NASCAR Cup

Bill Elliott Michigan II qualifying

BILL ELLIOTT (No. 9 Dodge Dealers Dodge Intrepid R/T) "We're on the pole. We're just on the wrong side of it. It's part of it (being knocked off the pole by the last car out). I've been racing long enough and now qualifying is over and ...

Edited: Apr 15, 2002, 11:45 PM

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BILL ELLIOTT (No. 9 Dodge Dealers Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"We're on the pole. We're just on the wrong side of it. It's part of it (being knocked off the pole by the last car out). I've been racing long enough and now qualifying is over and we'll worry about the race on Sunday. That's the objective now. Whether you're starting 39th or 43rd, the main objective is Sunday. We gained some from last time here, and that's the things you've got to do. Every time you come back to a race track you've got to get a little bit better. We came back and we were better, and that's the things we've got to keep working on.

"I thought this guy right over here (Ricky Rudd) was going to do it (win the pole). You never know. That's the thing with these deals. Week in and week out, everybody's got good equipment. The 32's got Yates motors. You hit it just right and get the combination just right, anybody's got the potential to do it, especially at race tracks like this.

"Competition has gotten so much better. On the other side of the coin, you've got so many cars that can run well. If you lose that track position.... Used to you could have a bad day and overcome track position. Now, if you have a bad day, that's where you end up, with a bad day.

"There's still some things we're trying to sort through. I feel like the car is a little bit different here than it was in June, and we didn't run that much better than we did here in June. I think we qualified with a .42 here in June (as opposed to a 38.327 today). Now we need to see what we're going to be like around other cars in race setup. I think that's where we need hopefully to make that work.

"It all depends on how things fall. You can start in the back anywhere and make it work for you, but you've got to have things fall your way. It's just like Indy. Just like Jeff and some of the guys who were in the back and because of the way the cautions fell, it ended up putting them in position to win the race. If they had not fallen that way, I don't know if they would have had an opportunity to win the race. This race track is wide, and you've got a lot more area to use. At Indy, Pocono and some of those places, you've either got to be on the bottom or you're out to lunch.

"I'm going to do everything I've done every weekend prior to -- Indy, Pocono, Watkins Glen, whatever. We're going to run as hard as we can and hope we can end up over here. If not, we'll go to Bristol next week."

-Dodge Motorsports

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