MISSOURI-ILLINOIS DODGE DEALERS RAM TOUGH 200
JULY 17, 2004 – GATEWAY INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY

DRIVER: DENNIS SETZER
TEAM: #46 Morgan-Dollar Motorsports Chevrolet Silverado
Date of Birth: February 27, 1960 Hometown:  Newton, NC

ON THE GATEWAY INT’L RACEWAY:  “We are excited about taking our Chevrolet Silverado to St. Louis, should be a great race. I just talked to someone there today; expecting mid-90s, it should be a little cooler when the sun goes down. It’s been a pretty good track for us at times, but haven’t run as well as we needed to. We qualified up front the last two years, led part of the show, but just didn’t finish were we needed to.  St. Louis is a good braking track, short track corners. We are excited and hopefully we can take our Chevrolet Silverado to victory lane.”

ON KENTUCKY SPEEDWAY RACE: “Man we really missed something here tonight.  We were loose at the start and loose after changes on the first stop.  We got a little better after our second stop, but still not good enough to drive it to the front.  This was the Silverado that we got into a wreck with last week at Kansas and the guys did a great job of getting it back together for this weekend, but maybe we missed something.  We’ll look it over when we get back to the shop.”

DRIVER:  JACK SPRAGUE
TEAM:  #16 IWX Motorsports Chevy Trucks Silverado
Date of Birth:  August 8, 1964 Hometown: Spring Lake, MI

ON GATEWAY INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY:  “I love Gateway. It is a driver’s track with the configuration being different at each end.  If you have a pretty neutral truck you can get it through both ends pretty decent even through they are so different.  You have to shift in one and two so grip is really important to keep the truck glued down.  If you have a truck that is very good in one and two, you will be ok in three and four.”

ON TEAM’S SUCCESS AT GATEWAY:  “You have to have a team who understands how to give you the truck you need here and I have that with our No. 16 Chevy Trucks Silverado team.  They had great runs with both Bliss and Kvapil, which is a huge confidence thing for a driver.  We feel like we are ready to give it a heck of a run this weekend.”

ON MOMEMTUM FROM KENTUCKY FINISH: “Luck is part of success in racing. But the team’s preparation to put you in a position to capitalize on opportunities and make your own luck is the critical part of racing success.  We had all of those in Kentucky. Now we move on to Gateway with positive momentum and the monkey off our back and keep doing what we did last weekend.”

DRIVER: DAVID STARR
TEAM:  #75 Spears Manufacturing Silverado
Date of Birth:  October 11, 1967  Hometown:  Houston, TX

ON GATEWAY INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY:  “Gateway International Raceway is a fun, unique track.  In fact, there are not many tracks similar.  One of the most exciting tracks on the circuit for both drivers and fans, Gateway has different turns on each end so you run both fast and slow. This was the first race I ran after my testing accident last season and we finished in 6th place.  The year before, we took 5th.  Our No. 75 Spears Chevy Silverado should be even better this year. To date there have been seven different winners at Gateway, two of which have been in Chevy trucks.  It would be awesome to be the seventh name of the list of winners and even more awesome to bring home the victory for both Spears and Chevrolet.”

DRIVER:  MATT CRAFTON                           
TEAM:  #6 Kevin Harvick, Inc. GM Goodwrench Silverado
Date of Birth: June 11, 1976  Hometown: Tulare, CA

DESCRIBES THE EGG SHAPED OVAL: "The racetrack is definitely unique because it is relatively flat and really hard to get your set-up right in both corners. If you have the set-up right in one set of corners then there is a good chance it is no where close to where it needs to be for the other set. You just have to find a happy medium."

HOW DO YOU MANAGE THE TWO DISTINCT SETS OF CORNERS? "Turns1 and 2 are definitely a different animal from turns 3 and 4. It is a real tight corner and I will have to downshift getting into the middle of the corner. I will be coming off the corner pretty slow and will be back in the throttle up shifting down the backstretch heading in to turns 3 and 4. I have to lift in turns 3 and 4 before I can get back in the gas and then the process starts all over again. I would say turns 3 and 4 at Gateway are similar to turns 3 and 4 at Phoenix. I really like Phoenix and have run well at Phoenix, so turns 3 and 4 at Gateway suit me fine. I look forward to going there because it is a driver's track. You can't just lay on the throttle and turn left."

YOU ARE TOP-FIVE IN POINTS AGAINST SOME VERY GOOD DRIVERS AND TEAMS – YOUR IMPRESSION?:  "We have had a pretty good season this far and been very consistent. We started off the season wanting to be consistent, finish every race top-10, top-five and now we are focusing on knocking down our top-fives to close in
on our first win. Even though we have not won yet we have definitely let our championship contending presence be known and that feels good."

NO. 6 GM GOODWRENCH CREW CHIEF WALLY ROGERS ON GATEWAY:  "I have sat on the pole before and really like the place but it is probably one of the most complicated tracks that we go to. It's hard to find the chassis set-up as well as a good motor set-up. We end up shifting there so it will be somewhat like a road course. Turns 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 are two different shapes so we will work on the motor aspect first and then focus on our chassis set-up. If you can get the set-up to be a little tight in 1 and 2 and a little free in 3 and 4 your balance will be just about perfect."

DRIVER: SHANE HMIEL
TEAM: #15 Billy Ballew Motorsports
Date of Birth: May 15, 1980  Hometown: Conover, NC

ON GATEWAY INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY:  “I’m looking forward to Gateway. I had a pole there and a couple of top finishes.  It’s a track I’m familiar with so we should be all right.  As long as the track doesn’t start with a K or the weather forecast doesn’t include rain.”

ON UNFORTUNATE LUCK SO FAR THIS SEASON: ““If we’d had any luck it would be bad luck.  We need to turn it around.  Four or five of these races we should have at least a top five finish.  We have a good team we shouldn’t be having DNF’s (Did Not Finish) It felt good to get up front so quickly in Kentucky when the wheel broke. We had another rain out of qualifying and so I had to start according to points. We have a truck that should finish in the top-5 every week. It’s hard to keep hearing and saying when it’s our day we’ll win.  Well I’m ready for that day with the No. 15 Chevrolet Silverado.”

DRIVER:  PAUL WHITE
TEAM:  #13 Sta-Max/Microtel Silverado
Date of Birth: April 9, 1963  Hometown:  Temple, TX

ON GATEWAY INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY: “"We're looking forward to St. Louis. I think we can improve on our performance from last week in Kentucky and afterwards I think we are headed to Chicago for some testing. We kept the Sta-MAx Chevrolet out of trouble all night and finished ahead of where we started so it wasn't all bad. We had some trouble with the set-up but that is something we can overcome. I really just need to get the feel for the truck and work on the set-ups with the crew so we can go out there and be competitive."