Jarrett Gives Taurus First Daytona 500 Victory

 

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YOU HAVE SOME MOMENTUM NOW? "We do have some good momentum with this team. They've worked hard. They worked hard last night on this particular car and it drove great, ran great. Tonycola (Tony Santanicola) came in with Ernie on the motors and I can't say enough good things about what's going on. They put a great car under me. They made a good call there at the end putting two tires on and that's what put us in a position to run third. If not we would have run who knows where." 

WAS THE TWO TIRE CHANGE A GAMBLE? "We had to do it, we had no choice. It was either come out where we were at on the race track or put two tires on it and I felt like I got my car good enough that I could stand two tires. The way it ended up we ran a little bit, the caution came out, we ran a little bit, so it really didn't matter if you had two or four because we didn't really give up anything by putting two tires on." 

WHAT ABOUT THE RACE? "Yates' cars have always been the car to beat down here for a lot of years, so that's no exception. When you look at it, Jeff Gordon had trouble, a few other guys had trouble. It was one of those deals if you got back a little bit, I don't know when I've raced this hard if you get back in the pack a little bit. It was a pretty tough day. I'm just glad we all got out of here on a good safe note." 

JEFF BURTON CONTINUED -- WHEN THE NEXT TO LAST CAUTION CAME OUT WHEN DID YOU ASSUME YOU WERE GOING TO TRY TO GET BY BENSON? "I think we were trying to get around Benson. All I could see was a bunch of this going on in front of me and I think Mark was doing all he could to get by him. Johnny could keep his car on the bottom like he needed to. He was gonna be hard to pass. We were all lined up trying to pass him, not because you're up against Johnny but whoever is leading is who you're trying to beat. He was going to be very difficult to get by." 

DID THE RACE GO LIKE YOU EXPECTED? "I thought it was a good race. I think at the 125s there was a lot of complaining about the race being boring, but I thought this race was anything but boring. I mean, you never knew who was gonna win, you had a lot of stuff going on. I never know how a race is gonna go, but at least to me it didn't seem like it was a boring race. From my seat it wasn't boring." 

MATT KENSETH -- COMPARE RACING IN BUSCH AND WINSTON CUP? "It's similar in a way, I guess. To me, there's just more competition here and there are drivers with a lot more experience. I shouldn't say there are a lot more safe moves going on because there was still some crazy stuff going on out there, but everybody seemed to have better control of their car today and people didn't really drive into the side of each other today like you've seen the last couple days. The car draft pretty similar and they handle pretty similar here." 

JEFF BURTON CONTINUED -- WAS IT DIFFICULT TO PASS? "It was difficult to pass, but I don't think it was any more difficult to pass than it was any other time than I've ever been here with restrictor plates. This race track comes down to handling. If you can run down on the bottom you can make up time. And then you run on the bottom and you don't have hole, then you go back to the back. I didn't see a whole lot of difference today than what I normally see for the Daytona 500. The only thing I did see today was that most people had the same problem. Normally here you see people loose, you see them tight, you see everything. Today, it looked like about everybody was tight. Other than that, it is hard to pass. If you've got a partner and you get a run on somebody you can pass them. If you don't, you can't. To me, that's the way it's always been here." 

IS THE TIGHTNESS DUE TO THE SHOCK RULE? "I guess the tightness is due to the shock rule, but I wasn't near as tight today as I was on Thursday. It was cooler today, I think that had a lot to do with the cars driving better. We've got two new makes of cars down here, the Pontiac is the same, and this is the first time we've had these shocks. I think we can make the cars drive the way we want to on these shocks. We make huge improvements from Thursday to Sunday. Well, the next time we come down here we're gonna be that much further down the road with it. I think the shocks have made it more difficult, but it ain't something you can't overcome." 

