KURT BUSCH (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger)

NOTE: Busch’s pole Friday broke a three-way tie with Kasey Kahne and Jeff Burton for most poles this season. Busch has won two straight and five total poles in 2006.

CAN YOU PLAN ADJUSTMENTS DURING THE RACE? “I think that’s what makes good, championship teams and cars that go to victory lane have the ability to adjust throughout the race. Having a left rear spring that might be heavy in the beginning filled with rubbers and just take rubbers out as the night progresses. When you have less left rear spring it helps you turn. With the speeds during the daytime and the track being hot and slick you still have to have the bite to stick to the racetrack. That’s one way to do it. That’s the easiest way. Then there’s the track bar that you can adjust. You can adjust air pressure. You hope your car has the adjustability to go both ways in case your car is off at the beginning of the race, you’ve got to still be able to tighten it up if you’re too loose in the beginning. That’s usually when you have a good car, when it’s neutral in the beginning and you’ve planned to go either way.”

WHAT WERE YOUR CHALLENGES LEADING UP TO THE CHASE? “What we’ve put behind us is the challenge of trying to jump in as a first-year team and learn crew chief to driver relationship as well as past setups and history and what they’ve done for other drivers is a little different than what Kurt Busch needed. We’ve gone to a bunch of tracks for a second time, road courses, Daytona, to Bristol twice and it seems like more and more tracks we go to the second time around we’re either able to pinpoint it quick or we have a notebook we can sit down and look at. For us now we want to try some off the wall setups because recently we have been more conservative with what we knew. What we knew wasn’t quite enough to make The Chase. Now with 12 races to go it’s an opportunity to try some off the wall things, learn, make mistakes and not have consequences. Just trying to get the car back in victory lane is the ultimate goal in these next 12 races.”

HAS WORKING FOR PENSKE BEEN EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO BE? “Absolutely. Roger is a great guy. Every time I speak with him or sit down at his office or see him at the racetrack there are words of wisdom. It’s different than where I was in the past per se. Roger has this driver background. He has this open wheel background. He has the background of doing things first class, and it’s really a pleasure working for him. Each and every time I get to do something for him, get a win or sit on a pole or just get one of those solid top 10 finishes, I feel pleased to be able to do that for Roger. Our win at Watkins Glen in the Grand National car was No. 275 all-time. It hit me really hard that I’m adding to Roger’s stats in the win column and pole column. It feels really neat to be able to do that for The Captain.”

“It was really a matter of finding the right adjustments to make with the hot temperatures today. I think our pole speed from today was about six tenths slower than February. It was hard to find the right adjustment to make. You just mainly compromised the grip level of the front tires versus the rear tires. The balance turned out to be a good pole-sitting car. I’m real happy with the adjustments we made. We didn’t think we had a shot at the pole, but past experience is starting to blend in my time I’ve spent with Penske Racing. They’re notorious for qualify, and so far success on Friday has been pretty good for us.”

HOW DIFFERENT WILL CONDITIONS BE ON SUNDAY? “The few times we’ve been here it was nice and cool the first year. Last year it was very warm and the track changed quite a bit from the daytime to the evening. It’s not as big a change as it is at Charlotte and a couple of other tracks. California is always warm. The track keeps its temperature at night and it’s a nice transition when the temperatures do cool off. A lot of other tracks are more abrupt. It’s the same game plan where you have to have a car that will turn on the bottom of the racetrack and then go up high and dart around other cars. The racetrack has come into its own here in California, multiple grooves, quite a bit of speed, but then it has its old short track characteristic where you’ve got to get the thing turned right in the middle of the corner.”

“We tried a little something different this time, and we’re good on Friday. We just need to get a little better on Sunday. The Penske/Jasper power down the straightaways is what I needed today. It was a really good run today, and the car was really good back here in the spring. I put a blindfold on sometimes and go out there and I hit a good lap. We go when we have the opportunity to go and right now that’s been on Fridays. We’ve been real solid with the power and setups underneath me. We need to make ‘em last for more than a lap. Having that comfort underneath me in qualifying is great, but we need that for every lap in the race.”

“A few things helped us today, but mainly just being together with my team longer and having that comfort zone and looking at the racetrack today and saying it’s pretty hot out. This is what we did back here in February and we’ve definitely got to adjust it for today. That gave us confidence in our adjustments. I had no idea we’d pick up the time we picked up in practice, but the Miller Lite Dodge has shown speed on most of the Fridays this year. I just hope that some of that can be pushed over to Sunday, that confidence feeling as well as making the right adjustments.”

HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO FINISH 11TH IN THE POINTS? “When I did the math when I won the championship there’s a hell of a lot more money to win the deal than to finish second. For 11th to 12th for us, it’s more important to make sure we learn and try some off the wall things. If we stub our toe, maybe it didn’t work or we get to relish in a nice victory. So, 11th is a prestigious thing, it’s nice, it’s just a whole season’s worth of work and you get to talk about it on stage for a few moments in New York. It is special. We haven’t thrown that out the window, but we’ve got to beat some pretty strong guys just to get to 11th. We’ve got two or three races where we can think out of the box. We’ve been good at California before. We’ve been good at Richmond, and I’ve won at Loudon. Right now we’ll see what we can throw at the wall. If it looks like something good, we’ll try it out.”

WHERE’S THE PAINTING YOU RECEIVED AT CALIFORNIA SPEEDWAY IN 2003? “It’s in my workout room. It’s a nice piece of art. It’s got that retro look, and it’s something very special. It has all the winners from 2003 when I won here. I keep threatening to take it off the wall and get everybody to sign it. Matt Kenseth won the Busch race that year. Ted Musgrave won the truck race. A buddy of mine, Sam Hornis, won the IRL race. He was driving for a different team. It’s really a nice picture. It’s in the workout room and it’s motivation to come get another California Speedway trophy.”

