Coca-Cola 600 - GM Qualifying Quotes

JACK SPRAGUE, NO. 0 NETZERO PONTIAC GRAND PRIX - Qualified a career-best 5th: "I thought I had a shot at it (the pole).I got through Turns 1 and 2 awesome, got through 3 and 4 perfect and I got down to the white line and just matted it. I thought, ' here we go, it's going to be a .20.' But then it got tight and I had to come completely out of the gas, so it wound up being a .42 (fifth quickest). It's a lot easier to drive a good race car fast than it is a miserable car. This is the first car that Tony Furr built, and I've got a better car for Dover. I'm not doing anything different. It was a good race car, and it went quick."

JOE NEMECHEK, NO. 25 UAW-DELPHI CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Qualified 7th: "It'll be good, but there's a lot of fast cars to come. There are so many fast guys. It was a good run for us. We kind of struggled in practice, and I don't know what it is. It's a little warmer than it was last week and maybe the ARCA race messed us up, I don't know. We never really got to make a full banzai run, but it drove pretty well. It would have been nice to qualify last night when we were supposed to, but it's going to be a good starting spot. "

BOBBY LABONTE, NO. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Qualified 11th: "I couldn't get any speed out of it this morning. I've run the same speed since we unloaded. For whatever reason I can't tell them how to make the car go faster. I just haven't been able to gain that tenth of a second. The track's OK, we just can't get fast."

RICKY CRAVEN, NO. 32 TIDE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX - Qualified 33rd: "It's not what we expected or what we had hoped for, but a 600-mile race is a great opportunity to test yourself. It's the ultimate endurance race, and it's a race that we finished third in last year, so our expectations are pretty high. We fell short today, but I feel we'll recover before Sunday."

MIKE WALLACE, NO. 01 U.S. ARMY PONTIAC GRAND PRIX - Qualified 44th, took provisional starting spot: "It wasn't a good lap, the speed was pretty slow and we thought we'd be a lot better than that. We came here last week for The Winston Open and qualified fourth, and this week we didn't get within a half-second of that. I'm a little bit confused right now."

STEVE PARK, NO. 30 AOL CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Qualified 16th: "Everything went according to plan. We were thinking we could run a 29.40 but we were off about a tick. The track got a bit hot toward the end of qualifying so things slowed down a little bit. But then some of the guys who went out late went fast so we knew the track had a lot of speed in it. We just ran the AOL Chevy as fast as we could and it handled good other than getting a little tight on the second lap.

"We're really focusing on what we need for the race. We got the pole last week but we got tight in the Winston Open so we've got to make sure the AOL Chevy can turn good for 600 miles. If that starts with qualifying near the top 10, we'll take it if we can run good in the race on Sunday."

TONY STEWART, NO. 20 THE HOME DEPOT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Qualified 6th: "It was looser than I want to drive it! It was pretty good. We had pretty high hopes for this track, but fourth isn't bad considering how much it has warmed up from practice. We ran a .40-something and we ran a .20-something in practice. It wasn't quite what we were wanting, but considering the sun came out, I don't think we'll be too terribly disappointed.

"It could have been better, but this place is so temperature-sensitive, it's a lot like Indianapolis. The sun comes out and it gets warmer, it's hard to repeat what you did in practice. If we stay fourth, we'll be happy with that. It's going to be a great race car for Sunday. I'm really excited about this race car."

JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DUPONT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Qualified 4th: "We're pretty happy so far. I'm kind of hoping the sun comes out here for these other guys. The conditions are great, the track's super fast. We picked up quite a bit from practice, so I'm real happy with that. The car was beautiful. This is a really solid car, chassis No. 2458. It's just been a real, real good car for us, and we've won a couple races with it. I don't know what we could've done to go a whole lot faster. It was probably just a little bit snug, but all in all it was a good lap."

JOHNNY BENSON, No. 10 VALVOLINE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX - qualified 10TH : "It was okay. You've got to remember, this car we ran with last week and we struggled with it pretty bad. (Crew chief) James Ince and the guys just did a tremendous job. Man, you wouldn't believe this was the same car. But they did a lot of work to it over the three days that we had, and I feel really good about it right now. Iwas the first one out, which I would've said, probably would've been okay, but Busch practice had a bad wreck in Turn 4, so I wasn't real happy about that. Outside that, that's just the luck of the draw. But we did pick up, and it's a tremendous gain from what we were last week, so I'm pretty excited."

MIKE SKINNER, NO. 4 KODAK PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: (IS THE EXTRA HUNDRED MILES AT THIS RACE TOUGHER ON YOU THAN SOME OF THE OTHER RACES?) "I don't think 600 miles at Charlotte is one bit tougher than 500 laps at Bristol. You know, Martinsville Bristol, Dover, Rockingham, Dover, those places, are extremely tough. What this place is taxing on is your equipment. I think you really have to condition yourself to make it through any of these races, and you might be worn out at the end, and it really takes a lot out of your car. You've got to be real careful early in the race because obviously if you knock the fenders in early in the race, it's a long day at this place." (ISN'T THE CHASSIS JUST AS IMPORTANT IN A 600-MILE RACE AS THE ENGINE?) "I think that's the communication between the crew chief and the feedback that we're giving the crew chief. If the crew chief and everybody in the pits does there job, and the tire specialist makes the proper adjustments for the way the car's changing, what our job as drivers, from my standpoint anyway, is to give them the proper feedback. There job is to make the right decisions. I might have to help with that decision some, but I still think it's there job on how to fix the car and how to make us more competitive. I will say this, I don't look at this tire to be as sensitive as what some say."

