NASCAR Cup

Watkins Glen: Pole winner press conference

RICKY RUDD --28-- Havoline Taurus "(My lap) was fairly uneventful. I was really sort of disappointed. I didn't think that was that great of a lap because the car drove so well. They really did a good job. They made some tire pressure changes ...

Edited: Aug 10, 2002, 1:20 AM

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RICKY RUDD --28-- Havoline Taurus

"(My lap) was fairly uneventful. I was really sort of disappointed. I didn't think that was that great of a lap because the car drove so well. They really did a good job. They made some tire pressure changes right before I went out for qualifying from watching TV and watching the broadcast and listening to the drivers comments. Fatback McSwain decided to make some air-pressure adjustments and that was probably the key to winning the pole."

YOU HAVE 6 ROAD COURSE WINS.

"That just proves if you hang around long enough, sooner or later you're gonna end up with some record. That's pretty encouraging. If we can win this weekend it ties Jeff Gordon's record, so that's pretty good. These guys, again, we wouldn't be talking about the pole if it wasn't for these Havoline guys. They stepped up and built us a new road course car this year and it's been pretty remarkable ever since we started running it out at Sonoma."

DOES IT FEEL LIKE CHEATING WATCHING THE GUYS ON TV AND LISTENING TO WHAT THEY SAY?

"I think it's taking advantage of all your resources (laughing). It's pretty nice to have all these guys go out and be a test driver for you and then come back and give you good feedback on what you need to do to your car to fix it. That's sort of what we did today. We listened to the broadcast and went out late. I know I was in the motorhome watching everything and I know Fatback was listening to the radio broadcast. You could hear from guys comments, everybody that got out of their car said 'there's no grip, there's no grip.' This morning in practice, our tire pressure was not correct for the morning when the track was cool. It probably favored more for a hotter, slicker race track and we basically didn't do a whole lot and let the race track come back to us. Again, everybody that got out of their car talked about no grip and we paid attention to that."

-ford-

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