Brickyard 400 - Rookie Qualifying Quotes

BRIAN VICKERS IN THE #25 GMAC CHEVROLET WAS THE TOP RAYBESTOS ROOKIE QUALIFIER AT INDY. HE WILL START SIXTH IN SUNDAY'S RACE. "It's OK. Obviously we wanted to be on the pole but that's part of it. We were still tight and that just hurt us." YOU DID HAVE A GOOD QUALIFYING DRAW TODAY. "I'm sure it helped. Hopefully it will continue to get hot and we'll be OK. The draw definitely makes a difference here. It makes a difference anywhere, for that matter. The car was tight. We were fighting tight yesterday toward the end of practice and we made a bunch of changes to help it but I don't think we went quite far enough." WAS THE TRACK CONSISTENT FROM PRACTICE YESTERDAY TO QUALIFYING TODAY? "Yeah, it's not bad. It's definitely faster now than it was."

KASEY KAHNE, #9 DODGE DEALERS/UAW DODGE: "That's a good lap for us. It's the best one that we've made since we've been at Indy. It was good; we picked up a little bit. We were a little bit tight from the center off and didn't run quite as fast as we probably could have but it was still a good lap for our Dodge Dealers car." WERE YOU SURPRISED TO RUN AS WELL AS YOU DID CONSIDERING WHEN YOU WENT OUT? "No, not at all. It was hotter yesterday, seems like. I think we should have went faster than that, really. Casey Mears just went probably a 48.40 or something. Obviously there is a lot of speed in the track."

SCOTT RIGGS, #10 VALVOLINE CHEVROLET: "It was terrible. I don't know if we had a set of tires that were a lot different or what but it was tighter that time than it has been all weekend. That's not what you expect when you keep freeing it up all day and you make another adjustment to free it up even more for qualifying and you go out there and it's tighter than it's been since we've been here. It's sort of frustrating. It's got to be something out of our control, something that we didn't have a handle on. We just missed it somewhere. It was terrible." YOUR QUALIFYING DRAW DIDN'T HELP EITHER. "You can't complain about that. The pole sitter went out two cars in front of me so you can't blame it on that. It was our fault."

BRENDAN GAUGHAN, #77 JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS DODGE: "I just got tight in turn one. That's really the only issue that caught the Jasper Dodge today. It's kind of a bummer. We had a really good racecar. We knew we were fast and we were just tight in two corners. They say that Indianapolis is a perfectly symmetrical, each corner is the same but they're still not. There's still little differences. Three and four was really good and one and two was just really bad for us. I don't know what happened but that's OK. The track temp isn't an excuse because Casey Mears blew it out of the water. It's not a very good start for the team that has Indiana roots but we're going to be all right. I just couldn't get through one, got up high and we'll start from there. A couple of guys that I saw that were fast were loose. I watched Ward Burton go and he was pretty loose and I was kind of hoping that we'd be a little bit of the same. It just got way too tight through one. I didn't feel like I missed. It got tight. The nice thing is that it's a good racecar. This thing in handling really well. It didn't do anything stupid, just got tight."

SCOTT WIMMER, #22 CATERPILLAR DODGE: IS THAT TIME ACCEPTABLE UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES? "We were pretty happy with it. We picked up a lot from practice and that's what you always ask to do. Weather and stuff like that plays a little more on how you're going to pick up but we picked up four tenths [from practice]. If we could have went out a little earlier maybe we could have picked up a couple more but we're in the show and I'm happy with that. The guys worked real hard to get this thing better. When we were up here testing we did all race trim stuff so I'm excited about this afternoon and about tomorrow." IS THE TRACK GETTING SLICKER AND SLICKER? "It's getting real slick. In qualifying there it was pretty slick up off of two and earlier I saw some guys getting a little free up there when I was watching on TV and that was two hours ago. This time it was pretty slick. We kind of caught a break there. We thought we were going to have a cloud but the sun popped out during our run. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the way it ran. We just need to work a little harder and we'll get it." WAS YOUR CAR TIGHT DURING QUALIFYING? "It kind of does two things here. When the sun gets real hot it kind of looses a lot of grip and the front end pushes and the back end slides. We're kind of fighting the same thing everybody else is. I'm sure we'll fight the same thing in race trim. Who gets their car turning best off the corners is the one that's going to be good in the race."

Since the inaugural race in 1994, Raybestos. has presented the Top Wrench Award and a $5,000 check to the crew chief of the highest qualifying Raybestos. Rookie for the Brickyard 400. The names of the crew chief and driver are placed on the Golden Walrus trophy, which is on display inside the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum.

PETER SOSPENZO, CREW CHIEF, #25 GMAC CHEVROLET: "We're real happy. We were a little bit tight in practice yesterday so we loosened it up but we didn't quite loosen it up enough. Who knows? He might have had a couple of tenths left in him. But all in all, it's good to be the highest starting Raybestos Rookie and hopefully we can be the Raybestos Rookie of the Race, also." AND YOU GET A CHECK FOR $5,000. "That certainly helps, but it's more in having that name on the trophy in the Indianapolis museum. That means more than anything else."