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NASCAR WCUP: Cracker Barrel 500 Post-Race Notes and Quotes, Rusty Wallace

13 March 2000

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
RUSTY WALLACE --2-- Miller Lite Taurus (Finished 32nd) -- "Tony Stewart lost it up there, somebody did. There was no place to go. I tried to get away from it. My car was just about blown up though, it was smoking real bad."

YOU HAD A GREAT RUN GOING FROM THE BACK OF THE FIELD. "Basically what happened was we broke an exhaust header. When the header broke it caught the inside of the car on fire, believe it or not. There was smoke everywhere, so I had to pit under green thinking I had a tire going down because it was stinking like tire smoke real bad and the car had a squirrely feeling. We pitted and didn't find anything wrong with the tire and went back out and then it got really bad. Come to find out the header broke and it was catching the whole inside of the car on fire. Then we had something going wrong with the motor, it was spitting oil out the tailpipes and smoking on caution flags, but it wasn't affecting the way it was running. Man, it's just unfortunate because I had a real hot rod today. We started 30th and drove it up to fourth and everything was great and now this happens. But this wreck, I guess Stewart spun. I don't know what happened there. I had them all cleared on the outside and somebody came flying across the race track through the grass and got me in the door. Now we're trying to get it back out there and make just a couple of laps to get some points and that's it."

IT SEEMED LIKE THINGS WERE VERY RACEY TODAY, WAS IT DUE TO THE TIRE? "The tire was really hard to figure out. It's a great tire and it just took a lot different setup. Everybody was really really loose...my tire wear was great, my camber wear was great...everything was going good except this doggone header broke and that's what caused everything."

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