Dickies 500 - Rookie Saturday Quotes

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER HAPPY HOUR QUOTES FOR THE DICKIES 500 NASCAR NEXTEL CUP SERIES RACE AT TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2005.

KYLE BUSCH, No. 5 CARQUEST CHEVROLET (Busch posted the fifth-best speed in the final practice session for the Dickies 500): “We got it better in race trim. It seems as though qualifying here is a little bit different story for us. All in all, we’ve been trying to work on the same problems, which is trying to get the thing to turn up off of turn 2. We’ve been a little bit tight in the center in 3 and 4 today as well, too. We kept working on it and kept getting it better so I’m excited about tomorrow. I think we have about a top-10 racecar.” THE TRACK WILL GET COOLER AND COOLER DURING THE RACE. “Yeah, it is. I think Matt [Kenseth] and myself were here testing and when it’s pretty cool out, there’s a lot of grip out there. You can really, really go fast. When the sun starts to go down, and the lights turn on and what not, we’re going to get lightning fast out there. It’s going to be sick. Still, I think you’re going to be a little bit looser during the day and the track might snug up more at night but also it will give you more grip.”

ALAN GUSTAFSON, CREW CHIEF, No. 5 CARQUEST CHEVROLET: “I think we’ve got better and better. We’re happy and the car is good. These races are tough [smiles]. You can be good and conditions change or competition steps up. I think we’ve got ourselves to a point where we can be competitive tomorrow and how we handle tomorrow and the adjustments we make will make the decision if we can win or not.” YOU HAVE THE ADVANTAGE OF MULTIPLE CARS IN THE BUSCH RACE TODAY IN ADDITION TO YOUR CUP TEAMMATES. THAT MUST BE A BIG HELP. “It does. Kyle is going to run that Busch race in the No. 57 Lowe’s car. I think that’s going to give us a good idea of what the track is going to be like when we start tomorrow. I think everybody is going to guess what tomorrow night is going to be like. It’s going to be fast, it’s going to be cool, and it’s going to be neat. It’s going to be a cool ending when the sun goes down because I think business is going to pick up in Texas here when the sun goes down so that will be fun [smiles].”

TRAVIS KVAPIL, No. 77 KODAK/JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS DODGE: “I feel like we’re making it better. We put tires on right there at the end of practice and really thought that we’d pick up and I’m pretty disappointed. It seemed like the longer we ran the more speed we had. I wish we had something from the get-go with fresh tires so it would take off a little bit. I definitely learned some things today. A couple of things really worked out for us and a couple of things didn’t. We had some good things and some bad things. We really need to brainstorm here and maybe see what Rusty’s got and kind of look around a little bit and see if we can get something a little better.” THE TRACK WILL COOL OFF DURING THE RACE. IS THAT GOING TO THROW YOU OFF? “Probably not. It will just get a little more grippier. The speeds will probably come up a little bit but I don’t think handling will really change that much. It might get a little tighter as the day goes on but it seems like that happens here as your fuels burns off and you wear out your left front tire. You just get tighter and tighter as the run goes on. We just need to be able to adjust for that during the race and hopefully not lose track of that during the race.”