Defending NASCAR Nextel Cup champion, Tony Stewart in the No. 20 Home Depot Monte Carlo SS, held a short question and answer session with media following the final practice at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Tony Stewart, No. 20 Home Depot Monte Carlo SS
DO YOU HAVE SNOW TIRES? "No, but if it gets at least an inch of it (snow) down there, I'm confident I can lap the field; well maybe except for Kasey Kahne, (Ken) Schrader and (Dave) Blaney and Ryan Newman, he has run some dirt too. Jeff (Gordon) will remember it too. It'll come back to him. So you might see six or eight of us lapping the field."

ON STARTING FIRST RATHER THAN FARTHER BACK IN THE FIELD: "Track position is the deal and it is just that if something happens early, we have it and it gets us a great pit selection obviously. That's just one of the perks of being the champion last year. Did we earn the pole? Not at Bristol here this weekend but we earned it from last year. You hate for the weather to be a big factor like this. I told them the last time I remember practicing in the snow I was in a spint car in Winchester and before you could even get on the race track, your toes were numb and you couldn't even feel the pedals. It's pretty insane but it's pretty cool at the same time to see something like this happen."

WHAT'S THE ART OF RACING AT BRISTOL? "You pretty much just react to what happens. You try to stay out of trouble all day. It's feast or famine. Most of the time if you're having a good day, it's a lot of fun. If you have one bad thing a lot of times the odds are against you getting back to where you were and getting back without a damaged race car."

HOW IS YOUR RACE CAR? "I'm excited about it. It was pretty quick in practice. We were toward the top of the sheet in the first session with a fast lap and then the second session we didn't come out right away so we didn't get a fast lap set up early. In the long run our lap times look really good."

Kyle Busch, No. 5 Kellogg's Monte Carlo SS
Note: Busch and Clint Bowyer's No. 07 Jack Daniels Monte Carlo SS made contact on track during today's final practice session damaging the left front quarter panel of the No. 5 Chevrolet.

"He was coming in or going out on the race track. I didn't know he was going to do that. He slid up on the race track right there right on the yellow line where you're supposed to be here. There's nothing I could have done except probably turned up the race track and wrecked myself doing that. It's a tough break. Now we got to fix it. It's too bad. This was a really, really fast race car."

Jeff Green, No. 66 Best Buy Monte Carlo SS
ON A SOLID PRACTICE AND CONFIDENCE TO MOVE UP THE FIELD DURING TOMORROW'S RACE: "It's still about track position. I don't care how fast of a car you got. If you don't have good track position, you're not going to be able to have good results. I think our Best Buy Chevy is really, really good. We just got to do some things to get up front. I don't think anybody is going to pass every car out here. I don't think there's anybody that strong over the other cars. I feel like if we get up there we can race those guys. We started out a lot different in the first practice set-up wise and kind of went back to the traditional set-up in the second practice. That showed and it paid off for us pretty good."

Kevin Harvick, No. 29 GM Goodwrench Monte Carlo SS
"I am really happy with the car. We ran both practices on one set of tires, we had 70 laps on them. The car was still pretty good so I am pretty happy with it.

HOW HAS THE COLD AFFECTED THE TRACK? "To be honest with you, it really isn't that bad. It doesn't seem like you can hug the bottom like you usually can here and there is a little more diamond than normal but it really isn't much different other than the first couple of laps."

Robby Gordon, No. 7 Menard's Monte Carlo SS
"We are pretty good, really good on old tires. Things are coming around for us. I am impressed that we are that competitive here at Bristol but you know it is just practice but I think we are good and that is half the battle is to believe you can be good when it comes race day.

HAVE YOU MADE CHANGES TO THE CAR TO COMPENSATE FOR THE COLD? "It is cold here. To be honest, we have had trouble getting rear grip in the car driving off the corner going forward. I hope I don't have the rear tires stuck so hard for today that tomorrow we will be pushing all day long but I think we are pretty good."

Jeff Gordon, No. 24 DuPont Monte Carlo SS
"I feel good. Every time you come to this track you have to attack it and try a lot of things to try to get better to keep up with the competition. I feel like we've really made gains through each practice and have a strong car for tomorrow."

Scott Wimmer, No. 4 Aero Exhaust Monte Carlo SS
“I felt like practice went real well for our Aero Exhaust Chevy. We learned quite a few things. In the first practice we went out and ran quite a bit then made a lot of changes for the second practice that helped the car toward the end. We didn’t burn up a lot of tires. We ran a lot of laps on our first and second set of tires and I think that is important here [at Bristol]. It doesn’t seem like we are going to have a huge issue with tire wear. I think the longer you can go [on tires] the better you are going be.”