TAKE US THROUGH YOUR QUALIFYING LAP? “It’s always key to get a good run at the start/finish line. So you go through three and four doing two things – anticipating how the car is going to handle as well as just putting your foot on the floor to get a good run coming to the start-finish line. It was a good head of steam. I knew the car was going to stick underneath me. I drove it into turn one and the crew chief said ‘that’s what I call driving it in deep You can over drive it real easy.’ I said, ‘well, it’s only overdriving if you miss the corner.’ We were joking about that It just stuck really well in one and two, maybe a little bit on the tight side. It got a great run off turn two and my foot was on the floor. All the way down the back straightaway you could feel the front of the car pit to the racetrack. I ran the gas up to where we needed it to be, drove up to turn three, maybe a little bit easier, just knowing turn three was easier to overdrive than turn one. I put it right on the white line, stood on the gas early, and it felt like a good solid lap. Right where I needed to be on the white line in both corners and then to come down the straightaway with a good head of steam.”

WERE YOU FRUSTRATED AT FIRST? “I just kept going along with Roger’s advice. Rome wasn’t built in one day. We’ve got time to get things together, knowing from my championship success what it took that year has expired by now, the setups. Not necessarily the approach or how to get in The Chase, but the setups really dictate how fast you can go each week, and it was a bit frustrating in the beginning of the year to go ‘man I’ve won at this track before. How come I’m running 20th.right now? That’s where you’ve got to keep your eye on the big picture. This team has come along way in one year. Roy McCauley has learned quite a bit, and I’ve learned you’ve got to go through some tough times to realize the good times definitely were that much sweeter.”

HOW DO YOU PREPARE FOR THE CAR OF TOMORROW? “There’s a few different ways to answer that question, but first off, the communication between a crew chief an driver builds and goes over time to make developing setups easier. I see that as a plus for us because we’re going to continue with that. The car of tomorrow looking at it is a matter of just quantity, getting out there and burning off practices and doing as much as you can at tracks like Milwaukee or Kentucky, even Memphis a little short track. It gets back to quantity. That’s’ why right now Ryan Newman and I are getting together as hard as we can to bring up ideas about that new car. Then we’ve got a third test driver that’s doing things for us – Billy Weiss. He’s off flogging laps, lap after lap after lap. It’s a good combination we have with Ryan driving the car, I’m in the car, and Billy Weiss has the most laps in it, so he could probably go win a race quicker than we can right now with the knowledge he has about the car. You’ve got to be able to put that in reality and that’s at Bristol next year. That’s the first race, and there’s going to be a ton of questions going in. Who knows? You might have a got like Scott Wimmer that has a shot at victory that day just because they stumbled across something quicker than other teams.”

RYAN NEWMAN (No. 12 Sony Dodge Charger)

“It was a good effort by everyone on this Sony Dodge Charger team. The guys worked hard on it. I don’t know what to say about the race track, if it’s better or worse or the same. We did qualifying runs in practice, and we changed some important things before qualifying and went the right way. The track just seems a lot slower. I think it’s just the temperature and heat and grease coming out of the track. I don’t know about the heat. It cooled down pretty good last night after the sun went down. It’s a different kind of hot. You just don’t sweat like you do at home when it’s this hot.”

BOBBY LABONTE (No. 43 Cheerios/Hamburger Helper Dodge Charger)

“We were fair in practice and the guys made a lot of changes on the car before qualifying. It got better, but the car still isn’t where it needs to be. We’ve got a work left to do before the race.”

CASEY MEARS (No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger)

“The car’s been tighter than hell since we’ve been here. On a scale of 1-10 it’s about a 15. It won’t turn, and that’s the way we’ve been since we started. That’s the way we qualified, too. It got a little better, but it’s still way too tight. The track is hotter and slicker, but it’s got the same characteristics it’s always had. It’s going to be warm for the race, but it’s not going to be hot. The track will get a lot more grip and hopefully the front will grip a lot better than the rear when that sun goes down.”

ELLIOTT SADLER (No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

“It just got a little bit too loose. I had Josh (Brown) and the guys make some changes on it before qualifying and they loosened it up too much. It was my fault. We’re not where we should be, but we should be somewhere in the top 20. We’ll have a great car for the race. We’ve had some good pit stops the past two weeks, and we’ll be fine come Sunday. It was just a driver mistake today.”

SCOTT RIGGS (No. 10 Valvoline/Stanley Tools Dodge Charger)

“We were going out there trying to qualify in the top five. We worked a lot of practice today in race trim and only did one qualifying run. We were fourth on the board and to wind up fourth is good for us. We’re happy with that. We’ve been seeing improvements on the inside and those improvements are now just starting to show to other people on the outside. I’ve been telling everybody this team is getting better and better and the last half of the year we’re going to come on strong. I think it’s now starting to be recognized on the outside. All my guys are doing a better job. I think I’m doing a better job of describing what the car’s doing. Everything is coming together and we’re getting results. I’m happy. It’s been three years since I’ve been in a car that I felt I could go out there and compete and race for wins.”

KASEY KAHNE (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

“It bounced around a lot. We need to work on that and get the front more stable. The car felt pretty good in three and four. I think we picked up some time there. We’ve got a lot of combinations to work on tomorrow. It’ll be good to work with the 19 and 10. Hopefully by the end of practice tomorrow we can put those three car setups together and have something good for Sunday.”