BOWYER: AT THE END OF THE RACE IT LOOKED LIKE YOU WERE IN THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME TO GET TO THE FRONT, RIGHT BEHIND DALE EARNHARDT JR. “Yeah we were. He was digging up high and I wasn’t going to leave him. He was the only one wanting to move. I was wanting to get up there a little farther than I was. I latched onto him and held on as much as I could. It was pretty fun. My car just wouldn’t run down there on the bottom. I had to stay up high and keep her wound up. We did what we had to do, the guys had good pit stops, and that’s the way that we wanted to start out with this Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet. It was a good run for us.” DID YOU TAKE IS EASY DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE RACE AND THEN MAKE YOUR MOVE TO THE FRONT? “I was just kind of watching things. Things were looking pretty dicey up three-wide. At one point I was like ‘Man, these guys are going to pile it up big-time.’ That’s why they’re the best drivers in the world: they didn’t. They all drove through it and it was a pretty good race. It was fun.” HOW PHYSICAL WAS THE RACE? “Not so much, not until right there at the end. It was a lot of fun out there. It wasn’t as much fun as that Busch race yesterday, but I learned a lot. That’s the hardest thing: these Cup cars draft so much harder than those Busch cars. I learned a lot with those guys out there today.” HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO GET A GOOD START TO THE SEASON? DOES THAT GIVE YOU A LOT OF MOMENTUM GOING TO CALIFORNIA AND LAS VEGAS? “It’s very important. That’s exactly what we needed to do, come here and have a good strong finish. I guess we got a sixth. I thought I was ahead of the 8 right there when we came to the caution. It’s still a good run for us. Coming down to that green-white-checkered, my car was bound up down on the bottom and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to hold it down there. We did and sixth is a good finish for us.” DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU RAN THE RACE LIKE A VETERAN? “I wouldn’t say that [smiles]. But I had a lot of fun out there.”

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FEDEX EXPRESS CHEVROLET: “It wasn’t anything to brad about, for sure. We just struggled all day trying to find help and get track position. Every time we get track position we get shuffled out one time and take us all the way to the back. Help was the biggest thing that we were lacking today.” WERE YOU INVOLVED IN THAT WRECK AT THE END OF THE RACE? “I got some of that. It is what it is, I guess. We can go racing now.”

DAVID STREMME, No. 40 LONESTAR STEAKHOUSE DODGE: YOUR CAR LOOKS LIKE YOU JUST RACED AT BRISTOL. “Ya think? Everybody looks like that. They’re idiots [smile]. We were trying to just bide our time. I thought we had a pretty good but lost the transmission there at the end. We had a few mishaps, missed the big wreck, and got tore up on pit road. All my guys did a good job. We just ended up losing first, second, and third [gears] there. There’s not much we can do about that.” COULD YOU GET ANY HELP IN THE DRAFT? “There’s nobody helping me, I can tell you that. Now I will say that Elliott Sadler helped me quite a bit and I was thankful for that. He did an awesome job. I look forward to Talladega.” THE CAR HAS A FEW DENTS. DO YOU FEEL FORTUNATE THAT YOU DIDN’T GET CAUGHT UP IN A WRECK? “I got caught up in a wreck a bunch of times, it just didn’t take me out. There were idiots all around me. That’s about all we can do. We’ll go to California and have fun.”

REED SORENSON, No. 41 TARGET DODGE: IT LOOKED LIKE YOU WERE IN POSITION TO GET A GOOD FINISH LATE IN THE RACE. DID YOU GET SHUFFLED OUT OF THE DRAFT? “We didn’t get a half-lap back just getting shuffled out. We blew a right rear tire. I didn’t get much drafting help. If I made a move, I didn’t get many people going with me. I couldn’t be too aggressive. I was just seeing what I could get done. We had a great run going. I think we 12th or 13th on that restart and blew a right rear going into 1.” DID YOU HAVE TIRE PROBLEMS TODAY? “No. It must have been a rub or something because we didn’t have any problems at all.”

KEVIN MANION, CREW CHIEF, No. 1 BASS PRO SHOPS/TRACKER BOATS CHEVROLET: “He thought the 25 just drove him straight in the fence. It knocked the rear end around and the truck arms bent and we did everything we could to beat the fenders out. We had to pit several times and we were still smoking on low air pressures. I saw that the left rear quarter was all parachuted out. It was a rough day but it’s in one piece somewhat.” THE RACE CONDITIONS TODAY WERE DIFFERENT THAT WHAT YOU HAD IN HAPPY HOUR YESTERDAY. “We planned for that. Everyone was fighting a tight-condition. We could run 30 laps and never lift. He said it was just one or two tight on a scale of 1-10. We made a half-pound of air pressure adjustment and he said it was better. By the time we got settled in, we wrecked. We were the first caution.”

BRENT SHERMAN, No. 49 SERTA DODGE: “We missed it a little bit there on the carburetor, I think, because of the cold weather. We were just not as fast as we were in practice, which was really disappointing. I was planning on riding around for 180 laps and then racing the last 20 but I couldn’t really race anyone the last 20 because we couldn’t get up in there. We didn’t wreck and we finished decent, 21st. I wish I could have done better for the team. I wish the whole team could have done better but all in all, it’s exactly what we came to do.” IS THIS THE STRATEGY YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE FOR THE OTHER FOUR RACES? “I think we’ll know when to take it to the next level. We’re going to run as hard as we can and slowly it will get better every week and we’re just automatically take it to the next level. We’re going to make it happen and get better every week.”