Samsung/Radio Shack 500 - Rookie Qualifying Quotes

KASEY KAHNE IN THE #9 DODGE DEALERS/UAW DODGE WAS THE TOP RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE QUALIFIER AT TEXAS. Notes: He will start third in Sunday's race, the only Raybestos Rookie to start inside the top-10. This is the fifth time in 2004 that Kahne has been the top Raybestos Rookie qualifier.

"I don't know if I left a little bit out there, I needed to get out down a little quicker down into turn one. I just couldn't get down there. We were close, though. That was a good lap for us." HOW IMPORTANT IS A GOOD STARTING POSITION TO YOU? "It's real important. I mean, we work on that really hard every Friday to start up in the front and hopefully we'll end up in the top-five here and have another good starting spot for Ray [Evernham, car owner] and everybody from Dodge." ARE YOU DISAPPOINTED THAT YOU DIDN'T WIN THE POLE? "I don't know, I thought that was a pretty good lap but obviously the 18 and the 91 made a little bit better lap. It feels good to be in the top-three right now." DID THE WEATHER WORK TO YOUR ADVANTAGE? "You would think it would, going out later. I think we definitely drew a good number. I think that tells pretty good for Bill's lap going out that early to where he's at." EVERNHAM MOTORSPORTS HAVE TWO CARS IN THE TOP-THREE. "That's good for Ray. I'm not sure where Jeremy's at but Ray's got some really good racecars here and we've all got some good starting spots so we're looking forward to Sunday." IS IT MORE FUN TO HAVE BILL BACK IN THE GROUP? "It's a lot more fun. I went to talk to him after his awesome lap and went to talk to him to try to figure something out. I learned a little bit but I wish he would have told me a little more. I might could have had a chance at beating him. He probably told me everything, I just didn't get it done." HOW DO YOU THINK THE CAR WILL RACE? "Tommy Baldwin [crew chief] and our whole Dodge Dealers team have been getting us good racecars. We've been pretty good in every race this year so I feel that we will have as good of a car as anybody come Sunday." ARE YOU GETTING MORE AND MORE CONFIDENT? "Definitely. You get more and more confidence every race and when we are running as well as we are you keep getting more. Those guys keep building my confidence."

TOMMY BALDWIN, CREW CHIEF, #9 DODGE DEALERS/UAW DODGE: "We struggled a little bit in the beginning of practice today and the guys did a good job of getting it fixed up for him. I guess our average starting spot is pretty good all year long. Everything is good and we'll get read for the race." WHAT IS THE MOST IMPRESSIVE THING ABOUT KASEY KAHNE? "he's just a normal kid that loves to go fast. He stays positive all the time and has got really good patience and probably a little too much patience last week at Bristol when that 42 car slung him around a little bit. Everything is good. We're happy. I'd rate him an A as a driver so far this year. We've made some mistakes on raceday and we haven't really helped our cause as good of a car as we've had on Sundays. Hopefully we can put the package together all week here and come out with a win." WILL TIRE WEAR BE A BIG FACTOR HERE SUNDAY? "No. I just think it's another good place that a good balanced racecar is going to be the best for it so we'll see what happens."

BRIAN VICKERS, #25 GMAC CHEVROLET: "The GMAC Chevy crew did an awesome job. We've got a good solid starting spot. I feel like we ended practice with a little bit better package, I feel like, but we were having a hard time keeping it off the track so we had to go back to our first package to get a solid starting spot and that's what we did. Peter [Sospenzo, crew chief] made a good call. I'm happy with that. We'll have a good starting spot. I want to say hey to Pop back home and wish him well. We came really close. Hopefully we can redeem ourself next year." DID THE WEATHER WORK TO YOUR ADVANTAGE? 'I think it helped, but it helped everybody else the same, you know? It didn't help us any more or less than the guy before or after us." DO YOU THINK THIS PLACE OWES YOU ONE? "I feel like it owes me one, as long as it feels the same way. That's all that matters. There's not going to be a whole lot of passing, I don't feel like. That's just a characteristic of the racetrack. As the track gets older you'll see me more of that. It's hard to build a brand new racetrack that's going to be two and three wide. It's really hard to do. They did a great job in Miami; maybe they'll start applying that more often. As this place gets older it will get more like Atlanta. The groove will move up." WHAT WOULD BE A GOOD DAY FOR YOU ON SUNDAY? "Every time we go out we try to win the race. Right now we're trying to build this team and we made a couple of changes this weekend. All in all, we just want to have a good solid position just to build on. And that's what we did last year: we started and we just built a team, we developed our communication. We had some good solid runs and we just built on that and the next thing you know we're winning races and the championship.

