BUSCH EARNS POLE FOR 2004 FORD 400

Kurt Busch and Mark Martin both participated in a media Q&A session prior to practice on Friday morning at Homestead Miami Speedway, along with the other three drivers competing for the Nextel Cup. Busch holds an 18-point lead while Martin is in fifth-place, 82 points behind.

MARK MARTIN – No. 6 Viagra Taurus – “There’s no pressure on us at all. We came here to win. We came down last week and did testing and really ran good. Our team has done a fabulous job. It’s an honor and a privilege to be included in this group. We’ve had our disappointments throughout this chase and everybody is faced with the possibility of that and we may be too, but, no matter what, it’s been an awesome year. 2004 has been incredible, especially considering what 2003 was like.” YOU SEEM SO HAPPY TO BE HERE. “Comparatively speaking, I would say you’re right. 2003 was a miserable year for me and I was very, very concerned that that was the note that I was gonna end my Cup career on. I have a lot of encouragement and enthusiasm coming from the Viagra team. Pat Tryson and all the Viagra guys – a commitment that these guys are gonna stay with me for 2005 and I really believe there’s a chance that we can do an even better job in 2005, so I have a lot to be excited about.”

KURT BUSCH – No. 97 Sharpie/IRWIN Taurus – DOES THIS TRACK WORK TO YOUR STRENGTH? “This race track has gone over a facelift in the past 10 years that it’s existed. With the new format of the banking, providing for the gradual bank and allowing the cars to race side-by-side and put on a great show is much different than when I had a chance to win here back in 2002. So it’s a whole new face and a whole new outlook on what to do to win this championship and we’ve been in a great position all throughout this championship – to be able to go out and try to lead laps and finish solidly and then to watch somebody put together a hot streak is surreal. It’s unparalleled with what we’ve seen in Nextel Cup racing before, and to compete against that – it’s a slim advantage – it’s a look of zero, zero. We go into the final race to try to beat Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Dale, Jr. and Mark Martin for this championship.” YOUR SCENARIO IS THE SIMPLIST. “Maybe the card catalog or that phone book large as far as scenarios. If we would have had a great run at Atlanta, maybe that would have been a bit smaller, but it’s just a matter of doing the job of what your team is capable of and we’re capable of winning races. If we can do that on Sunday, yes, the format will be very simple for our Sharpie Ford. But to be able to compete against these guys and to have the season that we’ve had, we feel as if we’ve accomplished so much already. We’re prepared to win on Sunday, but we’re prepared to lose as well. But it would be a much sweeter situation to bring that hardware home on Monday morning.”

MARK MARTIN CONTINUED – GREEN, WHITE, CHECKER FINISH. WHAT WOULD THAT LOOK LIKE? “There usually is a wrecker in that scenario (laughter).

KURT BUSCH CONTINUED – IS THAT ANY DIFFERENT THAN A LONG GREEN FLAG RUN TO THE CHECKERED FLAG? “There’s a different mindset when you get to have a full fuel run and tire run to the end, knowing your position on the race track when that run began. But a green, white, checkered, that just throws all the cards up in the air. Hopefully, the right cards turn out right-side up with the 97 up on top.” CARS OR CARDS? “Both.”

