NASCAR Cup
Mayfield Darlington Post-Race press conference
ON HIS SUCCESS AT DARLINGTON. "Well, first of all I want to say, Steve's a little bit disappointed, but I'm tickled to death. I'm happy as I've ever been. The year we've had to start with, it's been bad, and to come here and finish third feels ...
Edited: Apr 15, 2002, 11:45 PM
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ON HIS SUCCESS AT DARLINGTON.
"Well, first of all I want to say, Steve's a little bit disappointed, but I'm tickled to death. I'm happy as I've ever been. The year we've had to start with, it's been bad, and to come here and finish third feels like a win to us today. Darlington has just been a place that's been good for me, I really don't know why. I had crew chief Paul Andrews one time and this guy sitting over here is running good, too, so maybe it was Paul, maybe it was Cale Yarborough. You know, I ran for Cale for a while and he taught me a lot about this place, so, I really don't know why, just felt like I got a good set-up here, and you just gotta be patient all day and have a good race car."
ON HOW THIS FINISH HELPS THE TEAM IN THE POINTS STANDINGS.
"We were definitely in a hole, if that's what you want to call it. I think it was the furthest down I've ever been in the points. We were 40th coming into this week, and what do you do? W went to Rockingham thinking we were going to run good and kind of missed it there, and went to Vegas and had a great car there and got in a wreck and unfortunately took my teammate out - and the points leader. They came back to Atlanta last week and didn't run very good, so we feel like we kind of missed it and maybe took for granted that our downforce-type race tracks, our set-ups were good enough, and really didn't work that hard on them over the winter. It's time to go to work now, and I think that's what it showed this week, was everybody puts their heads together on the Mobil 1 team, we usually come out strong. We gotta keep this momentum going and get out of the hole we're in, and trust me, it's dark down there too, it's way down. I've never walked so far down in the garage area in my life, I think. I come in Friday morning and I'm walking and I said, 'Man, it's around here somewhere.' I pass Park over here and Mark Martin and all these guys, I thought, 'Man, we're out on the grass somewhere, you know, we're not even in the garage area, way down here on the end.' Anyway, we'll get us out of the hole there."
ON STARTING IN THE BACK AND WORKING TOWARD THE FRONT.
"The main thing today was to finish the race, no matter what we had to do, and try to stay out of trouble, be conservative on the set-up on the car and everything else because we were down to 40th in points and make that long run and you learn real quick you need finish this thing. We just kept easing our way up and I gotta hand it to my pit crew today, we were picking up three, four, five spots a stop and that's what it's all about. They helped me a ton and we just kept working on the car all day, keeping it right there where it needed to be, and just kept getting better and better, and was able to put ourselves in a position at the end to maybe have a shot to win the race. We were pretty happy with where we were."
DOES ONE RACE MEAN ANYTHING WITH FIVE FORD IN THE TOP 10?
"I wouldn't say so. I think it's just a matter of - again, he was the best Chevrolet today. I'm not sure what happened to Gordon, he was up there for a while. There were several good cars up there, you know, the 20 was up there and had trouble, I think. It's just the way the race went today. I don't think you saw the Fords dominate, Steve admitted a little while ago he dominated the race all day, so that'll tell you right there what the best car is, Chevrolet."
-Ford Racing
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