THE TOP FIVE CARS WERE FORDS. "How many times have we come down here and the top ones have been Chevrolets? That's just the way it is. It's kind of funny, I know there were some car owners a couple of three years ago that were talking about having crying towels for the Ford drivers and stuff and they're the ones that are doing the biggest crying this year. It's just a revolving door. The Chevrolets, they've built a great car. They won't be complaining at Rockingham I promise you. They built a great car with a lot of downforce, the same thing we did two or three years ago and we all came down here and struggled because we made too much drag. That's just the way it is. If you build a car with a lot of drag, you have to understand that when you come here you're gonna struggle. We've been struggling for two years. I mean, we haven't had near the luck or the success that the Chevrolets have had because we've been too draggy." 

CAN YOU COMMENT ON MARK GOING HIGH? "I knew we were gonna go high, they told me what we were gonna do and I just could not run up high. So I came off the corner and was on the bottom coming off the corner, but had intentions of going to the wall like you normally do on a normal lap. The 88, me being a little bit below him I guess, slowed him down a little bit and then Bill was behind me and then the 88 turned under Mark. At that point, there's no choice. I mean, on the straightaway when you've got one guy on the outside and four people on the inside, to go on the outside only drags Mark and myself back. I mean, we both would have gone back. Mark and I had a conversation before the race. We said, 'Listen, if you can help me, you help me. But, if it's gonna harm you, don't do it.' And that's one of those positions that always happens on a restrictor-plate race where somebody gets mad at somebody else. It's not out of malace, it's just out of protecting yourself." 

HOW ABOUT THREE ROUSH CARS IN THE TOP 10? "I think everybody knows our restrictor plate record. I'm not just happy, I'm surprised. We just have struggled on these races and for Mark and I to be in the top five and Matt to be 10th, that's way beyond expectations. Mark and I both had legitimate chances to win and if you would have told me that coming down here I would have been happy with that." 

BILL ELLIOTT CONTINUED -- HOW ABOUT FIVE FORDS IN THE TOP FIVE? "I totally agree. We all work together and obviously there were five or six Fords at the top because we stayed pretty much lined up and that's what we did. Like Jeff said, Benson had won the race. Probably had that restart not have happened, when Dale got by him, Benson probably would have won the race because Mark was trying to get by him and then we canned him, and then he got beside the 10 car and that's where he went. Anybody else in that pack, if they would have gotten out, that's where they would have went." 

MARTIN WENT HIGH AND NOBODY WENT WITH HIM, WHY? "I'm like Jeff, I couldn't run up there. Dale and Dale, Jr. went up there one time in the race and I saw nobody going nowhere up there and I tried to go up there and I lost a bunch of spots doing it. The only place I saw to be was on the bottom. You had to be in the grass on the bottom and that's it." 

DOES THIS GIVE YOU MOMENTUM? "I think coming out of Daytona really sets a tone on the year. It really helps us. You said there were three Roush cars in the top 10, well, all of Bill Elliott's cars made it in the top five -- all one of them. I was just trying to get some help from my friends. I was just thankful Rusty was able to help me. I tried to help Jeff. I figured if his tracks went into the grandstands that's where I was going (laughing), it's just one of them days but we're tickled to death." 

HOW CLOSE WERE YOU TO DALE'S INCIDENT YESTERDAY? "If you'd look on the right-rear of my car, he hit the wheel and down the right-rear quarter panel. Dale said, 'Were you the car that went by.' It was plenty close enough. I told him I had one opportunity to make a turn and whenever I could finally see where he was at, I turned left and I just did miss him. It was one of them deals that if the timing hadn't been exactly right I would have hit him and we both would have had to go to backup cars." 