MARK MARTIN CONTINUED – “I’ll also add to that, too. Under that scenario, you don’t have the lapped cars up there and that makes it a lot better. The really tough thing about these restarts is when there is a lot of pressure to get something done and you have all those lapped cars up the inside, too. That’s really when it gets pretty hairy out there, so you don’t have to do with the lapped cars up front in that scenario.” WHAT WAS YOUR INVOLVEMENT IN THE 1992 CHAMPIONSHIP THAT ALAN KULWICKI WON? “I remember being so impressed with Alan’s calculation of how he was willing to give up the win if he could just stay out and lead those last few precious laps that gave him the five bonus points. That took a lot of willpower. It was pretty incredible and he did what he had to do to lock up those five bonus points for leading the most laps before he made his final pit stop, instead of worrying so much about winning that race.” WHAT IF THERE’S AN EARLY RACE CAUTION? DO YOU PIT WITH LEAD LAP CARS OR STAY OUT TO LEAD A LAP? WHAT HAPPENS IF THREE OR FOUR STAY OUT TO LEAD A LAP? “That’s what would happen if I tried to stay out and lead a lap (laughing), so I’m not gonna do it because I’d be the last one in line waiting for it. So we’ll all take turns and I guess the next caution the next guy would get it.” ARE THE DEMANDS ON THE TEAM ANY DIFFERENT NOW THAN BEFORE? “For us, the first 26 were enough to break anybody’s back. We had mechanical failures in six of the first 12 races. There’s just no way I saw that we were gonna be able to make the chase. We had to race against tremendous teams like the way Kasey Kahne and his guys were running and Jeremy Mayfield and Jamie McMurray and Dale Jarrett. I mean, all these guys are tremendous and it was a huge race to get in and we were battling from behind. One of the biggest things is that these guys knew they were in all along and we didn’t. We had to fight and scratch our way in. We used all our tests but two, and the race tracks that we got to test at, I think, are gonna make a big difference. I think that we’re really gonna be strong here based on what we saw in the test and certainly we were strong at Atlanta. I wish we would have been comfortably in and be a little bit more prepared to do battle here in the chase, but if we would have saved anything, we might not have made it in and we desperately didn’t want to be on the outside looking in. I wouldn’t trade what we’ve done this year for anything, but we could have been a little bit more prepared if we would have known we were gonna be able to make it in. We just had to throw everything we had at it to get in.”

KURT BUSCH CONTINUED – DO YOU EXPECT ANY HELP FROM NASCAR ON SUNDAY? “One thing I already see that’s developed for this weekend is we have about 58 cars on the ground ready to qualify and when you have that, you’re gonna have the 43 best cars in the field. That gives a different perspective on what you see as a driver. Going back to last week, as drivers we always complain about small little things to try to help NASCAR see things from the driver’s point of view – whether the sun was staring us in the eyes, whether there are some slower cars out on the track – we’re just giving them the driver’s perspective on what we see. This weekend, I’ve been around for four years, and usually the last driver’s meeting is one of the most powerful ones of the entire year with Helton standing up and stating that we’ve got a different group of guys in a circumstance that allows them to win the championship. I’ve always been on the outside looking in. This time around I’ve got that opportunity to do so and I hope that everybody yields to the leaders that are up front and keeps that in mind all throughout the race.”

KURT BUSCH CONTINUED -- HOW BAD DO YOU WANT THAT CUP? “I’ve seen some of those NASCAR commercials – how bad have you got it. It’s to the point now where five guys have an opportunity to add something to their resume that we’ve all dreamed about as kids. Gordon’s got the championships out of this group, but there’s an opportunity for Jimmie, for Junior, for Mark. As many years as Mark has been running, I’m the one rooting for him to do it. I’m sure as a teammate, he’s rooting for me to do it in this position. It’s something where a lot of things have to fall into place and things have to help you throughout the race that you don’t know of, and, of course, you have to do the best job that you possibly can in the race car and not stretch beyond the reasonable control of your car and your team to chance something. That’s one thing that you don’t want to have to live with as a burden is something that was a mistake – a forced error. You don’t want to have that on Sunday, so this is a wonderful opportunity for our team to come to a level that we’ve never seen before, and whether the outcome is positive or negative, we have definitely made a stance for the 97 team to be competitive and one that can compete for a championship.”

MARK MARTIN CONTINUED – HOW BAD DO YOU WANT THAT CUP? “This is my next-to-last chance and I think everybody in this sport knows how hard I’m willing to work for this and how hard I have worked for this. At the same time, I’m not desperate. I’ve won a lot of championships, just not one of these cups. I’ve had a great career. I’m not done yet. I’m not done with 2004 until this thing is over with and I will be fierce in 2005. I will have a great team and I believe that I might have another chance at it if things will go our way. I’m really interested. I will be watching and I’ll be interested to see in 15 or 20 years if these guys are sitting up here. It’s truly an honor for me to race with these guys and to be a contender. Certainly, I would like to beat ‘em, but I will be watching. I’m a big fan. You guys don’t know, but I know the rate of difficulty to continue to do this for that amount of time and I will be watching (laughter).”

