Schrader charges to lead, fades to fourth

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Ken Schrader still gets a kick out of mixing it up during a race.

Schrader, driver of the No. 36 M&M's Pontiac, finished the Budweiser Shootout where he started -- fourth.

			Ken Schrader

He led the 70-lap race and then fell to fifth before taking back the fourth position with two laps left. After 17 years of Winston Cup Series competition, the 47-year-old still enjoys the thrill of competition.

"I was waiting to see if something was going to happen between first and second there at the end," Schrader said. "Whatever they did was going to dictate what we did. Jeff (Gordon) got high up on the outside of me and it got us loose.

"I thought we could have done better when I went with him and we ended up with fourth.

"We were all just hanging on there at the end. It wasn't a matter of nobody going with us, we were going as damn fast as we could. I wish we could have been a little better.

"It was fun out there. I'll take fourth, that's a hell of a lot better than we've done here before. I'll take that finish."

There's been some banter among drivers regarding how the makes would handle and race with each other with the new rules package for superspeedways. Schrader echoed a few other drivers' sentiments that the new package is a return to racing the way it was prior to the change.

"Drafting is back to what it was like in the past," Schrader said. "It's like it used to be and I like it. I don't know what the fans in the stands think about it. Let me tell you, where I was it was pretty exciting.

"When I got in the lead, I knew we were in trouble there. When you're running second, you know where you're going to go. When you're the leader, you try to figure out where they're going to go.

"I messed up and let Tony (Stewart) go by. He pushed us through the tri-oval to get the lead -- that was kind of fun."