NASCAR Winston Cup Bud at the Glen: Post Race Quotes from Ford Drivers
11 August 1997
NASCAR Winston Cup Series Ford Post-Race Quotes The Bud at the Glen Watkins Glen International WATKINS GLEN, NY - The following provided by Ford Motorsports Public Affairs: RICKY RUDD (#10 Tide Ford Thunderbird) - Started 31st, finished 40th - "It's pretty disappointing. We've had trouble all week. We changed transmissions this morning, and now we've got a failure here. We're not really sure what it is." HUT STRICKLIN (#8 Circuit City Ford Thunderbird) - Started 41st, 36th - "Believe it or not, it was about a 3-cent part that broke. We had a plastic tie wrap that holds the oil line. I guess it broke or melted or something. It let the oil line get over into one of the pullies and rub a hole in it. We're just struggling right now. We've been behind a bit, and we can't seem to catch up. We'll keep digging away." BRETT BODINE (#11 Close Call Ford Thunderbird) - Started 20th, finished 39th - "It looks like we tore up a ring gear pinion in the backend. We just didn't have anything going at all. About 12 laps into the race, we broke the front sway bar, and the car was a handful just to keep it on the race track. The guys got it fixed as fast as they could, but we lost a lap and really didn't get it fixed correctly. It was a hard thing to drive. We got another lap down, then this put us out. I'm really looking forward to working with Andy Evans and all his people. I think this team has a great future. What happened today is no indication of what is in our future. It's going to be all good things." BILL ELLIOTT (#94 McDonald's Ford Thunderbird) - Started 4th, finished 7th - This was Elliott's fourth straight top-10 finish and his ninth of the season. He had just six top-10s last year. - "We're making a great deal of headway. This team has done a job well done just in the past couple of months. We've been a contender several times this year and it shows to everyone. The car ran real good. Ernie gave us a strong motor. This McDonald's team will win one soon. If we could just get the breaks we need. At times today, the car was loose, then tight. Hey, four straight top-10s. I'm not gonna complain." KENNY WALLACE (#81 Square D Ford Thunderbird) - Started 23rd, finished 27th - "I'm really disappointed. We had such a great run. We ran out of gas a half a lap from the finish." GEOFF BODINE (#7 QVC Ford Thunderbird) - Started 7th, finished 2nd - "Rusty probably could have wrecked me there, and I thank him for not doing that. That was a clean move. If I hadn't gotten him there (on the restart), I probably wouldn't have been able to get him. I was so hard to pass, and he was running really good. That was a key move for us to get back to second. "I guess you have to ask why it took so long (for everyone to use the two-stop strategy). I don't know, but we did it first, and now everybody seems to be doing it. We did it a little different. It worked for a while and got us in front, and that was great. But you can't take anything away from the Hendrick group, Gordon as the driver, and the equipment they have is pretty awesome. Our pit stop was a little slower than Jeff and Rusty's. That put us quite a ways behind them, but the cautions caught us back up, so that really didn't matter. They just outran us. "The first pit stop was a little earlier (than last year). We didn't wait until 30. We pitted as soon as we could, so we would have the window covered. That got us in ahead of everyone else, and when they pitted we were ahead of 'em. It worked again. But if that had happened at the end of the race, it might have been a different finish. The cautions helped. That helped me catch 'em and let us group back up and it gave me that shot at Rusty on the restart. That was a big move. "This is what we're supposed to do. It's really no big deal. This is the way it's supposed to go. We've just been experiencing abnormal circumstances. We've been operating under abnormal circumstances and proved that you couldn't do it. Now that we've got a little help, a little backing and a little support, and my mind is a whole lot clearer, I can go out there and focus a whole lot better than I've been able to do for about a year." RUSTY WALLACE (#2 Miller Lite Ford Thunderbird) - Started 13th, finished 3rd - "I tried to pass Gordon on the outside on that restart and ran out of room there. I got bogged down so much Bodine got by me there and once he got by me, I finished third. Track position was everything. I was trying to find any hole out there, any grip I could get. But we got third, and I'll take that. It was a pretty good run. I tried to drive as hard as I can, and it worked out OK. We just came up short. I almost got Bodine a couple of times at the end, but it just didn't happen. It was a good run for us and a good run for them. I'll take that and go with it. It's not like a win, but that's as close as I can get right now." MARK MARTIN (#6 Valvoline/Cummins Ford Thunderbird) - Started 9th, finished 5th - "The only bright spot of today is that we ran fifth instead of 25th. That is a bright spot. But fifth is not what we're after. We were a little tight and we made an extra stop, which is incredibly hard to overcome. Track position, we did OK with that. We did the best we could. There was another spot or two for us there at the end, but we put ourselves way behind with a tight race car. We chose to make an extra pit stop. To be hones with you, to come from where we did to