AT TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY
· Dale Jarrett snapped a 98-race winless stretch
· Jarrett’s triumph was the 32nd of his NNC career and 30th with Ford, which ranks fourth on the all-time manufacturer list. Ned Jarrett is the all-time Ford leader with 43 wins while Bill Elliott is second (40) and Mark Martin third (34).
· The win for Jarrett was his 19th in the Taurus, which is the most among Ford drivers.
· Today’s win is the 12th of the season for Ford, which is two more than last year.
· Ford has 566 all-time NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series wins.
DALE JARRETT – No. 88 UPS Taurus – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW –
WHAT ABOUT THE LAST COUPLE OF LAPS?
“First I’ve got to thank Todd Parrott and our guys in the fab shop. The pit crew did a great job today and Doug Yates and his people with a great engine. It’s just incredible. I wasn’t tired until the last few laps, but that exhausted me. On the restart I kind of made a deal to go with Tony. I know he’s racing for a championship there and being in fourth I wasn’t sure what kind of chance I would get, but I thought if I could go with him – but we got kind of a bad restart up front and guys started dicing around. When we got back to the tri-oval I had gotten a little push and Tony went to the outside. I said, ‘Well, I told him I’d follow him, I’m going.’ He had such a run that he went from the outside to the inside and I didn’t have anywhere to go but to the outside of Matt. He was trying to block Tony and it worked out, and then Matt gave me a push down the backstretch and that was the winning part of it.”
THE CAR WAS STRONG ALL DAY. “We made a track bar and air-pressure adjustment the first pit stop and actually went a little bit too far. It was a little loose in the center of the corner and that’s what I was concerned with. After that, we actually came back up with the air-pressure and got the car where I could go in the middle of a three-wide deal and that’s what I was looking for because I knew that would happen at the end. For the rest of the race we just hung out. They kept wrecking and running into each other so I said, ‘We’ll just hang out here and wait until it’s time to go.’ Fortunately, we were in that position to do that.”
FEB. 2003 SINCE YOUR LAST WIN. DOES THIS MEAN AS MUCH AS THE ONE IN ’91? “It’s hard to believe. Yeah it does. When you get to this point of your career you’re not exactly sure when that last victory is gonna be there, so you learn to cherish each one. I knew we had a race team that could challenge. Todd has brought a lot of leadership back to our race team and he made the right calls in the pits and had us in the right sequence there at the right time. This means a lot to me.”
MARK MARTIN – No. 6 Viagra Taurus (Finished 41st) – “Somebody spun the 38 out. That’s about all I saw – the 38 spun. I just want to say one thing, the fans are the only ones that can do something about this. No one else can – the drivers can’t, the owners can’t and NASCAR’s not gonna do anything about it. I doubt if the fans can either. I know that it’s exciting racing to watch, but I didn’t even get a sweat worked up. You just can’t go against God’s will. I’d have a championship by now if it was God’s will. I’m OK and we’ll finish this one off and worry about next year next year.”
WHAT ARE YOUR EMOTIONS? “I don’t really have any other than I’m glad this is over with. I didn’t even work up a sweat. Maybe they won’t fix the thing and I won’t have to go back out. That’s kind of how I feel about it right now. These guys are incredible. They can fix anything, but this one is gonna be a challenge.” WHAT HAPPENED? “They had a big wreck in front of me.”
ANYTHING YOU COULD HAVE DONE? ARE YOU OK? “I’m like a mule. I can take it. The safety devices are incredible today. We used to take those kind of whoopings without all that stuff and it was a lot worse. This one is over with and we’ll pick up and go on. I told some guys a while ago that it’s hard to fight God’s will and today God’s will was for me to finish about last. I’d have a championship right now if it was His will, so we’re gonna take what we can get this year and see what happens going forward and see if everybody else in the chase flips before the race is over.”
WHAT ABOUT YOUR TITLE CHANCES NOW? “It hurts. What are you gonna do? It would be hard to win this championship if I would have got a top 10. You figure it out.”
WHAT DID YOU SEE? “I just saw the 38 spinning. You guys saw it. I haven’t seen it yet. All I saw was the 38 out of control in front of us and we all know how that had to have happened. I don’t know how it happened because I didn’t see it.”
HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED? “Once somebody wrecks in front of you there’s not much. I got hit from behind and hit the guys in front of me. You can’t stop as fast in these cars as a car that is wrecking can stop, so it’s impossible to slow down fast enough so I got hit both – behind and I hit the guys in front of me. We just kept hitting stuff.”
