Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn 400 - GM Qualifying Quotes

BRIAN VICKERS, NO. 25 UAW-DELPHI CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: “It was a good lap. I have to give all the credit to the guys, Peter and all the UAW-Delphi guys did a great job getting the car better and I held my breath for one lap. It was about all she had in her, so I shut her down and coasted on in. Hopefully, it will hold up like the Busch qualifying did, but either way it will be a good starting spot for us.” WHY DID YOU ONLY TAKE ONE LAP? “You just try to get as much as you can out of that first lap because the tires may only last one lap. The car was a little free in, but it was fast. It was a hold-your-breath lap.”

ROBBY GORDON, NO. 31 CINGULAR CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: “We did pick up from practice, but Brian Vickers obviously put a lap down. He picked up from practice too. A .70 was good for us, and it will get us in the top 25 and we’ll race from there. We’d have gone a lot faster but the car hit the track there coming out of Turn 4. I’m pretty pleased. We only ran a 24.0 in practice, and to come back with a 23.7 is pretty good.”

WARD BURTON, NO. 0 NETZERO HISPEED PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: “We made some good changes and the track changed a little bit. These cars are really sensitive and it’s going to take a couple of weeks to figure them out. Everything we try to do to it, it responds to it, but we have to get to where the changes are in little increments instead of making big, big changes.” TIRE WEAR HAS BEEN KEY HERE AT ROCKINGHAM. WHAT IS THE SECRET TO MAKING THEM LAST? “Nose turning. If the nose turns, it keeps forward bite in the car and stops the tires from wearing out unevenly. If the nose doesn’t turn, you’re going to get a push and you’ll get loose.”

JOE NEMECHEK, NO. 01 U.S. ARMY PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: “I was hoping to run a .50, because I think it’s going to take at least a .40 to win the pole and Ryan [Newman] is coming up here at the end. There are a lot of fast cars, but I’ll take that qualifying run for this whole U.S. Army Pontiac team. They’ve been working really hard and we’re starting to make things click. I think we have a great future.” HOW DO YOU CONSERVE TIRES HERE? “You have to have an easy foot. That’s where it all starts. Setup and handling are the key. You have to have a great setup and it has to be easy on tires. There are a lot of things we do with springs and shocks to help that happen.”

TONY RAINES POST-QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE: NOTE: Raines was the fastest-qualifying rookie, running the exact same time and speed as Jeremy Mayfield. It was his best career start, the previous mark being 12th.

WHERE DID THAT LAP COME FROM? “The guys in the crew asked that same thing. I hit the line just right, the adjustments worked and guess what? I had a good lap.”

DOES THIS MAKE YOU WONDER WHERE THAT HAS BEEN ALL YEAR? “It doesn’t, really. Earlier in the year we had a different engine program. We came here in the spring and we were just awful. It was probably the worst weekend of racing that I’d had and that was just from inexperience. Coming back here in the fall, we knew what not to do because of the way we ran in the spring. If you look at the last six or eight weeks, you see a team that has just gotten quietly better and stronger and our experience is starting to add up even though it’s only one race. We came here today and I really concentrated on trying to run the same rhythm on each lap and not overdrive the car and tune the car to me. This is the hardest race track; when you run your sticker tires one lap, they’re gone. The next time you go out your lap time’s way off, so you have to really concentrate on feel and balance. That’s one of the things I’m better at than say other stuff, but all the things came together at once. I don’t think we’ve left out anything earlier in the year but I think we’ve just quietly been getting stronger and better.”

DOES THIS TRACK LEVEL THE FIELD BETWEEN YOUR TEAM AND THE BETTER-FUNDED TEAMS? “It’s possible. The body isn’t as critical here, except for maybe qualifying. You average 155 miles per hour, but it’s just good old short-track racing, so to speak. What you put in the car is what you get out. We made some really smart changes to the car in practice and I did my job as well as I could do it. I hit my line and I got as much out of the car as I thought I could get. It makes me feel good because as a team it shows we can compete with these guys on a level basis. We’ve been getting closer and closer as the year comes to an end.”

