NASCAR : BUSCH, BIFFLE AND KENSETH POST TOP 10 FINISHES AT LAS VEGAS
HERMIE SADLER – No. 66 Peak Fitness Taurus (Finished 33rd) – “I made a mistake. There were 50 laps to go in the race and I should have just been a little bit more content where I was. We were working on the car and trying to get better and I was trying to go as hard as I could every lap and it just got away from me. No excuses. I was just trying too hard. It’s part of the learning process that we’ll go through, but we’ll be back at Atlanta next week to try it again.” YOU GOT SOME LAPS BEHIND YOU AT LEAST. “We had to get through this first. The only disappointing thing is not to finish. We really wanted to finish, but the pit crew did good. The guys worked on the car hard. Everybody worked hard. The driver just made a mistake.”
KURT BUSCH – No. 97 IRWIN/Sharpie Taurus (Finished 3rd) – “I’m very proud of him (Kyle). Our car ran great, we just didn’t have track position because of one bad stop. But it was an awesome for our Sharpie Ford. This was the first time I really felt like we were in contention at Vegas. I understand you have to run for a championship and when I come to Vegas it feels like it’s the Daytona 500. Congratulations to my little brother and it officially stops now – the advice to Kyle because he beat me fair and square.” DOES THIS TAKE SOME PRESSURE OFF? “It was great. I wish we could have picked up the W for the hometown crowd, but there’s a great group of people out there – probably 150,000 strong that saw a great race today. We just hope that we can do it again when we come back next year.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 National Guard/Subway Taurus (Finished 6th) – “It was a good day. Something was wrong in the drive train because it was vibrating so bad. I’m sure it vibrated bad enough to affect the handling of the car because it unhooked the tires from the race track. That’s unfortunate. We just couldn’t get it fixed in practice. IT WAS A GOOD POINTS DAY. “Yeah, it is. We’re trying to make the chase and we know what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to keep our head on straight and just have good runs. I was just disappointed. I had a really good car and I couldn’t get the balance between tight and loose balanced out, but that’s the way it is.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Taurus (Finished 8th) – “We didn’t run very good at all, we just had the best pit crew on pit road today. We had great stops that kept us in contention. We ran bad. We had a fuel problem. I made a dumb mistake and got into Elliott. I just didn’t expect him to swap lanes. He came from the lap-down lane in front of me and I couldn’t get slowed down. I spun him out and ended up wrecking our own fender. That messed up his day a little bit, but I’m glad it wasn’t worse. I feel bad about that. It was a dumb mistake and just bad judgment. That got us behind and we just had an uphill battle all day.” THIS HELPS IN THE POINTS. “Yeah, I don’t know what the streak is because I hate to talk about streaks, but it’s been like 10 races or something since we’ve had a top 10, so we’ve got to crawl before we can walk. At least we finished today and got a decent finish for how bad we ran, so if we get our performance back to where it was at California – hopefully at Atlanta – and have decent luck, hopefully we’ll get another good finish.” ANY TIME WHEN YOU HAD A CAR THAT COULD CONTEND? “Not really. We got up front and got our lap back and that made us look like it was fast, but it wasn’t very fast. It was in clean air and I just overdrove it and got out there as fast as we could.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 World Financial Group Taurus (Finished 14th) – “My car was a rocket ship and we got caught in that wreck when we ran into the 38. That was frustrating because at that point I think we were the fastest car on the race track, so I guess you can’t say enough about my guys. Bob Osborne and everybody did a great job. It was an awesome way to recover from that. I thought our day was over and they just battled back. To come out of it 14th, that’s making the most of a really bad day. I’m really proud of them and we’ll just go on to Atlanta and do our best.”
DALE JARRETT – No. 88 UPS Taurus (Finished 18th) – “I don’t know exactly where we’re missing it, but there’s something we’re not doing. Different sets of tires just affect it too much. We get to where I thought we made the car a lot better and run our way back towards tenth and the next thing you know we’re sliding around and everybody is passing us. I don’t know. There’s something that we’re missing. We’re just not getting it done yet.”
DOUG YATES, Engine Builder – Roush-Yates Engines – WHAT HAPPENED TO MARK’S ENGINE? “Something happened to the number four cylinder intake, but we’re not sure. We’ll have to get home and see, but I don’t think it dropped a valve because it kept running. We came in and disconnected that cylinder and went back out, but I don’t know. We’ll just have to see when we get home.”
RICKY RUDD – No. 21 Motorcraft Genuine Parts Taurus (Finished 37th) – “It’s just been a real frustrating season. The first three races - we’ve wrecked in all three of them. I don’t know what happened down in turn one there. Someone turned the 25 and there wasn’t anywhere to go. Our goal was just to run real conservative. Just wait and go to the front toward the end of the race if the car would do it. And we didn’t even get going again. The crew did a great job of patching that car up and getting it back out there where it could run. It was pretty bad. Usually people would put a car that bad on the truck and leave, but these guys didn’t do that. But, it’s just three races of 36.”
