Martin Captures Ford 200 Truck Race
FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES Ford 200 (Truck) November 17, 2006 Homestead-Miami Speedway
MARTIN WINS FOR THE SIXTH TIME IN 2006
· Mark Martin took the checkered flag for the seventh time in his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series career with tonight's victory. Martin started sixth and went to victory lane in his second series start at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
* In 14 races this season, Martin has driven to victory lane a series-high six times, and extended Roush Racing's all-time series win mark to 43, the most in series history.
· Ford has now won 78 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races all time, and eight in 2006 with three different drivers (Martin, Cook, Crawford).
* Ford's win today is its fifth truck series victory at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the most of any manufacturer (D. Rezendes -1, K. Irwin -1, R. Crawford -1, M. Wallace -1, M. Martin - 1).
* The last Ford truck series triumph at HMS occurred when Mike Wallace won this event in 1999.
MARK MARTIN-6-Scotts Ford F-150 (Finished 1st) - "This is the way we would have wrote it, if we could have wrote a story-book ending to it. We still have Sunday night to go. My car today wasn't too bad, my AAA Fusion. Tomorrow we're going to try to get it wired in this good. Mike Beam (crew chief) and these guys are a dream to work with. Golly, man, pretty incredible to drive this stuff." HOW MUCH DOES IT MEAN TO YOU TO GIVE JACK ROUSH ANOTHER TROPHY? "It does mean an incredible lot, but this is a team effort. We had huge horsepower under the hood today with our Roush-Yates power. This is the way to end it up with the 6. It's a good thing that there's a number 6 on the side of this truck. Like I said, we lacked two feet of winning this Cup race last year, and I know that's asking a lot." TALK ABOUT RACING GAUGHAN AT THE END. "Brendan really had that top line working there, and I just had to be real careful. I didn't want to make any mistakes. We had a great truck here and we just wanted to make sure that we made the pass clean and didn't have any trouble there."
ERIK DARNELL-99-Woolrich Ford F-150 (Finished 3rd) - "John Quinn (crew chief) and all of the guys on this whole team did a great job tonight. We kind of got bit on pit road a couple of times there, but the guys really nailed the pit stop and got pretty good track position and John made the right adjustments on the truck. The thing was pretty good there at the end. I didn't quite have enough for Mark, but if I had about five more laps, I might have been able to race Brendan there." YOU WERE ABLE TO CLINCH ROOKIE-OF-THE-YEAR HONORS THIS YEAR. "That was our ultimate goal at the beginning of the year. If you at who Jack brought through the truck series, you look at Carl Edwards, you look at Greg Biffle, you look at Kurt Busch, those guys that he has had in his truck, and they've all gone on and won rookie of the year in the truck series and gone on to great things in Nextel Cup. That's my ultimate dream out here, and I think this is my first step to achieving my goal."
TERRY COOK-10-Ford Power Stroke Diesel by Int'l F-150 (Finished 10th) - "The weekend started off real good. We were real good in practice. We tried something completely new suspension-wise that we are not accustomed to running. We thought it was going to work here for us, and I can't say that it didn't. But, track position was everything tonight. We found that out early on and we did a great job with the Ford Power Stroke Diesel by Int'l truck to work the track position and get to the front after having a very sub-par performance in qualifying. Our ultimate goal this weekend was to finish in the top 10 in points and I think we achieved that. It gives us something to build on. We're trying to put this program together for next year, and hopefully this will seal the deal to do that and continue to move on." IS THERE SOME UNCERTAINTY FOR YOU HEADING INTO THE OFF-SEASON? "It's never any fun. A top-10 finish and a top-10 points finish doesn't mean anything. It's all about catching somebody's eye and somebody making the right decision, I hope, at any rate. There's a lot of uncertainty, and Monday morning's coming and I basically don't have a job, and it's tough. We'll be looking and hopefully I find something soon."
MICHEL JOURDAIN, JR.-50-PurposeMoney.com Ford F-150 (Finished 31st) - "To drive for Jack Roush, it's a really big dream come true. It's an amazing thing. It was a really good opportunity, and I'm really happy that it worked out. It was very important for me to do it." YOUR RUN TONIGHT WAS SPOILED BY AN EARLY INCIDENT. IT APPEARED THAT YOU HAD NOWHERE TO GO TO AVOID CONTACT. "That's exactly right. I had nowhere to go, and that was it."
ERIK DARNELL RAYBESTOS ROOKIE-OF-THE-YEAR PRESS CONFERENCE
"Well, our truck tonight was really good. John Quinn and all of the guys did a great job. Our whole Woolrich team did a great job. We had a couple of mishaps in the pits and got us behind a little bit, but they nailed the third stop and we were able to get some good track position and make a run there toward the end. We weren't as good as Mark, and we were catching Brendan there, but we just kind of ran out of laps. The season a whole, we can't complain. We had decent year, not quite what I was looking for. I didn't quite get to some of the goals that I was looking for. To come out of here the way we did and to win the Raybestos Rookie-of-the-Year deal, that was kind of our ultimate goal coming into the season. It's kind of mission accomplished as far as that goes."
"Well, for us, this is pretty big. I think we ended up in the last five races running in the top 10 for all of them. I think that just shows how well we've come together as a team, both myself and John Quinn working together, and just everybody on the team in general. I think it's going to give us quite a bit of momentum coming into next year. I think the last six or seven races of the year are just a preview for what's to come next year, and I'm hoping to run up front and we're going to be looking to be a championship contender."
