BUSCH: “Man, I can’t say enough. Mr. Hendrick and Hendrick Motorsports, his engines ran great all day today. The guys in the chassis shop and body shop, they build some awesome racecars and to come out here with the Kellogg’s/Robots Chevrolet and finish runner-up, that’s not too bad. This is just our second downforce race of the year. I want to say that last year was a fluke and Gary DeHart and all those guys worked their butts off to try to give me something. I don’t think I could have told them what I needed in that car and that’s why we struggled last year [in the Cup series]. Alan Gustafson [crew chief] and all these guys on this Kellogg’s crew have done an awesome job for me and I’m looking forward to the rest of the year. Hopefully we can get it done.” YOUR BROTHER KURT SAID TO YOU AFTER THE RACE THAT THE ADVICE ENDS NOW. “I definitely need a tremendous amount more. We had an awesome car there at the end. We were kind of struggling all day with a tight car in the center and to be able to come back here at the end and have a decent car where we could pass guys on the outside and get up to second position. We tried chasing the 48 but just couldn’t get it done. These guys have done an awesome job and Hendrick Motorsports one-two, we’ve ended the Roush domination for two years in a row. My best finish here before was ninth in a Craftsman Truck race and yesterday we finished 10th and here today in the NEXTEL Cup race, my first real start here we ended up second in the Kellogg’s/Robot Chevrolet. It was awesome to be able to come out here and finish once and to finish second is tremendous.” HOW DID YOU GET THE FLAT TIRE? “I think it was coming down through the access road. I think that’s when we cut it down but I didn’t feel any problems the last few laps. If it was flat before the last couple of laps I probably would have had a chance of catching Jimmie. We were just too tight. That [flat tire] would have loosened ‘er up right there.” SOME HAVE SAID THAT MAYBE YOU SHOULDN’T BE IN THE NEXTEL CUP SERIES THIS EARLY IN YOUR CAREER. “Darrell Waltrip stuck up for me today and he told everybody that sometimes you have to get thrown in with the big dogs, early as it is or late as it is, it doesn’t really matter. You’re going to have to learn and you are going to go through those learning curves and today was definitely one of those. I’m excited for all the guys and I’m looking forward to a great year and chasing down that Raybestos Rookie of the Year honor. We were trying to catch the 48. We were just way too tight on the long run. We just couldn’t get the car to rotate good enough for us. It was a shame that we couldn’t catch him but all in all we finished second here and that was pretty cool.” YOU BEAT YOUR BIG BROTHER TODAY. HOW DOES THAT FEEL? “It feels awesome. I wish it was one-two, but I don’t want to wish any bad luck on the 48. I was just trying to chase him down. That was all we had. My congratulations to Jimmie Johnson and the rest of Hendrick Motorsports.” WHAT WORKED FOR YOU LATE IN THE RACE? “We made changes all day long. We were tight in the middle of the corner all day and we just kind of tried working on that. We ended up getting it pretty good to where I could get the throttle down. It’s all about throttle time here and being able to hook up coming off the corner and passing those guys on the outside was something else. On fresh tires I could really get that car to roll. It was good to be able to get track position there before we got too tight.” IT’S GOT TO BE COOL TO SEE THIS MANY PEOPLE AT YOUR HOME TRACK. “It is pretty cool. The only shame about that is yesterday in the Busch race Martin Truex got more cheers than the hometown hero. We’ll have to change that this year.” WHAT COULD YOU HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY TO CHASE DOWN JIMMIE JOHNSON? “We might have been able to catch him if we had another caution there but that would have also given everybody else a chance to adjust on their cars. If Jimmie and I could have came down pit road by ourselves and put another set of tires on I think we had a shot to chase him down. We were running the exact same lap times. He’d be quicker than me, I’d be quicker than him and we’d kind of even out. If we had a little more adjustment time we probably could have got him.” ARE YOUR SURPRISED TO BE THIS STRONG SO EARLY IN THE SEASON? “Not really. I think it’s awesome though to be able to be this strong but I’m looking forward to more so of the year and trying to get everything done that we need to get done. I hope it’s not a fluke. I just wish we can go back out there and keep finishing like this week in and week out.” YOU HAVE TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT THIS PERFORMANCE AT YOUR HOMETOWN TRACK. “It was definitely a good day for the Kellogg’s/Robot Chevrolet and it was a lot of fun to be able to bring a second place finish home to all the FOX entry folks and everybody else that was involved and here today for the whole event and the movie that came out Friday. It’s probably going to be the number one movie; I was one spot short, but that’s all right. We still have a long year ahead of us. I hope this wasn’t just a fluke. Qualifying on the pole two weeks ago in California and finishing second here in the race was just a tremendous opportunity for the whole team. Putting the 5 and 25 cars in the same building and being able to try to go out strong here is definitely the awesome thing. We worked on the car all day. We were tight, tight, tight always in the center and to be able to work on that all day, Alan Gustafson [crew chief] made awesome calls back there and got the car handling better. I was able to drive by all those guys on the outside and come back up through to second spot.” DO YOU RATE THIS SECOND PLACE FINISH TODAY BIGGER THAN ANY OF YOUR VICTORIES IN THE BUSCH SERIES? “If it was a win, probably. You know what, I haven’t actually gotten a win since our accident back in October of last year. This is just another one of those second place finishes that we wish we could have turned into a win but we’re