NASCAR WCUP: Pontiac driver notes and quotes, 'The Winston'
21 May 2000
Posted By Terry CallahanMotorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
WARD BURTON, NO. 22 CATERPILLAR PONTIAC GRAND PRIX:
(ON WHAT HAPPENED IN THE INCIDENT INVOLVING HIMSELF, MARK MARTIN AND TONY STEWART) "I don't know. Somebody must have forgotten their bifocals or something, and they just stuffed Mark right in the back. It was very weird. You know, this race is fun and is supposed to be exciting for the spectators, and obviously it's a big deal to try to win it. But at the cost of some of the stuff that was going on out there, I don't know if we're even going to run the damn thing next year."
BOBBY LABONTE, NO. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES PONTIAC GRAND PRIX:
(ON TIRE STRATEGY AT THE END OF THE RACE) "Our strategy was to put four of the best tires we could on it because it was handling so bad. We just wanted to be safe. We just did that knowing we just had a chance to finish somewhere in the top 10. That was our game plan anyway." (CAN A TEAM LEARN MUCH ABOUT THE '600' IN THE WINSTON)? "Not a whole lot. We'll bring back a different race car with a whole different set-up going into the race. I think this is just a Saturday night short track race really - it's just on a big track." (N THE WINSTON) "It is real exciting. We've done really good in it before. We just didn't do good this time here. We rolled a lot of dice this afternoon to try something. We just weren't hitting on anything. It is frustrating that we didn't do any better. I don't think we could have won but it would have been nice to have run more competitively, which we didn't do. We've got to try to work on that for next weekend."
TONY STEWART, NO. 20 HOME DEPOT PONTIAC GRAND PRIX:
(ON WHAT HAPPENED IN THE INCIDENT INVOLVING HIMSELF, MARK MARTIN AND WARD BURTON) "First of all I want to apologize to Mark Martin because I sure as heck didn't mean to get into him. I got a heck of a run off of two and got underneath him, and I didn't expect him to come down. I think he was just guarding his line and I misjudged him and got him." (ON WHAT HAPPENED IN THE INCIDENT THAT ENDED HIS NIGHT) "I don't know. All I saw in (turn) one was the '1' car sideways. We checked up real good, and I think Jeff (Gordon) was the one that hit us in the back. He didn't have anywhere to go either. It's just part of one them wild Saturday night races."
Text provided by Al Larsen
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