NASCAR Winston Cup Pocono 500 -- Post Race Quotes, Ford Drivers
9 June 1997
NASCAR Winston Cup Series Ford Post-Race Quotes Pocono 500 Pocono Raceway June 8, 1997 LONG POND, PA - DALE JARRETT (#88 Quality Care/Ford Credit Thunderbird) - Started 2nd, finished 3rd - "We ran good most of the day. It got a little tight. I was a little loose when the sun was out and we made a pretty big adjustment and unfortunately it got cloudy again and I got too tight, and we just never could get it loosened back up. We made the call to get just two tires there at the end, and that was a good call by Todd (Parrott, crew chief) and the guys. It was a good finish for us. That wasn't much of a shot even then, but I thought that if we just got two and either they got four or we got the car freed up enough, then we might challenge him. But I think he was just on cruise. "We've been running well, we just needed to finish, and we did that today. We were hoping to win, certainly, but the sun and the clouds played havoc with us today. Our car was pretty good when it was cloudy, but it looked like the sun was going to stay out for awhile, and I was pretty loose like that, so we made a pretty big adjustment and it just got too tight. They wanted to go for two tires, so we did it. This was a really good tire. We just didn't have much to loosen the car up with that. We just didn't go quite far enough." BOBBY HILLIN (#77 Jasper Engines/Federal Mogul Thunderbird) - Started 33rd, finished 37th - "We lost a gear. I switched it into overdrive. That didn't hurt us too bad. We just kept it in third gear. We ran pretty good like that, then when I pitted I couldn't get it in second or first. A bunch of stuff was rattling around in there. We got a good restart and I thought we were going to be OK, but stuff just started rattling around and rattling around and it started tightening up, then smoke started coming inside the car and getting in my eyes pretty good, so I knew that was it. So we came on in and changed transmissions. It's a shame." JOHN ANDRETTI (#98 RCA Thunderbird) - Started 9th, finished 40th - "I'm not sure what happened at first. I knew we lost an oil pump belt and it blew the motor up. I've never had motor failures here. It's unusual for us. I feel really good about the cars and the team. My guys hung the body on this car, and they did a great job. I think they've got something to be proud of and something to work on." MARK MARTIN (#6 Valvoline Thunderbird) - Started 14th, finished 4th - "Well, we ran fourth. That ain't all bad. We were off a little bit today and got behind. We got the car a little bit better, but we need to do a little bit better to contend to win, I think. We were all messed up yesterday and took a wild guess this morning. We were way off most of the race. There at the end we were pretty close. But we ran fourth today. What can I say? Everybody did a great job. We had super pit stops and a super car. It just wasn't good enough to win with." ON THE TWO-TIRE STOP: "It didn't matter. It didn't change the outcome. I just didn't want to take four and somebody take two and beat us, because we had a good car the the car was working as good as the first- and second-place car at the end. We were just where we were. Track position is a good deal, and we were off a little bit. We weren't good enough to win." JEFF BURTON (#99 Exide Batteries Thunderbird) - Started 18th, finished 2nd - THIS WAS BURTON'S SEVENTH TOP-FIVE FINISH OF THE SEASON, ALL ON SUPERSPEEDWAYS. HE HAS EARNED MORE POINTS THAN ANY DRIVER THIS SEASON O SUPERSPEEDWAYS. - "Well, we need the most points of everybody everywhere. That's the goal. We've got a real good race team. If we keep our heads on straight and continue to work as hard as we've worked and keep people from stealing our key people and keep doing all the things that are difficult to do, we can be a competitive race team. The key is everybody concentrating, and that includes me, and paying attention to our jobs and not letting where we are in the points and not letting the media attention and everything else effect us." WHAT WENT THROUGH YOUR MIND IN THOSE CLOSING LAPS? ARE YOU JUST HOPING SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN TO HIM? - "With five to go, you are not going to catch him. At that point, it turns into a survival game. You just make sure the guys behind you don't catch you. You run real, real hard for that whole time, but all you're doing is breaking even, but that's not going to do it. So you slow down a little bit and just get all you can get. WHERE WAS GORDON BEATING YOU? - "He would get through (turn) 3 better than everybody. And his car in traffic wouldn't pick up a push as bad as other people. Mine and Ward's and Dale Jarrett and quite a few people, once you got to somebody you could catch 'em, but you couldn't pass 'em. You would pick up a push. He didn't seem to pick up quite as bad a push as everybody else. I don't want to get into the Ford-Chevrolet issue, but that's the thing we've been talking about. We're not worried about what they are by themselves, because I think we've got a good race car by itself. But in traffic, the Chevrolet is superior to the Ford. When he would catch somebody he was able to go on by 'em and we couldn't. I'm not making excuses. Ford has got a good race car and Chevrolet has got a good race car. I don't want to see any more rules changes. I want to race what we've got. We can work hard, and if they don't make any changes, we can continue to improve. But the whole issue, and I don't think everybody has understood it, is a traffic issue, not an issue of running by yourself. It's an aero thing. If you make your car drive real good behind somebody, you're so loose when you're by yourself that you can't drive You can't give that up. You just can't do it. The Fords are real sensitive to someone behind them, and the Fords are real sensitive when somebody is in front of 'em. It looks like they are just