Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500 - Rookie Qualifying Quotes

Where the Raybestos Rookies qualified at Atlanta:
K. Busch 7th
T. Kvapil 40th

TRAVIS KVAPIL, No. 77 KODAK/JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS DODGE: “That’s not very good. The track’s got a ton of grip in it. I thought it felt a lot faster than that, for sure. We’ve been kind of struggling this whole weekend and haven’t been able to hit on a whole lot. We made two qualifying runs earlier today and never really got those going very good either. It hasn’t been that great of a weekend. I know we worked pretty hard on our race setup. We made longer runs so hopefully it will come to us there Sunday. I don’t know how those guys go that fast because that’s about all I could do [smiles].” YOU QUALIFY AT NIGHT BUT RACE IN THE DAYTIME. WHAT CAN YOU TAKE FROM A QUALIFYING LAP HERE? “Nothing really. It’s just fast tonight. If we qualified in the afternoon, everybody would be a half-second slower. I guess the main thing is we practiced in the daytime, in the sun, and that’s when we’re going to race. I don’t think track conditions really change, it just get grippier. I don’t think it gets tighter or looser, it just gets fast. I mean, we picked up a half-second from what we ran and we need at least half a second to get us in the ballgame from there yet. It’s disappointing but hopefully we’ll do a little better on Sunday.” DID THE TRACK STAY CONSISTENT TODAY IN PRACTICE? “I think it did. We know from our past experience here it’s going to get tighter and tighter as the race goes on and as the weekend goes on with more rubber being laid down. That’s something that we have to build that adjustability into our racecar to account for that. Luckily we know we’re in the race and we don’t have to worry about going fast in qualifying. We could work on our race setup and try to build adjustability into our car and hopefully we did that.”

KYLE BUSCH, No. 5 KELLOGG’S CHEVROLET (Notes: Busch was the top Raybestos Rookie qualifier at Atlanta.) DID YOU LEAVE ANYTHING OUT THERE? “I left a lot out there, but I’ve never made a qualifying lap here at night. Last time I backed it in the fence pretty good. I’m glad to get out of here with a good solid qualifying effort. It seems as thought the car handled exactly the way it should have for the qualifying run there. It was a little bit tight and I could have changed my driving style just a little bit to try to do a couple of different things in order to help that out, but I didn’t even know what I was going to have going out there. I was hoping that I wasn’t going to be loose at all. The guys gave me an awesome car, prepared an awesome piece, so I’m looking forward to Sunday’s race.” HOW MUCH DIFFERENT IS THE TRACK AT NIGHT VERSUS THE DAYTIME? “A lot. It’s got a lot of grip, plus we build a lot of grip in it for our cars for qualifying. All your vantage points are a little bit different because of the nighttime but it’s not bad.” DOES QUALIFYING AT NIGHT THROW YOU OFF IN THE RACE? “No, because our setups are race setups. We didn’t have to worry about a qualifying setup or anything like that. I think we’ll be pretty good. I’m hoping for about a top-10 car. I know Carl [Edwards] is going to be really good, I know the 20 will be really good, and there are a few others out there that will be strong as well.” WHY ARE YOU SO STRONG AT THESE TYPE TRACKS? “Atlanta is not one of my favorite mile-and-a half tracks. It’s just like Charlotte, just like Texas, except that it’s nowhere close to Charlotte or Texas. This place is it’s own animal. When it was brand new I’m sure it was pretty close to those tracks. The thing about this place is that it’s so much broader. You’re in the corners longer and Texas is closest to this. Charlotte is more of a tighter-cornered racetrack and longer straightaways. But coming up out of turn 2 here, you’re just rolling out of turn 2 here forever and then you’re easing off into turn 3 forever here as well, too, where there is no grip here after five laps. You’re sliding around hoping for the best, hanging on. Texas is about getting that way, too. It’s one of those places where the track is broad still and the banking falls off of turn 2 really fast and off of turn 4 somewhat really fast but the asphalt is getting old there too where it’s kind of hard to get some grip after 10 laps.” HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO PIT HERE? “It’s not too bad. Green flag stops will be a little bit tricky because you’re hauling the mail through 3 and 4 and you’ve got to whoa it down to 55 or 45 miles per hour right before the pit land there and there is a lot of sand at this place. It’s real gritty, just like Darlington. A 190 mile per hour Darlington is not that much fun.” CAN YOU TAKE TWO TIRES HERE? “No, you will not see a two-tire stop on Sunday. If you do, that boy had better be praying that he four.”