HOW HARD IS IT TO COME THROUGH THIS SEASON WITHOUT A SPONSOR AND STILL COMPETE LIKE THIS? “Qualifying is only one part of it. What we have, working with, we’re getting the most out of it. That’s what a lot of teams do, but that’s what we have to do. With a sponsorship on that car, we could add a few more employees, have more cars, we could do this and we could do that. Without a doubt, it would ramp us up to a higher level. It goes to show that we’re trying to prove to everybody—racers, fans and sponsors alike—that this is a good operation, hopefully they think I’m a good driver and we’ve taken a lot of personal pride in the fact that we are doing more with less. To come out here and qualify well at a very tough track is a great feeling. But qualifying is over. Tomorrow we have Happy Hour and we have to get a really good race car because Sunday is a long race. If I could qualify well and race well here on Sunday that would cap it off. I’m tickled to death that we qualified well as a team, we made good adjustments, but I’m already trying to figure out how to make that car run well on a whole set of tires on Sunday.”

WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR 2004? “It’s hard to say. What I know and what I’d like to do aren’t necessarily in the same sentence. I really enjoy driving for Bill and Brian. I like racing in the Cup series. I’m honored that other people may think I’m good enough to drive their car. In a perfect world, we’d have a big sponsor and we’d continue to do what we’re doing and getting better. It’s obvious to me that this is a good group of guys, a good crew chief and a good team and we work well together. It would be a shame to not be able to carry that on further and see what we could do with the proper support.”

MICHAEL WALTRIP, NO. 15 NAPA CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: "We didn't hit anything but I'm pretty proud of that lap. I think we could have done a lot better if we hadn't gotten messed up on (Turn) 4. But nevertheless, it's pretty decent."

HAVING TESTED HERE WITH DALE JR, HOW WILL THAT HELP YOU ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON? "It's really beneficial to come and test and learn what kind of direction you need to go in and you start the final practices on Saturday morning with a car that you know you were happy with when you tested it and it's a matter of just tweaking it. When you learn a lot in testing then you can just get down to the fine-tuning of the car during those practices and we're pretty optimistic about our test and really looking forward to practicing tomorrow."

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE'S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: "I was hoping to pick up a little more, obviously. But when we unloaded today we had an extremely loose race car. These guys have worked their tails off to get it drivable and changed a lot of things. We changed pretty much all four springs two or three times in practice. So I've got to give these guys a lot of credit for getting it turned around. Again, we were still a little too loose in qualifying today. But we've had trouble here lately qualifying at Rockingham, but we've raced very well. So I'm very happy actually that we're not going to need a provisional. That's going to be a first for me here in a couple of starts."

BRIAN VICKERS POST-QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE:

YOU WERE ASKED AFTER YOU WON THE BUSCH POLE IF THAT GAVE YOU CONFIDENCE TO WIN THE CUP POLE, AND YOU ALMOST DID. “It’s a big thanks to the UAW-Delphi team. The guys did a great job. Just like I said in the Busch car, we made a bunch of changes after practice, what you’d call educated guesses, and they worked out in both cars. Man, it was awesome. Ryan Newman…what can I say? That’s twice he’s knocked me off the pole by a couple thousandths or whatever it was. He’s a good qualifier, and congratulations to him. I have to hand it to him. But it sure would have been nice to have gotten that pole today in the Cup series. I know it’s asking too much, and I don’t know if anyone has ever done that before.”