JEFF BURTON CONTINUED -- THOUGHTS ON GREEN-WHITE-CHECKERED FINISH. "My thoughts at Daytona are a green-white-checkered at Daytona is a recipe for disaster. That's what I think. We've done it before and everytime we do it, it seems like something bad happens and it happened today too. Something happened on the front straightaway. A couple years ago I stopped down here in turn three and my brother had a bruise on his head and my teammate didn't know who he was, so everytime that happens it seems to be a disaster. The other problem that we have is that our races are so long, what if you've planned all your fuel mileage to go 500 miles and now you go 508 miles. I mean, there are a lot of things that happen that running that green-white-checkered can do that you don't think about. We could have rode around today for three laps under caution and Johnny Benson could have been leading the race, well he didn't pit all of us other guys pitted. He could have run out of fuel. There are so many things that could come up with having to do that. It would be better for racing, but, golly, it's hard to plan strategy and it's hard not to run out of fuel and do all those things when you do that kind of rule." 

DALE JARRETT PRESS CONFERENCE 

DALE JARRETT -- "The range of emotions in about a 24 hour period has been pretty incredible. Everything had gone so smoothly for us since we got here about 10 days ago and then yesterday afternoon in making our last run, getting involved in that little accident, bending the car up, and just knowing the time and effort that not only was put forth, but that it actually takes to make one of these cars fast here looked to be taken right out of our hands. But Todd checked the chassis over and when we saw that the chassis was OK, he was pretty confident that he could get his people here early this morning and they could rebuild the front end basically. They started on that at 4:45 this morning and put a new left-front fender on it, repaired the nose, repaired the right-front fender and the hood on the left-front corner. There were other pieces that had to be done. The rear bumper had to be fixed, but they basically did that yesterday evening. They worked until about 10 o'clock last night on the car...tailpipes. It was an incredible job. That's where the credit goes, to those guys for getting it back. The car drove just like it had been, so the chassis was OK and it had been just as good as it was before." 

COMMENT ON WINNING THREE 500s SO QUICKLY? "It's really incredible. When I got involved in Winston Cup racing I had the dream that everybody else does of one day being in that victory lane and having a Daytona 500 trophy. To now have three of them, the thing I can say about it is it was an incredible victory because it was a total team effort. But, it's always nice to come down pit road and get the congratulations of other team members and your own team members. But, the thing today was Richard Petty came out, made his way across pit road, and shook my hand. That sent chills up my spine that the King would make his way out there and congratulate me on that. I think that says just how special it is to get those three...very, very elite company and I just have a lot of people, mainly this guy sitting beside me, to thank for all those possibilities for it all happening." 

DID YOU SLEEP LAST NIGHT AND HOW SOON IN THE RACE WERE YOU CONFIDENT YOUR CAR WAS OK? "I spent about two-and-a-half hours after practice was over with Todd and the guys yesterday afternoon and once we went over everything, knowing that the chassis was OK, then we talked about what we needed to do to the car. If we had made the right choice in what we had done right before the incident happened, and I was very confident when I left there that the car would be back in good shape. I went out to the motorhome, Kelley had supper fixed, I ate supper, and I laid down on the couch at about quarter to eight and went to sleep. They woke me up sometime and I went and got in the bed and slept the rest of the night. It's the best night's rest I've had in a long time, so when this man tells me everything's OK, I believe everything's OK. When we took off I wasn't sure. I wanted to make sure that we had everything back right. I certainly didn't want to get into Ricky, so I probably cut the car too low and stayed away from him too much but about four laps in I knew the car was every bit as good and that's whenever I started making the way to the front then." 

TODD PARROTT, Crew Chief -- COMPARE THIS WIN TO THE ONE IN '96. "There will never be anything to replace that first Daytona 500 victory. To come out, rookie crew chief, win the Bud Shootout -- the Busch Clash then -- win the Daytona 500 your first big race it just doesn't get any bigger than that. The thing that did come out of this deal here is if you work hard enough for something, if you want something bad enough and are willing to sacrifice whatever it takes and you have confidence in your driver, your team, yourself, you can accomplish those goals. Today, you all saw living proof of that." 

