RICKY RUDD – No. 88 Snicker’s Ford Fusion (Finished 13th) –

“We had all kind of problems. The alternator quit charging early on but luckily we had two battery systems. Part of the price I had to pay was trying to keep the car in clean air, turn off the radiator fans, I had to turn off the helmet blower – I had no cool helmet all day long – and it about cooked me today. During the little break I went over and got me a little oxygen and I was ready to go.”

YOU’VE BEEN COOKED HERE BEFORE. “Yeah, but this wasn’t nowhere near that bad. We probably had a 10th-place car and ended up 13th just trying to take care of all the stuff on the car. I guess 13th with the way we’ve been going lately is pretty big boost for these guys.”

WHAT ABOUT THIS NEW FUSION AFTER TWO RACES? “This, to me, on this track our cars aren’t much different. It’s really puzzling for us as a driver and as a crew chief – Butch Hylton and the guys working on this Snickers Ford – is how to get them set up. The springs we used to run won’t even begin to work. We tried to do it the other day. We put some springs under here that used to go around here pretty good and the left-front tire was coming off the ground a foot. It was like a dirt car or a sprint car, so that didn’t work and now everything that used to work, you throw it away and start over again. We were up and down the speed chart the other day. Going into qualifying we were as low as 35th or 40th on the speed chart and we hit on something and qualified 16th or 17th. Then we went out in happy hour the other day and missed it and we were almost last, and they made a few changes and we moved up to 15th. I think everybody is coming and going as far as trying to figure these things out. Obviously, some of these guys have got more time on them, I guess, but our guys have been pretty puzzled and so have a lot of other guys.”

IS THIS A SIGN THE TEAM IS MOVING FORWARD? “Other than Daytona, where we had a car that could have won a race, we’ve been a 20 to 25th-place car performance-wise. We’ve had issues. We’ve had some problems with wrecks and such, but on-track performance has been about a 25th-place car. Even today, we ended up 13th, but I felt like we had a 10th-place car today. It’s definitely a step in the right direction. At Bristol, we got in a wreck late. We had a different car last week, but we just totally missed it there. We were around a 20th-place car at Bristol and that was it, so at least it went good today. I’d like to be able to say, ‘OK, we’ve got all of our issues fixed and we’re settled,’ but it seems to be such a big hit-and-miss for everybody on this car of tomorrow.”