NASCAR Cup
Loudon II: Benson, Labonte press conference
JOHNNY BENSON, NO. 10 VALVOLINE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: "We were pretty happy with practice. When we unloaded the car we were only about 25th quick, but we made a couple of changes. (Crew chief) James Ince and the guys are just doing a tremendous ...
Edited: Sep 15, 2002, 1:29 AM
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JOHNNY BENSON, NO. 10 VALVOLINE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX:
"We were pretty happy with practice. When we unloaded the car we were only about 25th quick, but we made a couple of changes. (Crew chief) James Ince and the guys are just doing a tremendous job. They got the car a little bit more comfortable for me, and by the end of practice we were second on the sheet and that's where we ended up in qualifying.
YOUR COMMENTS ON THE TRACK
"It's great, I don't know what they were complaining about last time, but then I wasn't here. So it's been great - I'm not going to complain at all. It seems to have a lot of grip in it, but I haven't got out past the outside groove either. I think it will be fine and we'll just have to deal with it if things start to happen.
PHYSICALLY HOW DO YOU FEEL?
"I'm in good shape. When I wrecked at Daytona I broke totally different ribs than I did in Richmond. I think I'm in okay shape now. Obviously I don't want to hit anything, but by the same token I think we're fine."
BOBBY LABONTE, NO. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES PONTIAC GRAND PRIX:
"We started off 30th or something in practice right off the bat, and we were a little tighter than we were last time here. We made a few changes on the car and it got better as we went. We ran quite a few laps in practice and kept making changes, and finally we made our bonsai run before practice was over and we ended up fifth. We just kept making the right changes. Jimmy (Makar) and all of the guys worked real hard on this car because it's the same one I hit Johnny (Benson) with last week as a matter of fact, but he got the better end of it. The guys did a great job working on it replacing the nose, the fenders, the hood and all of that stuff to get back here this weekend. This is the same car we qualified fourth with last time here, it's just that I didn't get to start fourth because I crashed on Saturday morning, so now I have to be careful tomorrow morning.
YOUR COMMENTS ON THE TRACK
"The big thing between this time and last time, it seemed like the track was a little tighter, and I've talked to a couple of other drivers that thought the same thing. I'm kind of like Johnny. In practice for qualifying, you don't want to vary off of your line much because the fast way around is closer to the bottom of the racetrack, or at least in the groove that's banked the right way, so we'll see what happens. At least it's a little bit cooler weekend than we had here last time, so that should be good for us. But we didn't see a problem last time until Sunday anyway. You never know. We'll practice tomorrow morning the best we can and see if we can't get our car working really good. We had a good car last time and finished 13th after we had to make an extra pit stop there at the end, so really that's the key for us to just try and get our car as fast as we can right now and not worry about anything else."
-pontiac-
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