SCOTT RIGGS, #10 VALVOLINE CHEVROLET: HOW DO YOU THINK THAT LAP WILL HOLD UP? "It's going to be between 25th and 30th, probably. It's still not where we need to be. I feel like we're learning a lot every single week. Coming to a place like Texas where I feel like that I know what I need to feel. I like this place but coming here with this tire, you've got to go. You've got to throw everything that you've learned about all the tracks out the window because it's so much of a different feel with the tire. It's just something that I've got to learn. It goes against the grain of everything that I have trained myself the last three or four years on these radials. There is just so much difference. I've got to say that I'm happy with all the guys on the Valvoline car because they are all standing behind me and they are all trying to learn as much as I am. Nobody has lost any confidence. When we finally hit it and finally get the switch turned on it's going to be a pretty bright light. Before you were on the edge, you felt the edge of the tires and now the tires have such a soft sidewall that you can't be on the edge. It seems like you have to have the car really tight to be able to drive into the corner and pull a lot of wheel, a lot of slip angle in the tires and all and then you can finally get where you can hustle the tires and hustle the car. It goes against the grain because you're used to if you turned the wheels that much you were killing the front tires and if you had that much wheel in it and tried to get back in the gas you were going to snap it loose. All that is out the window now. That's not the way these tires work. It's something that goes against the grain. I've been laying some pretty strong foundation on my grain the last couple of years and it's hard to go across it." IF THE CAR GETS A LITTLE OUT OF SHAPE, CAN YOU SAVE IT? "If your car is on the free side at all, any little quick movement or adjustment you do steering-wise or throttle or brake, it upsets the car and it's bad and that's why you have to have the car so stable and tight. It's really not temperatures but it feels tight to the drivers. It feels like you've got a lot of wheel in it but that's not the case."

SCOTT WIMMER, #22 CATERPILLAR DODGE: "At least we picked up [smiles] but not quite what we were looking for, either. We made big changes on the car. Not a bad qualifying run. We made the show by time and we won't have to take a provisional or anything like that. It's a little disappointing but there's other cars behind us and we'll work on race trim." WILL THE CAR RACE A LITTLE BETTER THAN IT QUALIFIED? "I think we will. We notoriously race a lot better than we qualify. Some cars are some real good qualifying cars and some are real good racecars and we tend to really have good racecars.

JOHNNY SAUTER, #30 AMERICA ONLINE CHEVROLET: "We had a miss in the motor or something. That's not what we wanted, not what we expected. We did things chassis-wise that we knew were going to make it better. We knew that the racetrack was going to get tighter as the day went on and we tried to adjust for that. I thought that I cut two good corners but it was just missing on the end of the straightaway. I don't know what the heck it is. It was just a higher RPM miss. Here, you are going 190 and you are turning some RPM."

BRENDAN GAUGHAN, #77 KODAK EASY SHARE DODGE: "I'm really disappointed with it. The Penske Jasper guys had a lot better racecar than where we're going to end up in qualifying today. We got our familiar Kodak Easy Share colors back on and it's a fast racecar. I made it too tight. I overdrove it into the corner and made it too tight and that's mostly my own fault. We'll go back and put it in race trim. It was great here in the test. We'll be even better in race trim."