UAW-GM Quality 500 - Ford Friday Quotes

Kurt Busch, driver of the No. 97 Sharpie/IRWIN Taurus, brushed the wall during happy hour, but eventually got back out with the same car and turned more laps. He spoke about the incident afterwards.

KURT BUSCH - No. 97 Sharpie/IRWIN Taurus - WHAT HAPPENED? "I was just running laps and one reason was to get in traffic and see what the car would do. Second, it was my little brother and I wanted to see why he was struggling. Thirdly, I forgot what I was supposed to be doing (chuckling). We were loose all through that run and on that lap it pushed so bad off of four that I ran out of race track. It tweaked the front end a little bit and it tweaked the rear end a little bit and the worst damage is it caved in the side, so they'll have to work a little bit into the night to polish it up. It'll look a little rough. The pretty is knocked off it and now we can go fast." YOU STILL LOOKED FAST EVEN AFTER THAT. "The car is good. We just wanted to do a long run. That's the mode I was in and I wanted to be around other cars to check that and made a judgment error on where we were coming off turn four. It's no biggie."

John Andretti, driver of the No. 14 VB/APlus at Sunoco Taurus, made the inaugural NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series qualifying attempt for ppc Racing a success as he qualified 20th for tomorrow night's race. Andretti spoke about the strides he and his team have made in a short amount of time.

JOHN ANDRETTI -- No. 14 VB/APlus at Sunoco Taurus - YOU MADE THE RACE SO IS THE PRESSURE OFF? CAN YOU GUYS JUST RELAX NOW AND RACE? "Yeah, I mean I don't think that we're going to over expect anything. I think that we just want to have a pretty good, clean race and take what's given to us. We don't want to try and go out and get too much out of it too quick. Hopefully, we'll just have a good, solid race."

IS THERE JUST A FEELING OF EXCITEMENT AND HIGH ENERGY AROUND THIS TEAM RIGHT NOW? "Yeah, I think that we're all real excited. I think that last night was big and in some ways you almost would have thought we got the pole because a lot of pressure was relieved. That was a huge accomplishment for us in such a short period and that's the way we look at it. Nextel Cup racing is too competitive to think you're just gonna come in here and it's gonna be a walk in the park. We know there's still a huge hill to climb and we're willing to climb it -- it's just gonna take some time."