ELLIOTT SADLER – No. 38 M&M’s Taurus (Finished 34th) – “I’m just really upset. It’s lap 18. Where are you going? I’m really upset at Jimmie. We’ve got three pedals in these cars and as many times as he’s been drafting here he knows that you always stack up at the end of every straightaway – it’s the way the draft works. I guess he’s trying to keep his streak alive. He caused a big wreck here last year and he caused a big one again this year. Maybe that’s his way of racing here at Talladega as far as trying to get rid of everybody so he can try to win the race. I don’t know. I’m just really upset right now. I’m just frustrated. Usually Jimmie and I can race each other clean. I just don’t understand on lap 18. If it was the last lap I understand, you’ve got to go, but not lap 18. So we’re gonna try to fix it and get it back out there and get as many points as we can.”
YOUR CAR WAS OBVIOUSLY GOOD. “Our car was awesome. I was just hanging out playing and just picking a line and staying in it. I was just riding and trying to at least make it to a pit stop, and we didn’t even get to make it to our first pit stop. It’s been one of those years for us. I think this is three years in a row for us – this fall Talladega race – we just cannot finish this race.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 National Guard/Subway Taurus (Finished 27th) – “It was pretty obvious what happened. It looked like Ryan Newman spun the 41 out. It’s unfortunate. We were right there racing with those guys, but I had a good race car. This is what people pay their money to come see and pay to watch television and listen to the radio is big crashes here at Talladega. Everybody loves it.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 World Financial Group Taurus (Finished 5th) – “I had a blast. The whole day the car was awesome. We could go back up to the front. The World Financial Group and everyone did a great job. I’m proud of Dale Jarrett. That’s so cool for him to get a win. That’s pretty neat. I’m just glad we didn’t crash Ryan Newman when I bumped him there. It was wild and he did a great job saving it.”
WHAT ABOUT THE LAST COUPLE OF LAPS? “In the back of my mind I didn’t think the 88 car, I didn’t think Dale Jarrett was gonna go that hard and they dropped the green flag and I was like, ‘That looks like the guy to follow,’ so I tried to tuck up behind him. Everybody was trying everything. It was just a blast.”
YOU SURVIVED THE WRECKS AND DEBRIS. WHAT WAS GOING ON? “I don’t know. I almost caused a couple of wrecks. It’s really tough and I’m really glad nobody got hurt. One of those wrecks, I think it was Scott Riggs flipping end over end and something hit my car. We ran over something and I couldn’t figure out what it was and I looked over and the front windshield was broke. Something shattered the right side, the Lexan and all that, so it was kind of crazy. I’m just glad nobody got hurt.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Taurus (Finished 3rd) – WHAT ABOUT AT THE END. WERE YOU A SITTING DUCK? “Yeah, but I don’t feel like I’m the best driver at this restrictor plate stuff anyway. You want to be leading everywhere at the end with two to go, except for I think here. I don’t know. I wasn’t very good at restarts to get through the gears. I don’t know if it was our ratios or what, but I knew that was gonna be tough and I saw them all gang up. I just didn’t know where to block next, so once I did get shuffled back three-wide there, I could have gone with the 88 or the 20 and I gave the 88 a nice push. That was my best chance to get by and that’s pretty cool that DJ won.”
YOU USED YOUR MIRROR TO TRY AND KEEP THE 20 BEHIND YOU. “Yeah, I mean the thing is you can only block so much without wrecking. Tony was blocking a lot earlier when I was trying to pass him early in the race, but at the end of the race neither one of you are gonna lift and you can only go across the front end so much before you get yourself and him wrecked, so you’ve got to try to keep your position but you can’t be dumb either.”
IS IT A RELIEF TO GET THROUGH THIS? “Yeah, I mean we led a couple of laps and we finished third, I believe. You’ve got to be pretty happy with that. Some other people had trouble like we had last week, so, hopefully, it’ll get us caught up in the points a little bit. It’s just disappointing when you restart in the lead on the last lap and finish third. I’m disappointed about that, but happy with our day overall.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 National Guard/Subway Taurus – POST RACE – “Good ‘ol Talladega. Just another day at the race track. It’s what we expect when we come here. We come here for the fans and for TV – to put on a show and they got to see a great show today. That’s what it’s about. It’s unfortunate we were involved in that wreck. I don’t know how it started, but we have to watch the tapes and figure it out.”