KURT BUSCH PRESS CONFERENCE – “We did better than I thought we could do today. It was an awesome effort for our Sharpie Ford with the competitive advantage that the Roush guys have seemed to have had here at this, we just didn’t quite slide into Victory Lane like we thought. But it was a super effort. We had to overcome a bad pit stop that put us in the back, but we were able to charge our way back to the front. I didn’t think we had enough time, but the only time I beat my little brother today was to the media center. He was pretty stout. I’m very proud of him. Just to watch him up there compete with the best of the best today, he did a super job. I officially have to cut it off now. No more advice for Kyle because he beat me.”
WHAT KIND OF BRAGGING RIGHTS WILL THIS GIVE KYLE? “He did it at Vegas of all places. He knows he’s got work to do with his team and getting himself comfortable at all the race tracks, but he definitely can take the four-wheeler and spray rocks on the side of my truck if he wants. He did a great job. I’m real proud of him. I’m beside myself really because I didn’t expect this from him so early, but I talked him up like he couldn’t do any worse and he was really coming together quicker than I thought, but those Hendrick guys will take care of him.”
IS HE STILL GONNA BE THE SHRUB? “I knew this was gonna be a roast when I came in here today (laughing). No, he’s my little brother and he’s being taken care of by the Hendrick group, Kellogg’s, and everybody over there is gonna help him mature as a 19-year-old. He will eventually race in the Bud Shootout one day, so I’ve got that one-up on him, but he’s gonna be competitive and we’ll see how he does at some of the short tracks coming up because that’s where we go after Atlanta. We go to Bristol and Martinsville.”
YOU MUST FEEL GOOD WITH THIS BEING YOUR BEST FINISH HERE. “Yeah, for me I’m very excited about our finish. I didn’t know that we would finish as well as we did and then after the problem we had I thought we were buried because it is tough to maneuver your way back up front. For us, it was a great effort. Each of the years that I’ve been here we’ve had small things happen to us. In my rookie year, you’re a rookie once and you finish where you can. I ended up 11th. I think I’ve blown up a motor. I think I’ve crashed once. Last year we finished ninth, so this year was my fifth run to get a top five. It’s great because all the excitement and the fans – you come off a championship year and you’ve got a checklist of what things you want to do and Vegas is definitely on my check list.”
WERE YOU MORE RELAXED THE LAST FEW LAPS TODAY? “The championship definitely taught me a bunch of different things that I didn’t know. With running in the top 10 every week and having to finish as if every race was the last race during the chase last year, it teaches a driver more patience than anything and when you have patience to look at what lap is what and when to attack a race track, then you’re more comfortable and you actually gain speed out on the race track. Kyle proved today, just as anybody can, you have to have a car that’s dialed in and overcome all the obstacles and when you’ve got a fast race car like that you can dial it in. We just weren’t that good today. We were just a little bit off. Kyle finished second and Jimmie Johnson won, so congratulations to those two.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE TO HAVE A SECOND RACE AT LAS VEGAS? “The track definitely has proved that it’s worthy of two dates. It’s obviously not owned by the group that controls where we go and race. Bruton (Smith) does a great job with all of his tracks – with Bristol and Atlanta – Sears Point. Everytime we go to any of these race tracks they prove and they stretch out everything that they can – even the people that work here – as thin as they can so that they put on a great show. It would make sense. Logistically, it would be a nightmare to get traffic scienced out during a night time event. We’re definitely open for the opportunity, it’s just a matter of getting everything dialed in behind the scenes. We know NASCAR is continuing to change and heading in a southwestern direction from the southeast, but all over the country there are people wanting two dates, so this place has definitely got its challenge ahead of it.”
IT APPEARS TO BE ROUSH VERSUS HENDRICK EARLY ON. “It’s gonna be a fun battle all the way to the end. That’s what it was last year with me and Roush Racing trying to beat two Hendrick cars for the chase for the championship. To start off this year with Gordon in Victory Lane and Biffle and now Johnson – with us having three top fives – you could say that Hendrick and Roush definitely have a distinct advantage over the other groups. But I saw Penske out there today and they were very competitive. Tony Stewart was lingering around. I see him making strides, so the Gibbs cars will be there. Ganassi is gonna hit on it. I think the tires – if you can remember back to 2001 – we had a big tire change and there wasn’t a single Roush car that won a race that year. So this year with the tires, they just have matched up with our cars and the Hendrick cars and away we go. I know the other teams will definitely be working overtime to catch us, whereas we might get stalled out with the knowledge we have right now. But we’re definitely riding a high with the way we came off the championship last year. To start off with these great finishes, I’m happy.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE ODDS MAKING HERE IN TOWN? “With looking at the odds being here in Vegas might be the only time we pay attention to it. But to have Kyle at such a good bet, it would make sense to put money on him or a guy like Joe Nemechek at 25:1 or something. With me being 8:1 or 10:1, it’s a good bet but you’re not gonna get that payoff. Vegas is fun with that aspect, but, obviously, we have to focus on the race car and every fan that’s out there is saying, ‘I’ve got money on you.’ It’s like, ‘Man, everybody’s got money on me.’ There’s a pot of gold at the end of the race track, too, so we’re going for that.”