fifth was pretty good. That's the bright spot in the day. The not-so-bright spot is that the guy we are chasing in the points championship won it. That's the spot we were truly after. It's not frustrating, it's just the way it went down today. "It's real hard (to work your way back through the field like that). I didn't make it all the way. We had a good car. It wasn't at its best. We missed the setup a little bit, unfortunately. But it was better than most, and we were able to overcome our extra stop and our track position for a fifth-place finish, which isn't great, but it could have been worse." TED MUSGRAVE (#16 Family Channel/Primestar Ford Thunderbird) - Started 29th, finished 6th - "That's my best finish here at Watkins Glen, how about that? The car was pretty good. We just didn't have enough braking at the end of the race. We just don't have the exact same stuff that Mark does and he can outbrake me in the corner. I can get through the esses and the corners pretty good, but he can outbrake me going in. That's the only spot we have to work on right now. (Crew chief) James (Ince) made a great call getting me up front like that. That means a heckuva lot. We planned that, but it just fell into place. You've got to get lucky, too. We pitted and about two laps later the caution came out, which is exactly what we wanted. If we did it and the caution came out, we said, 'Man, we'll be looking pretty smart,' and it happened. I couldn't believe it. "Mark and I had a good race there at the end, Mark could just outbrake me. He couldn't outcorner me or outhandle me, but he could outbrake me in the corner, and that's where you pass here. We're teammates and I wasn't going to force him off the race track the last couple of laps. I figured it he could get anything on Robby Gordon, let him go at it. I race him more or less like I race anybody else, but I race him cleaner. I would have ran him a little harder if he wasn't my teammate. But it was fun. Mark's the road course king, and to run with him like that make you feel pretty good." JEREMY MAYFIELD (#37 Kmart/RC Cola Thunderbird) - Started 28th, finished 15th - "With all the stuff happening out there, I wanted to make sure the day didn't end up as 'Jeremy's wild race.' We gained a lot of points on some people, and picked up a spot in the standings, too. That was a pretty important 15th-place finish for this team. Now we head to Michigan and Bristol, two tracks where we did real well the first time. We're still going in the direction we want to go." JEFF BURTON (#99 Exide Batteries Ford Thunderbird) - Started 36th, finished 29th - "Lance Hooper came from 15 car lengths behind me into (turn) 1, and I was behind a car and we were running normal speed, and he ran right into me. I don't even know how he hit me. I've yet to figure out how he hit me he was so far behind me. It's a shame that we are sitting here running for a championship, and somebody like Lance Hooper, who has never done nothing, and with driving like that will never do anything, comes and screws our deal up. That screwed us out of any chance whatsoever. We got a lap down. We were running 22nd when it happened. Where we qualified, we knew we weren't going to win the race, but the 88 (Dale Jarrett) had trouble, the 3 finished 15th. A lot of guys we're racing didn't have great days, and we ended up 29th because of a moron." PAUL ANDREWS (Crew Chief #37 Kmart/RC Cola Ford Thunderbird) - Andrews was crew chief for Geoff Bodine when he won this race last year. He made the two-pit stop call that won the race for Bodine last year. - "It's been a struggle the whole weekend. We struggled through practice. We had a good qualifying effort for us on a road course, and we came out with a good finish. It was a good run. We stayed consistent all day and played it smart. We played it a little on the conservative side, but when you are in the position we are, you don't have a real good car, but knew we had a good enough car to be in the top 20 or top 15, and to come out of this deal, 15th is good. We said this morning that if we came out of here 15th we'll be happy, and we are. "I think that is a good deal for those guys (Bodine). I knew what they were doing. I did the same thing. I pitted as soon as I possibly could today with this car. We couldn't go as far. But I was happy for those guys. That proves a lot. There has been a lot of things going on up here, people saying we won last year on pit strategy. But I've said all along that you've got to have a good car and a good driver, and he proved that he's still a good driver, and he had a good car last year and he had a good car this year. I was pretty happy for all of them. "I wasn't surprised a lot of people tried it this time. There were people doing it last year, too. But we were the ones with Geoff who made it work. I wasn't surprised. I think we did sneak up on 'em last year. That wasn't as many who tried it last year. It's a good deal for them." DALE JARRETT (#88 Quality Care/Ford Credit Ford Thunderbird) - Started 2nd, 32nd - "We broke the transmission. We ran pretty good, but we had another problem, as we usually do here for some reason. NASCAR felt like that it was smoking too much and something must be coming out, so they gave us the black flag and we had to come in. "We'll just have to see (how this effects the points race). All we can do is do the best we can the rest of the year. We go back to Michigan now. Hopefully, we can go there and not have any problems." ###