WHERE DOES TODAY PUT YOU IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP? “Not too bad. We finished 27th and it could have been worse. We could have been 35th or 40th, so 27th isn’t where we wanted to be but I don’t think that’s gonna take us out of it.”
KANSAS IS NEXT. “All we can try and do is go there and do the best we can and just be careful racing around certain people that are gonna start accidents. Hopefully it won’t happen anywhere but here, but it’s too bad people have to get impatient. We can put on a good race. You see what happens. You’ve got two or three big wrecks and then it was single-file the rest of the day. There was a lot of mixing it up at the lead, but the three-wide, 20-deep is gone. That racing is over. It’s just too bad they tore up a lot of good cars.”
KURT BUSCH – No. 97 Sharpie Taurus (Finished 8th) – “Our car was damaged pretty bad. The toe-out was knocked out about an inch-and-a-half, but, luckily we got that caution. There’ something against us, but we just have to keep pulling through. To get a flat tire all on our own and wreck, and to come back and still finish eighth is a great day for our Sharpie Ford.”
IS THERE A SECOND WHEN THE TIRE GOES DOWN WHEN YOU SAY, ‘NOT AGAIN?’ “I was just asking why. It’s unfair that we get that type of flat tire syndrome, but we’ll bounce back and see what we can get.”
YOU GOT AS MANY POINTS AS YOU COULD UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “Yeah, eighth was great considering our car was very damaged, but it’s just a question of why do we get a flat tire while leading. We bounced back though and finished eighth. A lot of guys were wounded, so now we go to Kansas and go back to the normal type of racing.”
THE FLAT TIRE CAME IN A GOOD SPOT. “It didn’t matter. We pounded the fence and it didn’t matter because the yellow came out.”
IT WAS A WILD DAY. “There were some hard times out there trying to dodge the wrecks and just position our car where we were in a safe position, but a bunch of guys that hadn’t won races before were up front and going fast. It just seems like now the evolution of restrictor plates has caught everybody. Everybody is fast and everybody is the same speed, so we should shake it up again so we can separate some of the pack.”
MORE CARL EDWARDS – “The guys really worked on this Ford here and I think you can tell from Dale Jarrett winning and Elliott Sadler on the pole that the Fords are really stepping it up and that means a lot.”
WHAT ABOUT THE LAST FEW LAPS? “Yeah, that was wild. Matt and I worked really well together all day. I just stayed glued to his back bumper as long as I could and I had a good time. That was fun. I’m really happy for Dale Jarrett to win the UAW-Ford 500, that’s as good as it gets.”
A GOOD POINTS DAY TOO FOR YOU. “That’s all we could ask for as far as points. That’s awesome.”
ROBBIE REISER PRESS CONFERENCE – THOUGHTS ON HOW THE RACE ENDED. “Talladega is a tough place to race. We all saw that today. It’s just kind of the luck of the deal – to run up front all day long. The guys did a real good job of keeping Matt up front all day and coming out of here with a third-place finish was pretty awesome. I thought we had a chance to win there at the end, but with the restart we were kind of sitting ducks. We have a new car that we’re taking to Kansas. We tested up there and we’re looking forward to that.”
WHAT WAS IT LIKE FOR YOU AT THE END? “I guess it’s less nerve-wracking for me. Obviously, those guys have a lot more going on than what I do, but we pretty much had what we had. Matt was concerned about the restart, obviously, because you get a little bit of run and they’re all gonna gang up behind you and that’s basically what happened. Matt was trying to fight them off the best he could. They were three-wide going down the backstretch and it was exciting, but I wish we were up front.”
THE FORDS FINALLY WON HERE. DO YOU FEEL BETTER ABOUT THE FORDS ON THESE TYPE OF TRACKS? “Obviously this was our best effort from the 17 car. Our car was competitive all day and we had one of the better cars, so a lot goes into what the guys do back at the shop, and the people that build the engines. Doug Yates and his gang have done an awesome job for us and we just keep plugging every week and keep working on this speedway stuff. I would say at Roush Racing we probably spend a lot more time on downforce cars than what we do speedways, but, obviously, the way all five cars ran today and qualified our program is coming along. A lot of it has to do with what Yates and Roush race engines have done. It’s been an incredible there and the cars have gotten better too.”