DALE JARRETT CONTINUED -- WHAT HAPPENED WITH MARK? "Mark had radioed and asked if he went high would I go with him and I said yes. We tried it the lap before that and didn't get a very good run. I don't know if Mark had to get out of the throttle, but we just didn't get a very good run on Benson. Nothing else was said then. We came down through the tri-oval the next time, went into one, Mark went high, I went into the corner high when we went into the corner with every intention of going with Mark. I look in my mirror and the 99 car dove to the bottom of the race track. I've gotta protect my position at that point. I didn't lie to Mark Martin. I know he felt like that and there's nothing I can say that's gonna change his mind. If I were in the position I'd feel the same way, probably, but when I looked up and saw the 99 knowing he had the 94 right behind him, I was getting ready to lose my spot for sure and didn't know how far back I would go. All I wanted to do was protect my position. When I dove down, it gave me a push from the 99 and that pushed me beside Mark then. I didn't dive down there to pass Mark, I dove down there to protect my position. With the push that I got, it got me past Mark. Now, whether he had to lift because he was up there, I don't know, but it got me beside him. That wasn't my intention when I drove down into the corner. My intention was to go with him. I understand his feelings and I hate that it happened that way, but the lap before when it was asked if I would go high with him, I did go high with him, we just never made the pass." 

WHAT ABOUT THE BENSON PASS? "On the restart I knew that was gonna be my best opportunity because I had seen before, even though I was fourth or fifth on the other restarts, that Johnny's car didn't get up to speed as good as what mine did. We actually changed transmissions from Thursday and I think that helped us a lot on the restart. I got a good run on him. I knew that we was gonna try to block me. I tried to back up to get a little bit of a run, he backed up with me, Burton was backing up to try to make a run on me and I got enough of a push. Just, when I hit high gear it just seemed like my car really took off and his kind of bogged, I assumed whenever he hit high gear. I faked high and he went up there and as soon as I saw him move up the race track I cut my car dead left. I was committed. If I would have had to go to the apron, which I almost had to, that's where I was going. But I had a run and then the 99 helped push me by." 

IT SEEMED LIKE NOBODY COULD PASS THE LEADER. "In second, aero push. More than the aero push, it was just difficult to pass. My car would pick up a push somewhat like when I was behind Mark, but it wasn't that bad of a push. My car drove great. I could keep it right on the bottom, but I just couldn't make a pass. I backed up a couple of times trying to get a run, it's just that these cars are making such a small hole in the air that you can't really get a run on somebody. It makes it that difficult. You have to be back pretty far and a head of steam coming with some help to make a pass." 

SO YOU HAD TO DO IT THEN? "That was my best chance. I had a chance. I worked and found where I thought I could make a move, but I was gonna need the help of the 99 and the 94 to do it. I was waiting until a certain time because if they hung me out I didn't want to go back any further than I had to, so it was gonna be a late try at it. I did have somewhere with my car that I could get a run on Benson. Now, whether he could block me or not I don't know, but I did have a place that my car could really pick up and go and I felt like I was gonna be able to make a move. Whether I could have completed the pass, I don't know." 

DID MARK CONGRATULATE YOU AFTER THE RACE OR SHAKE HIS FIST? "When Mark pulled up beside me he didn't shake his fist and he didn't give me the finger, he threw his hands up like 'what happened' and I totally understand that. I would have been the same way." 

TODD PARROTT CONTINUED -- HOW MANY GUYS WORKED ON THE CAR AND WHAT PERCENTAGE OF THE CAR WAS REPAIRED? "With all the engine guys that Robert had down here working on engines and motor parts and stuff like that, I looked up this morning and I thought everybody from Robert Yates Racing was in the garage area. It took a total team effort, it took everybody. I would say 15-20 people at least. We flew three guys from Charlotte, three fabricators here, they got here about 10:15 last night. They came by my motorhome and we sat there for about 45 minutes. It just so happened that a tape of Happy Hour was on when we were sitting there talking, we got to see the wreck, I taped it, played it back a couple times and showed them what areas we were gonna have to work on. When they got here this morning at 4:45 we had a gameplan. The guys just did a great job. We work hard all winter long for Daytona. Robert Yates Racing, there's something about it when you say Daytona 500. I told him lights start flashing at the place, it's like the power is going out. It's just how bad we want to win here. It takes a total team effort and I'm just thankful our sponsors and Robert has given us everything that we need to perform." 

