Quotebook: On the outside looking in

RICHMOND, Va. -- Comments from those drivers that did not make the Chase for the Nextel Cup:

"I don't know how much we missed it by, but that's the way it goes with the points.

"We'll just look back and try to win one of these races in the next 10. We gave it all we had, but we just came up a little bit short."

"We didn't get in the deal. I thought that we were going to have a good enough car during the race to get in there, and it just didn't happen. We'll try to win some races, I guess.

"It's a huge letdown right now. It's like 'What do you race for now?' We'll just work on getting Raybestos Rookie of the Year now. It's great that (Jeremy Mayfield is) in it. It's nice for our team. We've worked as a team all year long. It was good that one of us got in there. I was thinking that it was going to be us and it ended up being them. Going into this race, he probably thought that we had a better chance, and he did too but they got it done today. They had the great race and that's what it took to get in."

"I'm disappointed. We were running pretty good there for a while. It's so hard to tell. Guys pitted there behind us and we were kind of in a position where we didn't need to pit for track position.

It's obviously all about track position, obviously. We came in and pitted there and we got behind. We got a lap down because some guys there who didn't have to pit for a while and that put us a lap down.

"It wasn't all about tonight, I can tell you that. We had a better car tonight than where we finished. Our pit strategy was working out good until that caution flag come out, obviously, just because track position is so important everywhere we go, and obviously I'm not very good at that. If we would have had a better finish we wouldn't have made the top-10 anyway, but if we had had a better finish it would have been a lot more fun."

"The car was good early. It just got a little bit loose there. In the second half of the race, we just couldn't get in the corner. But all in all, it wasn't a bad night. We did the best we could, and that's all you can ask for.

"It's disappointing to not be in the hunt for the championship. We've had some things not go our way this year and some miscues here and there. You can't make those mistakes and expect to be there. We'll be all right. The sun will rise tomorrow and we'll still go racing. We've got a chance to win races still and go for that final spot at the banquet. This team hasn't given up before, and we're not going to start now."

"We looked like we weren't ready for this.

I did a terrible job, apparently, in practice of relaying what we needed with the car, and they couldn't adjust, so we ran back. That's all you can say.

"We'll go like we always do: go try to win races, and hopefully we'll improve and get better and be good as a race team from this point forward, try to finish 11th in the points and try to get to Victory Lane before this year is over."