, but his car is really good right now.' There's no way, unless something happened, that I was going to pass him. He just pulled away that last little bit off the corner, and as a driver you can feel that and see that. I saw it. I was going into the corner, getting on the gas as fast as I could and trying to get it turned as much as I could and he was just pulling me. His stuff was going."

 

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT IN 2004 WITH SO MANY GUYS CAPABLE OF WINNING A TITLE? "It's good to finish on this note. I've won the last race three of the last seven or eight years. I won Atlanta twice the last year and I won this race here. It's always cool to win the last race because you can celebrate the offseason just a little longer than the next guy. I think that will be good for our team. Next year, you see guys like Ryan Newman, Jimmie Johnson, we don't know what Bill Elliott's going to do, you have Tony and myself, hopefully, and you have the guys that finished in the top 10 this year and others that were knocking on the door of the top 10 and guys that are coming up that could be in the top 10 too. It's no different than last year, but there's a few different names. If those guys do their jobs right and don't have any bad luck throughout the year, there's going to be a lot of good cars. It's just going to come down to who is the most consistent again, and who doesn't have the bad luck to go along with the misfortunes that other people might have. Matt Kenseth only won one race, and the top-fives and top-10s are what you shoot for that is the key. A lot of guys can do that."

 

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN A POSITION LIKE TODAY WHERE THE ROLES WERE REVERSED? "I don't think on the last lap, like that. I've had it happen with a few laps to go, but not the last lap. At Michigan in a Busch race, I had a half-straightaway lead and ran out of gas with 12 laps to go or something like that. I was out the tunnel by the time the race was over, and my wife is like, 'what are you doing?' I said, 'I quit, it was my last race anyway. I wasn't running for points.' I've had similar situations, but not that close to the finish. That's got to be tough. Bill is such a great guy, and he had the car to win. For that to happen, that has to be upsetting. I'd say there's not anybody better to handle that than him, because he's pretty laid back. He's not going to go in there and scream and holler. He's been around long enough to see what's going to happen. His decision, for what's going to happen in the future, I hope that doesn't make it any different. But if he's going to be that good, I don't know. He's getting better. He shouldn't give up or quit."

 

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO MATT KENSETH IN TERMS OF REPEATING? "You just try to tell him to do what he did this year. It's easier said than done. We tried the same thing. We were talking the other day, and Rusty Wallace said, 'man, I thought when I won my championship I was going to win 10 more.' It's just so hard after that, it seems like. You have a lot of momentum on your side until today and then you have to start over again. If you're second in points this year, you have No. 1 to go for. When you're first, it's a different type of thing to stay there. You just have to do the same thing they did this year, but they somehow think they're going to do better. You have to actually have to do better, because everybody else is doing better. You can't let it get to you."

 

DO YOU HAVE TO BE SMOOTH TO WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP OR IS IT MORE LIKE RYAN NEWMAN? "I don't know. Things have changed. Jimmie Johnson, Ryan Newman, Kurt Busch, some of those guys have put a little different twist on things this year. Matt Kenseth won one race this year, but he was still competitive week in and week out. It's not like he didn't try to win races, but he tried to finish in the top 10. Ryan and those guys tried to win races, and it got them caught some times, but they tried. It's not like Matt tried to finish 10th, but he finished 10th. It does put a different spin on it. I said last year that when the 12 car gets its act together and can run the whole race as fast as they do for 12 or 15 laps, they're going to be hard to beat. They were this year. That does make us all aware of what we have to do. They hit upon the right combination, the right balance. They wear the tires out evenly through the run, and that's a big 

deal now, especially when they don't wear out. My car doesn't get it. Not saying my car, but if my car doesn't wear tires as well as theirs does, they're getting better use out of their stuff than we are. We have to get better use out of our stuff. We have to be more chancy on pit road, take two tires or gas or stuff like that. It does change the way you think about things."

 

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE NEW TRACK? "Did you look at the lap times? Holy cow. It was really fast. They did a great job here making a race track that was great to race on. We've gone to a lot of tracks for the first time in the last five or six years and it's single file, single file single file, and you never get a groove up there. This thing had a groove when we got here Wednesday when we showed up and I heard it had a groove on Monday and Tuesday. It had more than one groove, in the middle, down low and mid high. I think they did a great job. It was a great track to race on, real fast and it reminds you of Charlotte, Atlanta, Michigan and California. It has its own uniqueness, because it doesn't have a quad-oval, tri-oval type of deal. It will only get better. I'm sure it won't be as black when we come here next year because of the sun here."

 

THE RACE TODAY SET A RECORD FOR NUMBER OF CAUTIONS AND LAPS. DID THE NEW TRACK CONTRIBUTE TO THAT? "With a track like this, you want to run two-wide. You have a lot better chance of getting into an accident running two-wide than you do running single-file. I think it just happened that way. A lot of times, the number of cautions today is with the lucky dog thing, because it takes them an extra laps or two to get things sorted out. The flags today, there were some crashes, some debris things, a couple of blown engines. A lot of guys were racing hard."

 

JIM CAMPBELL, MARKETING DIRECTOR, CHEVY RACING: "This was indeed a championship weekend for Chevrolet in many ways. We captured drivers' championships in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series with Travis Kvapil and the NASCAR Busch Series with Brian Vickers, and we captured the Manufacturers' Championship in the Winston Cup and Busch Series. Bobby Labonte certainly put an exclamation point on our championship weekend with his victory in the Winston Cup race, and four Chevrolets came home in the top five. We're proud of all the Chevrolet Monte Carlo teams for a great season. Monte Carlos won 19 of the 36 

races this season, and earned Chevy its 23rd Manufacturers' Championship of the modern era. It's been a great year."

 

DOUG DUCHARDT, DIRECTOR, GM RACING: "What a weekend for GM Racing. When we came into this weekend, the Craftsman Truck Series championship was undecided and the Busch Series championship was undecided. We earned both of those championships with Travis Kvapil [Trucks] and Brian Vickers [Busch Series], we won the Manufacturers' Championship in the Winston Cup and Busch Series, and GM Racing cars, both Chevrolet and Pontiac, won more races in Winston Cup than all the other manufacturers combined. That gives you some idea of Chevrolet's dominance of the Winston Cup season in 2003. Bobby Labonte earned the victory on Sunday, there were four Chevrolet Monte Carlos and one Pontiac Grand Prix in the top five and Terry Labonte worked his way into the top 10 in the final point standings, giving us seven of the top 10 drivers in Winston Cup. It was a great weekend for GM Racing and it capped a great year for Chevrolet."