NASCAR Winston Cup Series ACDelco 400: Post Qual Quotes (Ford Drivers)
24 October 1997
NASCAR Winston Cup Series Ford Qualify Quotes ACDelco 400 North Carolina Motor Speedway October 24, 1997 ROCKINGHAM, NC - The following provided by Ford Motorsports Public Affairs: MARK MARTIN (#6 Valvoline Thunderbird) - Qualified 3rd - "Well, it wasn't good enough for a pole, but that will get us on the frontstretch (pits). I was a little uneasy coming up to the green, so I got into the corners a little easier than you've got to if you are going to get a pole. I got on the gas good and early and the car really did good, but I didn't have the feeling that I needed to reach out for a pole. When I came up to speed. I didn't feel real secure going into turn 3, so I just took what I could get. We didn't need to reach any deeper than that. That was a good conservative lap. The car worked well, but it didn't have in it what it needed to reach for a pole, so we'll save that for another day. "We are going to do everything we can to try to race good here. That's all we can do. It's going to come down to the last few races and all of 'em are important. If we were 110 ahead instead of 110 behind we'd be in a lot better shape. We're awful good at Phoenix and we hope to do good at Atlanta. But we look at the 24 car (Jeff Gordon) and say, 'They are, too.' Then we look at the 88 (Dale Jarrett) and we say, "They are, too.' It's been the same story all year. I don't know how the picture is going to change. The picture would have changed a little bit if we had gotten through that wreck at Talladega, but we didn't If we had a 110-point lead things would look a lot better than they look right now. The main thing is winning on Sunday. We'll give it our best shot. The team has done a great job. We've got great cars right now, they're working good, everybody's chin is up and we're ready to go." RUSTY WALLACE (#2 Miller Lite Thunderbird) - Qualified 18th - "I was pretty happy with it. I had a good run. turns 3 and 4 were really good, and in turn 1, I've been driving in way too deep and I had my mind on that and I don't think I drove in deep enough this time." DICK TRICKLE (#90 Heilig-Meyers Thunderbird) - Qualified 12th - "It was a good lap for us. It's the best lap we've run all day. It was about two-tenths quicker. Hopefully that will get us in. We kinda messed up in practice and lost some time, but the guys came back and got us a respectable lap." LAKE SPEED (#9 Advantage Camo Thunderbird) - Did not qualify; 30th - "It was fair. It wasn't what we were expecting. The car has been a little tight. It was still tight, but that will get us in the race and we can get ready to race." GEOFF BODINE (#7 QVC Thunderbird) - Qualified 7th - "That will get us in. That was pretty awesome. We hadn't run that good in practice, but we made some changes. Terry Wooten and Pete Peterson and Tim Brewer, my three guys, we came up with a plan and it worked pretty good. The car was darn good. We stiffened the right rear spring up, no big secret. It was a little tight getting into the corner. It didn't want to turn good getting into the middle of the corner, so we put a rubber in the right rear and it turned." JEREMY MAYFIELD (#37 Kmart/RC Cola Thunderbird) - Qualified 24th - "We're in the show and we're on the frontstretch. That's two of the three goals everybody started with this morning. I guess Bobby Labonte is the only guy out here who got all three goals today. We're excited about Sunday. We've got a good car and a really good feeling." DALE JARRETT (#88 Quality Care/Ford Credit Thunderbird) - Qualified 2nd - "Bobby ran a good lap, I just couldn't quite get to him. The lap was good. I don't know if I could do anything different. The car has been fast here the whole time. Now if we can just get it ready to race." JEFF BURTON (#99 Exide Batteries Thunderbird) - Qualified 11th - "That was a great run. We picked up four-tenths from where we practiced. That's just a lot of hard work and a lot of effort. I'm real, real proud of that. There are some days when you are proud to qualify on the pole, and some days when you are proud just to be in the top 10. Wherever that puts us, I'm real proud, because we gained a whole lot from where we practiced. We picked up four-tenths, and you just don't pick up four-tenths at a place like Rockingham. We struggled a lot and made a lot of changes before qualifying, and they worked. I think I was struggling a little bit from getting out of the Busch car and into the Winston Cup car. I don't think I was adjusting quite good enough. But I made sure I drove the Cup car like a Cup car. I did a better job of driving and the team did a better job. It was a big, big team effort, and I'm really proud of them. "I'm excited about being on the Busch pole. We've had a great year and run really good and we needed a pole for confidence and everything else. I've struggled a little bit qualifying, and today is probably the best I've ever qualified all the way around. The Winston Cup car isn't on the pole, but we picked up four-tenths from where we practiced and that's a lot." BILL ELLIOTT (#94 McDonald's Thunderbird) - Qualified 8th - "That's a lot better than we did in practice. I just really concentrated on the lap I wanted to ran and just tried to put it all together. Here I have qualified the last two times around at 23.60, then I've been back in the teens, so I said I was going to try to get a pretty good lap here, and it paid off."
