NASCAR Cup
Dover: Top Rookie press conference
SCOTT RIGGS, NO. 10 VALVOLINE CHEVROLET (Finished 5th and Best Rookie) ON BEING TOP ROOKIE AND HIS BEST FINISH YET: "We still didn't have the car we needed to be competitive like we needed to be. It seemed like the last couple of races as soon ...
Published: Jun 9, 2004, 11:19 AM
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SCOTT RIGGS, NO. 10 VALVOLINE CHEVROLET (Finished 5th and Best Rookie)
ON BEING TOP ROOKIE AND HIS BEST FINISH YET:
"We still didn't have the car we needed to be competitive like we needed to be. It seemed like the last couple of races as soon as the green flag drops it takes us about a third of the race to get our car dialed in. The same thing happened today. We fell back and got a lap down and kept making the car better. We happened to be in the right place at the right time through all those wrecks. We didn't pit there with those green cycle pit stops. We stayed out as long as we could. We stayed out and got a break there and got one of our laps back. Then we got the lucky dog at the end and got back on the lead lap and had a decent finish. The big thing was staying out of the wrecks and missing all the melee through three and four."
HAVE YOU SEEN AS WILD AS THE LAST 80 LAPS?
"I've seen massive crashes like that. Most time it was short track back home where everybody is driving over the top of their head and wrecking each other. That's what it felt like out there and sort of tip-toe when everybody is two-wide, beating and banging. I was wondering what was taking so long. I think they should of stopped it and given us some more laps and figured out where they were going to put the No. 12. It's a pretty unfortunate situation for the leader to cause the caution. I'm sure it's a pretty complex situation the way the rules are."
"We can go back out there and run twenty more laps and it's fine with me. I'm sure it was pretty confusing to figure out what's going to happen. It's better for them to take their time now than it was to do something like what happened to Carl Edwards and say sorry we messed up."
DID YOU THINK YOU HAD A SHOT AT THE LUCKY DOG AT THE SECOND FROM LAST YELLOW FLAG:
"I didn't know if we'd have another caution. The way it was going I didn't want to be in the front. It seemed like whoever was leading was going to have some bad luck and have the car tore up. I just didn't have the car to be able to hold him off. Dale Jr. was able to get by. As soon as he got by they had debris. He had a chance to get back on the lead lap. We were fortunate enough to have another caution later on and get ourselves back on the lead lap. I'm not complaining about it for sure."
HOW BAD DID YOU NEED THAT FINISH?
"Team wise we needed a finish that bad about as bad as anything else. We've been struggling awful hard all year and it's not because of lack of effort on anybody's part. There's a lot of new guys on the team. I'm a rookie myself. These new tires and these Cup cars are a lot different that the Busch cars were. It's taking a lot time to figure out what the car needs to feel like to be competitive. It seems like we have so many variables that change the way the race track is and the way the race car is from the time we leave Happy Hour to the time we drop the green lap. That's the thing we've been missing. We did the same thing today. We're still striving to be better."
-gm
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