Post race quotes - Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500.

''What a great day. I'm real happy. To come from 30th and drive up the way we did - I had a lot of fun racing with Junior to get up through there. I just couldn't believe how awesome our car was. The guys did an incredible job. We had that car on Friday and unfortunately we over-adjusted for qualifying and weren't able to start up there. But, it certainly made it fun to come from the back." - Jeff Gordon

BOBBY LABONTE, NO. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Finished 1st - Led 172 laps - 6th Atlanta Motor Speedway victory - 20th career Winston Cup victory
''Our car was really good all day long. It was probably better from the beginning to the mid-part of the race. Then, the track got a little tighter I suppose and we probably didn't adjust for it. I didn't adjust on every stop, but it was pretty good. I've been that way before here. I've been catching up a little bit and always got better towards the end. At the end we started adjusting on it a little bit more. Fatback made all the right choices there at the end to free it up a little bit and we were able to get by the '24' car.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS PLACE? BL ''I have no idea. It's combination of a lot of things. I just don't know. I like this place. There are a lot of things, but I can't do it every time, either. We do run good a lot, but we don't run good every time. We haven't run good every time. But, it's just one of those places I like.

''I told this story this morning at hospitality, and it doesn't really mean anything, but it makes for a good story. I was like 17 years old when I ran my first race here in a 'Baby Grand' car and I finished third, and I think what helped was that the throttle got hung wide open...That was my first time here and I can't explain why I ran good then because we didn't do nothing but wax the car. The guy that I was a teammate with, he worked all week long and he ran like dog poop, so it was just one of those deals. I have no idea why. It just happens. I love going fast here. The faster you go the more I like it.''

MARK MARTIN - No. 6 Viagra Ford Taurus (Finished 42nd - Engine)
''This is a pretty tough road for all of us, but that's how it goes I guess. I feel pretty down about it right now, but you can't change it. The car was really working good. On that last stop we really got it going good. At least we were running, but there's nothing we can do about it. We broke and we're in the garage.''

BRETT BODINE - No. 11 Hooters Taurus (Finished 41st - Accident)
''We struggled with the car all day. The car was really, really pushing and it just wouldn't turn the corner. We got it going decent for a couple runs there, but that was just my fault. I didn't know the yellow came out. The guys checked up in front of me and I got into the side of Kenny Wallace. I hope I didn't damage his car too bad, but it was totally my fault. I didn't know the yellow was out and I just got in the side of him. Hopefully, like I said, it didn't damage him too bad. We're out of it, but we'll bring the Hooters Ford back at Bristol.''

KURT BUSCH - No. 97 Rubbermaid Taurus (Finished 40th - Engine)
''We were a 10th-place car at best. If we can get the downforce better and get the horsepower better we would be able to compete.''

HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO PINPOINT THE PROBLEM?KB ''No. We've always had a problem under the hood. We try and try and try. We gain horsepower, we're just not competing under the hood like the other teams.''

HOW FRUSTRATING IS THAT?KB ''It's part of life.''

JEFF BURTON - No. 99 CITGO Taurus (Finished 33rd - Engine)
''We didn't have a very good car. Every time we needed a good pit stop to keep us on the lead lap, we had a real bad one. On the first set of tires we took off pretty good. We were running with the 6 and the 17 and the 97 and us - we were all sitting there running together. And then the second set we put on we were awful and then we over-adjusted and weren't good from then on. We went back and forth on the car from being loose to tight. In the last 20 laps the thing vibrated pretty good and then it finally broke.''

YOU SUFFERED THE SAME FATE AS SOME OF YOUR TEAMMATES.JB ''Yeah, I guess all of us but one or two are out, but, I don't know, the guys are working real hard. I don't want to call it luck because we need to do a better job, but it's not because we're not trying.''

MATT KENSETH - No. 17 DEWALT Power Tools Taurus (Finished 4th)
''We lost our power-steering before that last restart. It was weird. It wasn't like I just didn't have power-steering, it was like it was 10 times harder to steer than if it didn't have it, so I just kind of had to hang on the last 10 laps. But we had a great car. I think we were first in class. It was almost impossible to run with those Chevy's, so I feel real proud to bring a Ford up front and get a top five out of it.''

HOW CONCERNED WITH YOU ABOUT THE ENGINE LASTING?MK ''I was real concerned about it, but there's nothing you can do except to keep running and hope for the best.''

HOW WAS IT TO PASS?MK ''It wasn't too bad. You could still pass. It seemed like I could have used a little more front downforce, then maybe I could have kept up with them a little better. It seemed like I couldn't stay at the front very good all day no matter what I did, but we had a great car. The DEWALT guys did a great job with it and we came home fourth.''

THIS KEEPS YOUR SOLID START TO THE SEASON GOING.MK ''Yeah, on the long run we were better than anybody on the last 20 laps of a run. I felt good about that and felt if it would have gone green to the end, I felt pretty good about our car. On the short run I'd get hurt a little bit, but, yet, it was a great effort. We found our way all the way up there. We struggled for a lot of the day and got it good when we needed it to be at the end.''

DID YOU THINK A FORD WOULD EVEN FINISH IN THE TOP FIVE?MK ''No. I'm just real lucky to have such a great team to get me in that position and get me a good enough car to at least finish in the top five with those guys. They were pretty stout.''

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO LEAD THE POINT STANDINGS?MK ''I guess it doesn't really matter this early in the year, but it's better to be ahead than behind. We'll take that and build on what we did today and, hopefully, we'll have a good run at Darlington next week.''

ELLIOTT SADLER - No. 38 M&M's Taurus (Finished 6th) YOU STARTED SLOW, BUT YOU BOUNCED BACK.ES ''Yeah and that's what I've learned about this team, even when we don't start where we need to be, they know how to work on a car better than anybody I've ever been around. Shawn (Parker) and Raymond (Fox) are really using their heads and giving me great cars. It was fun. We were a little bit loose at first and we were falling back, but we stayed around the top 10 all day. They gave me the best set of tires and the best the car had been when it counted at the end of the race and, man, I'm proud of them.''

IS THIS A RELIEF?ES ''Oh yeah. This is a big relief because the bad luck has been awful. To be able to run all 500 miles with nothing happening to us is a good momentum boost. We had good pit stops and now we're going to my three favorite tracks in a row - Darlington, Bristol and Texas. We know we can make up some points and some positions there, so it's a good momentum boost for us. I'm proud of this race team. We've got a young team and, man, they're working good together and making me look good right now.''

DID THE SUN THROW YOU GUYS OFF AT THE START?ES ''Yeah, it's my fault. I wanted the car a lot freer than what it was yesterday in practice and the sun made the track a little freer than what I thought it would be. The car was a lot looser than what I wanted it to be, so it was my fault but they adjusted to it and made it better. They made it to where we got a sixth-place finish. We wanted a top five, but I was just too tight to hold Tony off at the end, so we'll take sixth.''

THE CHEVYS WERE STRONG.ES ''Yeah, we were the next best Ford to Matt, but the Chevrolets got us killed right now. If they can't see that going on two races in a row, I don't know what you've got to do. We've just got to work hard and keep our nose to the grindstone and try to come up with something. We know we're at a disadvantage, but if we keep working hard on our springs and shocks and getting it close that way we'll be fine.''

RICKY RUDD - No. 21 Motorcraft Taurus (Finished 35th - Engine)
''Something broke in the motor, I'm not really sure. The motor tightened up and I caught it right before it exploded, but it was definitely a long day for us. It's not one that we're real happy with for sure.''

