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BUSCH: Dover: Scott Riggs press conference

SCOTT RIGGS -10-Nesquik Taurus (Finished 11th) - highest finiishing rookie "They won here last year, the 10 car, so we really thought we had a real good car to start the race. We thought it would be just a little bit too free and we thought the ...

Edited: Apr 16, 2008, 12:40 AM

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SCOTT RIGGS -10-Nesquik Taurus (Finished 11th) - highest finiishing rookie

"They won here last year, the 10 car, so we really thought we had a real good car to start the race. We thought it would be just a little bit too free and we thought the race track would come to us. Unfortunately, as soon as they dropped the green flag it was just terribly tight and it was tight all day. We just fought it all day. We started fifth, fell back to like eighth, worked our way back in the top five - got to fourth and got to fifth. We just kept working on it everytime we came into the pits and the last time we came into the pits we got four tires. When we pulled out, the 57 - unfortunately my teammate - pulled out and hit me right in the left-front, which knocked the toe way out. That really hurt us. In the meantime, somewhere around halfway in the race I didn't have any clutch, so I would come into the pits, knock it in neutral, coast to a stop, shut the motor off, put it in gear, and then when they dropped the jack I tried to crank it up and take off. We think we had a shock or something break on the car because it was so tight, but we made a lot of changes. It should have been so loose that it should have been backing itself into the corner. I hate that we couldn't have a better finish, but we did hold on and didn't tear the car up. We can go back and learn from it, learn what happened and what went wrong. Eleventh place, top rookie, that's pretty pathetic. I hate that, but that just goes to show you how tough this place really is. I hate it for all the other guys not to have better finishes. I'm glad to see that all the people that did have tires, go down and hit the wall and things like that, that everybody was OK. We'll just go back to Nashville next week and redeem our concrete reputation."

WERE YOU SURPRISED TO SEE THE RED FLAG? "As far as giving one to go as soon as we took off, yeah, they were definitely giving us as many laps under green as they could. So we debated there. We were a 10th-place car right then and the toe was knocked out. We thought about coming in and, if we would have more laps under caution we would have tried to come in and maybe get the toe better - put on four tires and maybe get a couple positions there at the end, but they told us as soon as we cranked the cars and started rolling that they were gonna give us one to go. So we had to suffer it out and finish where we could."

YOU MUST BE PLEASED LEADING THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE RACE. "I'm more or less pleased with the opportunity I've got with this team. These guys on the 10 car, some of the guys have been together for nine years, so it's hard to find guys that work that good together and have been together that long and still have great communication and great relationships. I just feel fortunate to be able to step into a band of brothers like I have. I feel like we're all brothers and all work hard together. We try to do the best we can every week."

HAS THE POINTS CHAMPIONSHIP BEEN DISCUSSED? "These guys are definitely looking at the championship points race. The only way we're gonna be satisfied every week is to just be consistent and try to finish as consistently as we can. So I think the points will sort of fall where they may and show who has been the most consistent and who has had the great cars all year. We're looking at the points but, at the same time, we don't want to look too far ahead. We just want to keep our focus on each race and take them one at a time."

-ford-

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