Pepsi 400 - Dodge Qualifying Quotes

TRAVIS KVAPIL (No. 77 Kodak/Jasper Dodge Charger)

“We were all drafting in practice. You’ll pick up a second to a second and a half. We never made a in qualifying trim, so we didn’t have a clue how fast we were going to go. It looks like it’s going to end up somewhere in the mid pack, so that’s OK. We worked on handling and trying to make the car drive good. Hopefully that will pay off for tomorrow night. It’s fairly easy to put up a big number in practice if you wanted to. You could lay back with two or three guys and catch the big pack in front of you. That’s basically what happened with me, Harvick and Bliss. We were lined up and caught the big pack. We knew we weren’t going to be that fast in qualifying. We didn’t have a very good driving racecar in practice, but we kept making changes. Everybody on the Kodak crew did a good job making good adjustments on the car. It’s going to be handling. The guy who can keep it open all night long is probably going to win. That’s what we’re shooting for.”

RUSTY WALLACE (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger)

“I feel good about my chances here. We have a real good car, and we qualified well. I told the guys when I got out of the car that it felt friction free, and it drafted nice. This is my last one, and I’ll be driving extra hard, trying to win this thing. I was fighting the car a little bit more than I wanted to in practice, but we made some changes at the very end and I think that got it. It felt pretty good. I don’t think anybody is going to tell you their car handles perfect here. These tires are going to give up and it’s going to get slick out here. The practice times were in the draft. We didn’t do any banzai runs. We didn’t know what we were supposed to run in qualifying. It really doesn’t matter, but I hope that holds up for the top 10. We beat some pretty good cars. We did all the stuff we could do with the new impound rule. I think I’m liking this rule because it’s got me qualifying better than I normally have here. I’m tickled with that.”

RYAN NEWMAN (No. 12 Alltel Dodge Charger)

“That was basically it. We didn’t know what we were going to run. The car was pretty good in race trim and it’s good to average in qualifying trim if that means anything. I don’t think it does. We’ll take the Alltel Dodge and do our best with it tomorrow night. You just have to be in the right place at the right time. There’s no truth anymore to being the guy out front after we saw some of the things that happened in the 150 in February. You’ve just got to be basically luck. I don’t feel lucky today – maybe tomorrow.

“We’re OK in a lot of respects. I think under the right circumstances (OK is good enough to win). I don’t know exactly if they’re going to have a 20-car pileup. If they take out half the field we’ll have a better shot at it. If you just go by numbers, Roush and Hendrick have a quarter of the entire field. Obviously they’re performing well, but dominating is easier for them when they’re performing well.

“We’re disappointed because we haven’t been to victory lane yet, but I think our performance this year has been the most constant and stable it’s ever been as far as points. If we can do like we usually do the last half of the year, from Chicago out like we usually do, we’ll be in real good shape points-wise. We’re more consistent, and we’re more consistent because we’ve learned. We’re making fewer mistakes in reference to things that cost us positions on the racetrack.

“This is the same car we ran in the Budweiser Shootout, and we ran second in the night race there. Hopefully we can run second or better in tomorrow night’s race, but it’s the same car. It was 55 degrees then and it’s 85 degrees now, so the track is definitely slicker and greasier. Everybody will deal with the same situation. It’s just whoever gets through it the best as far as grip on the track.

“We’re consistent at being sixth or seventh in the points, but we’re not consistent throughout the year. We have weak spots. I think coming into this race we’ve been 17th in points before and came back and finished sixth. Anything can happen, but it takes a lot of hard work and effort basically to be successful. We’ll do our best. It’s like poker in a way. You might get the good cards, but you’ve still got to play ‘em right and get lucky to outplay the other people.

“We struggled at Texas in the race, and we’ve been pretty good at Phoenix the past couple of years. It all depends on how things fall. I think the Dodges have struggled a little bit this year as far as performance in general. Maybe we’ll have things figured out better than the rest of the competition at that point.

“It’s a lot harder to get the cars hooked up to the asphalt when the asphalt is so hot you don’t want to touch it. In general we struggle more with the July races here at Daytona than we do in February when it was 55 or 60 degrees and cloudy. The setup and aero is important. We’re OK. The way the sport is going you’ve got to be an experienced team or have experienced people on your team or a good notebook to go off of. If you wanted to start a team, you couldn’t do it by yourself. You’d have to have experienced people to help you.”