FORD 400 QUALIFYING QUOTES

MARK MARTIN – No. 6 Viagra Taurus (Qualified 11th) – “I’m disgusted with that. A lot of times I’m quick to blame myself come qualifying time, but I really drove hard. I got a good lap and I was two-tenths slower than practice. I know the sun is out and it’s hot, but it didn’t seem to bother Kasey Kahne any. I wish it wouldn’t have bothered us. I’m real disappointed with that. We were real fast in practice and I certainly don’t feel like I dropped the ball out there, but I don’t feel like the car did either, so I’m kind of confused. I’m disappointed. It won’t be bad, and it may turn out to be a decent starting spot, but it’s not gonna be what we thought we could do.”

DALE JARRETT – No. 88 UPS Taurus (Qualified 27th) – “It just seems that the track is a little hotter and it’s lost some grip. We actually ran close to the same time, so we either were too slow in practice or we did OK in qualifying. I actually thought we might have run a little faster there. The car felt pretty good. We worked on race trim this morning and the car felt really good in that, so I’m really looking forward to seeing everybody in that scenario tomorrow. I think we’ve got a pretty good race car.”

RICKY RUDD – No. 21 Motorcraft Taurus (Qualified 7th) – “I’m somewhat happy. I guess we got teased a little bit. We were fast in practice and a lot of guys have fallen off a little bit. I don’t know. We didn’t have the rear grip that I had in practice and we ran just about a tenth of a second slower. I wished I had that lap I ran in practice. I guess we wouldn’t have been on the pole, but we’d be second right now. I’m just really happy. Here we are getting frustrated because we didn’t win a pole. We’re sitting here fourth or so. We’ve come a long way. This is our Kansas car and I’m looking forward to racing it. We were here a couple of weeks ago and did nothing but work on race runs. I guess I’m more pleased about how it ran in qualifying trim because I really liked it in race trim.”

JOHN ANDRETTI – No. 14 VB/APlus at Sunoco Taurus (Qualified 23rd) – IT WAS AN EVENTFUL DAY, BUT IT TURNED OUT OK. “It was way too eventful. To put a car in the wall on the first lap on the track really stinks. I feel really bad for this whole team to do that, but I don’t know what happened quite honestly. I think we’ll figure it out, but we didn’t have time to figure it out. We just had to get the other car. Luckily, we had a car that was ready and everything. We got the race motor in and thanks to Robert Yates Racing and all of them. These guys did a great job. The Miller High Life Busch team came over and helped and the Powerstroke Diesel Truck team came over and helped, so we had guys in all different uniforms. These guys had never worked together before, but it went like magic and they got the car back out and got me some laps in practice because I still don’t have a clue where I’m going around here.” AFTER THE WEATHER TOOK YOU OUT OF QUALIFYING LAST WEEK, WAS TODAY MORE PRESSURE? “The last five or six weekends it’s Russian Roulette and the first five weekends of next year is gonna be Russian Roulette again. I guess Russian Roulette is OK, except for when the weather comes in and then it loads the whole chamber and you die no matter what. I think today said a lot about our team. They proved so much to me and I think a lot of other people. To be able to rebound like that is huge.”