MIKE SKINNER, NO. 4 KODAK PONTIAC GRAND PRIX - Qualified 3rd: "Our car was real good off the truck. I think we were 11th in practice. I honestly didn't think - unless we really made some great adjustments to our Pontiac - that we could start in the top three or four. I thought maybe in the top 10 or 12 if I hit my marks and everything went right. We changed the gear right before qualifying and it was a pretty bold chance since we're sitting 39th in points with a car that we knew we could get into the race with. But, you've got to be a little risky once in a while. This was the only race I ever missed when I was with RCR. But we mashed the gas hard and the car was a little bit loose. I think we gave up a lot in (turns) 1 and 2. We ran through 3 and 4 real well. Our car ran real well up the straightaway. They changed the engine combination this week and the engine was real good and the gear change obviously was positive. Our Pontiac ran good."

(ARE YOU SURPRISED TO QUALIFY THIS WELL AND WILL THIS MARK A TURNAROUND FOR THE TEAM?) "No, I'm not surprised. Our turnaround would show up on Sunday, not Friday. I used to be known for qualifying pretty good. Since I've been with this race team, I've really struggled with that. We qualify fairly good at two or three races a year and then we've struggled a lot. It's just (about) communication and getting the right set-up under the car. Either I'm saying the wrong things or they're hearing the wrong things and we're really working on that. Larry (McClure, team owner) and I had a long meeting on that yesterday about where we grade ourselves with our communication. I thought it was a 'D'. So we had another meeting today with Chris and Tim and everybody and we started picking that apart to see what we can do to make that better. We exercised that the best we could. Our car wasn't terrible last week. It's not like we just came in here and turned everything around overnight because it was pretty decent last week. I made a pretty bold move in a 10-lap shootout and bent the right fender an inch and a half. That killed our chances to win the Open.

"This communication is the biggest thing and what's under the hood has a lot to do with everything. They made gains on the engine today. Knock on wood. If you look at last year's stats and this year's stats as far as blowing up, it's a lot. We've crashed seven times. We've been a victim six of those. One of them was my fault. That probably has a lot to do with where we are in points. We've had some bad luck. We've had a pretty good car a few times. I love the Pontiac. I love the body. Our engines are much better. As far as a turnaround goes, we'll see what happens on Sunday. We've got to start getting some top 10 and top 15 finishes. When we can start doing that consistently then we can say yes, we're starting to turn things around."

JACK SPRAGUE, NO. 0 NETZERO PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: (IS THE EXTRA HUNDRED MILES AT THIS RACE TOUGHER ON YOU THAN SOME OF THE OTHER RACES?) "That's probably not a very good question for me because I've never run 600 miles before. But like Mike said, I don't think it can be near as tough as 500 laps at Bristol, and I've had several of those and they're still tough. This isn't a physically tough racetrack on your body, but I think it's very tough on your equipment. You've got to keep the fenders on it. And you'll probably run less gear than you probably run in a 500-mile race because certainly if you blow up you're in trouble. You seem to lose a lot of engines in this race because it is the longest race. We're in a little bit different situation than those guys. We're just trying to climb the hill and turn the corner a little bit and get better. And we have been. It's a slow process. We didn't get screwed up overnight, and we're not going to fix it overnight, but this is the first car that Tony put the body on it, and I ran in the Open last week and was very pleased with it. Even though we ran 10th, that wasn't really all the car was capable of. I just kind of stayed back and let those guys knock the hell out of each other, and used it as a test. The car was extremely fast and drove extremely good, so we brought it back. In fact we've got a car at the shop that's going to Dover that's a lot better than this one but he wouldn't let me bring it."

(HOW IMPORTANT IS THE CHASSIS FOR THIS RACE?) "If you've got a good race car, it's easy to tune as the night goes on. But if you start out horrible, and then you get it somewhat decent, it's going to go back horrible I think. If you start this race and you can run in the top 15, they can tweak on that car all night long, and you should be able to run there all night long. But if you start horrible and start "garage-sailing" it, and start throwing things at it, you might get it better for a while, but then it's going to get worse. That's the way I feel about it."

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE'S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Note: Johnson did not qualify due to engine problems. He will take a provisional starting spot: "I was coming up through the gears trying to leave pit road and something failed in the engine. We're not sure what. Obviously, it's really early to find out what's going on. I'm disappointed and I know the guys are. I'm just glad we found it now instead of halfway into a 600-mile race. So we'll take a look at things and see what happened and we'll go from there.

CHAD KNAUS, NO. 48 LOWE'S MONTE CARLO CREW CHIEF: "It was something in the powertrain or power-related. We'll just have to take a look at it and see what happened. This Lowe's Chevrolet is a fast racecar here, so we'll just get it fixed and be fine come Sunday."

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