NASCAR Cup

Darlington: Ford teams qualifying quotes

ELLIOTT SADLER - No. 38 M&M's Taurus (Qualified 10th) "That's a decent lap. If that gets in the top 10, I'll be very happy. To go out first, I didn't think we'd run that fast. That's pretty good. The guys made some good changes to the car. I ...

Published: Mar 20, 2004, 9:58 PM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

ELLIOTT SADLER - No. 38 M&M's Taurus (Qualified 10th)

"That's a decent lap. If that gets in the top 10, I'll be very happy. To go out first, I didn't think we'd run that fast. That's pretty good. The guys made some good changes to the car. I do not think that will be on the pole. I don't think that will be in the top five, but we said to ourselves after seeing we drew that number that anything in the top 10 is something we'd be very happy with. We feel like we've got a great race package. We finished in the top 10 in both races here last year, so we'll try to get 'em then."

HOW IS THE NEW WALL? "It's tough. It comes in pretty close to you in the middle of three and four. I think it catches up to you more there than what you're really used to, so it's gonna make for some very interesting racing come Sunday, I think."

MARK MARTIN - No. 6 Viagra Taurus (Qualified 20th)

"It's a little tougher than it used to be. We'll probably get used to it, but I think it's always gonna be a little bit tougher with that 30 inches gone. It's gonna be an interesting day Sunday. I'm real proud of Pat Tryson and this Viagra team. I love these guys. I would like to start better than we're gonna start, but I'm certainly proud of the lap time that we posted and I'm proud of this race team. We're gonna go get 'em this year."

WHAT ABOUT THE SOFT WALL? "We're gonna get used to it. It's gonna be OK. It's not gonna be a major issue in the race. They tried to make it safer for us and I applaud 'em for that, but this race track is very narrow. This is one race track where it's hard to give that 30 inches up, but we will and we'll be fine. It's gonna be a wild race on Sunday."

JEFF BURTON - No. 99 Hot Wheels Taurus (Qualified 33rd)

"We were just real loose. It's disappointing because we made the car better all day long. We didn't change anything and it was real loose. I don't know. We put the four tires on it. The track certainly changed some but everybody else got faster and we got slower."

MATT KENSETH - No. 17 DEWALT Tools Taurus (Qualified 15th)

"It was OK. It wasn't great from where I was at. I was perfect in two and three and four, but I just overdrove turn one. I made a mistake, but it's still a good lap for us. It's a lot better than where we usually start, I just thought I could have done a little better."

WHERE DO YOU HAVE THAT CHAMPIONSHIP TROPHY? "It's still sitting on the kitchen counter. I'm waiting to do some work to find a cool place to see it, but it's nice sitting there because every time I walk in the house I can see it sitting there."

RICKY RUDD - No. 21 Motorcraft Taurus (Qualified 25th)

"I don't feel too bad about that. We worked on race setup for most of the day, so we know we sacrificed a little bit for qualifying. We picked up about half-a-second from where we practiced and we didn't really know what we had. They made some changes right before qualifying and I didn't have a clue as to what it was gonna do. They said to just drive it in there and it'll stick, and it did. If it would have been a little bit tighter coming off, we would have probably been a little quicker but we're pretty happy with that."

HOW ABOUT THE SAFER BARRIER? "In qualifying trim there's virtually no difference. In race trim there is some difference. That's when you're gonna see guys playing touch with that wall. It's no different than a normal Darlington other than the fact that on a race run on older tires you cannot drive it into the corner as hard as you could before - especially going into three. It's always been that way, but you have to back off a little bit more. I know when I first went out there in race trim I left a little extra room that I thought was gonna be insurance and I kind of used every bit of insurance up. You're gonna just have to keep telling yourself during the race to not overdrive the entrance to turn three."

DALE JARRETT - No. 88 UPS Taurus (Qualified 22nd)

"The car was actually pretty good. I was a little late getting back to the throttle in three and four. I don't know how much that was, but we didn't pick up as much as a lot of these guys. We picked up a tenth-and-a-half from practice, but we probably needed a little more than that."

THOUGHTS ON THE SAFER BARRIER? "It's noticeable, but you race within the parameters of the place and that's what we have. You have to adjust things a little bit, but it should make racing interesting to say the least. You definitely have no more than a groove that's two-wide now, so it'll make for some interesting scenarios on Sunday."

KURT BUSCH -No. 97 Sharpie/IRWIN Taurus (Qualified 4th)

"That was a comfortable lap. I saw the speed posted by the 9 and the 8 and I didn't think we'd even come close to that, so we ran a decent lap. That will give us a good starting spot. The way the car has been running recently, we had to make some changes to it and so far it's helped out today in qualifying and hopefully on Sunday as well."

DO YOU THINK IT WILL BE HARDER TO PASS ON SUNDAY? "It always is here. What the track used to have was a zone of about a foot right next to the wall with better asphalt than what most of the track is, so when they put a soft wall in and take away 30 inches it's something every driver has to adjust to. It has no difference in or off the corner, it's just in the center of the corner where we're gonna have to make adjustments."

GREG BIFFLE - No. 16 National Guard/Subway Taurus (Qualified 3rd)

"The guys gave me a lot better car than I qualified. We definitely had a car to be on the pole here today. I just got nervous sitting there waiting all that time buckled in the car. I saw what happened to Jeff Burton when they couldn't get the timing and scoring working on the Busch car, but I just got real nervous sitting down there waiting when they were doing all this clean up from Johnny Sauter. The temperature probably kept dropping and helped us some, but I just gave up way too much getting into one."

-ford-

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article Darlington starting lineup

Next article Darlington: Earnhardt Jr qualifying press conference

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Laurent Mekies under the microscope: How different is his leadership at Red Bull from Christian Horner?

Formula 1

Singapore GP

Laurent Mekies under the microscope: How different is his leadership at Red Bull from Christian Horner?

Franco Morbidelli on securing most coveted WSBK ride: 'Clearly Ducati has some trust in me'

MotoGP

MGP MotoGP

Japanese GP

1 h

Franco Morbidelli on securing most coveted WSBK ride: 'Clearly Ducati has some trust in me'

"Not allowed, not made possible": Was BMW denied its title chance?

DTM

DTM DTM

Hockenheim

2 h

"Not allowed, not made possible": Was BMW denied its title chance?

Max Verstappen: FAQ on his GTWC Europe debut

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1 2 h

Max Verstappen: FAQ on his GTWC Europe debut

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts