Pocono 500 - Rookie Qualifying Quotes

GREG BIFFLE, NO. 16 GRAINGER FORD:

"I don't know what happened. We're looking to see if a tire equalized or something because it made it through turns one and two beautiful. I mean awesome, hauling butt, and it was going to be a really good lap. I thought we had some left. I thought we could be close to top of the board. I went through the tunnel turn and it just never turned. I almost hit the wall. It didn't turn down there and I thought well, maybe I made a mistake and tried another lap and something is wrong. We don't know what yet, but something is wrong with the car somewhere." DO YOU LIKE POCONO? "I love it but I have to have a good racecar to drive and we don't know what's wrong with ours. We'll keep working on it."

CASEY MEARS, NO. 41 TARGET DODGE:

"We ran a couple of tenths slower than what we ran in practice. I know we could have ran quicker for qualifying but I don't know why. We didn't change anything on the car, it just got really, really loose." DO YOU THINK IT WAS PARTLY BECAUSE OF THE WEATHER? "It might have been, with the track temperature going up it might have got loose. I know a lot of other guys said they freed up a little bit from where they were. We just freed up a lot. I couldn't even touch the throttle. I'm pretty disappointed with that run but I think we will be all right." YOU WILL HAVE EXTRA TRACK TIME THIS WEEKEND WITH THE ARCA CAR. HOW MUCH WILL THAT HELP YOU IN THE WINSTON CUP RACE? "Any laps you get are valuable. I mean, that's why we are doing it. How big it is? I couldn't tell you. Any laps you can get are valuable and better. You just got to try run as much as you can. IS THE TUNNEL TURN HERE MORE DIFFICULT THAN THE OTHERS? "No, that's one of the easiest corners for me. That's the one that I like the best. The hardest corner for me is turn three. It's really hard to get the car to turn there. You are just really waiting on the car to turn. This time we were too loose."

JACK SPRAGUE IN THE NO. O NETZERO PONTIAC WAS THE TOP QUALIFYING RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE AT POCONO. HE TOOK TOP QUALFIYING ROOKIE HONORS FOR THE THIRD TIME THIS SEASON AND FOR THE SECOND TIME IN THE LAST THREE RACES.

"I hope that will be a top-20, I think it will. I know what it takes to go fast here. I mean, I was a little tight in practice and I was a little too tight there. The bad thing is I used three provisionals right off the bat at the beginning of the year and I don't need to be going home and I'm flirting with disaster as it is. You get these guys coming in here trying to run us out of provisionals, which I don't think is right but that's just my opinion. I don't think you should just be able to come and run these guys out of provisionals and then these guys are in the points and you go home because you are out. But that's the way the rules are so I have to be careful. I'm better off just being on the tight side and just making the race right now than trying to be a hero. I could have been freer and I could have gone faster but I might not have made it. This is our first time here and we tested good with it. That's our race setup. All we did was pull the fenders in and taped it off. I've got a real good racecar. The provisional deal has just got me nervous." WHAT IS THE MOST CRITICAL AREA OF THE TRACK? "I haven't been here enough to tell you. I think the tunnel turn is important. Turn one is pretty easy because it is banked but I think the tunnel turn and turn three is probably big." IS POCONO A LOT LIKE NAZARETH? "To me it's like Nazareth on steroids. It's a big old' Nazareth with less turns. It's a lot of fun. I've had a blast ever since I came here and tested last week and like I said, we'll have a good racecar." WHAT WOULD BE A GOOD DAY FOR YOU ON SUNDAY? "A top-15, but the way that we've been running a top-10 is not out of the question. I just have to get to the end and not do anything stupid."

TONY FURR, CREW CHIEF, NETZERO PONTIAC:

ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THAT LAP? "That's about what we ran in practice. The sun came out and we didn't get any help at all from the clouds. No, I'm not happy because I want to be at the top, but we'll take it. It's solid in the field and we'll get ready to race." SPRAGUE SAID YOU FOCUSED MORE ON RACE SETUP IN PRACTICE THIS MORNING. "That's what we did up here testing. I think we worked from about 2:30 until five o'clock on our qualifying stuff and the other day and a half was on race stuff." IS THAT BECAUSE THERE IS RAIN IN THE FORECAST FOR SATURDAY? "It's rained so much this year you don't never know and you are better off to be good in the race because you have to race good because the race is what counts."

JAMIE MCMURRAY, NO. 42 HAVOLINE DODGE:

"I think we picked up just a little bit. We tested here with a different car and fought a tight condition the whole time that we were here. We've been loose since we unloaded. I felt like we finally got the car balanced, it just didn't have any grip. We'll have to back and work on it but I think this is one of the few places that you can pass. It's a huge racetrack and a lot of room. I used to get all stressed out after qualifying but really I quit even worrying about it. We qualify between like 15th and 25th every week doesn't really seem to matter once you get a couple of hundred laps into the race. Even if you qualify good it seems like you go to the back at one point throughout a race. Sometimes if you can't qualify in the top-15 you are almost better off being way in the back because if a caution comes out in the first five or eight laps you can go ahead and take a chance pitting and gambling without losing much. We'll just try to use that to our advantage." DO YOU THINK THE CAR WILL SLIDE AROUND HERE DURING THE RACE? "I don't know. If we think we knew how to fix that we would have done that earlier today. I think the guy with the best-balanced car is going to be the best, just like it is every week. I haven't raced here before but I would say that aero push is going to be big here and trying to pass could be an issue of learning where to pass at. With the rookies, we've never raced here. It's one thing to run by yourself and it's another thing to run around people. We'll just have to work on passing in 'Happy Hour' and getting the car balanced."

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