YOU WERE MOVED UP A COUPLE OF SPOTS. THOSE POINTS COULD PLAY A BIG ROLE AT THE END. “Well, I don’t know. We were leading with two to go, so we kind of went back two spots the way I look at it. I don’t know. When the caution comes out that’s their call and they go back and look at the TV and decide where everybody is at when that happens. We pretty much just stand back like you guys do and wait for the decision to come down and that’s where we are. When the caution came out I didn’t know where we were. Matt thought we were sixth and some of the guys thought we were third, so we ended up third. I think as well as our car ran everybody on our team wanted to win. Sure, we’re in the chase and we’re worried about points and we’re doing all those things, but you show up every week to try to win these races and it would have been good for Matt and our whole race team to be able to win at a superspeedway and I think he had a shot at it, it’s just that the caution fell at the wrong time.”
ANY OVERHEATING TROUBLE TODAY? “I think if you noticed throughout the race, a lot of guys would start overheating in the middle of the race and with all the bump-drafting that’s going on out there, it really depends a lot on how our grilles are radiused and the tape is tight trying to get as much out of the car as you can, but if you screw up the radius in the front of the car, it makes the thing want to overheat. That’s why a lot of cars were having trouble as the race went because the front noses were getting beat up. Right before the race, I think we were 200-210 in practice yesterday. I opened up the tape just a little bit just for that reason because we struggled with that in the past and we didn’t really have any trouble with it at all today.”
DALE JARRETT PRESS CONFERENCE – YOU MUST BE ECSTATIC. “Yeah, to say the least. I’m exhausted, but very emotional. As I came down the straightaway it was just an incredible feeling. I’ve been very fortunate in my career to win a lot of important races and big races that we have, a lot of them with this guys beside me (Todd Parrott) and to win a championship, but at this point in time in my career I’m not sure there’s anything that was more important than getting that push down the backstretch from Matt Kenseth and taking the checkered flag here. Truly, it’s quite an exciting day. I knew we had a good car and I just wanted to try to find myself in a position that we might could do something at the end. I kind of had a plan with Tony there to go with him on the green-white-checker and that worked for a while and I did help him by the 12 car there as we got the white flag, but he dove to the inside of the 17 and I couldn’t make that move. I was on the outside and the 99 was pushing me and I got in front of the 17 and then he pushed me by the 20. It’s just incredible. A lot of the credit goes to Todd. This car was being built before Todd became the crew chief with our team, but it was being built to the specifications that he built Elliott’s car here the first race, so it was a copy of that. So he had a lot to do with that and made a lot of great calls in the pits as far as when to get two and four tires and to get me in the right position at the end.”
TODD PARROTT – WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO YOU AND YOUR TEAM? “It means a lot. To go through things that we did this year – neither one of our teams to make the chase. We all know how important that is and what it means to Robert Yates Racing and just racing in general, and to kind of be the darkhorse so to speak all day long – everybody talking about the top 10 cars in the chase – and the old faithful one here just kind of hanging around where he needed to hang around to be around at the end and then to make the move that he did is pretty special. Just to come over here. I told Robert before Dover. I went out on a limb and I promised him that I would get this 88 UPS car back in Victory Lane before the end of the year. I just didn’t know it was gonna happen this quick. Me and this guy have worked a lot of magic together and we’re not done.”
DALE JARRETT CONTINUED – COULD YOU HAVE WON BEFORE THE NEXT-TO-LAST CAUTION CAME OUT AND HAVE YOU CALLED YOUR DAD? “I haven’t talked to my dad. Are you talking about as we were in turn three and the caution came out? The one that set up the green-white-checkered. I have no idea what was gonna happen at that point. I was sitting there thinking, “Good gosh this is gonna be wild,’ but we caught up. I was back a ways and we did a great job of staying in line and then once we made a pack of about 10 or 11 cars there, then things started shuffling. I had a chance even at that point because I was in a pretty good position, but to say that I would have been able to, I don’t know. I couldn’t have told you I was gonna win when I went into turn three right before the caution came out at the very end hardly. But the opportunity was still there. We had put ourselves in a position even without that caution to set up the green-white-checkered.”
