Where the Raybestos Rookies qualified at Charlotte:
Andretti 20th
Kluever 23rd
O’Quinn Jr. 35th
McFarland 37th
Gilliland 38th
Kauffman 40th
Lamar 46th
Conway 49th
KEVIN CONWAY, No. 40 SUPRA WAKEBOARD BOATS DODGE: “It’s been frustrating. We’ve been struggling with this tire the whole time. We’ve been really tight and then with the cooler temperatures we really expected it be much tighter yet and man, it was loose from entry all the way in the center and just snapped in the center and it hit pretty hard. But we’ll rebound and we’ll get ready to get prepared for Nashville. Nashville will be our next race. We’re going to skip Dover and regroup a little bit and make sure that get our ducks in a row so that we’re ready to rock at Nashville.”
MARK MCFARLAND, No. 88 NAVY CHEVROLET: ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH THE LAP? “It was good. The car drove good and that’s what we were mainly after. I knew that it wouldn’t have a lot of speed like some of those guys. It feels pretty good so I’m excited about the race.” WHAT IS YOUR COMFORT LEVEL FOR A NIGHT RACE HERE? “I think so. It’s a lot better running at night than it is in the day. The track has a lot of grip right now. I’m excited. I can’t wait for Saturday.” DID YOU LEARN SOMETHING FROM PRACTICE THIS MORNING? “We learned a lot today. A lot of the stuff from the test we went back and used a little bit of the notes that we had in the test and it helped it. It’s driving good so I’m excited.”
JOHN ANDRETTI, No. 10 FREEDOM ROADS/CAMPING WORLD FORD: “I’m satisfied. I'm thinking about the race right now and what we’ve got to do to the car for the race. This is the first time that we’ve run at night in a while and track has changed since we tested here I think and today was kind of a wash to learn a lot.” WHAT DO YOU EXPECT IN THE RACE? “Saturday night I expect a lot of damage and I just want to be one of them that isn’t [laughs].”
DANNY O’QUINN JR., No. 50 STONEBRIDGE LIFE FORD: “The car is good. We were really bad all day today in the sun. We tested really good. I was a little skeptical on what we needed to do there knowing how slick it was but the car is plenty
quicker than what I ran it. I’m really excited about the race after that. The car drove perfect there. I just left a lot on the table. We’re in the race. There wasn’t any point going too awfully hard for it, if it didn’t feel too comfortable. I definitely left a lot there and I think we’ve got us a good car for the race. We tested up here at night and we’re pretty happy with it after the test. We’ll see what happens.” IS IT A TALL ORDER TO PRACTICE IN THE DAYTIME AND QUALIFY AT NIGHT HERE? “I’ll say here it is just because of the configuration that we’re dealing with. This new asphalt has a lot of oil and stuff and it’s still curing out so during the day it’s really slick and I don’t think any tire would really stick to it out there during the day. I think the fastest that I run in practice was a 31.50 and that’s like a second and a half faster than what we practiced. That just goes to show you how much quicker that it is at night. This tire is a little bit hard. I wrecked the car up here in practice so that made things a little bit more ancy for me out there qualifying because I had it bite me once. We’re in the show and we’ve got a really good racecar and we’ll see what we can do with our Stonebridge Fusion.”
BURNEY LAMAR, No. 77 DOLLAR GENERAL CHEVROLET: YOU’VE HAD A LONG DAY HERE BUT YOU DID POST A RESPECTABLE QUALIFYING TIME. “The only thing I can say is that my guys are lifesavers. We had a little accident there in practice but the Dollar General crew did a great job rebounding getting this backup car ready. The attitude looked good but the main thing is that we’re going to be in the race Saturday and don’t count us out yet.” WAS THAT THE FIRST TWO LAPS YOU’VE HAD WITH THE CAR? “Yes, since Las Vegas. The crew did a great job. These guys are awesome. I can’t say enough about my crew. When I was down earlier after the accident in practice they picked me back up and we’re back in the game. We’re going to adjust on it and come from the back and hopefully get a good finish out of it.”
TODD KLUEVER, No. 06 3M FORD: HOW WAS THE LAP? “It’s okay. I think the driver really let my team down on that. It’s such a disadvantage to practice in the day. Even if you do a bonsai run in practice, it’s not anywhere close to what it is right now and you’ve got all those other guys that have just come out of their Cup cars. They’ve already qualified a car that doesn’t handle as well so they know what to expect. I think
we had a 10th to 15th-place qualifying car and I’m just really disappointed in myself in that. We’ve got a good car. It tested well and it ran well today. We really got off track with it in the second practice but put it back to where it was in Raybestos Rookie practice and I was pretty happy with it and we thought it was competitive. It’s a new car that’s never been raced, this is its first race; obviously some of the good stuff our shop can put out so I’m really excited about this weekend and the rest of the season.” DO YOU THINK YOU WILL RACE BETTER THAN YOU QUALIFIED? “I definitely think we’ll race a lot better than we qualified. A lot of the guys today, they’d run their fastest lap on lap 3 or 4 or 5 of a run and then they’d start to fall off again. Ten or 12 laps into a run I was still getting faster and faster. And it’s not that our times were really uncompetitive at the beginning, either. We were getting in 10 or 12 laps to where guys were running their fastest laps. I think we’ve got a really good racecar and I’m really excited about it. I’m just disappointed. The tire is so tricky. I don’t have a lot of experience on it and some of these guys that have a couple of years under their belt race these cars when the tires were a little bit harder and things like that so they kind of know what to expect. I really got took to school there and I think the rookie in me let my team down in qualifying but we’ve got a lot better racecar than that.”
