O’Reilly 300 - Rookie Qualifying Quotes

KYLE BUSCH IN THE #5 LOWE'S/GLADIATOR CHEVROLET WAS THE TOP RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE QUALIFIER AT TEXAS. Notes: Busch won the pole at Texas, his second pole of the 2004 season. He also took the top starting position at Darlington, two races ago. Busch has been top qualifying Raybestos Rookie in four of the six races this season.

LANCE MCGREW, CREW CHIEF, #5 LOWE'S/GLADIATOR CHEVROLET: "We've had good racecars. We've had a little bad luck but he's a good qualifier. That's just the name of the game. We get the cars as close as we can and the guys were still a tenth quicker than us in practice. We made a couple little changes right before qualifying and he isn't scared to put the wood down. He's getting it done. Typically we don't really concentrate on qualifying so we do an hour, hour and 15 minutes of race practice in our two hour allotted time and we switch over to qualifying and we do about two runs and that's all the time that we dedicate to it. We still concentrate more on our race runs than our qualifying especially at a place like this. The weather this morning for the race practice was so much like what we're going to race in that it was just worth the while to use as much time as we can in race practice. We ran more laps in practice than anybody else too so that's just kind of how it goes." DID THE QUALIFYING DRAW HELP YOU A LOT? "Absolutely. I was scared more of the rubber that the late model guy were putting down than anything else and I hadn't run with them before so I didn't know if it was going to help or hurt but it really didn't seem to have much affect on it but the draw definitely helps."

BUSCH POST QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERNCE: "We were able to come out here with our NEXTEL Cup car, that's what we tested out here a couple of weeks ago and ran fairly well with that so we translated a little bit of notes and of course Lance has really good notes here from last year with Brian Vickers, obviously being able to pretty much dominate the race here last year until he got caught up in a wreck. These Lowe's guys do an awesome job. We always have a lot of fun coming out here to these places like this, Lowe's Motor Speedway, Texas Motor Speedway, Atlanta, most of my favorite tracks. I definitely have a lot of fun when we come to these places.

"Lance myself and our aero engineer Kurt Romberg were all sitting up in the hauler watching qualifying on the little screen there that shows all the lap times and stuff and we were seeing that everybody was picking up at least three tenths if not a little bit more. Clint Bowyer had an awesome run; he picked up like five or six tenths or whatever it might have been. There's definitely the option there where you can pick up a lot of time or you can sometimes lose time, too. The track conditions like David [Green] said definitely came in more towards the end and that's what I was really hoping for. I told our guy that picks the qualifying that we needed a late one and he was lucky enough to get a late one for us. I was definitely glad for that but there's definitely a lot of certain circumstances that can definitely fit in to how you qualify.

"I believe it was definitely cooler outside. I don't know exactly how much but I'm sure it was because there was more shade along the front straightaway and of course going out of turn four and going into turn one and all the cars that went in front of us, 49-something cars, would lay rubber down for us. Maybe they did clean off a little bit of the late model rubber which was better for us or maybe the late model rubber in the beginning was better, it's hard to say. David had an awesome run when he went out fourth and we had a great run when we went out 50th and I believe Biffle went out right in the middle. It just shows that the top-three were scattered throughout the qualifying order.

"Both of us stepped into great equipment and we couldn't be happier with the circumstances that we are in. Of course I'm with Hendrick Motorsports and I know the capability that they have from last year with Brian Vickers winning the championship just over David Green. I'm in that ride. I'm a Raybestos Rookie driver but I'm with a championship caliber team so I guess that I've got to step up my playing level a little bit to compete with these guys that I have on my team. It's a little bit difficult for me but Kurt's doing an awesome with his group of guys. Jimmy Fennig is just like a father figure to him that helps him out and always gives him a good car to qualify and race and they're always working on it, just like Lance and myself.

"I've never been to Bristol and before I went to test I called him and asked him about pointers about this and that and if your car is doing this what to do and stuff like that. I do that everywhere I go. I do that at Texas, I do that at Bristol, I did that at Lowe's the first time I went there with an ARCA car. Pretty much everywhere I go I'd call up Kurt and ask him if he's been there. Normally I'd know if he'd been there or not but I always get great notes from him and feedback that I can use and everything that he's told me has always come up true, either in the tests or within the race that I have raced on that particular racetrack.

"Like I said, my favorite racetracks are of the Lowe's and the Texas and the Atlanta style racetracks with the double dogleg. I have a lot of fun at every racetrack that I go to. You always have your favorite ones or your least favorite ones but technically I don't have a least favorite one. I enjoy going to all of them. I guess if you say you have a least favorite one then that track is likely to come out and bite you and will take you down so you just want to make sure that you enjoy going to all of them. If you do struggle at one particular racetrack, go there and test and try to figure it out. As a matter of fact, Kurt did that a couple of years ago at Richmond. He struggled there, couldn't get a hold of the place but he dominates at Bristol and it's another short track. He went there to figure it out a couple times and he was able to get better at it."

"No, there's no need for plates here. Atlanta was huge-fast when we first went there when it was repaved. I believe Geoffrey Bodine still has the track record there at 193 [mph] or something like that. If we had the cars that we have today we would be going 200-something miles per hour around that place back then. It's a matter of technology and the era that we're in."