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 National Guard/Subway Taurus (Qualified 2nd) – IT WAS A SOLID LAP. “Yeah, it really is. The guys have really worked hard on the National Guard Ford Taurus car here. It’s our best car. Doug and Bobby and all of the guys just do a great job. We made a small shock change just before our qualifying lap and it just really got down on the race track and I could use the throttle a lot. It was just a little bit too free. We were gonna go up a pound of air in the right rear, but I’m glad we didn’t. It was just right. I’m excited. I’ve got a really good car for Sunday. I’m pretty busy this weekend, so it’s a good way to start on Sunday.” HOW ARE YOU BALANCING YOUR TIME WITH ALL THREE RACES THIS WEEKEND? “I’m just running between each garage and make sure I spend enough time with each crew chief. It’s fun. I’m doing that Truck for Ford. Brien (Henry) did the paint scheme on it and won the challenge for fifth through eighth graders to paint the best truck and we’re excited to run that 44 truck for Rick Crawford today.” HOW WAS THE LAP? “It was a really good lap. The car was just perfect. It went down in the corner and the car rotated just right. I went for the throttle and it was just a little bit free and I just kind of drove the race car. The guys just did a great job with it. It’s our best Ford Taurus body that we have and it’s our best chassis. This is the car I won Michigan with and I’m just really excited about starting up front. I may not be on the pole, but I’m gonna be in the first two rows and that’s what counts.” HOW DO YOU THINK THE CAR WILL RACE? “It won Michigan and finished third at Kansas and led the whole day, so I’m expecting it to race the same way as it did those two.” WERE YOU SURPRISED WITH THE LAP? “I expected a good lap. I hadn’t really run a full-fledged, all-out lap yet and I figured I could get in the teens. I felt pretty confident about it and we got in the 11s.”

ELLIOTT SADLER – No. 38 M&M’s Taurus (Qualified 15th) – “We made some changes for qualifying, but just went the wrong way. It’s a shame to qualify that bad here, but we think we should be decent for the race. We’ll just try to work on it a little better and get it little more comfortable. Hopefully, we’ll be OK. Doug and the guys did a great job on the motor, but I just wasn’t able to use it. A lot of hard work went into it, but we’ll try to get ‘em on Sunday.”

KURT BUSCH – No. 97 Sharpie/IRWIN Taurus (Qualified 1st) – “I don’t really know what time the car ran, I just like qualifying here at Homestead because you get to feel the altitude. You really don’t have much altitude here and you get all the horsepower you can. You don’t feel like you’re doing a great lap, but the horsepower comes forth and you really put down a great number. It’s a tribute to Roush Racing and the Yates engine group on what they gave me for this piece and I just went to go make a lap. Maybe this car is telling me that it needs to run well on Sunday as well.” WHAT ABOUT THE POLE TODAY? “It’s something we didn’t expect. We knew we had a good car, but it was a lap that I hadn’t done yet today. I knew that there was no sense in doing it too early and you just trust the instincts of your race car, you trust your crew, and we picked up enough time today. I thought we could pick up two-tenths and we did the perfect amount.” WHAT DOES THIS DO FOR YOUR CHANCES SUNDAY? “I hope that people don’t get too far ahead of themselves. We can’t overlook anything in the pit area. This gives us a great opportunity to start off the race and lead a lap, and it puts us in the right mindset for what we need to do this weekend, which is win.” DOES THIS MAKE IT ANY EASIER FOR SUNDAY? “It does, but yet it doesn’t. There’s so much that can go on on Sunday. If I didn’t qualify well, I wouldn’t be standing here and we’d have that mindset of, ‘what do we have to do to get to the front,’ and work on our race car and make the setup right tomorrow in tomorrow’s practices. This just gives us a better starting spot. It gives us a great opportunity to maybe even lead the most laps and hold the other competitors at bay for not leading and keeping those five points to ourselves.”

KURT BUSCH POLE-WINNING PRESS CONFERENCE – WHAT STATEMENT DOES THIS MAKE? “First and foremost, is this Friday? I never knew we could do things like this on Friday. I’m somewhat puzzled at how we’re able to do so well – just a great balanced race car that we scienced out with what tires we needed to put on it as far as stickers or scuffs, and then as far as the tempo on what to push hard during qualifying. Everything fell into place for us. I knew I hit one and two perfectly on the second lap, I just threw away a little bit of time in three and four with sliding in and then getting on the gas and the car slid a little bit more. That was the information I relayed back to the crew, but when you slide with all four tires at the same time, there’s not much you can do as far as adjustment to help the car. It’s one of those laps. It’s really been a storybook effort thus far for this chase and this is a great token and a nice piece of hardware to gain and, of course, to get into the Bud Shootout next year. I was just joking in the pre-qualifying interview that we need a pole to get into the shootout and now here we are.”

WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF STARTING UP FRONT AND BEING IN CLEAN AIR? “One thing we’ve noticed when we’ve qualified well this year is we’ll run good early on in the race and then as we progress through the race, our car just doesn’t seem to turn as well. The front end loses the full amount of air that’s on it because you’re normally up front, but then later in the race some people pass you with pit strategy – two tires versus no tires, just fuel – and once your car gets behind people it doesn’t turn as well. So those are adjustments we have to look out for tomorrow in happy hour and not get ahead of ourselves. Yeah, we qualified well but this isn’t Sunday. This is Friday, so we need to work towards our Sunday goal.”

IS THERE A MENTAL ADVANTAGE WHERE YOU ARE RIGHT NOW? “As far as the mental advantage, it is a tremendous plus for us to be in this position to start up on the pole and to have the other competitors behind us. Gordon is top five, I believe. Jimmie Johnson is much further back. Those are the two guys that we’re first and foremost worried about. Then there’s the 8 car and the 6, but normally on Friday after we qualify, we look at what we have as a car. How did it react to our changes during the day? Today is just a short two-hour session. Tomorrow, we’ll now look into our process of what we’re gonna change during happy hour and put our program together and that’ll just allow us to move smoother through the weekend and to have that mindset. That’s what it takes as a team to stick together. It’s not to get wrapped up in, ‘we’re on the pole, they’re too far behind us,’ and then lose track of what adjustments you have to make on the race car for Saturday’s practice to make it a well handling car on Sunday.”

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO SEE IF YOUR CAR MISBEHAVES ON SUNDAY? “One question that I got last week was since you didn’t have many laps here the year before, what’s your mindset going into this race? Just to brush up, we were wrecked on lap four last year and didn’t get many laps at all on this new surface, so I looked at it as we’re almost a rookie coming to this race track. What better way than to have all this experience and all of this momentum and the knowledge and still be a rookie. We’re a rookie at this race track and that’s what’s helped us today with not camoflauging the true qualities of the car. What’s it handling like? In the past it did this, well today one change after the next helped us achieve what we needed to do. Once the race starts, we noticed in testing it’s about lap 30 that good cars come forward and some cars drop off, so that’s the focus we have to work on with our race trim. It’s not to pressure the tires as hard as we can for one lap or two, it’s to work on the setup so it lasts 45 to 50 laps. Lap 30 was when our car cycled over as far as when it began to slow up, which I thought was pretty good during testing. Some teams might slow up at lap 10, but they were much quicker than us during the first part of that run.”

YOU CAN’T FEEL SECURE BECAUSE THOSE GUYS WILL STILL BE COMING AT YOU. “They do have to chase us down, though. That’s the aspect of the mental side of it, knowing that they’re behind us. They’ve got to do the job to come up through the pack to pass cars. Whether it’s to take risks during pit stops and taking two tires, or not making and taking the time to take out a spring rubber, which adds two or three seconds to a pit stop. We know have that advantage and we can roll forward. It’s just the same as any other Sunday, though, you have to adjust to the changing track surface to win the race.”

