Rookie quotes: Robinson and Newman.

It was an interesting time for Shawna Robinson and Ryan Newman at the Samsung/Radio Shack 500. Robinson was involved in the accident that effectively put Earnhardt Jr out of the running whereas Newman suffered an engine blow.
Shawna Robinson, No. 49 Bam Racing Dodge, finished 36th.
"We learned a lot. Anytime you can run like that you learn so much on every set of tyres you put on. There are totally different ways to drive the racecar. That's about the best I can get out of the day is that we learned a lot. My pit crew had some good stops. We had a spring coil up at the end which made (the rear of the car) feel like it was up on air so it was really wanting to come around. I'll have to look at my notes to see when it happened but every change we made didn't fix it. We knew something was wrong but we just tried to hang in there and stay out of trouble."
Ryan Newman, No.12 Alltel Ford, finished 40th. Newman left with race after completing 252 laps with engine failure.
"We blew a motor. You can't do a whole lot about it. It's just a mechanical failure. We'll have to go back and see what happened and make sure it doesn't happen again."

Q:
Did you have to chase the track any today?

RN:
"We were really good, really happy all day. We made some adjustments but we were really happy. We needed track position and we finally got that and then that yellow came out and put us at the tail end of the lead lap and that hurt us. Overall, I think we had a great racecar."

"The setup that we started with was virtually what (teammate Rusty Wallace) tested with, if that tells you anything. We were on the radio during the race talking back and forth. This (engine failure) probably would have happened yesterday in practice."

Matt Borland, crew chief No. 12 Alltel Ford:
"We lost the motor. We're not sure why yet. We'll tear it down when we get back to the shop and find out. It's just an unfortunate deal."

Q:
Newman and Rusty Wallace were both strong today. Did the teams exchange information to help one another?

MB:
"We swapped quite a bit of information. They tested here (Wallace's team) and we used some of that information and we used some of our information from our Atlanta race. We came up with a combination between them and a couple of adjustments during the race and we weren't too bad."

Q:
How big of a factor was the weather? Did you chase the track all day?

MB:
"Not really. We were fighting the same condition all day, just a little bit loose at the beginning and a little tight at the end."