The Winston - Rookie Qualifying Quotes

GREG BIFFLE, NO. 16 GRAINGER FORD:

"We freed it up a little bit. I was a little bit too tight there at the end (of practice). It's cooling off. I thought it would be tightening up just a little bit more. I got down into one really, really good, faster than I had been ever before in a race car. I put the throttle down and it was little bit free, the car goes across there a little free anyway and I just didn't pay it enough respect. It started getting out a little bit and I thought 'It will be all right.' It got out a little bit more and I said 'I'm in trouble now.' The main thing was to keep it off everything. I drove it back real slow so I didn't tear any fenders off. It's a really good car and it will be good in the Open." DID YOU DO ANYTHING INSIDE THE CAR TO KEEP IT OFF THE WALL? "I was driving it forward, backward, sideways, and turned it back around. I was doing everything I could to keep it off the wall."

JACK SPRAGUE, NO. O NETZERO PONTIAC:

"It was eventful. It was faster than we ran in practice, which is a good thing. Just a little too loose. A little too loose in to get back after it quick enough. I really thought I could run a .50 and probably could have if it wasn't as loose. At least we're gaining on it. We're headed in the right direction." WHY DOES A CAR GET LOOSE? "It could come from the tires, a different set of tires. We just didn't have it tight enough. We were a little loose in the last practice and we didn't go far enough, didn't tighten it up enough."

TONY RAINES, NO. 74 BACE MOTORSPORTS CHEVROLET:

"It was a good lap. Larry (Carter, crew chief) and the guys made a couple of changes on it, not big changes, but we are obviously using this as an extra practice next weekend for the 600. We picked up. We're learning more. I think if things continue to keep going this way we'll get better for the 600 and hopefully race our way into The Winston. We got half of it, we didn't get all of it. The car was a little bit tight still. We were better, but I said we weren't quite there where we needed to be. But like I say we're getting a lot of notes here that we never had. Hopefully we can transfer this into next weekend for the 600 and get a solid starting spot and maybe race our way into The Winston." WHAT WOULD BE A GOOD NIGHT FOR YOU IN THE WINSTON OPEN? "Finishing first is what you need to do to get in. Not wrecking would be a good starting point and running competitively. It's kind of a different form than what we're used to. We don't have a lot of cars in the shop. We don't need to be tearing up a good race car but if we have a shot at racing our way in we are certainly going to do that. All this is good because all this is going to add up and make it a better Charlotte week."

LARRY FOYT, NO. 14 HARRAH'S DODGE:

"We changed everything so it was either going to be good or bad. I really think that we changed almost everything on the car. We are using this as a test session because we didn't to test. I guess we went the right direction on that so hopefully that will help us out." WHAT WERE YOU STRUGGLING WITH EARLIER TODAY? "I was just trying not to crash. We were pretty wicked earlier but we found a couple of things wrong where we were bottoming out the chassis and things like that. Now we're just working on getting the car driving better for me and I think we are going in the right direction." IS THIS BETTER THAN A TEST? "It could be. You definitely know where you stack up. I think sometimes you can fool yourself at a test, maybe run a good lap late in the day or something like that. You feel real good and you come back and you can't do it again. This is more like the conditions that we're going to be starting the race in, I think. It's still not great. We have a lot of work to do."

JAMIE MCMURRAY, NO. 42 HAVOLINE DODGE:

WHAT HAPPENED? "We think that the gear broke. We don't really know. We didn't practice with this gear. We just put it in right before we went out there. It was a brand new gear. I don't know what happened, though, something; something broke, something big. HOW WAS THE CAR ON THE LAP? "It wasn't bad. We bottomed out a little bit. We never really made a qualifying run in practice. We did all race run stuff."

DONNIE WINGO, CREW CHIEF, NO. 42 HAVOLINE DODGE:

"His qualifying lap looked pretty good. I don't know what happened there. The stop wasn't all the great but still something broke there when he was leaving the pits. It kind of looked like wheel hopping a little bit. DID YOUR CREW PRACTICE A LITTLE BIT EXTRA FOR THIS TONIGHT? "We've been practicing a little bit extra trying to get better at that anyway because it's hurt us some races but, I mean, we're new. They haven't been working together but just this year. They are getting better. We've been practicing harder and harder every week. It's been a little tougher schedule for them where they practice more. THIS WAS A STANDARD GEAR THAT YOU USED TONIGHT? "This is just a standard, normal deal here. It's one of those deals where if you get the clutch out sometimes or something like that a little bit too quick or whatever and you get it to wheel hopping, it won't stop, and that's kind of what happened." DOES IT REALLY MATTER WHERE YOU START IN THE WINSTON? "Not really. The biggest thing is that you just want to be in the twenty on the first segment and be in the fourteen on the last segment. That's where you want to be. It really doesn't make that much difference because if you are in the twenty on the first one a lot of times they invert so many anyway. That's basically why we've mostly been working on race setup."

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