Buddy Rice Car Quotations

It's pretty cool to be able to hang out with the President and have the race-winning car on the South Lawn.

When the car's going well, I purr like a kitten.

Pikes Peak is a nice track and it is a lot of fun to drive. The high altitude does have an effect on the power of the engine, but Honda does a great job of adjusting to the thin air. We have some new things on the car that I think will help make us more competitive. I'd like to see our luck change at Pikes Peak.

It feels good to be back on a road circuit. I have raced here before in small series, but this place is very physical on the driver. We worked well in the morning and learned quite a number of things. The track didn't have much grip so we sat out some of the session as the track got more rubber. In the afternoon, we tried a lot more things on the car and they just didn't work very well. So we'll go back to what we used in the morning. I think we all got a little excited to road race again. I know I was over driving the car too much at times. We haven't had a road racing event since April at St. Pete and we all enjoy this kind of driving. I feel we learned a lot today and should be much better on Saturday.

Well, I think he had a lot of heart. That guy put everything he had into becoming a race car driver. At least he went out on the top step, where he wanted to be at, in the top level. So he fulfilled his dream, everything he wanted.

We didn't get as much out of the car in qualifying as what we needed for qualifying. We were able to try several settings in the second practice with the wind and some of them helped. We want to be prepared for any kind of conditions in the race. Last year, we had some trouble early, but that was a freak deal. This year is a whole another year. Now we'll be ready for the race. We were able to run some race setup in practice with full tanks. I was pleased with the car in that configuration. We just couldn't get the speed for qualifying. Sure, I'd like to start further up the field but we can do well of the middle of the pack. The race is much different than qualifying.

The track was really slick and dirty this morning. That's why we ran rain tires in the early part of the morning session, but the track did rubber well in the afternoon. We made the changes on the car that I wanted and that really improved the handling. The track is a little bumpy than last year, but we can deal with that. I'm a little upset because what always happens on the a street course happened on the last lap. I felt I was on a 63 flat (seconds) lap and the yellow came out and we didn't the lap in. That seems to happen a lot on the street course. Right when you have everything together for a flying lap, boom, the yellow comes out. It is frustrating. But we'll be better on Saturday.

It's great to finally have a full-blown solid weekend. The pit stops were excellent like always. The car was good. (Engineer) Tim (Reiter) and I hit it off all weekend. We've been spot on, didn't make hardly any changes. The Honda power was awesome this weekend.

That guy put everything he had into becoming a race car driver.

The car was flat out all the way around, and that is all it had. It definitely helps that we tested here last week and the team was able to pick up some additional information. I think we have a good racecar, too. This is a trick track, and the race is always crowded and busy throughout the 200 laps. We haven't had the best luck this year, but the Sonoma race was a confidence builder for the No. 15 Argent Mortgage/Pioneer team.