Food City 500 - Rookie Qualifying Quotes

GREG BIFFLE IN NO. 16 GRAINGER FORD WAS THE TOP QUALIFYING RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE AT BRISTOL. HE WILL START 15TH IN SUNDAY'S RACE. BIFFLE TOOK TOP QUALIFYING HONORS FOR THE THIRD CONSECUTIVE RACE, DATING BACK TO THE BASS PRO SHOPS MBNA 500 AT ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY.

"The guys are working real hard on our cars to be the best that we can. I knew that we were a little bit better than we were in practice. I just knew it but I didn't get a good lap out there. I just knew I needed to get a good lap in. there's a fine line here at Bristol here between trying too hard and not trying hard enough and slower is faster and all those kinds of things. I felt that I did what I had to do and got us a good lap."

IT SEEMS LIKE YOU ALWAYS RUN WELL AT BRISTOL. "My first time here I was on the pole in the trucks. I like the racetrack. It's a lot of fun to drive and it's really, really challenging. That's why I'm looking forward to places like Pocono places that are really tough. I'm looking forward to that. It's going to be a lot of fun but here, it's just a tough place. A lot of it is luck, racing luck, being in the right place at the right time. We'll just have to wait and see."

IS YOUR TEAM ON A ROLL NOW? "Like I said, I knew that missing that race (Las Vegas) was going to help us put our program together better and know what we need to do. We know that we were that far off and it's good. Instead of just meeting around at the back we realized that we were way off. We're not off a little bit. We need to be changing our program around a lot. We need better cars. We need to be testing. We need to be focused better. We were focused but we needed to apply all of our knowledge better and that's what we are doing. We're still not there yet. We're not even close to being there yet but we're getting closer each week."

TONY RAINES, NO. 74 BACE MOTORSPORTS CHEVROLET, QUALIFIED 22ND:

"Qualifying on time has been our goal this year. We didn't test here and we've picked up every time on the track so that just shows what kind of team we have here. This is actually the first car that we built. It's kind of our sacrificial lamb because the body is not like we want it so we figured that we would bring it here and if we wreck it that's okay. If we don't wreck it that's okay too but we're going to learn as much as we can Sunday. Qualifying I think helps the team and the driver. Getting a good run would help us in points. We got caught up in a wreck last week and we had a pretty good car but we have a lot of racing yet to do this summer so one race is not going to make us or break us."

JAMIE MCMURRAY, NO.42 HAVOLINE DODGE, QUALIFIED 26TH:

"The car drug a little bit but I'm pretty happy with that. That's not a bad lap for us to not have any practice and then to wreck a car like that. That's not a bad lap to back it up with. This is a car that we tested at Rockingham and ran about 10 laps with it and that's it. That's all that we had run. For the team to do that (get the backup car ready) shows that we have a really good race team and that we are capable of doing well. We just have to put ourselves in the right position."

WHAT HAPPENED IN PRACTICE? "I don't know. It just got out from underneath me. It felt a little bit free getting on all day but it didn't even feel like it got loose. It just snapped on me so I'm blaming that something broke (laughs) but it didn't. It's just one of those deals. That's why I have the yellow stripes on my bumper."

WAS IT HARD TO GET FOCUSED FOR QUALIFYING? "It's hard to just jump in the car and go like that. I couldn't even get my steering wheel straight. It's a little bit tough but I ran so much practice with my Busch car this morning that it wasn't that bad."

CASEY MEARS, NO. 41 TARGET DODGE:

"I'm not real happy with it at all. I thought maybe we could at least have run a .20. It just got looser from practice to qualifying. We had one set of tires that was looser and one set of tires that were a little tighter. We practiced on the set that was a little tighter and then put on the set that was a little looser for qualifying and we just didn't adjust to it just right. It's not bad. It's not a horrible, horrible lap time but it's going to put us pretty far back in the field so I'm not real happy with it."

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