not quite as sensitive. I'm not lobbying for a rules change. I don't want any more rules changes. I want us to work on what we've got and pay attention to what we've got and make it better, but that is an issue." JEREMY MAYFIELD (#37 Kmart/RC Cola Thunderbird) - Started 27th, finished 5th - "The guys did a super job again today and kept us up front. I just can't say enough for 'em. The team is working great. We're coming together. We've show this the last two months, we just hadn't pulled it all together. And the last two weeks, we have. This is great, especially coming off last week. I just can't say enough about this team. When you've got a great team, a great car owner and a great engine program like we've got, you are going to run up front week in and week out. We just haven't had the right breaks go for us. But it seems like the last couple of weeks, everything has started going our way. I hope we're turning the corner. With qualifying, we're still lacking in that area. But it doesn't seem to matter any more. We've been qualifying in the back and working our way to the front. That says a lot for our pit crew, too. They did a really good job for us today. "This means a lot. We've done this the last two or three weeks, and it's starting to get my confidence way up. It's got the team's confidence up and mine. When you've got that, you're going to be there week in and week out. We've just got better race cars. Everything is coming together for us. We're communicating well, Paul Andrews and me and the whole team. Everybody on the team has done a good job. And the pit crew has been great. I know that if I get up there, I know they are going to get me up there. When you've got a pit crew like that, it gives you a lot of confidence. "This is an awesome car. It's a Kranefuss-Haas race car. It's the second time we've run this car, and it's awesome. We ran it at Charlotte, and got a bad break there. We should have finished in the top three or four there. So we came back and ran it again, and it was awesome. It just shows what kind of race cars we've got. Both times we've run it, we've run up front. It's fast. It's our first in-house car, and we've got several more on the way. This is a Kranefuss-Haas chassis, and these guys put it all together, and it's a good combination right now. You've got to have something different. If you've got what everybody else has got, you're going to run where everybody else is. You've got to have something different. For some reason, this style chassis and my driving style is starting to work together." ERNIE IRVAN (#28 Texaco Havoline Thunderbird) - Started 19th, finished 29th - WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BRAKES? - "We wore 'em out. I don't know really what the problem was. We just didn't have any brakes left. It's unusual here. We've never had that problem, but we're going to address it and be better next time." TED MUSGRAVE (#16 Family Channel/PRIMESTAR Thunderbird) - Started 31st, finished 6th - "That was all we could do. With no tires, we knew we were going to struggle at the very end, but when you are sitting there thinking, 'You are either going to get a top five or get really close to it.' We were going to try hard to get the win, but with no tires, the guys with fresh tires could just overhaul me. But it was really good strategy. We had to start near the back. We had a problem inside the car where the whole shift tower area got loose in the car and it was just blowing 120-degree air in on me. I was just burning up in there. So we taped it down on one pit stop and had to go to the back of the pack toward the end. It worked really good. We had a lot of adversity today, like all year, but we prevailed. We got a good run out of it. When the sun was out, it was pretty hot in there. They wanted to know how warm it was, and I said, 'I'll just give you the water temperature from the engine, and that will tell you how hot.' It was pretty warm, but it was just after halfway when we pitted and tried to tape it down. But it's a long race, and you've got to be really sharp at the end. We lost seven positions when we went to the back, but it was well worth it." BILL ELLIOTT (#94 McDonald's Thunderbird) - Started 5th, finished 32nd - ELLIOTT HAD ONE OF THE FASTEST CARS, BUT THE RIGHT REAR BRAKE ROTOR ON HIS CAR BROKE. HE LOST SEVERAL LAPS WHILE HIS CREW FIXED IT. - "We just can't seem to get any breaks, literally." RICKY RUDD (#10 Tide Thunderbird) - Started 6th, finished 21st - "It was a new brake system we haven't run before. We saw we were probably going to have a problem, but there wasn't a whole lot we could do about it this morning. We were afraid if we changed it, the car would get real loose on the rear brakes, so we elected to go with what we had. In hindsight, we should have gone ahead and changed it. It was a mistake when they put the brake pads in it. They put the hard pads in it instead of the soft pads, and it overworked the front brakes. We caught it, and we should have changed it." GEOFF BODINE (#7 QVC Thunderbird) - Started 24th, finished 8th - "It's good to finish and be competitive. We worked really hard for this. We put a new motor in this morning, a Pro Motor. We had trouble with our engines, so we had to borrow one from the #23 car, and I want to thank them for letting us do that. Peter Guild, from Pro Motors and the whole crew worked really hard to get it in. We had to change a lot of stuff, but they did a good job. The car ran good and stayed together and we had a good finish. We had a left, front tire go flat. We had to pit early, and that got us out of our rhythm. It's just hard to pass all those cars, but to get to eighth is really good, because we were last on the lead lap at ne time. I feel good about the effort. We're still looking for sponsorship. Still looking for sponsors or some people interested in buying into the team. We're still looking." Provided by Ford Motorsports Public Affairs:
