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NASCAR WCUP: Bobby Labonte talks about his practice crash at Darlington

2 September 2000

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel

THOUGHTS FROM BOBBY LABONTE, NO. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES PONTIAC GRAND PRIX, FOLLOWING HIS PRACTICE CRASH:

"It was just a freak deal. The throttle did hang on it and got in the wall there going into (turn) three. We can't find out why, don't know why, probably never know why. It did it this time. It won't do it again. We tore up a good race car and know we've got to go to a backup car and just do the best we can."

(HOW DID THE BACKUP CAR FEEL IN PRACTICE?) "We only got one lap on the racetrack afterwards. It was OK. I took it kind of conservative. But it wasn't ready to qualify yet anyway."

(HOW IS HE FEELING PHYSICALLY?) "My back is sore, but it was kind of sore beforehand, so I can't really say that was the reason why. But it was a pretty hard hit. I can tell you it scares the heck of you when your throttle hangs like that. I'm glad I'm standing here right now. It definitely could have been a lot worse."

(DID HE HAVE A THROTTLE KILL SWITCH IN HIS CAR?) "There are two of them in there, but I didn't have time to hit either one."

(ON THE WAY PRACTICE HAD BEEN UP UNTIL THE INCIDENT) "We were practicing really good. The car was OK. We were like top 15 in practice and hadn't made a qualifying run yet, so I felt really good about it. But that car is not going to be worth anything for a while, so we've got this backup car out which is the same type of car that the other one was. We'll just got motor on through the weekend and see what we've got."

(DOES SOMETHING LIKE THIS GET INTO YOUR HEAD MORE DURING A POINTS RACE?) "Not really. Each weekend you go run and every weekend there is going to be some obstacle that you've got to get over. This is a bigger obstacle than we had last weekend or the weekend before or the weekend before, so we'll see what we can do with it and do the best we can."

"Certainly we didn't need this at all. It was unfortunate. But hey, sometimes breaks go your way and sometimes they don't. But it's still early. It's only Friday."

(DOES HE THINK HE'LL BE OK TO DRIVE SUNDAY?) "I think it will be alright. Like I said, it's still Friday. I guess right now I just look at it as 'no harm, no foul.' We're still OK. We've still got a car we can run, and we're going to go qualify here in a minute and see what we've got."

(HAS HE BEEN EXPERIENCING ANY CRAMPS LIKE HE HAD DURING THE BRISTOL RACE?) "No. That was a one shot deal for me, I hope. That was just a lack of electrolytes. I didn't have enough of those they said. "Trust me, after I got home on Monday I read the paper; I thought I was going to die by reading the paper, so why screw with a good story when it sounded really good? Evidently it sounded really good but it really wasn't that bad. I didn't even need anything after the race. I didn't want anything after the race. About 30 seconds and I was fine. But hey, it's one of those deals. No, that hasn't posed a problem at all."

(HOW MUCH TOUGHER DOES THIS MAKE IT ON HIM AT A TRACK THAT HE HAS STRUGGLED AT IN THE PAST?) "I don't think we've struggled here. I really don't. We were going to finish third here last time, and we had a screw-up. I came into the pits too hard and slid past the pits. So we don't struggle at this racetrack. We haven't finished as good as we need to and we haven't been running as good as we need to a few times. But we still run pretty good here and we still can run good here. There is no doubt in my mind about that. Everybody wrote me off on the road courses and we finished top five on both of them. So we struggled there last year and look what we did this year. I don't think you can count that."

Text provided by Al Larsen

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