Sharpie 500 - Rookie Qualifying Quotes

Where the Raybestos Rookies qualified at Bristol:
Busch 11th
Kvapil 31st
S. Barrett 36th
Garvey 45th (DNQ)

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER QUALIFYING QUOTES FOR THE SHARPIE 500 NASCAR NEXTEL CUP SERIES RACE AT BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY, AUGUST 26, 2005.

KYLE BUSCH IN THE No. 5 KELLOGG’S/JOHNNY BRAVO CHEVROLET WAS THE TOP RAYBESTOS ROOKIE QUALIFIER AT BRISTOL. Notes: Busch will start 11th in Saturday night’s Sharpie 500. “The guys gave me an awesome racecar and it turned out terrible for us. It got real, real loose into turn 3 and I don’t know why. I didn’t think I got too low or whatever. It ruined my momentum for the first lap, obviously and hurt it for the second one, too. It was a great effort by the team and the guys did an awesome job preparing the car for me and did everything else. I guess I was trying to hard to match what we did in the Busch Series.”

YOU HAVE BEEN ON THE TRACK ALL DAY. DID YOU NOTICE THE TRACK CHANGE? “The track has definitely been changing. I’m not sure if it’s the rubber getting down or if it’s the weather changing it. It’s been getting slicker the more that we’ve been getting on it so that might have something to do with it, too.”

DID THE BUSCH CAR HELP YOU TODAY? “Yeah, definitely and Wednesday [truck race] was a big help as well. That’s awesome for me to be able to come in and get a good basis of what I need to know. I ran 200 laps and was able to learn a line that I thought would work for me and have been able to adapt it to both of these cars. It’s been pretty good for me. I was just hoping to end up a little bit better.”

HOW MUCH OF A CHALLENGE IS THE UNIQUE PIT ROAD HERE? “It’s not bad. You’ve just got to kind of keep on top if it. It’s not bad at all. I’ve been here three or four times. It’s a good deal for me, being able to go down one or two pit roads or whatever the situation may be. It isn’t too confusing.”

MIKE GARVEY, No. 66 EAS FORD: “I thought the lap was pretty good. I was hoping to be farther up the board than that. I was hoping to be better than that. We’ll just have to see where we end up. You can’t make any mistakes here qualifying. On our second lap I hooked the corner and got it a little wiggly put that was our faster lap. It’s tough. These guys come here and test and we’re just showing up and doing it. It’s hard but that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to put our time in to learn and hopefully get our EAS Ford in the field learn some more and come back next week.”

TRAVIS KVAPIL, No. 77 KODAK/JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS DODGE: “That was pretty good. We’re still just a little too loose. You always wish you could do it over. If you knew what you had you could compensate for it but the car drove pretty good, just a little too loose. I was able to get back to the gas really soon and really thought I was going to get a good drive off but getting up out of the corner it was starting to brake loose and I had to lift. Obviously you loose speed when that happens. We did a few things right before qualifying to help it and I think it helped it but maybe just not quite enough.”

DID YOU MAKE A QUALIFYING RUN IN PRACTICE OR FOCUS ON RACE SETUP? “Starting position is pretty important here so you want to qualify as good as you can. This is a place where if you’re good in race trim you’re usually pretty good in qualifying trim usually too. All we worked on was race trim; we just kind of taped it up at the end to see what we had. We were good in the spring and we’re basically the same as where we were at in the spring so we should be all right for this race.”

ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE LAP? “I wish we had about another tenth. I was hoping that we could run a .20 but that’s not bad.”

STANTON BARRETT, No. 95 LANGLEY PROPERTIES CHEVROLET: (Notes: Barrrett will make his first NEXTEL Cup Series start since he qualified for the Food City 500 at Bristol this past April. This is his fifth career NEXTEL Cup Series start.) “That was good. I can’t complain. It was aggressive like you normally do here. You really have to hustle a car here. We’re pretty far down on horsepower but that’s not a bad thing here to race. The guys just did a great job. We’ve put together a new team with myself and just a handful of guys. It’s fun to be here. This is my favorite track. We’re just living the dream.”

WAS THAT LAP GOOD ENOUGH TO MAKE THE RACE? “I think it is. I think we already beat seven people so we should be in the show. They say our timing device was wrong or something [smiles].”

HOW BIG IS MAKING THIS RACE FOR YOUR LITTLE TEAM? “It’s always big. It’s a new team that we put together. I’ve run teams for other guys in the Cup series. I have partners in this team too but it’s all brand new. This is kind of the first time that I’m a legitimate NEXTEL Cup owner and to qualify for one of my favorite tracks is special. We’re working hard. We’re going to try to put some sponsorships together to come out more next year both in NEXTEL Cup and Busch. It’s a good first step to make your first race.”