RUSTY RELEGATED TO 29TH-PLACE FINISH
IN SUNDAY'S DAYTONA 500

The wet weather that moved through the area late yesterday and forced the postponement of the conclusion of the Busch Series race until Monday morning cleared the area last night. Only a passing shower just before this morning's 11:30 a.m. drivers' meeting dampened the otherwise ideal weather conditions here at Daytona International Speedway.

"We have a great handling race car and our Miller Lite Dodge can win it," Rusty told a group of team sponsor representatives gathered in the garage area this morning. "We have the front end all fixed up from the little ding we got in the final practice and we're ready to go racing." (Penske teammate Ryan Newman cut a tire down and spun in front of a pack of cars that included Rusty's Dodge. Taking evasive action, Rusty accidentally got into the rear of Jeff Burton's No. 99 Ford. Newman experienced potential engine damage and will start the race from the rear of the field after making an engine change.)

In front of a crowd of some 200,000 that included everyone from President George Bush to actor Ben Afleck and numerous celebrities and sports figures in between, the green flag for the Daytona 500 finally flew at 1:50 p.m. after Bush gave the command for the drivers to start their engines.

As expected Dale Earnhardt Jr. was able to flex his muscle early as he controlled the pace up front. Only seven laps into the race, Mark Martin blew an engine to bring out the first yellow flag of the race. Rusty was experiencing a slight overheating problem and had radioed that his water temperature, "was 240 and rising. We need to get some of the tape off the front end of this thing."

The ensuing pit stops under yellow on Lap 8 allowed Rusty's Larry Carter-led team to get four tires and address the overheating situation. The time on Rusty's stop was 15.771 seconds and he was 24th on the Lap 11 restart.

By Lap 25, the water temperature had dropped back down to 220 degrees, but Rusty had developed a tight handling condition. Up front, it was Earnhardt, Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Jimmie Johnson and Jamie McMurray battling for the top five spots.

Derrike Cope's Turn 4 crash on Lap 33 allowed the leaders to hit pit road again under the yellow. Rusty went with a round of bite out and lowered air pressures in the left side tires, in an effort to tackle the car's tightness. The right front tire was showing some wear, but it was nothing extreme. Larry and engineer Roy McCauley chimed in on the radio to assure Rusty that the situation with the right front was nothing to be alarmed about.

Stewart led on the Lap 38 restart, with Earnhardt, Johnson, Michael Waltrip and Kurt Busch completing the top five. Rusty lined up 20th and was hoping to launch a charge back up toward the front.

At Lap 50, Johnson led with Earnhardt second, Stewart third, Matt Kenseth fourth and Jeff Gordon fifth. Rusty was back up to 16th. Unfortunately for Rusty and his Miller Lite Dodge team, any chance of winning this edition of the Daytona 500 evaporated nine laps later when he was caught up in a three-car skirmish off of Turn 2 with Jeff Green and Ken Schrader.

"I was following the 43 car," Rusty explained to NBC-TV's Marty Snider. "He was really holding me up. He wasn't doing anything wrong, but I went into one and two and had a good run. I tried to blast out of the middle of two and I drove through the center and just didn't clear him. As I was exiting, his left front corner got my right rear quarterpanel. The car was pretty good, but it was just tight, tighter than I wanted it to be. I told the guys I could not get it to go. It would not run. If I wasn't in the draft it wouldn't go. On restarts I got behind and the field drove off. Something is going wrong. We pulled a lot of tape off. It was running hot, and I think I hurt the motor or something.

"It was just one of those racing things. It wasn't Jeff's fault, and I didn't give myself enough room. The car is tore up pretty good. I think I hurt the motor early on the run. It was sluggish, nothing like yesterday. It really ran great in practice Saturday. It felt like it was down 30 horsepower today. I don't know what was wrong with it.

"I'm real disappointed. I wanted it real bad, but it wasn't to be done today. It's a sad deal. I didn't have the car. It didn't handle right. It wasn't running. It was perfect yesterday, but it got real hot and I must have hurt the motor. It wasn't where it needed to be. We had a great week going. We've been here for two weeks now and everything has been good, but it wasn't today.

"It's going to be a long week. I thought I had a car to win today. It was really running good yesterday in practice. A lot of people were saying I was going to do it, and I felt really good about it. We're not going to get down. Larry Carter (crew chief) has done a great job with this team, and I was hoping we'd have better results for him today."

Relegated to the garage for repairs that included replacing the radiator and repairing sheet metal damage, Rusty did return to the race at Lap 100. It was then a matter of logging laps and picking up valuable finishing spots.

A wild multi-car crash at Lap 70, which involved some 12 cars including Waltrip and teammate Ryan Newman, thinned the field even more and made Rusty's effort to return to action even more worthwhile. At the end of the day, he was credited with a 29th-place finish.

The battle up front shook down to a two-car shootout during the final laps between Earnhardt and Stewart. During the final green flag pit stops, rookie Scott Wimmer opted for two tires only to grab the lead. But the lead duo of Stewart and Earnhardt caught and passed him with 25 laps remaining.

Earnhardt made an inside move on Stewart with 19 laps remaining to grab the lead and never looked back.

At the finish, it was Earnhardt taking the win, with Stewart second, Wimmer third, Harvick fourth and Johnson fifth. Joe Nemechek, Elliott Sadler, Jeff Gordon,Matt Kenseth and Dale Jarrett rounded out the top 10 finishers.

"After the crash, we just were forced to try to regroup and get all we could during the rest of the day," Rusty said after the race. "We got back out there and the guys did a great job of putting the car back in decent shape. It was just a matter of a lot of cars out by attrition and several of us as walking wounded out there. I am really surprised that we finished in the top 30 with our problems coming so early in the race here today. Oh well, we'll just have to bounce back and get them next week at Rockingham."

The NASCAR NEXTEL Cup circuit now moves on to North Carolina Speedway near Rockingham for next Sunday's Subway 400, which features live coverage by FOX-TV and MRN Radio.

Rusty and team tested several weeks back for this race. "When it was all said and done, we'd put in 500 miles of test time in both race and qualifying trim," Rusty said recently of the test. " If you recall, the first Rockingham race last year was definitely a big fish that got away. We led the most laps - just dominated the thing - only to see the handling go away there at the end. Well, this time I'm confident that we'll have all the 'I's' dotted and the 'T's' crossed."