MARK MARTIN (#6 Valvoline Thunderbird):
"It was OK. We have a good-handling car, like we expected. We're short on speed, and we may have to deal with that this week. But we've got a good handling car and the slicker the track gets, the better off we'll be. We'll be in the thick of things by Sunday. I'm not too surprised to see the outcome. This was one race, two 10-lap sprints, and you expect to see Robert Yates' cars do well."
RICKY RUDD (#10 Tide Thunderbird): "We need some more get up and go, but we've got a car that will handle. It's the first time I've ever had a car at Daytona that I could drive on the bottom -- and pass. I think our 500 car is a little bit better driving car than this one. There was a lot of scrambling going on out there. It looked like a Richmond race. There wasn't much contact really. It was like the cars were going to hit each other, but an air barrier would get between them. The cars would wiggle a little bit and straighten back up. It wasn't so much hitting, but the air was bouncing the cars around. This shows today that we can get in there, tag along and mix it up a little bit. We'll work on a little more speed and see what happens with the motors. At Daytona, it's a 60-40 thing. You need to handle and you need the motor. But handling's a big factor. That's all we can do. We haven't found much to help the speed, so we've concentrated on making it handle."
BILL ELLIOTT (#94 McDonalds Thunderbird)
"That as fun. I enjoyed that. I don't know if my heart can stand it for the 500, but... Nobody was afraid to make it three-wide, but as slow as you run now, it was pretty easy to make it three-wdie. The problem is, as the track gets slick, I don't know that you'll want to do that It could be a problem later on. It seems like when you pull out and get beside another, your lap times get so slow that it's opened up a new lane out there -- one that doesn't need to be there. It's typical though. At Talladega, they make it four or five wide and we'll do that again. Today I think we shot ourselves in the foot when we worked on the other car so much to get it up to speed that we didn't have any time on this other motor. It ran a lot of temperature in the first segment and it still ran hot in the second segment. I'm pretty sure it hurt the motor"
TED MUSGRAVE (#16 The Family Channel Thunderbird)
I'm glad that's over. We learned quite a bit actually, even though we didn't run that great. With the new rules slowing the cars down, it still looks like we're going to need the same springs and shocks and everything that you've run here in the past. We thought it would require a big change, but it doesn't seem to be. We thought initially with the speed down, you could run a lot less spring or different wedge, but it doesn't look like that's going to be true."
JOHN ANDRETTI (#37 Kmart/Little Caesars Thunderbird)
"I think we a really had a strong car. And I know that everybody's going to say that, but we never had a chance to prove it. Unfortunately, we developed an oil leak and we had to come and fix it. There's no playing catch up in a 20-lap race -- especially when you're five or six laps down. I'm not quite sure what happened, but after it was fixed we could run with the best of them out there, but I didn't dare mix it up to much with the guys going for the the win. I hear black race cars are fastest, so I thought it was going to help to change ours today."
HUT STRICKLIN (#8 Circuit City)
"My first half was a lot better than we were expecting. We've struggled with both cars. But it seems like we found some things overnight and it helped us a lot. Something went away in the steering in the second segment. It got real darty, but once we figure out what it is, we'll fix that and apply everything we've learned to the 500 car."
