Mr. Goodcents 300 - Rookie Qualifying Quotes

Where the Raybestos Rookies will start at Kansas
P. Menard, POLE!!
K. Busch, 4th
J.J. Yeley, 15th
C. Bowyer, 24th

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER QUALIFYING QUOTES FOR THE MR. GOODCENTS 300 NASCAR BUSCH SERIES RACE AT KANSAS SPEEDWAY, OCTOBER 8, 2004.

KYLE BUSCH, No. 5 LOWE'S/SHOP VAC CHEVROLET: "I don't know, we missed on something. It's sickening sometimes that you can't get a pole. You get four of them and you can't get any more. We'll keep digging at it. The 38 has really come on strong here of late and I'm really proud of those guys. We just go do what we need to do." YOU'VE DONE WELL AT THE INTERMEDIATE TRACKS THIS SEASON. "It doesn't much matter when your rival goes and tests everywhere, though. I don't know how he gets all his tests but we don't have that many."

PAUL MENARD, No. 11 MENARDS/PITTSBURGH PAINTS CHEVROLET: "We're real happy with it, especially from where we started out practice. We weren't very good when we unloaded and it was kind of surprising because we tested here. We had a real good test. Something happened with our left front spring. We fixed that, fixed the bucket and changed the spring. We got a lot more travel in the car and the car is pretty fast now I'm definitely looking forward to happy hour." YOU HAD THE FASTEST TIME IN PRACTICE AT MICHIGAN IN AUGUST BUT MISSED THE RACE WHEN TIME TRIALS WERE RAINED OUT. YOU DIDN'T GET A CHANCE TO QUALIFY. "No we didn't, and hopefully the rain will hold off which I think it will this time. This is actually a brand new car. It's not the one that we ran at Michigan. It's a brand new car and it's looking good so far." YOU'VE BEEN IMPROVING ALL SEASON AND NOW YOU'RE ABLE TO SHOW IT. "We're learning through our trials and errors and like I said it's more in not being very good. There was a lot of frustration and everybody pulled together. Everybody has done a good job and we're looking forward to a good showing tomorrow." DID THE TRACK STAY FAIRLY CONSISTENT FROM PRACTICE THIS MORNING TO QUALIFYING? "It's about the same amount of grip, it seems like. We were a little bit loose in practice, in qualifying trim; so we tightened it up a little bit. It's pretty good." HOW MUCH DIFFERENT IS RACE GOING TO BE VERSUS QUALIFYING? "It's hard to say. I ran a truck race here last year but it was 110 degrees and sunny. It's pretty overcast today and hopefully it stays that way tomorrow and it doesn't throw us a curve ball at the end of the race." HOW TEMPERATURE SENSITIVE IS THIS TRACK? "It's temperature sensitive but not as much as Charlotte. The sun definitely affects it. Like I said we were here testing and in the afternoon to evening to morning, there's a lot of speed swings and handling swings. I just hope it stays consistent from where it is now and stays like this tomorrow." DO YOU HAVE TWO GROOVES HERE TO WORK WITH? "In practice on old tires I actually moved up a little bit in the groove and it seemed like it was pretty good grip so we'll see how it all plays out."

J.J. YELEY, No. 18 MBNA CHEVROLET: "Any time you get to drive it back to the pits, I've learned, is always better than the other [smiles]. The car was real good. I tried to push my second lap and I ran just a little too hard into three. It felt so good the first lap that I knew I left a little bit on the table. Obviously we did, because we slid so far up the racetrack and still ran almost the exact same time. I'm pretty happy with it. I think the racetrack slowed down a little bit. A lot of guys lost a lot of time we went out and backed up what we did in practice. Hopefully it will end up near top-10, top-15, so we have a pretty decent starting spot and a good pit draw." YOU WERE IN POSITION TO WIN AT CHICAGOLAND SPEEDWAY, A TRACK VERY SIMILAR TO KANSAS. "We had three top-10s, all on mile-and-a-halves. We had a lot of real good momentum going before we had a couple months off. I'm just glad to be back at a mile-and-a-half. This place is very similar to Chicago. A little short on banking, so I think it's going to make that second groove a lot harder to run, where we were able to get away with there at Chicago. There's a couple good Cup guys in the Busch race so maybe we can get that second groove widened out and go out there and have some fun."