DAVE BLANEY - No. 77 Jasper Engines Taurus (Finished 8th)
''That was a good day. We ran solid all day and just kept creeping forward. Unfortunately
sixth-seventh-eighth was all we could do. We couldn't get the car any faster than that. I was kind of yo-yoing back and forth all day. I'd be really good in one corner and struggle a little bit in the other, so I was kind of biding my time. We could never really get it good to run with the top guys, but after a miserable week last week in Las Vegas this makes up for it. It was a good week.''

YOU GOT OFF TO A GOOD START DESPITE THE DIFFERENT CONDITIONS.DB ''We did. Bootie (Barker) and those guys got it right. We didn't change much from yesterday. We were pretty loose yesterday and just did a couple of little things and that kept us from going down a lap early. If you were bad, you were in trouble. It's a good thing Bootie got it right because that kept us in the race.''

BUT THE DRIVER HAS A ROLE TOO, RIGHT?DB ''Yeah, here you do. This track, you've got to move around and find out where the car is the best but you've got to keep running the thing hard.''

GREG BIFFLE - No. 16 Grainger Taurus (Finished 13th - Leading Rookie Finisher)
''It was a lot better week than it was last week, I guess, watching it (the race) on TV. We brought a lot better car here this week and sort of copied some of our teammates' setups. It was really kind of a guess for us. We've been having some problems with the stuff going on our car. The left-front jack bolt keeps backing and, of course, in happy hour it backed out again.

"Really, we didn't have an idea of where to start today and kind of took a guess at it. It wasn't quite where I needed to be, but we kept working on it throughout the day. We went from running 30th to running 13th and, at one time, chasing down Junior to get my lap back. The car just isn't quite good enough yet, so we need to work on it some more.

"Overall, I'm excited. It was a great run for us. I was just trying to stay out of the leaders way up there, but trying to stay in contact to get our lap back all day. That's a tough position to be in.''

DID YOU HAVE ANY CONCERNS ABOUT YOUR ENGINE LASTING?GB ''Yeah, it did. Probably more of my concern was the oil-pressure light on the dashboard for the last 150 laps. When that red light is on and it's not supposed to be, you worry from there until the checkered flag. We're not sure exactly what happened. I don't think it's the same problem that my teammates had, obviously. We had some kind of pickup problem, scavenging the oil out of the engine or getting oil pressure or something like that. The oil pressure was moving around a bunch and the red light was coming on going into the corners, so some kind of oil problem. But the engine ran fine. It ran great the whole day and didn't have any problems at all.''

YOU WERE SICK EARLIER IN THE WEEK. HOW ABOUT NOW?GB ''I'm better that this race is over and I get to go home (laughing). No, I'm not feeling any better - maybe a little bit better than I was on Friday, but I'll be better for next week.''

BILL ELLIOTT (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Intrepid) - Finished 39th - Engine
''It had a real bad vibration in the motor and it just quit. We started out really loose, and then we kept getting it better and better. We didn't have anything for the 18 and that group. They're just in a class kind of by themselves, and nobody else is running with 'em. This has just been par for the year for us, but we'll get better.''

JIMMY SPENCER (No. 7 Sirius Satellite Radio Dodge Intrepid) - Finished 7th
''The guys did a great job. We qualified well and ran well all day. We had a vibration, and I think it was the brake rotor. We'd run 20 or 30 laps and get the brakes hot and try to slow the car down and it got a little scary. It's hard to run without brakes at Atlanta. We came home with a top 10, and that's pretty good for the Sirius Dodge boys. Atlanta is one of my tracks I like, but I never ran well here. Last week at Vegas, I thought we had a top 10 car. I'm really impressed with the way the team has come together.

''It got hot out there today. I burned my heel a little bit. I didn't prepare for that like I needed to, but you don't think too much about it when you're running good. Tommy Baldwin (crew chief) is doing a hell of a job, and Jimmy Smith is letting us do what we need to do. Jimmy Smith is a great car owner. He lets us go. You never once heard him complain when we put an extra set of tires on one time. He's the most upbeat car owner I've ever driven for. I love it.