HOW MUCH OF THE BODY WAS REPAIRED? "If you break it up in quarters, I would say at least 35-40 percent." 

HOW DID YOU SLEEP LAST NIGHT? "What's that. Not very good. Like I said, the guys came over. My wife flew in yesterday, she had to come on the Robert Yates engine plane so she had to get up about 4 o'clock. She was there all day long by herself and I showed up about 10 o'clock last night and first thing I did was invited the guys over to talk about stuff. Finally got in bed, there was just so much stuff that was going through my mind, I'm glad he was in a position he was in where he could sleep because I knew he'd need his rest. I got about three hours and 45 minutes of sleep. It wasn't very good sleep because this is the Daytona 500 and I know how bad we wanted to win it and I knew we had to make sure when it rolled out on the line this morning it had to be absolutely perfect and it was." 

ARE THE CHEVY'S GOING TO BE CRYING LOUDER? "From what I saw the Chevys need to work a little better together. I saw a couple Chevrolets that were pretty good. Everybody knows that they felt they were at a disadvantage all week long, they ran awfully strong. I think the Fords just more or less teamed up with each other and didn't work with them very well. The Pontiacs, they were awfully good. The Monte Carlo, it will be different story when we get to Rockingham next week. They're gonna be awfully good. We were at a disadvantage two years ago and we had to work. They ain't gonna give it to you. Nobody is gonna give it to you. You've gotta go to work and those guys, I'm sure they'll go to work and they'll figure it out just like we did. Quit crying, let's race." 

DALE JARRETT CONTINUED -- WHAT WAS YOUR MINDSET TRYING TO GET BY BENSON AND THEN SEEING THE YELLOW? "When you look at a guy like Johnny, who you know is hungry for that victory, a team, I guess needing a full-time sponsorship, they got themselves in a position to win the Daytona 500 and you realize that he's not gonna give up that position very easily. He was doing a fantastic job. I honestly didn't think that he would be able to stay out there with just the two tires that they took on for that long. I thought his car would give up, but that shows they had a great handling package and it worked well for them. You know that it's gonna be difficult. It's almost like mixed feelings. I always want to win, but you see somebody get themselves in a position like that you'd almost like for them to have that opportunity. I wouldn't have felt bad to lose to Johnny Benson there, really, because he's a good guy and they need a break. On the other hand, I wanted to win. The caution coming out there, you've gotta figure when you get inside the last five laps that everybody is racing hard trying to get every position that they can, so it was a good thing I was able to take the lead when I did because otherwise I wasn't gonna have much of a chance." 

DALE JARRETT CONTINUED -- DID YOU TOUCH THE 10 CAR? "I don't think Johnny and I ever touched. I could be wrong, but I was basically almost down on the apron, but I don't think we ever touched. I think that when I came down he tried to come down with me and, if we did, it was very slight. I didn't hit him in the back as I made my move off of him, I was able to get beside of him, but I don't think we ever touched." 

ON THE FORD-CHEVY SITUATION. "I'm sure those guys are disappointed that they didn't have a better chance at winning the race. We were in the same position in '98. It's amazing how quickly you forget about things like that. The Fords, we came here with a new Taurus in '98 and it had a lot of downforce in the rear but it creates a lot of drag. They've looked to us all week and I don't know why. I've said this a number of times, I'm still trying to figure out why they're mad at us because we didn't build their race car. They built it, not us. They had plenty of time to build it and we just built ours. We're happy with what we have. We think we're gonna have a good car from here on out everywhere, but we know they're also gonna have a very good race car for the rest of these races." -Autoworld.com

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