CLINT BOWYER, #21 REESE'S CHEVROLET: "There's probably a couple more cars that could knock me off but being in your first race and a top-five hopefully, you can't ask for much more. It's just a dream come true, really." DO YOU THINK YOU CAN WIN THE RACE HERE SATURDAY? "Well, I didn't come to loose [laughs]. You never go to a racetrack to loose. You've got to have confidence: confidence in your crew. Kevin Harvick can do it and you've got to keep learning from him and learning from this team and the resources they have and make it happen." HAS EVERYTHING GONE SMOOTH TODAY? "We came down here and tested and everything was good. We ran really fast laps but it was pretty cool outside. It's probably 15 degrees hotter and we showed up really, really loose. We're trying to compensate from that, been inching up toward the tight side and have kind of been struggling getting there. The guys made a good change there before qualifying and it worked." WAS THE TEST COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM TODAY'S QUALIFYING SESSION? "For sure. The test, like I said, was so much cooler outside and the track was a lot faster and had a lot more grip, a lot more comfort [smiles]. That old comfort isn't there today. We held on to it and I think everybody is fighting it. You're no different than everybody else. I think everybody is fighting it and is going to fight it when it's hot at these tracks like this. I've just got to keep learning." WHAT WOULD BE A GOOD FINISH FOR YOU ON SATURDAY? "Realistically, a top-10 or a top-five to keep this car in the points as the points leader. That's what the big picture is all about and just keep that Reese's 21 car up front."

J.J. YELEY, #18 VIGORO/THE HOME DEPOT CHEVROLET: "I'm happy with it. We weren't very good in practice. We only got to do one qualifying run. The car was tremendously tight and we picked up almost a second from where we practiced. I'm happy with that. The car got a little bit tight the second lap and it was actually quicker so I think if I had turned it a little sooner, maybe made a little bit better corner, it might have been faster but as a driver you always think about what you could have done to go faster. It's an improvement but we definitely liked to have been a little bit quicker." YOU WERE ABLE TO TEST HERE A FEW WEEKS AGO. IS THERE A LOT OF DIFFERENCE COMING BACK HERE UNDER RACE CONDITIONS? "It has been so far. When we tested the track was pretty green, pretty dirty, the groove was pretty narrow. I learned quite a bit but the racetrack has been rubbering up quite a bit. We'll try to get the car freed up a little bit. This is a different car than what we tested with here. This is a brand new racecar. We'll just try to get the bugs out of it but in race trim the car was pretty good. I know it's going to be tough to pass but we'll just have to use a little bit of patience."

BILLY PARKER, #66 DURAFLAME DODGE: "It was loose, man, I was sideways. I didn't have to turn the steering wheel; I just looked left. The car was sideways. That's about as close as I've ever come to wrecking and not wreck. I don't know if a gust of wind came by and pushed me back straight or what but we were head on for the wall there coming out of four. I don't know if there was any talent on that one or not, just luckily we didn't knock the wall down."

STAN BOYD, #51 THEKOBRA.COM DODGE: "I think we were 38th or 39th in practice with a 30 flat. The car is one of Brian Vickers' old cars and the car is just awesome. We bought the car and didn't save enough money for a good motor. We picked it up three and a half tenths and I can't believe it doesn't look like that's going to be enough to make the race. We were in from our speed in practice and that was three and a half tenths slower. I guess a lot of good cars have went so hopefully we will be able to beat more of these cars in our league and still be able to get in the race; 38th is still in." YOU ARE A YOUNG DRIVER WITH A SMALL TEAM TRYING TO GET YOUR CAREER STARTED. HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO KEEP A POSITIVE OUTLOOK? "A lot of fans and people that don't follow it closely see the truck series step up and that's where I come from and they're like 'The truck series is really tough this year. It's probably tougher than Busch.' Yeah, the truck series has stepped up and it did get tougher but you look here and you've got 40 top teams. The truck series has manufacturer sponsors and that's about it and here you look down and every car has bit money sponsors. It's tough. I work in the shop, 18 hours at day sometimes and I just appreciate that Rick Ware is giving me the opportunity to drive and hopefully a sponsor will come along and we can step our program up. We have the knowledge, we just don't have the money."

PAUL MENARD, #33 MENARDS/PITTSBURGH PAINTS CHEVROLET: "It's pretty good. It got a little loose into three on our last lap so I think we lost probably two tenths there, a least a tenth. Overall, I'm pretty happy, though. We should be in the top-20 anyway and that's an improvement over last week and as long as we keep improving we'll keep going forward." HOW DIFFICULT IS QUALIFYING AT THIS LEVEL? "Everybody steps it up. We were just talking that David Green stepped it up four tenths and that seems to be kind of the average. We only went two tenths quicker that we practiced. It's tough. These guys are professionals and that's what they do week in and week out and we'll get there." WHEN YOU TEST, DO YOU WORK ON QUALIFYING SETUPS? "We always work on race setup. We come to the racetrack for a race weekend in race setup and then we'll practice maybe three our four qualifying runs and see how the car reacts to new tires and kind of make an educated guess from there. We always focus on race stuff. That's what pays the money."