WHERE DID YOU COME FROM AND HOW DID YOU GO FROM 18TH TO THE LEAD IN 30 LAPS? “As far as where I came from, even coming off of turn four to get the white flag I don’t know that I felt like that I was in a position to win. I felt like I was still in position to get a good finish, but I got a push, once again, from the 99 car I think it was. When he pushed me, I was able to give Tony the push that we needed. Then as we came through the tri-oval, Tony went to the outside and I pushed him by the 12. When Tony went from the top of the race track literally to the bottom I said, ‘There’s no reason me trying to make that.’ First of all, the 12 was there and I wasn’t close enough to do that. It was like when the 17 and the 20 got side-by-side, they were fighting each other and that helped my cause – not to mention I had the 99 with me up top and had a lot of momentum. That was the key.
DALE JARRETT CONTINUED – “Once I got by him, or once the 99 pushed me by the 17, the 17 started to make a run to the outside but I blocked him a little there and he really didn’t have enough of a push. He had enough of a push to hit me and push me by the 20, so I knew once I got that push that I was gonna be able to get down in front of the 20, but as soon as I got to that point they hollered, ‘caution’ and I knew that I had the race won. Coming from 18th, things were just getting shuffled around. I found that it was a lot easier to make a run from kind of the end of where a line of cars were than what it was to either be in the middle of them or either towards the front because you get jammed up at the front and then if you were in the middle, you were waiting to see what was gonna happen there and the guys behind you would pass you. So I started making a move from the back to where I could use the middle of the race track. My car drove just great all day, so that’s kind of how we did it. A lot of it is luck and making the right decisions at times, but you have to have a very good car to do the things I was able to do.”
YOU DROPPED BACK AT THE START, WAS THAT STRATEGIC AND DID IT HELP YOU AVOID THE EARLY CRASH? “I dropped back simply because I got in the wrong line. Without taking a real chance at that point in time of the race and trying to squeeze somebody out of the gas to try to get to the middle lane, and my car was loose in the middle lane. That was the one thing I found out early. I was OK on the bottom of the race track and I was OK on the very top of the track, but in the middle of the three-wide deal I was pretty loose. That time of the race doesn’t pay anything, so I just found myself in a position that I was comfortable running in. I’ve told you all a lot of times that you continue to run into each other in these races they’re gonna wreck. There’s no doubt a wreck is gonna happen, so that did help me avoid especially the first one. That was probably the closest that I came, although a couple of others were pretty close too. Even at those times, once we made some adjustments on the car and we got those right, we went up a little too far one time, and then we came back with the adjustments. I went up a couple of times in the middle to see how my car was gonna do and exactly where my car was better than others, where I could make passes and clear people. Once I found that out I wasn’t in any hurry to go anywhere. There was no reason to go anywhere until you get to the end of this race and then you find yourself in the right position.”
ANY DOUBT YOU WERE AHEAD AT THE POINT WHEN THE CAUTION CAME OUT? “No, I was clearly in the lead at that point in time. I was getting ready, when they hollered caution, to pull down in front of Tony just to make sure. I had Tony cleared at that time and I was just gonna get in front of him. I hated to leave Matt hanging out, but that’s at a point in time that you’ve just got to get yourself in a position. I felt like Tony was the car that I needed to block and I was clearly in front of him. As a matter of fact, as I said, I was getting ready to pull down in front of him just to make sure that I got the push from him that I needed to get back. No, that’s just the way things work out. Regardless of whether that caution comes out or not I was gonna win the race.”
WHY IS THIS ONE SO SPECIAL? “I’m not sure that I treated the one at Rockingham special enough. We were so used to winning in those days that I didn’t see any reason that we wouldn’t continue on winning races – at least a couple a year. That was what we were used to doing. Our program got to the point that we weren’t in a position to do that much, so that’s what makes this so special and this one will be treated a lot more special. I think that we do have more victories to go. I think in the next two years to come that we can visit Victory Lane a number of times, but in case that doesn’t happen, we’re gonna make sure that we enjoy this one. All of these have been very special. I can go back and talk about each and every one of them about something that made each one of them special, but today came at a very good time for a lot of us – for Todd and myself, and for Robert and Doug, and especially for everyone at UPS.”
DALE JARRETT CONTINUED – TALK ABOUT BEING A SPOILER. “You all might not watch the TV show on Speed on Thursday night at 8 o’clock, but Ralph Shaheen and I talk about spoilers each week. The show is about all the guys in the championship – in the chase – that’s what we do, but we talk about people that have opportunities to be spoilers each week. That’s what you have to look at. This weekend we talked about Jeff Gordon and Dale, Jr., Elliott
