NASCAR WCUP: Driver Quotes, Post Race, Richmond
8 May 2000
Posted By Terry
Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
MIKE BLISS, NO. 27 VIAGRA PONTIAC GRAND PRIX:
"I got underneath the '42' car. I was alright. I was a little tight in
the
center, but I wasn't tight off. Coming off of four I was alright and
all-of-a-sudden it just took off. I was hoping nobody was beside me. I
knew Kenny (Irwin) was there but I wasn't hoping he wasn't right there.
We
got together and I got in the wall and took him. I feel bad that we took
him out and ourselves because we had a pretty good car tonight. We just
had
bad track position. It's just unfortunate. That didn't need to happen to
either one (of us)."WARD BURTON, NO. 22 CATERPILLAR PONTIAC GRAND PRIX (6TH): "Two weeks in a row the car was really awesome during 'Happy Hour.' It's more a lack of my experience than the team's. I thought it was set up pretty good. Obviously it wasn't. It pushed like a dump truck all night. But Tommy (Baldwin) and his guys, they don't ever give up. As long as I'm complaining they're changing. And they made some pretty big changes. That's one thing I've liked about Tommy from the get-go. Sometimes when I've got a big problem he's just not going to take a round of wedge out, he's going to do some major stuff and that's what I need." (ON TONIGHT BEING TOUGH) "This one is right up there. This was a hard night. It was hot. I had the cover off the oil reservoir or something because it started heating up quite a bit from lap one. But we'll take that, man. That's a pretty good run for us. We've been consistent. That's what it's all about."
JOHN ANDRETTI, NO. 43 STP/CHEERIOS PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: "We were just persistent. My pit crew did an excellent job tonight. They are the ones that kept us in the game. Without them it would have been tough because track position was everything. Obviously we weren't the fastest car. We struggled really bad through the middle of the corner. I thought we were pretty good in (turns) one and two but seemed to really struggle in (turns) three and four. And if you picked the wrong lane in traffic you were done. All you've got to do is look at who finished where. It was all track position. There were a couple really good cars but everybody else was just plain equal. You could pass somebody when they got boxed-in in traffic, but otherwise, there wasn't much racing going on."
KEN SCHRADER, NO. 36 M&M'S PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: "We can get this done. I think we proved that tonight we came from all the way back in 34th to finish near the front. We've still got a little ways to go but this is definitely a step in the right direction for the M&M's team. If we can keep running like we did tonight and get our qualifying better, we'll be where we need to be."
BOBBY LABONTE, NO. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: "The '88' (Dale Jarrett) and the '24' (Jeff Gordon) got together. Somehow I think the '24' got back up underneath the '88' and they were hooked. I went by them on the inside because I thought if they were going to screw around, I thought maybe they would just be slow. But I guess they wrecked and I straightened them out.
"It was just one of those deals. Sometimes you're in the right place at the right time and sometimes you're not. I definitely wasn't, but it could have been a lot worse." (HOW DID IT ALL START) "The '88' kind of slid up on the '24' into (turns) one and two, and got him (Gordon) high and rubbed him all the way up there, clipped him in the left front, the left front fender and all that stuff." (ON HANGING ON TO THE POINTS LEAD) "I guess that's kind of incredible in a way. Our Interstate Batteries Pontiac wasn't quite as good as we wanted it to be all night long. It didn't really turn like it should have. But we worked on it and worked on it and got a lot better. We made a lot of changes and I thought we had something going. But I spun out on my own off of (turn) four there trying to get underneath the '3' (Dale Earnhardt) and the '31' (Mike Skinner) while they were battling and lost some track position. We kind of got a little bit of it back there for awhile but then the '88' and the '24' got together. They hooked cars and came to the left in a hurry. They caught me in the right front and pretty much ended our night from then on. We should have finished at least ninth or 10th tonight. We didn't have the best car but we should have finished maybe 10th or ninth, or something like that. We just weren't quite good enough. We'll just have to try to get it better next time."
TONY STEWART, NO. 20 HOME DEPOT PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: "What could I do? What was I gonna do? I did everything I could do. It wasn't his fault. It wasn't my fault. It's just part of racing."
GREG ZIPADELLI, CREW CHIEF, NO. 20 HOME DEPOT PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: (ON THE GOOD RUN DESPITE THE END RESULT) "We haven't qualified as well as we have in the past, but we've had good cars and we just haven't been able to close deals. We had a really good car at California last week and a bunch of other ones, and we let 'em get away. These eighth-place finishes are starting to wear on me." (DID TONY TELL YOU ANYTHING ABOUT THE INCIDENT WITH DALE EARNHARDT, JR.) "He didn't have to tell me anything. You could see it. They hit. It looked like the 8 car was just trying to block him - do what everybody does, pull out and try to go all the way to the outside. He hit us, we suffered from it, and it didn't bother him any. That's just racing. It's going to happen all the time. We just need to start racing that way."
Text provided by Al Larsen
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