Running Their Mouth: 2009 Sharpie 500 at Bristol

Each week, we’ll go through media reports, interviews, PR and all of our own stuff to find the best quotes from the Sprint Cup race, capturing the story of how the weekend unfolded. It’s the most original commentary you’ll ever find: the truth, coming straight out of the mouths of the drivers, crew members and car owners themselves. This week, here’s a peek at what the drivers were thinking following the Sharpie 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway:

“Really set up a tight battle between myself and Mark Martin, who is the best car all night. Man, what an honorable racecar driver Mark Martin is. Such an honor to race with him. To give him the room that he needed [and] for him to give me the room I needed was awesome. I can’t thank him enough. He didn’t let me win the race, but he certainly didn’t take it from us. I love those guys on that team.” – Kyle Busch

“Well, I’d first like to say that it was incredible what the fans did here tonight. In my opinion, a thousand starts ain’t no big deal. But what they did made me cry. It’s pretty cool. I love this sport as much as they do. I’m grateful to have a chance to do what a did tonight, which is drive a really fast racecar and finish where it was running. We’ve had so much trouble this year, not finishing like we ran. Yeah, we ran second, but I bet we had the fans on their feet those last few laps. You know, that’s cool.” – Mark Martin

“Great day for me. Great night for my sponsors. Just really thrilled. First-year team, first-year driver. To be running up there like we did tonight it pretty special. Dale [Earnhardt] Jr. behind me, Greg Biffle beside me. I am good friends with Greg. If I was doing the wrong thing by Dale, I was going to get lynched by 50,000 people trying to get out here.” – Marcos Ambrose, finished third

“This lane choice is just really terrible on the restarts. Whoever is on the outside just has a clear advantage. It’s too bad that that caution came out there at the end. We were going to finish third and might’ve had an opportunity to get up there. It’s too bad because Mark Martin probably would’ve won the race, but that’s racing, that’s the way it happens.” – Greg Biffle, finished fourth

“I’ll never give up on you guys. I’m sorry I yelled at you guys. I just get fired up. We live together, we die together.” – Kurt Busch on his radio after he griped at his crew while he suffered from a vibration, finished seventh

“Fastest car out there. We should be in victory lane. It’s just a bummer we had something on pit road screw us up. Just really disappointed.” – Jimmie Johnson, finished eighth

“We had a great weekend. We made good decisions, we made good changes on the car and we had a really good car for the last 150, 200 laps of the race. It was great.” – Scott Speed, Raybestos Rookie of the Race, finished 15th

“Well, I’m telling you, this was like an episode of the Twilight Zone. How it started was I switched my frequency on my radio over to Ryan’s (Newman) channel to wish them luck, which is not uncommon. I didn’t go back to my channel. Every channel I went to it was still them. The reason I stayed on that and didn’t unplug the radio was because at least if a caution comes out I can hear his spotter calling the caution out.” – Tony Stewart, finished 33rd

“No, we just qualified good.” – Matt Kenseth when asked if his car was as good as it seemed early in the race

“That was one of the most disappointing evenings. We had a solid qualifying run, so you’d think starting in the top 10 would be one of the safest places on the track. Well not tonight. After I got hit, the tire gave out five or six laps later. The guys did a great job to get me back out on the track, but it was no fun to be out there for 480 laps knowing you have a really fast car and can’t do anything about it.” – Joey Logano, finished 34th

“It was a challenging schedule but also plenty of fun. When you represent our soldiers you know what it takes when it comes to preparation and mental toughness. I take a lot of pride wearing the Army uniform and every time I compete I was the soldiers to know that we never give up and will always fight hard to complete the mission.” – Ryan Newman on running four races in the same week at Bristol