Kyle Busch
#5 Kellogg's Chevrolet
3rd position
PRESS CONFERENCE
HOW DOES THE CAR FEEL?
It feels pretty good. We had a good decent run there with the Kellogg's Chevrolet. Once we unloaded here I felt that had a pretty good shot at qualifying in the top 10. Especially there after the qualifying, I knew we were going to somewhere in the top 5. So, that was definitely good for us and I'm looking forward to the race.
IS LAST WEEK'S INCIDENT WITH KASEY OVER AND DONE WITH?
Yeah, what is today's date? 9/24? I think that was 9/18 or something. That was days ago, it's over. I talked with Tommy Baldwin earlier today and discussed things with him. I tried to catch up with Ray but I was getting in the car as he was walking by and I hadn't had a chance to see Kasey at all running back and forth with the Busch cars. I ran into him right there and that was about it. I don't even have his phone number so I wasn't able to get in touch with him during the week.
IS THIS HOW YOU'VE WANTED YOUR IMPROVEMENT IN YOUR TEAM TO GO DURING THIS CHASE PERIOD? YOU'VE HAD GREAT CARS LATELY
No, we didn't have a very good car last week. We were second in practice. Qualifying it was really, really loose. In the race I thought it was going to be pretty good, but in the race it wasn't good either. Really tight. It wasn't the same car we had there in the spring race at Loudon. That might have been some of the problem. But overall we've got a good car. We came up here and tested a couple of weeks ago. (We) had a decent enough test where we thought we could come here in a good car and we did. But, we unloaded well for qualifying trim and now it's about race trim and getting some good laps down and build a comfort level for the car on the race track.
Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
#8 Budweiser Chevrolet
4th position
HOW WAS YOUR LAP?
It was a good effort all day by DEI and the Budweiser team.
ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE DIRECTION THIS TEAM IS GOING IN?
We've qualified well for two weeks in a row. We'll see how we race. We've got a pretty decent setup we worked on this morning. I think if we get some time tomorrow we'll dial it in and have a good race on Sunday.
HOW IMPORTANT IS A QUALIFYING SPOT HERE?
Qualifying spot is good anywhere really. For pit selection to be able to choose that suits whether you'd like an open stall or behind you. It also allows you put people around you who won't be battling with you for the stalls. It's real easy to get hung up on pit road here because it's real narrow. Just being able to get a good stall here is something you can work with all day long.
Jimmie Johnson
#48 Lowe's Chevrolet
5th position
Really good lap. I can't thank my crew guys enough. They work so hard to get some speed in the car and make the car comfortable for me. And that's a hard thing to do, so I've got to thank Chad Knaus and all the crew guys on the Lowe's team for a great race car. A little loose into the turn but great bite up off the corner. Lost a little speed getting into turn 3. A lot of fun.
DOES THE TRACK CHANGE MUCH HERE?
Yes and no. It's just consistently lays down rubber and you lose grip. Nine times out of ten you end up caught up in traffic. It's a track that we can predict the setups on a little bit and we know what's going to happen in traffic. The thing I'm encouraged about is that in the spring we could run in the second and third and fourth lanes and really had a full race track to run. I'm looking forward to that in Sunday's race.
Joe Nemechek
#01 U.S. Army Chevrolet
9th position
Yeah, pretty good day for bringing a brand new race car here today-no laps, everything-chassis, body, everything is new. We struggled here the first race here this year, didn't run. They brought a whole different package back and it's been great ever since we unloaded. We just have to take that and deal with it. I was just a little bit too tight in qualifying to get extra speed in the corners. And, that's just typical Dover.
Jeff Gordon
#24 DuPont Chevrolet
25th position
Not too good. Anytime you don't pick up from practice, but everybody else does, you know you're going to be pretty far back. Just too tight.
Brian Vickers
#25 GMAC Chevrolet
26th position
We're still loose. We've been playing loose all morning. It was a lot better than we practiced, but we're still loose.
Michael Waltrip
#15 NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet
27th position
You know, I drove as hard as I could. I drove as hard as I could and I thought I was going to have a little bit better time than I had. Everybody is just so close. I ran a 23 and a darn 13 would make me happy. I always tell people don't let a tenth of a second ruin your whole day.
Tony Stewart
#20 The Home Depot Chevrolet
31st position
It wasn't a stellar lap by any means but as Zippy said on the radio, this isn't a track where we put a huge emphasis on qualifying. We've started in the mid 20s for the two races that we won here so we're not too concerned about a wreck.
Jeff Burton
#31 Cingular Wireless Chevrolet
36th position
We were just way too loose. We worked on race trim the whole time. We threw a qualifying setup into it kind of late it just didn't work very good. Then we had to guess. But I feel really good about race setup. We'll just have to work from where we're starting.