HOW AGONIZING WAS THE WAIT? “It was. We knew it was a good time when we set it. Looking at the practice times, we thought it was going to be a good starting spot, but we didn’t think we were in contention for the pole. The track must have slowed down some. When he went out, I wanted to go talk to him and ask him if he’d give me one, just to get at least one more car in the Bud Shootout. There’s going to be like five cars in that race because of him. But I didn’t get a chance. I don’t know if he’d have given it to me or not. I was standing there on the backstretch getting ready for Busch happy hour with Bobby Hamilton Jr. and he came off Turn 2 like a rocket ship. I said, ‘well, we’re not going to be on the pole today, unless he loses it in 3 and 4.’ He is the man to beat on poles and hopefully one day when we have the opportunity to do that, it will be that much better.”

HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN YOUR GOOD RUN TO YOUR TEAMMATES WHO DIDN’T DO SO WELL? “I don’t know. I talked to those guys, especially Jeff, and our setups are a little different. Running the Busch car helped, not really with the setup, but just being on the race track, seat time. Last week, we were 2nd, 3rd and 4th. I don’t know what happened to them in qualifying. I don’t think it’s any lack of talent on their part. You’re talking about a four-time Winston Cup champion, a two-time Winston Cup champion and a multi-race winner. You can’t win them all and I’m sure they’ll be there at the end of the day on Sunday.”

WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO CATCH ON TO THE 400-MILE STUFF? “That’s a very good question. I don’t know where the qualifying has come from. Most of my career, I’ve been a racer, not a qualifier. I think it’s just the support and the personnel at Hendrick Motorsports that has helped me with that. Maybe because I wasn’t a qualifier when I was younger, I’ve worked a lot harder at being better at it. As far as the race stuff in Cup, they do practice a little different and the races are longer and you have to adjust to that. Last week, a 13th-place finish was a good solid effort for the UAW-Delphi team. The guys did a good job. We started out a lot tighter than we anticipated and that was one of those learning curves as to what the track does after the Busch race that I really didn’t see coming. We got it better by the end of the race, but it was too late then. It was all about track position. One thing that has caught me off-guard is how important track position is in Cup than in the Busch Series, because there are so many more competitive cars. Pit road, if that’s not a jungle…I came off pit road the first time, I was stopping, turning left, it felt like I was doing 360s just to get off pit road without hitting anyone. It is a mess. There’s 43 cars on the lead lap when you come down pit road the first time, or at least 30-plus anyway. There’s a lot to learn there, and I think as time goes on I’ll figure it out. With the help of the teammates I have, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Terry Labonte, hopefully it won’t take too long.”

HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY TO HAVE A QUALIFYING DRAW AFTER RYAN NEWMAN? “I don’t know what it’s going to take. Last week we had to go out real early and I think it really hurt us, even more than it did this week. Going out early definitely didn’t help this week. If we could get some of the draws he’s been getting the past few weeks, that would be in our favor. I’m not going to complain right now.”

HOW GOOD DO YOU THINK YOU’LL BE ON SUNDAY? “We’ll see more in Happy Hour. I feel pretty good about this team and our ability to fix the car if it’s not good. That’ll get better as time goes on, and I do have my teammates to lean on. Jeff has had some really good races here, so has Jimmie and so has Terry. I know this team is going to do its best.”

HOW DOES HAVING A VETERAN CREW CHIEF HELP IN MAKING CHANGES OVER A LONGER RACE? “That was part of the big debate. Lance and I communicate so well. He is a great crew chief. The only concern there was, we didn’t want to break up either of the teams and Lance has never been crew chief in a Cup race, and there’s a lot of difference between Busch and Cup in terms of logistics of how it works and how you have to approach the race, the changes, the length of the race and a lot of the calls he makes. Peter has done that for a long time. What we didn’t want to have happen was to have me learning all these things at the same time as the crew chief. Peter has a lot of experience that I think will pay off when I’m a little indecisive or unfamiliar with the situation. He’s been there and done it and he can make that call and we can go on and have a good race.”

JOHN ANDRETTI, NO. 1 PENNZOIL CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: "It's just loose. It's been free all day but the Pennzoil crew has done a great job and it's getting better and better.

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