glad that our teammate was able to win. I can’t say that it’s been any bigger than any of my Busch Series victories quite yet. It’s definitely right up there with most of them. Probably Lowe’s Motor Speedway is my biggest win because it’s in front of all the Hendrick Motorsports people and of course all the racing guys around North Carolina and it was out home track, too: Lowe’s.” WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO HAVE A SECOND RACE HERE IN LAS VEGAS? “I think it should be here. A night race in September or October, that sounds good.” JOHNSON HAD A PROBLEM WITH SCOTT WIMMER AND YOU WERE ABLE TO CLOSE IN A LITTLE BIT. “I was obviously excited that I was catching him, having a shot to just kind of get up there. Then once Jimmie got to another set of lap cars and got through them pretty well and I got to them and they were side by side so I kind of lost that ground again. Anything can kind of play around in the lap car world and I was there last week. I probably screwed up a lot of people. It’s all a matter of how you can get through the traffic and stuff like that. Jimmie was trying to go low on them and I guess was giving him the outside just to kind of go around and they got bottled up but no big deal. I’m sure Jimmie would have been upset if I won and he lost.” IN THE EARLY PART OF THE SEASON, IT LOOKS LIKE ROUSH VERSUS HENDRICK. WHAT IS YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON THAT SINCE YOU REPRESENT THE TWO STRONGEST TEAMS THIS YEAR? “I’m just excited to be here. It’s fun to be associated with such a great organization with Hendrick Motorsports and what Mr. Hendrick gives us all: what the chassis shop does, the body shop, the engine shop everybody at Hendrick Motorsports works their hearts out. It goes from the front office to the dumpster guys to the guys that sweep the floor. Everybody does a job there at Hendrick Motorsports and their job is to be number one and obviously we’re working towards trying to be there. We’ve got the Roush guys to try to beat and but it’s definitely going to be a good battle. Like Kurt said, don’t count out anybody else just yet. It’s a long season ahead of us and those guys will go test. They’ll get it done. DEI will come up there, Ganassi, Yates, everybody. There’s a tremendous amount of opportunity out here and for everybody to get going.” SINCE WAGERING IS LEGAL IN LAS VEGAS, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE ODDS AND THAT ASPECT (KYLE WAS 60-1)? “I had a bunch of guys that put money on me so I was wishing that the 48 would have pulled over and let us win. It would have made some bank. I betcha all the sports books would have went broke [laughter]. It was pretty cool. Everything was fun this weekend but I’ll bet you next year I’ll have a lot lower odds.” ARE YOU SURPRISING YOURSELF TO THIS POINT OF THE SEASON? “Not really. I’m not really surprising myself. I wish it was easier on myself to try to finish this well every week. The Busch Series I could finish in the top-10 every week. The Cup series is a tremendous amount harder. There in the middle part of the race I thought ‘Dang, we don’t have a shot for 15th.’ The guys kept working on the car and kept making it run better for us and we were able to pass guys on the outside and come back up to second place. I wish I could have won today. Obviously anybody would wish that but we could have set that youngest winner record and probably would have been pretty, pretty hard to best for anybody else coming up.” WHEN YOU AND KURT ARE RACING EADCH OTHER HOW DO YOUR PARENTS DIVIDE THE TIME IN THE PITS? “I hope my Dad stays at the Hendrick Motorsports pit because that’s where his job is. He works at Hendrick and used to work for my ARCA team and now he kind of works a little bit more so throughout the organization. They both hang around a both of us a lot. It’s cool to be able to have such a family that’s great like that.”

TRAVIS KVAPIL, No. 77 MOBIL 1/KODAK/JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS DODGE (Note: Kvapil led the race once for three laps, the first time he has led in his NEXTEL Cup Series career): “It was awful there at the end. It was a terrible time to have the wrong adjustment. Man, we were just on it for the first three-quarters of the race. We had one miscue in the pits where we had one lug nut fall off. We lost a bunch of time and had to come from the back and drove our way back up into the top-10. We just had a super racecar. We were really good on long runs and basically we just made the wrong adjustment on that last pit stop and really dialed the racecar out. It’s all I could do to just to keep it going straight. It was sideways and really loose. It’s just a big disappointment to run in the top-10 all day and then have that bad of a finish at the end. We definitely learned something and we proved to ourselves that we can run up front, we can lead laps. We’ve just got to be smarter with some of our adjustments and put this in the memory bank and not do it again, that’s for sure.” SOME COMMENTATORS ON TELEVISON SAID THAT YOU MADE A HALF-POUND AIR PRESSURE ADJUSTMENT. WOULD THAT HAVE MADE THE CAR THAT BAD? “I think we did it all the way around on all four tires. We were right on the border of having a free racecar and you make a four-tire air pressure adjustment and it really screwed the racecar up and the balance of the racecar. It don’t take much to really dial yourself out but I’m amazed that small of an adjustment hurt the racecar that bad but that’s all we did. It’s a big letdown to have a good racecar all weekend and be solid on the board all weekend and then finish like this. It’s a big confidence builder for us at the same time knowing that we can run up front.” IT MUST BE ENCOURAGING TO PASS SO MANY CARS. “We had one bad pit stop and we came out 22nd or 23rd and we drove ourself back up to eighth or ninth under green. That’s a great feeling, just passing cars and having a great setup. It’s just disappointing like I said to be that good all day long and have your one bad adjustment during the last run and really dial the racecar out.”