''The next level for us is to just keep doing what we're doing. I'm really happy with the way the team has come around. Our pit stops were a little rusty today, and we had that little problem with the brake rotor. We've got to make sure we don't have any problems and keep getting those top 10s. That's how you keep stepping up a level. This is not a fluke. I know it's not. Now we'll prove it next week again.

''Top Dodge today? That feels pretty good.''

RYAN NEWMAN (No. 12 ALLTEL Dodge Intrepid) - Finished 10th
''The power steering was on its way out at lap 177. I drove without power steering at Watkins Glen last year. I did it in the midgets quite a few times, but I've never done it for that long. I'm pretty tired. We had a top-five car, but that doesn't do any good when you're at a place like this. We were loose at first and kept getting looser and looser. After that was got the car really good. NASCAR has definitely got to look at these Chevrolets because there's a bunch of them up front. We've had two top 10s in a row, but that's just top 10s. We need top fives and wins. We're not going to get them this way.

''I could manhandle the car for a few laps without the power steering. It was a handful after that. A top 10 run is pretty decent, but I know we're capable of a lot more than that. We'll go on from here and see what happens. We gained a few more positions in the standings today, so we'll keep on working hard and try again next week at Darlington.''

RUSTY WALLACE (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Intrepid) - Finished 15th
''I just let it get right up there against the wall, and that was pretty much it. I think we could have easily had a top five. The car was strong enough to finish up there I believe, but I just got up there in the marbles and that was it.''

WARD BURTON (No. 22 Caterpillar Dodge Intrepid) - Finished 18th
''We were a little bit too loose starting out like a lot of other cars. By the time we got a chance to come in and tighten it up we were down a lap and we just never got a chance to make it up. The car was pretty good after that.''

TONY GLOVER (Team Manager Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates Dodge Intrepids) - Finished 14th (Marlin), 23rd (Mears), 36th (McMurray)
''We're not where we need to be right now with the 40 car. We missed it Friday qualifying and had to start in the rear. A couple of guys were so good early on that we got lapped before that first yellow. We got the car a little better, but we weren't nowhere fast as we needed to be. We've got some work to do. We were no match for those guys up front by any means. I'm sure NASCAR will look at it in time. Until we can be the best Dodge week in and week out like we've been the past two years then we've got to go to work to make our program better and not worry about what the other folks are doing. We've just got to get our stuff better.''

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE'S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Finished 32nd - EngineON HIS ENGINE FAILURE JJ ''This doesn't happen to us very often. I went up through the gears and was in fourth coming off of two and I felt a really bad vibration, and that was it.''

JOE NEMECHEK, NO. 25 UAW-DELPHI CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Finished 9th
''We got behind on our adjustments a little bit. It seemed like we could be good one run and then the next run we'd either be tight or else we would get loose. We could never hit it perfect. When we had to make time up we could go, but it's disappointing coming home ninth. We had a much better car than that. The pit stops were up and down. They had some great awesome stops, but then they had a couple where - well, we left the lug nuts loose and we got behind one time. It's just hard to make it up when all these guys keep adjusting their cars, too.''

TONY STEWART, NO. HOME DEPOT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Finished 5th
''We thought with the sun we might be a little bit free. We were really good in Happy Hour yesterday, but it was overcast and cool. We fought a loose car the majority of the day. We could get it tightened up in certain areas, but we'd get it too tight in others, and then still be loose in some. We just fought it all day, but we had a good day and the guys did a great job.

"The first half of the race we showed signs of being as good as everybody else, but it seems like if we miss a little bit here it shows up big at the end. The guys that finished ahead of us got their cars right. I've had a cold all week, so when you run 100 laps without a caution that makes for a long day. At the same time, we had a great car. It was a little free at the beginning of the day, but we kept working on it. We just never could get it 100% right through the corner. We'd get parts of the corner good, but we couldn't get 100% of the corner right.''

WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS TRACK AND THE JOE GIBBS RACING TEAM? TS ''Our teams run really good here. I mean, Bobby's always run well here even before I joined the team. It's a track we both like, and it's a great place for the fans to watch a mile-and-a-half track. It's probably the best one we run on all year. You can run on the bottom, you can run on the top, you can run anywhere in between. You actually get to race here. It's kind of nice on a mile-and-a-half to be able to race instead of one of these new places you can't race on.''

JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DUPONT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Finished 2nd
''What a great day. I'm real happy. To come from 30th and drive up the way we did - I had a lot of fun racing with Junior to get up through there. I just couldn't believe how awesome our race car was. The guys did an incredible job. We had that race car on Friday and unfortunately we over-adjusted for qualifying and weren't able to start up there. But, it certainly made it fun to come from the back.

''I got up there, and I don't know if Bobby was just playing with everybody or what, but as soon as we came in for pit stops and I got the lead, man, he just mowed us right down and blew us away and just drove away. It seemed like anytime he wanted to he could. I thought we had it figured out that one time when he came up there towards the end and was behind me and he couldn't get to me. We were kind of actually driving away from him right before the pit stop.

"But, he was so good on new tires and Bobby is just good here anyway. I just wasn't as good on new tires as I need to be. I told the guys to tighten it up a little bit because I thought that would help us, especially if we got the lead and it all worked out perfect. We passed him, got the lead and just couldn't hold it. I was actually too tight then, and Bobby was just super strong. I'm just so happy to get a good strong finish and kind of get some momentum on our side.

''We had great pit stops. It was a whole team effort and hopefully we can do that every weekend.''

DID YOU THINK YOU HAD THE TOP BLOCKED WHEN BOBBY CAME UP?JG ''Bobby could run that thing anywhere. It was amazing how well he could hold his momentum. I went to the bottom trying to protect the bottom. That was where my car was working better. I saw him on the outside of me and my spotter said I was clear. I slid up in front of him, but he had the momentum. When I slid up in front of him he gave me a little tap and I was hoping that would slow him momentum down, but it didn't. I actually spun the tires a little bit and got a little sideways, but it allowed him to kind of get a bumper to the outside of me. I tried to squeeze him up high, but I knew he was there and I knew it was only going to be a wreck if I went any further with it, so I just had to give up the spot unfortunately. But, Bobby was so strong it would have been hard to hold him off there.''

WERE YOU SURPRISED HE CAME AT YOU SO QUICKLY ON THE TOP LIKE THAT?JG ''When Bobby Labonte has a car that is capable of winning he drives it for all it's worth, so that doesn't surprise me. I think a lot of people think of him as maybe just this calm, conservative guy. But, nobody is any hungrier than he is when he's got a shot at winning, so nothing surprised me. And, he's so good here at Atlanta. You can't take anything for granted. They certainly had their car dialed in today, so no - it didn't really surprise me.''

ON THE HIGH NUMBER OF BLOWN ENGINES TODAYJG ''We're cranking these things really hard - a lot of RPM. On those restarts there we were almost wide open there for one or two laps. You have no idea how much stress - you can just hear the engine - the RPMs it's turning, the stress that's being put on it. We were running some pretty darn fast laps there, especially there towards the end of the race, so it didn't surprise me. I know I looked at my tach one time. I had turned like 9,400. I don't know if that was just coming through the gears or whatever, but I got a little nervous because I did that. It wasn't surprising me that guys were blowing. I was just hoping that mine wouldn't.''

JOHNNY BENSON, NO. 10 VALVOLINE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX - Finished 11th
''I really thought we were going to be a little bit better. But after how we unloaded Friday, (crew chief) James Ince and the guys did a tremendous job. I mean, we were 40th quick after unloading, worked our way up, qualified okay, and in the race worked our way up to 11th. It was a good day for us, just a little bit behind, but not bad. We fought the car on the long runs, which is really unusual for us. Normally we run really good on the long runs, but we fought that a little bit today.''

