Quotes of the Week

DAN WHELDON, IRL driver, Target Chip Ganassi Racing
"As Brian Barnhart says, 'What goes around, comes around.' She nearly put me in the pit wall at Indianapolis. I certainly have no problem with everybody else on the track. I'm sure she's just feeling the pressure of not winning races and her teammates are. She's just feisty. I mean there's a lot of pressure on her, like I say, because she's not won a race and her teammates have. So I think in a situation like that sometimes you get desperate. She's just being Danica. She'll be fine when she calms down. But she's messing with the wrong person if she wants to get feisty that's for sure. Because I'm a lot tougher than she is on track." (Commenting about the incident when Danica Patrick and Wheldon made contact during the ABC Supply/AJ Foyt Indy 225 race in Milwaukee)

DANICA PATRICK, IRL driver, Andretti Green Racing
"I don't know if he's mad that I passed him at Indy and he got passed by five more cars or something. I don't know if the message got across. I've never been in this situation with Dan before. He is a tough person to pass. So, I don't know. We'll see next time. I just went up to him and put my arm around him and asked him and said, 'I was inside of you, Dan. Why did you come down on me?' And he didn't have anything to say. He was being stubborn and he didn't think I was there. And if he thinks I'm not going to remember that, he's crazy!" (Commenting about the incident when Danica and Dan Wheldon made contact during the ABC Supply/AJ Foyt Indy 225 race in Milwaukee)

ROBIN MILLER, Motorsports Journalist, Veteran Open Wheel Expert
"I think when you look at the film, her right front hits his left rear. Did Franchitti get under her and force her up? Did Wheldon come down? I don't know. They both have their opinions. I do know this one thing for sure. Hate is good for auto racing. We need more hate. And I like the fact that not only did Danica pass more cars than anybody on the track today, but she thought she was right and she went down to Wheldon and confronted him. She didn't send her PR man down there and moan in the press. She did what a man would do. At a sprint car race, she went down and faced him up head-on, and I like that. Whose fault it was? I'm not sure. It might have been just one of those racing things like AJ says." (Commenting on the incident between Dan Wheldon and Danica Patrick made contact at the ABC Supply/AJ Foyt Indy 225 race in Milwaukee. A lengthy pit spot to repair the right-side steering rod cost Patrick track position)

DAVID COULTHARD, F1 driver, Red Bull
David Coulthard, who drove for McLaren for nearly a decade until the end of 2004, accused British journalists of wrongly depicting Ron Dennis' squad as "the big bad racing team screwing the nice British driver" after the Monaco Grand Prix. "(They are) helping Lewis create the foundations of his future success, fame and fortune. So I don't think you can say they're not being fair," he said. He went on: "Was it fair on Lewis to ask him to back off in Monaco? My answer is, what's fair? I would say to (the media), don't be hard on McLaren because they have given Lewis the opportunity. They have given the media a potential British world champion this year. If they want to give Lewis the time to grow as a grand prix driver … then I would suggest they shouldn't do anything that alienates his relationship with the team, because put him in a Spyker and he ain't going nowhere!"

LUCA DI MONTEZEMOLO, Ferrari President
"Monte Carlo is a joke," Luca di Montezemolo said. "It's not even a race, it's just a TV show." (Montezemolo dismissed McLaren's recent one-two as a one-off and predicted a swift return to the top for his Ferraris)

DALE EARNHARDT, Jr., NASCAR driver, DEI Incorporated
"I have never had the opportunity to see any shops outside DEI in my driving career. That was a big surprise for me. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary or didn't see any golden eggs laying around. But there were basically, you know, I was surprised at how on par in some places DEI really is. And there's. I never really felt like me and Tony, Jr. (crew chief Eury) had any trouble competing and being competitive at DEI. The reasons why I left were truly personal and not competition related. But you look at these other teams that win more races and there's an obvious difference between the two companies or three or four companies. So you look at that and you say, 'What are we not doing?' Well, I got a chance to look around these shops and see some of the areas where teams are sort of branching out and growing. As I have said, I want to continue driving Chevrolets. That spells it out pretty good for a lot of people. Chevrolet has been good to me. They have complimented my Busch Series program. They have supported me and complimented me in my career. And just for a couple of extra bucks, I wouldn't want to go drive for another manufacturer. I don't have those relationships with those other manufacturers although I am sure there are great people working there."