CLINT BOWYER, No. 21 REESE'S CHEVROLET: "I thought we would have been up front. We'd run a .67 in practice and I thought we were plenty capable of doing it. The 88 car that went right in front of me dumped a lot of water down on the track and both laps were really, really loose getting into one. She swapped ends on me and it was all I could do to catch it [smiles]. I was racing myself out there, not really for a good lap. That's the way that it goes sometimes." IS THIS THE BIGGEST DAY OF YOUR RACING CAREER? "Absolutely, being here in front of hometown crowd means a lot. The announcement of me driving the 2 car was big. I was really hoping to get this car to start up front for tomorrow. But to tell you the truth, it really doesn't matter because every time I start up front I usually run bad. Maybe it's a good sign for tomorrow."

MENARD PRESS CONFERENCE

· Menard won his first Busch Pole in 28 career starts today at Kansas Speedway. His best previous start was 8th in April at Talladega. Prior to today's qualifying run, his average starting position in 2004 was 20.5.

· In 24 Busch Series starts this season, his best finish was 12th in at Pikes Peak. His best career finish is 9th, which came at Indianapolis Raceway Park in 2003.

MENARD: YOU TESTED HERE LAST WEEK. "It definitely helped. What threw us for a loop this morning was that we were coil binding the left front spring. That kind of sat us back in practice. We changed the spring bucket and spring and definitely got it a lot better for qualifying. We tested here for two days last week and felt really good about it. We had a real good car in both qualifying and race runs. Hopefully the spring bucket that we changed before qualifying is going to help us in happy hour mode. We'll have a pretty bad-ass car tomorrow." WHAT IS IT LIKE FOR YOU WIN YOUR FIRST POLE? "It's definitely cool. I knew that we could do it and it's our seventh race with DEI. They are a great group of guys, great power, and great bodies. We definitely had all the tools there. It was just kind of up to Tony Gibson [crew chief] and myself to try to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. We got a pole today and hopefully we can get a win tomorrow." DESCRIBE THE LAP. "It was loose getting in which at a big speedway like this is kind of hairy. As soon as I got down to the white line the thing stuck and I could get back in the gas really early and drove it off the corner really hard. The only complaint about the qualifying lap was that it was a little bit loose getting into the corner." COMMENT ON JOINING DEI. "Martin helped us out this morning, Martin Bono, and their tire guy, Russell. They helped us out with pressures. We took what they ran fast in practice and kind of did our own little spin on it. We obviously got the pole with that so there was a lot of information sharing back and forth between Martin, myself, and even Dale Jr. and Michael Waltrip. Dale Jr. was out here testing with us and helped us quite a bit. We did some different chassis things. We helped them with some spindle stuff. It was a big payoff. There's a lot of resources at DEI and we are starting to take advantage of it." WHAT IS YOUR STRATEGY FOR THE RACE? "Hopefully we can get it good in happy hour and lead every lap. That's the goal." "I've been racing since I was eight years old and that's the only thing that I've ever wanted to do, to have the opportunity to run with Dale Earnhardt Inc. It's a dream come true for me and hopefully we can just keep going with it and make it big." HOW DID YOUR PAST RACING EXPERIENCE HELP YOU TODAY? It's a little loose sliding getting in the corner. Every car is so different, too. These cars are so aero dependant these days that I've never really driven a car that had that much dependency on aero. I tested an Indy car once and that's just in a league of its own right there. Every time you can experience a different type of car you can take little bits from everything and just learn from your experiences. If something worked in this car, maybe try it in this one and it will work."