Pepsi 400 - Rookie Friday Quotes

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER MID-YEAR PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT FROM AT DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY, JULY 1, 2005.

KYLE BUSCH, No. 5 KELLOGG’S CHEVROLET: THIS IS YOUR SECOND RACE OF THE SEASON AT DAYTONA. HOW MUCH DOES THAT HELP YOU? “I’m hoping that it helps out a lot better than probably what it will. Running through the first part of the Cup season is a definitely an experience. Being able to get out there with all the guys and race around them throughout the year and try to gain some experience and make some friends out there and try to make sure that everyone is on your side. You want to make sure when you come to a place like Daytona or Talladega, a place like that, you’ve got some friends so you can go out there and have some drafting help. It’s a good feeling when you come to Daytona and Talladega when you know that’s going to happen. Still, with that yellow stripe on the bumper, I’m not exactly how sure everybody is going to be of you and be able to help you out in order to take it to the front.” YOU HAVE BEEN RUNNING MORE CONSISTENTLY OVER THE LAST 10 RACES. “We’ve had some really, really good races in there where we probably felt like we could have finished in the top 10 or at least the top 15 but the finishes just didn’t show up that way. Darlington was one of those. We finished 25th after tire failure and then Charlotte after having some engine troubles and then last weekend after transmission troubles. It’s just a shame that we haven’t been able to run up front and kind of finish the way that we’ve been able to run. All in all, we have to keep going along with everything and make sure that we work on our cars getting them to the end of the race here in the second half of the year to put an exclamation point on our season. We’ve had a decent season as of now and if you can just keep on keeping on, make it a little better through the rest of the year you can probably show up a little bit better in the point standings. Our goal is still to try to make the Chase. We still have a shot to get in it. If we can make that, that’s a tremendous achievement for us. I think if we can come close to that, that would definitely be great, too.”

TRAVIS KVAPIL, No. 77 KODAK/JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS DODGE: WHAT HAS IT BEEN LIKE MAKING THE MOVE TO THE CUP SERIES FROM THE TRUCK SERIES? “It’s definitely been challenging, but it’s been everything that I expected it to be as well. The competition level is so fierce and the difference between a good day and a bad day on the Cup level is very small. The margin for error and having your car handling very good is key. The competition is just not quite that close in the truck series. You’ve really got to be on, the pit crew has got to be on. You can’t have any mistakes and things like that. We don’t feel like we’ve been running where we should be running. We need to be in the top 20, top 15 every week and we’ve been a little consistent doing that. We’re really looking forward to the second half of the year, going to these racetracks for a second time and having a better baseline for chassis setups and I’ll feel better at the racetracks for a second time as well.” WHAT KIND OF RELATIONSHIP HAVE YOU AND KYLE DEVELOPED COMPETING FOR RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR? “Pretty good. We’re definitely competitors on the racetrack but I think we would be considered friends off the racetrack. It’s not like we hang out or anything like that, but I consider him one of my friends just like any other competitor that I race with. All of us drivers seem like we’re pretty busy and we never really have a whole lot of free time to be hanging out. I’m definitely not planning on wrecking him or anything like that [smiles]. We’re a lot closer than that [laughs].”