ALAN GUSTAFSON, CREW CHIEF, No. 5 KELLOGG’S CHEVROLET: UNLIKE THE SPRING RACE, YOU WILL HAVE TRACK POSITION HERE AT THE START OF THE RACE. “After what we did here the last race qualifying at Atlanta, we’re pretty happy with that. Kyle did a good job. My teammate Lance [McGrew, Brian Vickers’ crew chief] helped me out on the air pressures. Brian ran real good early so I got a good gauge on that and it always helps to have friends. It’s just a good run for the Kellogg’s Chevy. I’m happy.” ARE YOU SURPRISED THIS CAR RAN SO WELL? “This car is the car that we ran at Charlotte in the spring, which led a lot of laps there and finished fourth at Pocono. This car and the Charlotte car we wrecked, which is the car that won at California, are twins. They are really, really close. Since day one, either of these cars have been fast at the racetrack so I knew it would be a good car.” DO YOU THINK WE’LL SEE ANY TWO-TIRE STOPS HERE ON SUNDAY? “No, I think it's going to be like Darlington. I think if you run 10 laps you’re going to stop for tires.”

BUSCH PRESS CONFERENCE
“It was a good lap. It was pretty uneventful. Going off into turn 1 kind of roll out of the throttle, just enough where I could get down to the bottom of the racetrack and then try to ease back into the gas coming up out of the corner. I was really tight. My car didn’t stick all that well on the front end. We just kind of drifted up the racetrack upon the center of the corner to the exit on both turn 1 and turn 2. I felt like I left a little bit out there the first lap so I wanted to go after something on the second one and got a little bit better. All in all, I think there was still a little bit left out there but I think our car might have been a lot better where we might have been able to pick up even more time.” WHAT DO YOU EXPECT DURING THE RACE ON SUNDAY? “It’s probably going to be a pretty exciting race like Carl [Edwards] and Elliott [Sadler] were saying. I’m not so sure about the pit strategy that they were alluding to. I think it’s all going to be about every caution you come down and get tires. It’s going to be four tires. There aren’t going to be any two-tire stops. I’m going to be curious how the last part of the race plays out, though, because coming down to the end, if you have a pit stop with 50 to go and you run 35 or 40 laps, it’s going to be just like California where we all went down pit road with 12 laps to go and everybody is going to come in for tires but this time I don’t think you’re going to see two tires because two tires are not going to allow you to win the race, especially after putting 30 laps on the tires and stuff like that. It’s going to be a little bit different on trying to figure out who’s going to do what throughout this race. Like I said, the cautions are going to kind of predict everything.” HOW FAST IS THIS TRACK? “This place and Charlotte have become pretty close because of Charlotte’s grinding and levigating and stuff. This place has been so fast for so many years since they repaved it and they had a new track record in ’97. If I was Atlanta Motor Speedway, I’d probably never repave this place again, even though we would want to see it repaved so it would be a lot easier to drive. We’d never want to see it repaved because we’d be hitting 210 miles per hour or something like that. It would be unreal. This place is exciting enough to have the loss of grip that it has in order to run five distinct different grooves. You can run low, you can run high, and you can go anywhere you want to go here. The speed sensation is unreal. You head off into the corners at 200 miles per hour and slam into a 28-degree bank and try to make it go around the other way and head back to the next direction. You do what you have to do to get the best handling racecar out there.” WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR SATURDAY? “I’m entered in the Craftsman Truck Series race so I have to run that [smiles]. I’m going to watch some college football after the race is over. Watch the IROC race before that. I guess Mark Martin has almost clinched it and that’s pretty cool. Hopefully Kurt finishes up second at least in the points and we’ll see what else happens.”