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| | Sunday, October 24 | |||||
| Here's what the leaders and other drivers had to say Sunday following the Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn 400 at North Carolina Speedway.
"Let me tell you something, this Exide Ford was a lapped car. Frank and everyone just kept working on the car. I mean, we were a lapped car literally. And they kept working and working and working and finally got this thing so it would run. I'm just so proud of them. That was just a 'never-quit' attitude right there.
"The middle worked best for me, up high I was too loose. In the middle, I was better. I just can't believe we won this race. I hate it for Ward, I really do. I know that's a heartbreaker for him. One day he's going to turn this thing around and start kicking my butt. I really do hate it for him, he had a great race car.
"Everyone says, isn't it fun to race your brother?' Well, it's no fun having to beat your brother. It's no fun at all. I know they are dissappointed, but they did a hell of a job too."
-- Jeff Burton Pop Secret 400 winner "What a driver, what a crew. Those guys got us out front there at the end and I'm glad they still let me change the tires. What a great stop there at the end to beat the No. 22 out. Tommy Baldwin does a great job with Ward and those guys ran great today, I don't know how we won this race. "We were junk at the beginning of the race. We made so many changes on the car, this is the greatest race we've ever won as far as making that many adjustments. We never had a good enough car to win and somehow we worked it out. The guys just did a great job. And Jeff Burton? Wow, what a job by him." -- Frank Stoddard Jeff Burton's crew chief "This time, (finishing second to Jeff) made me mad. The first two times didn't bother me as much. But I'm actually ... I still am just mad. I don't really want to say how I feel right now. "The main thing is my team keeps giving me better cars every week and they did again. The pit stops were awesome, the engine was awesome. We had a lapped car (in front of us), trying to get the lap back and that got (Jeff) about 200 yards ahead of me. But a few more laps and we would have got him. We just ran out of time. "Not only is he my brother, but I've finished twice (to him) three times. We want to win a race and I don't expect anyone else to give it to us. It's just the circumstances, and I'm not mad at him. But one of these days we are going to turn this around. "We could go back over this whole race, start to finish, and I don't know what we'd do differently. We just ran out of time. If we don't win a race this season, I still say we've had a winning season." -- Ward Burton Finished: 2nd Place "We didn't have third-place car for most of the day and we came on better at the end. We couldn't run Jeff or Ward after we went back to green, but kind of evened out with them after 20 laps. We seemed like we could be good on the long run, or at least break even with those guys on long runs. But we couldn't go as fast as those guys on restarts. "For a while there, the car was actually the best it had been and we were breaking even with them a little bit quicker than before. We thought maybe they went so fast that their tires had given up a little bit, but they just didn't. They just outclassed us. "We adjusted on the car throughout the day. We put it back where we had it the second stop and then made some adjustments after that. We just dropped the track bar down a little bit. We had it up a couple of times and had it back down a couple of times. One time down wasn't good, one time up wasn't good." "Overall, we had a good day. We got by Rusty there at the end. I thought Dale (Jarrett) was going to come up on us, because he'd been good all day. But he wasn't able to catch us, so we were able to finish third." -- Bobby Labonte Finished: 3rd Place "We just weren't very good on new tires, so we were willing to give that up. But I thought I could make it a little better on the longer run (at the end). We talked, and there wasn't a lot of adjustments made (at the end), but it wasn't enough to hurt the car. Between that, and maybe that set of tires, it just didn't stick. "The tires I had on just before that, I was ready to go. I had the car just where I thought would be perfect. We had 85 or so laps there (to go) if we would have run to the end. That was just what I was looking for to try to make a run at 'em. But, all in all, when you look at the big picture, we did what we needed to do." -- Dale Jarrett Finished: 4th Place "The car was really good all day long, just really fantastic. I'm just proud of the team to have a car that could let me drive it from 25th to first. It was just that dominate today. Everything was going great, but then all of sudden we changed tires and the car was just not handling at all like it was all day long. "So because of that, we thought the tempeature was changing, so we took some wedge out of it at the end of the race. And when we put another set of tires on it, we found out that set wasn't agreeing with everything else. The car just got real loose at the end. I just had to save it and bring it home fifth. "I got to tell you. I really thought I had my 50th win today. (The car) was that dominate. When you qualify as bad as I did and then drive up to the lead, get the halfway bonus and get all that money and lead a lot laps -- I really thought today was the day. I really thought we had our 50th victory today. "But then you change tires and it went nuts on me. Then you find yourself chasing that. When we put that last set of tires on it, it was back OK. But that adjustment we made in the chassis is what KO'd us." -- Rusty Wallace Finished: 5th Place "I guess it was a good day for our team. It was just one of those days, we had a couple of problems, but it sure could have been worse. We had a pretty good race car, but we chased some things around the racetrack today. We were pretty strong there at the end, but we had to come from way behind. To come from 10th to sixth is all we could do. "I knew we had a chance, but I didn't think we were going to kill 'em. At Dover, I knew we had a chance to whip 'em. But today, I knew everything would have to fall our way to do it -- and it didn't. So, we gave it our best effort and we got a reasonable result." -- Mark Martin Finished: 6th Place "The 28 and I got hooked up and I think his bumper stuck into my bumper and when I tried to turn it just wouldn't go. So, we knocked the wall a ton. "But we were suffering all day, anyway. I hate to be out, I wanted to finish. But we were having a tough day anyway. Maybe we can go get 'em in Phoenix." -- Dale Earnhardt Finished: 40th Place | ALSO SEE Burton wards off big brother (again) to win Pop Secret 400
Notebook: Jarrett still needs finishing touch at Rock
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