KASEY KAHNE (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

“That’s a real good lap. I feel like this might be one of the better cars we’ve brought down here. We had a top 10 car in the 500, and I think this car is going to race better than it qualified. I’m pretty excited. Everybody at the shop did a good job building it, and those Evernham engines are paying off. We need to get more consistent. This series is so competitive. There are so many good teams and drivers and crew chiefs. It’s tough to run consistent. I think we can do it. We’re working with this Dodge Charger. I think it’s a great speedway car. We’ll keep working with it, and I think we’re going to do a lot better the second half than we were the first half.”

KYLE PETTY (No. 45 Stars and Stripes Georgia-Pacific Dodge Charger)

“Who knows? We never tried anything in practice. I think everybody is about halfway surprised with what they’ve got because they never tried anything. All you’ve got to do now is race.”

CASEY MEARS (No. 41 Target Dodge Charger)

“Nothing blew up. Nothing fell off the car, so I guess that’s cool. We never did a qualifying run in practice. I like this layout a lot better as far as not doing qualifying runs. Qualifying runs at Daytona and Talladega are probably the most boring things you could ever do as a racecar driver. That’s why I like this format. Race practice, work on your racecar and the racing is a lot of fun. I enjoy the races, but running around here by yourself is no fun at all. You’d rather be in front. You can get up front if you’ve got a good car. It usually cycles around to where almost leads the race at some point. I think we’ll be good. We had a good car in practice in race trim.”

JAMIE McMURRAY (No. 42 Home 123/Havoline Dodge Charger)

“I thought our car was pretty good in race trim this morning. It drove good in qualifying. It was just real loose, so I hope we’re going to be OK. It’s nice to be back in the top 10. I hope we can stay there longer than a week.”

RAY EVERNHAM (President, CEO Evernham Motorsports Dodge Chargers)

NOTE: Evernham Motorsports today announced that it has agreed in principle to form a partnership with Valvoline to create Valvoline Evernham Racing LLC, which will campaign the No. 10 Valvoline Dodge Charger in 2006 on the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup circuit.

COMMENT ON OWNERS’ POINTS AND WHY YOU’RE MAKING THE ANNOUNCEMENT NOW “The owners’ points for the 10 will stay with MVB. The 91 will probably run in selected races also (in 2006). My agreement with Bill Elliott is if Bill wants to drive until he’s a hundred I’ll supply a car for him. We were hoping a good partner would come and it has. We decided collectively that the best thing to do would be to go ahead and announce we have the infrastructure in place and we’re doing this and it would be like The Field of Dreams so to speak. If you build it they will come. We’ve talked to several people, but we have not decided nor do we have a driver picked for next year.”

WHAT KIND OF DRIVER ARE YOU LOOKING FOR? “A racecar driver, a good one. The best driver that’s available that fits our program. Like Jim said, we want this car to come out of the box competitive. You say you want to win and be up front every week, but you’ve got to be competitive. You’ve got to be able to compete in the top 15 and challenge for wins and be up front. Whether the guy is young or old or a girl, who knows? Somebody that’s fast enough and can do that with us. It doesn’t have to be young, old, female, just someone who is fast.”

WILL THE 10 CAR RUN ANY BUSCH RACES IN 2006? “We do have a Busch team, and we do run our Cup drivers through that. Again, not having a driver, not having a set plan, but there is a possibility that whoever drivers this car will drive some Busch races, too. Again, we don’t have a plan to do that, but it could happen.”

COULD ERIN CROCKER BE READY TO DRIVE THE 10 CAR IN CUP NEXT SEASON? “I don’t think that’s possible for her to be ready by next year. The only reason I said male-female is because if I didn’t Erin would kick me in the butt. She’s pretty tough. I don’t know if you saw what she did to Darrell on TV, but I just wanted to make a point. It doesn’t matter. We’re actively working on driver development at Evernham Motorsports and we’ve been testing a lot of people and interviewing a lot of people. Any more I don’t have a preconceived notion about what a driver has to be. You have to represent your team and your sponsor well, but I think that’s a given nowadays in our sport, but the main thing a person has to be is fast.”

WILL THE VALVOLINE DODGE RUN ALL THE RACES IN 2006? “It will be a full schedule car.”