ANOTHER SOLID FINISH MOVES YOU UP TO SIXTH IN THE POINTS.JB ''We'll take whatever we can get. You kind of look at the points race, but then you don't, so we'll just keep working away.''

DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 8 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Finished 3rdDID YOU HAVE ANYTHING FOR THE GUYS THAT FINISHED IN FRONT OF YOU? DE JR ''No, I don't think I really had anything for the '18' or the '24' when they were in front of you. It just really depended on who got off pit road first and who got in the clean air - you might have a chance of keeping them tight back there behind you. The '18' was really, really good all day. Me and Jeff came up through the pack together and raced together pretty much most of the day. I felt like we had a good shot at a top five if we just kept our nose clean, so that is what I concentrated on.''

ON THIS BEING A 'DIFFERENT' CAR TODAYDE JR ''I was just saying that the setup we had underneath the car was something really crazy. I didn't have a lot of confidence in it. I don't think anybody has ever won a race in the history of NASCAR with the setup we had under there. I kept joking with Tony [Eury] Jr. that 'it wasn't going to work, it wasn't going to work.'

''But, it ended up working out all right. Everything we had in the car from last year and the previous top fives and top 10s we'd got - this has always been a good track for us; we've always led and run good here - but, it wouldn't work. All that other stuff wouldn't work. I don't know why. But, we got it driving really good. I was really happy with it all day long. I was just a little too tight in the center.''

ARE YOU SURPRISED WITH YOUR FINISH AFTER A TOUGH COUPLE DAYS? DE JR ''I am. Like I said, I didn't have no confidence in what we were going to do today. What we had in the car for qualifying is what we qualified second with many times here and won the pole before, and it was awful. The bodies on the car are just so much different now that we had to just really to several extremes.

''It runs along the lines of what we've heard a lot of the Fords and Dodges have run here in the past - some of the stuff that we just couldn't imagine running or couldn't run under our cars in the past. We're able to put those under our cars now and just see better results. But, I'm real surprised. It was a good effort for us all day. I thought Matt was going to beat us there at the end. We were able to get him there on that restart and kind of just hung out there in third, best I could.''

LARRY FOYT, NO. 14 HARRAH'S DODGE - Finished 43rd - Engine
''I guess the motor broke. We were struggling all weekend and changing a lot of stuff and still we were really struggling. The motor broke coming off two. I hate that it happened but we were in everybody's way anyway. It was a tough day.''

DID THE LIMITED AMOUNT OF PRACTICE AND THE FACT THAT YOU DID NOT TEST ADD TO YOUR PROBLEMS? LF ''It's just tough. I haven't driven these Cup cars much and I'm kind of struggling telling the guys what I think the car needs to make it better. I hate it because it's tough on everybody.''

JACK SPRAGUE, NO. 0 NETZERO PONTIAC - Finished 37th - Engine
''The NetZero Pontiac was good most of the day. We fought a tight condition in the last half of the race and it got so bad I could hardly hold on to the thing. Somehow we got a hole in the radiator so we had to go on into the garage to change it. Unfortunately we found we had bigger problems than that and our day was over at that point.''

TONY RAINES, NO. 74 STAFF AMERICA CHEVROLET - Finished 24th
''We're twenty fourth-ing them to death, I think. We were horrible at the start. We're not going to quit; any time, anywhere. We just kept working on it and working on it trying to make it better and got it to where it would drive halfway decent. We're logging laps trying to get these finishes, avoiding DNFs and that kind of stuff.

"Later on in the season when we really need this type of job the team is well familiar with it and we'll just keep working on it. We can set a tone now that we can keep doing later. I mean, 24th is not great but from the way that we started 24th is good (laughs).''

JERRY NADEAU, NO.01 U.S. ARMY PONTIAC - Finished 31st
"It was just a disappointing day all the way around for us. We had handling problems for most of the race, then had a problem on pit road, cut a tire and crashed the car. It was just a downward spiral day. We'll just take our lumps and go to Darlington next week.''