DALE JARRETT - No. 88 UPS Taurus (Qualified 28th)
GOING OUT FIRST IS
USUALLY NOT GOOD. "I don't know that it really mattered today. If we
were gonna have to get our chance at being first out, this wasn't a bad
place for it. We worked totally on race setup. We just ran in our
qualifying tires right at the end and we really didn't know what it would
do, but the car drove pretty good. We're pretty happy with it."
HOW WAS
THE LAP? "It went pretty good. We made some changes. We actually just
scuffed in our qualifying tires, so that was pretty good. The car drove
good and I'm pretty happy with that. We worked on a lot of race stuff
and I think we figured out a little bit of what we need to do.
Hopefully, it'll be good enough for 500 laps on Sunday."
CARL EDWARDS - No. 99 Office Depot Taurus (Qualified 18th)
"The
qualifying lap is huge and we've got the Office Depot Ford in the top
five, but hopefully that will hold up for a top 20 spot or top 15. That
would be awesome. As you can see here, all it takes is a little tiny
mistake and it can break your lap. If you lose a half-a-tenth, you can
lose 15 spots so I hope that holds up. I screwed up a little bit here on
the back side of the second lap, so we'll see. It'll be fun either way."
MARK MARTIN - No. 6 Viagra Taurus (Qualified 35th)
"I'm really
disappointed. We qualified 19th and finished third the last time with
this car here and we haven't really put a scratch on it since. It's been
junk ever since we took it out on the race track. The guys worked real
hard on it in practice there and I thought we made some headway, but we
probably just made it worse. From the way things look right now, we must
have just made it even worse. I don't know. I thought we had made it
better. We got up to 26th in practice, but that's gonna be a provisional
there."
RICKY RUDD - No. 21 Motorcraft Genuine Parts Taurus (Qualified 2nd)
HOW
IS THE CAR? "It's been really good since we unloaded. The Motorcraft
Taurus has been fast right off the truck. Fatback McSwain and everybody
on the Wood Brothers team has done a heck of a job preparing this race
car. It's hard to believe we're running in the 19.30s at Martinsville.
I remember it wasn't all that many years ago that the modifieds didn't
hardly run that fast. It's pretty impressive."
HOW WAS THE LAP?"It was
fairly uneventful because the race car was so good. It's been good since
we got off the truck. This Motorcraft Taurus is just fast. It's driving
extremely well and it's got a lot of grip. It's been a long time since
I've been to Martinsville and had a car that could go like this one. I
feel pretty good about it. We came up a couple weeks ago and ran 700
laps of practice for Goodyear - tire testing for next year's tires - but
it probably didn't hurt any to get me a good tune-up here. I ran a lot
of laps here and felt like it probably helped me to stay sharp."
HOW IS
THE CAR IN THREE AND FOUR? "The car has been very good. It's making
good grip. I nudged the curb on the last of my timed laps. I don't know
if we would have run quicker or not. All day in practice this is the
only track we go to where they give you sort of three timed laps where
the first one doesn't count. My car was very good on the middle lap, but
the third lap has always been a little slow. At least I'll blame it on
that because I hit the curb. Hopefully, it wasn't because of something
that I caused."
KURT BUSCH - No. 97 IRWIN/Sharpie Taurus (Qualified 14th)
"Practice was
pretty good for us and then our run we were able to make adjustments. We
were still a little bit on the loose side and then in race trim we're on
the tighter side, so we had to do everything at once today because we
think there's gonna be moisture in the air tomorrow morning. That should
give us top 15 and that's about where we normally qualify and then we
usually race pretty good."
CAN YOU MAKE UP SOME GROUND HERE? "I don't
think you can necessarily gain ground here unless somebody has a bad
day. Everybody in the top 10 usually can run pretty good here. Carl
Edwards is a rookie, but he'll still be OK. You just can't have anything
bad happen. We were running third with about 30 laps to go in the spring
and we got dumped by Jeff Gordon. We finished 19th. We don't need that
kind of run Sunday."
ELLIOTT SADLER - No. 38 M&M's Taurus (Qualified 9th)
IT'S NOT THE POLE
BUT DOES IT FEEL LIKE IT? "It does. I remember us coming to
Martinsville in seven or eight straight races and never even making a
race, so to come here and get us a good top 10 qualifying effort is a
great feeling. We've had some awesome race cars lately. This is by far
the best car I've ever had here in racing trim. That's all we worked on
this morning, so my guys are doing a great job. We've just got to keep
people from running over the top of us. We've gotten wrecked pretty much
three of the last five races, but we're running good. We're running up
front when bad things are happening to us, so we can't hang our heads.
We're still trying to get to 11th-place in points and we really need to
get through here at Martinsville. This has been a weak spot for us, but
I think we're better prepared today than we've ever been, and I'm looking
forward to a good race on Sunday."
-ford racing-
