“I think you have to be in the trenches week in and week out on a real regular basis. Obviously, you've got to compete in all of them to try to win the championship and that's something that has eluded me for all these years in racing and you've got to run them all together to try to do that. For a long time I was actually turning down some opportunities because they were full-time rides at the time and I got to doing a lot of thinking about it. I think if you're gonna do this thing, you need to do it right and you need to do it full time."
WHAT WOULD GO IN TO DECIDING ON WHETHER TO PUT THE 28 ON THE SIDE OF THE CAR?
RY "It's more about either the grandstands or the marketing - what's best for the marketing. I've been dug down in the middle of the thing. I'm good with the 28, but the 88 has been our number that we chose. We sort of left that 28 alone when - good or bad - we dissolved our relationship at the end of 2002 with Ricky and just sort of chose a new number like the M&M car. I think everybody understands that's the 38 car. I like to wrap packages with a number that's a fun, good package. Now that we've sort of put closure to the Davey Allison car, the 28 coming back with us would be just wonderful for us, but I'll go either way. The 88 car, I'm still very fine with that number. You probably could answer better than anybody what would be the fondest number from the grandstand."
![Ricky Rudd was the top Ford in qualifying at Daytona. Rudd posted the 5th fastest time [Photo: autostock].](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/49363.jpg )
