NASCAR Cup

Fontana: Ford teams qualifying quotes

JEFF BURTON - No. 99 - Roundup Taurus (Qualified 30th) WILL IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE GOING OUT EARLY? "It did in the Busch cars. Joe Nemechek and Brendan picked up, Joe picked up a lot and Brendan picked up a little more than we did. We struggled a ...

Published: May 2, 2004, 9:34 PM

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JEFF BURTON - No. 99 - Roundup Taurus (Qualified 30th)

WILL IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE GOING OUT EARLY? "It did in the Busch cars. Joe Nemechek and Brendan picked up, Joe picked up a lot and Brendan picked up a little more than we did. We struggled a lot in practice and never quite got it the way we wanted it. Actually, that's about a half a second faster than we ran on our mock qualifying run. That's not going to be very good, but that's all we got today."

CALIFORNIA SPEEDWAY HAS BEEN GOOD TO ROUSH RACING. WILL THAT HOLDUP THIS SUNDAY? "Yeah, I hope so. We're looking for a good day with the Roundup Ford. It's been a tough year for us. Last week went well. Hopefully, we'll get some momentum going and maybe we can build on that."

ELLIOTT SADLER - No. 38 - M&M's Taurus (Qualified 14th)

WHY WERE YOU ABLE TO PICK UP ON YOUR SECOND LAP? "I don't know. We were just a little bit too tight, but we had a little miss in the motor that time, so we'll go back and check it out and see what kind of went haywire there. The car was pretty good, but something happened. We'll get it fixed for Sunday."

CAN THE WIND BE A FACTOR HERE? "I think we would be worried if it was going to be an issue or not if it was going to make the car tighter or looser or whatever, but it really didn't bother us too bad at all. We were okay with or without. It might affect other people's cars more than it affected ours, but it was okay for us."

RICKY RUDD - No. 21 - Motorcraft Taurus (Qualified 35th)

"We're kind of disappointed. We run really good when practice first opened this morning, we were like top-10 on the speed chart most of the day, and then when it got hot we haven't been able to run since. We've lost the handle on this Motorcraft Taurus and haven't found it yet. It just sort of slides and glides on top of the race track, it doesn't get a hold of the race track. We got a little work to do, but we got some time to get it done."

THERE'S PLENTY OF RACE TRACK TO WORK WITH HERE. WHAT CAN A DRIVER DO ON SUNDAY IF HE DIDN'T QUALIFY WELL? "Well, about what you do when I qualified - you just use up every inch of it on the exit. The car's not stuck, it's just gliding across the race track, and it makes for a long day, but you do have a lot of race track. You can run top, bottom here and we just got to get this things stuck a little better to the ground. Hopefully, we'll find a set-up that works."

KURT BUSCH - No. 97 - IRWIN Industrial Tools Taurus (Qualified 21st)

DOES THE WIND BECOME A FACTOR ON A TODAY LIKE TODAY? "It's always a factor when you run in California, because it blows so strong. We just got too tight. We made the wrong adjustments."

MATT KENSETH - No. 17 - DeWalt Power Tools Taurus (Qualified 25th)

"Our car drove really good in three and four, one and two is were we get more travel, and it drove in probably pretty hard. It just kind of locked the front end down and it just wouldn't turn. So, as sloppy as one and two was we had a good three and four and a decent recovery, but one of these weeks I would like to qualify in front a little farther."

GREG BIFFLE - No. 16 - National Guard/Subway Taurus (Qualified 18th)

A NICE PICK-UP FROM PRACTICE WILL GET YOU A TOP-20 START. "Yeah, it did. We're like bottoming out or coil binding. It feels like it's running out of travel. We look at it and don't see anything apparent, but we're hoping it's going to go away when we get in race trim. The car feels like it's got the potential to be really good, but we're happy with that, I guess. Not as back as far as we were, so we're alright."

EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE FROM QUITE A BIT NORTH OF HERE (WASHINGTON), IS THIS LIKE COMING HOME FOR YOU? "Yeah, it is. It's nice coming back out here. I enjoy coming to the west coast. I get to see my family and a lot of fans, so it's kind of neat."

-ford racing-

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