HOW MUCH WILL YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE OTHER CONTENDERS ON SUNDAY? “I don’t really want to know anything. I don’t care to know and don’t really need to know as far as just different thoughts in my own mind. I need to stay focused on my race car and know what I’ve got to do to adjust on my race car. When you start to begin to look in different areas as far as where your competition is running, you lose focus to the attention to detail. Last week at Darlington, I noticed the 24 went backwards at the beginning and the 48 went forward, and we were going backwards during the middle stages of the race and then they were the cars that ran up front all race long. The 24 made adjustments, the 48 made the right corrections on their car to keep it at top-notch form, so you don’t want to pay attention to where they are, except for maybe the last final pit stop, or maybe the pit stop just before that so you can position yourself more aggressively if you need to. So towards the end of the race is when it all comes down to who is running where, what do I need to do? A unique opportunity that I have to pull back as far as experience from is in 2002, I came into the final race and I could have finished third in points or I could have finished eighth. That’s a lot more cars than what are involved with this championship chase. Obviously, it’s at a smaller level, but we had to do our job that day to the best of our ability and not worry about anybody else and adjust our car, and that’s what we did for that day, except for that last pit stop. I wanted to know who was running there and what kind of advantage I had or disadvantage I had to overcome.”

WHAT DO YOU MEAN WHEN YOU SAY YOU HAVE TO PREPARE TO LOSE THIS TITLE? “It’s a matter of learning at this rate that I have in NASCAR Nextel Cup racing that I was overwhelmed when I first got here on what to do, what to look at, and who to go for for experience. Jack Roush is that lead guy for me. He’s an engineer, he’s a racer guy and he’s a numbers guy. That’s what his backbone is and that’s who I am. I like to race hard. I like to know where I stand. I do look up to Jack Roush as my mentor on how to approach things. Jimmy Fennig is there with me by my side I would say 360 days out of the year and those other five I try to go somewhere else. So it’s Jimmy Fennig who I model myself after and what he’s done to bring me to this position and, so far, we’ve had so much fun together that I wouldn’t know what other way to do it.”

SO YOU TRY NOT TO GET TOO EXCITED ABOUT THINGS? “Yes, and if we do have that chance on Sunday to win, I’m probably gonna wreck a lot of things and blow off a lot of champagne bottles and do all the wrong things that a champion is not supposed to do because I’ll let it all pour out on Sunday, but, until then, we’ve got some work to do.”

DOES THIS ENERGY CARRY OVER TO NEXT YEAR REGARDLESS OF THE OUTCOME? “We hope that it does and, of course, you want it to. You want to always end something on a high note to know that there’s so much blue sky to look forward to. Next year, it’ll be the regular season when we start, it won’t be the 10-race playoff, and what I hope we’re able to achieve out of this successful run is somewhat of our secretive notes on what we did to approach this championship and I hope that we keep everything in place and that we go into the second Loudon next year on a high note and that we can go through those final 10 races with just as competitive a streak as what we’ve put together through these final 10.”

HOW DO YOU THINK YOU’LL FEEL ON SUNDAY WHEN IT’S OVER? “The approach that I’ve taken already is to take some time off and reflect on what this season has brought me and what it’s brought our team, our sponsors, and just the infrastructure of Roush Racing. What we can do better, we’ll think about shortly afterwards and what we can do to approach the 2005 season with a positive outlook and what we need to do to implement things into place, and I hope we’re able to do that. But these final 10 have definitely added a different burden than what most seasons have. This is only my fourth year. Mark has been through so many more seasons and been close to a championship and when you’re in this position, it weighs heavily on you, but it’s something you dream about as a kid and when you’re a kid, you’re always having fun. This has definitely been a fun experience – to be able to compete at this level and have this opportunity on Sunday.”

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM THE 17 AND THEIR STRUGGLES TO TRY TO REPEAT? “They’re a team that’s always looking on the cutting edge of technology on what to change and what to do and the success that they have is they do it at the right times. At the end of last season, that wasn’t the correct time for them to implement any new ideas. It was their time to run consistently and do the job they had to do. They had some bad races – Kansas and a couple others mixed in – then there was the race, Dover, at the end of his season last year, I saw him go backwards as fast as anybody and at the end of the race he finished fourth. I was like, ‘Wait a minute. That wasn’t supposed to happen. How did they do that?’ Those are the days that I’ve tried to piece into my knowledge and to what we need to do as a team. Those are the days that are quiet, though, on Matt Kenseth’s radar for his championship effort.”