HOW MUCH WILL A THIRD CAR HELP THE 9 AND 19? “Jack and Rick have proved, ultimately I thought a two-car team would be perfect. I’ve always thought Formula One was perfect, but multiple cars help you with your group IQ. You put more people, more resources and I think it spreads out. I don’t see where the actual cost of running a car gets any cheaper, but I think your information base, because you can have more people, you can have more equipment, more tests, more resources, again another partner. We’ve got a great partner already with Dodge on the technical side. Now we’ve got a great partner with Valvoline on the technical side. Just adding to that group IQ I think makes your team better.”

WHO WILL BE THE CREW CHIEF? “Chris Andrews right now is the director and crew chief of the 91 car. Chris will continue to build this operation. He’s in the process of building more cars right now, hiring more people, so right now Chris Andrews is listed as crew chief of this program.”

DO YOU HAVE A DEADLINE TO SIGN A DRIVER? “That’s something we haven’t discussed. That’s something Jim and the other powers that be at Evernham Motorsports will have to sit down and say, ‘OK, we’re going to put a line in the sand and we need to have somebody.’ Hopefully there will be a lot of activity in the next 30-45 days.”

WILL VALVOLINE CONTINUE AS ASSOCIATE SPONSOR ON THE 19 AND 9? “Valvoline has been a partner of the 9 and 19 since the beginning. This is a completely separate program. Valvoline will continue to be an associate sponsor on the 9 and 19.”

HAS THIS BEEN A PHASED IN PROGRAM? “We’ve been growing it as we started the 91 actually ran two races three years ago and then five or six last year and 12 or so this year. That’s why we took the time to build that building. We actually hired people that were doing the testing – Chris Andrews and a bunch of guys. Right now they’re doing Erin’s ARCA races and some Busch races with the 79 car. It’s something we’ve been building and planning for, and we actually have a calendar that goes in steps of how many cars we’re going to have by this date and how many people we’re going to have by this date. By the time November comes, this team will be equal to the other teams as far as personnel, equipment, everything and we’ll be ready to go.”

JIM ROCCO (Valvoline Designated Team Owner)

WHY THE SWITCH TO EVERNHAM MOTORSPORTS? “We have been owners for five years. We’ve had one win and one pole and to attract a high-caliber of associate sponsor to the team we feel we have to run good week in and week out. We think with a multi-car team there’s going to be advantages for Ray and us as far as R&D, learning quicker what’s going on at the track and hopefully we’ll come out of the box as a top 15 car the first year.”

IS THERE A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN VALVOLINE AND DAIMLER-CHRYSLER? “We currently have a position with our parent company Ashland with Daimler-Chrysler and Valvoline is a current supplier to Daimler-Chrysler. Really, when we sat down and started talking about this, it had nothing to do with the fact that we wanted to be with Ray Evernham. We wanted to be with him because of all the opportunities we felt like we’d get with Ray.”

WILL THIS BE A BIGGER COMMITMENT THAN PAST SPONSORSHIP? “Yes it is, substantially.”

WILL VALVOLINE HAVE A BIG ROLE IN PICKING THE DRIVER? “As far as the driver is concerned I think ultimately it will be Ray’s decision. Certainly as an owner we’ll have some input. We’ll want somebody that will be able to go fast and represent our brand well. Those two things are paramount. Certainly the final decision would be Ray’s.”

HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT TO KEEP THE NUMBER 10? “It was very important for us. We feel we have some continuity with the 10 and we wanted to keep it. We have a Valvoline team owners program where we allow the NASCAR fans to experience things you can’t experience as a fan. You come in and be a part of our team. We have special events for them. A few weeks ago Scotty (Riggs) had a go-kart race for 40 of them in Charlotte. We also felt that 10 fit well with the 9 and 19. We’re looking for some good strong associate sponsorship and we don’t want to limit our opportunities there.”

WHAT HAPPENS WITH OWNERSHIP STAKE IN OTHER TEAM? “We announced on Wednesday that we have an agreement in principle to sell our 50 percent back to Nelson Bowers and Jay Frye. That’s been in the works for awhile. We’re not just going to walk away. We’re going to sort of walk away at the end of the season, but until then we committed to getting the No. 10 car in victory circle.”