MARK MARTIN PRESS CONFERENCE
"Well, to start with, this is the storybook ending, almost. This is the first segment. We lacked two feet last year of winning this race with Biffle beating us by two feet. It would be pretty incredible to be in contention again for that. This is sweet. Jack and I have done this a lot together and Sunday is our last chance, for a while anyway. You never know what'll happen in the future. I've seen a lot of crazy things happen over there. Anyway, this is sweet. We had a huge effort from Mike Beam and from Roush-Yates engines. We had an incredible engine under that hood and all year long, and really good Ford trucks. It was really awesome to have Scotts come on board. I remember back in January testing, I had no plans at all of running Daytona, and we made the deal that if they'd sponsor us that I'd run Daytona. We got the pole and won the race, so that was a pretty good way to start it off. We've been on a roll all year with that thing. It's just pretty special. It's great people and great equipment and it's been a lot of fun."
JACK ROUSH PRESS CONFERENCE
"I listen to Mark and I've learned things that sometimes that he says publicly that I haven't heard privately. I would look forward to negotiating with Mark for a return back to the Ford world and Roush Racing for anything that he would be interested in running for a championship. He's a championship man. It's going to be pretty hard to win the Cup championship. I've held out hope that we would get this one done, but we've had several things happen and we were off a little on performance and we just didn't get the deal closed. Again, it's more my fault than his. But, 19 years we've been doing this in Busch cars, Cup cars. Of course, Cup cars first and then Busch cars and now trucks, and, of course, this year it was all three. To win the first race for the F-150, to win the last race with the F-150, and to win six races with the No. 6 truck, there's some kind of karma there. I'm not sure what all that means, but it's pretty special. Mark is leaving Roush Racing, but he's not leaving Jack as a friend. We'll be friends as long as we live, I'm sure. It was a particular joy that we were able to share that here tonight with our friends from Ford. Ford had been through all their trials and tribulations, and they've done everything they could this year to support us by giving us parts for our engines and time in the wind tunnel for our aero, and, of course, helping with tooling where we needed to have things tooled to get competitive with what was happening in this series. Ford is very much a part of this, too, and we enjoy having them here since this was the Ford 200 tonight. It was awesome to share that with them. I look forward to trying to make a run it win the race Sunday night, and I guess Mark will be taking tomorrow off. Are you sure you need to take tomorrow off? At any rate, it's been a great run. I'm not going to get a tear tonight, but certainly I can tear up. It's been real special, and it's been sad."
(MARTIN CONTINUED)
"I think it's great for Todd. I raced against all three of them and all three of them are fierce competitors. Coming from a guy who's never won one, I would have to say that they don't need a title to make them (Bodines) great. Geoff Bodine did tremendous things in this sport, as well as Brett. Todd has been phenomenal this year. I would like to point out that I think our truck was second in the owner's points. Mike Beam mentioned that we only missed the championship by 30 points with four different drivers. You might want to check those facts before writing them, but I'm very proud of Roush Racing in all. On that note, it was nice to see. Todd and those guys certainly earned it. I saw them sweat pretty hard for it. In 2007, I'm not going to worry about points so much. It's been a long, hard road, and I would have to say, and with Jack's disappointment, maybe in the outcome of our year, one of my proudest moments was with five races to go, we were five points out. That was pretty special to me. All I wanted was a chance and we had a chance and things turned for the worse. I'm very proud of the effort that has been made by Roush Racing and especially by the 6 team all three years. The last three years have been phenomenal. We won't finish as high in the points this year as we did the other two years, so on paper it may not look as good, but believe me, the effort was spectacular. The effort was probably better than the last two. Sometimes the results don't show the true effort and sometimes the performance."
TALK ABOUT THE PASS YOU MADE ON BRENDAN AT THE END. "That was a good way to do it. We were in a situation where we didn't have somebody from behind us really pestering us, so we were able to make it fun and exciting for the fans. I had to make sure that I made that pass without making a mistake. Brendan was rolling around the top really well, and he didn't need me wrecking into him, and I didn't need to mess up another truck like I did like a bonehead at Atlanta at the start of the race. I was being very careful with that pass, and it was a lot of fun. This race track has matured greatly, and it's a fantastic place to race. He was riding right up by the wall and I was right down on the white line, so I was just trying to figure out a way to get it done where I could do it clean and safe and not jeopardize either one of us."
"This is the best program that I think I've ever been involved in, with Mike Beam and all of the guys there. It has kept me awake at night quite a bit, the decision to not be able to continue in that truck. It's just an incredible opportunity to drive such fantastic equipment and work with such incredible people. For some reason, the chemistry really worked with Mike Beam and Hal (Rolston, engineer) and the guys between us. I think it's pretty cool, pretty exciting to drive the Wood Brothers truck next year, the No. 21. History means an awful lot to me. I knew those boys when I was a boy. When I first came in 1981, I was 21 years old and that's probably about what those boys were, too, if that. We've been around a long time and I've admired them, and this is our first chance to work together on any project and it's a real special honor and a real special opportunity for us to do something together. Between five and 10 (races in 2007 in the No. 21 Ford F-150), probably closer to 10 than five. We're just working on all of the details. They haven't secured sponsor for it, but they've made a commitment to do a minimum of five races. They're working right now. They're pretty close on some things and hopefully it will work out."
TALK ABOUT HOW SPECIAL THIS WIN WOULD BE IF THIS WERE YOUR LAST WIN FOR JACK ROUSH. "Well, it would be real special to just win for Jack. I know everybody thinks it probably won't be, but this could be the last time that I ever win a NASCAR race, so the challenge is on. I'm faced with greater challenges going forward than I probably have been in many years because I'm interested in doing anything less that what we did tonight. That was some of the most fun that I've ever had and this is what it's all about. Some day it will come to end, but I hope it didn't come to an end tonight. This size, this shape of race track in this kind of equipment is a dream come true. I felt like I was 21 year old again out there tonight, and I'd like to latch on to that some in the future, so there's our challenge."