STREMME: “Reed and I talked a lot about it because he did a lot of drafting and we did a lot of qualifying runs and we kind of threw everything together. Casey has kind of got what he’s got because he got tore up but I think he’ll race pretty good.” IS IT A RELIEF TO GET IN THE RACE? “Yeah, that’s the biggest thing. And it’s not that we weren’t fast enough. The one thing is just making sure that we don’t hang a gear, get it caught in a different gear and shift right and I don’t hit the wall. All these guys did a great job.” YOU FOCUSED A LOT ON QUALIFYING YESTERDAY. DOES THAT PUT YOU AT A DISADVANTAGE FOR THE RACE? “Probably a little bit. But we’ve got enough pit stops and we’ll be able to adjust to where we should be pretty good in the race. Pit selection is going to be huge. We just have to make sure that we go and we get a good pit stall, clean in and clean out, and be set from there.” WHERE DO YOU WANT TO PIT HERE? “Anywhere there is an opening. There are plenty of openings here. That’s pretty big, getting in and out.” WILL YOU HAVE TO HAVE A LOT OF PATIENCE TOMORROW NIGHT? “Every week there’s a lot of patience [smiles]. I think our team is getting a lot stronger. We’ll keep digging and see where we end up.”

STEVE LANE, CREW CHIEF, No. 40 COORS LIGHT DODGE: THIS MUST BE A MORALE BOOST FOR THE TEAM. “Definitely. This is a tribute to all the guys back there in the fab shop that work on nothing but speedway cars. They’ve worked their guts out because that car was wrecked here in the 500.” WAS EVERYONE TENSE BEFORE QUALIFYING BECAUSE YOU MUST MAKE THE RACE ON SPEED? “Absolutely and especially these places. Anything can happen. You miss a gear, over-rev the motor, throw an oil pump belt off, you think about all the stuff when you’re leaving pit road. To be in the race, we can finally sleep tonight [smile].” WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO PIT? “Probably somewhere around stalls 20 or 21, right around those boxes. I think those are pretty good. It gives him time, if he does make a mistake getting on or off pit road a little time to recover plus you’ve got an opening there.” ARE YOU A STEP BEHIND FOR THE RACE? “We’re absolutely a step behind. I think you’ll see on the first caution we’ll come in and you’ll see track bars going up and rubbers going in the rear and anything else you can do to free it up. We’re definitely a step behind.”

J.J. YELEY, No. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET: “Not bad for a backup car. It drove good and it’s the same car that we had here in February. I would have rather had the initial car we were supposed to run. I know if drove good and sucked up good. Qualifying is not worth a whole bunch here right now. Hopefully we get this car close. We get this car 80-90 percent of what we had the other car, we’ll be happy.” YOU DIDN’T MANY LAPS ON THIS CAR AND YOU STILL QUALIFIED IN THE TOP-10. “Well, like I said, I raced that car here in February and it was a good racecar. We qualified 15th or something. Obviously guys aren’t putting as much emphasis in qualifying for this race, which you do in February. I know that Denny’s car races real good but doesn’t qualify very good. Hopefully we’ve got a car that qualifies good and races better.”

REED SORENSON, No. 41 TARGET DODGE: “We had a great car yesterday. We started 41st at Talladega and we had a pretty good car there. I think we’ll be okay. I’ve seen the 8 car start here in the back at speedway races and be in the front pretty early. I think as long as your car drives good here, that’s the main thing. Qualifying is almost a waste of time really, unless you get the pole. If you get the pole, it’s really cool. Other than that, it doesn’t matter too much because you can front to back and front to back as soon as the race starts. It’ll be all right.” ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE CAR IN RACEW TRIM? “Oh yeah. I think we’re good. This is probably a better car than we had in the 500 and we thought we were pretty good there. I think we’ll be fine.” WILL THE BUSCH RACE TONIGHT HELP YOU TOMORROW? “I don’t think it makes much difference. Anytime you can get superspeedway experience, a little bit, it will help for sure. I think we’ve got a good car for tonight as well.”

MARTIN TRUEX JR., No. 1 BASS PRO SHOPS/TRACKER BOATS CHEVROLET: THIS IS THE SAME CAR YOU HAD IN THE 500. “Same car. The boys tuned her up, put a new body on it and they’ve been working real hard. They’re real proud of this car and they’ve talked about it all week. I’m real proud of them for their efforts. They did a really good job. I’ve never felt a car that felt like that. Before I even took the green, I said ‘Man, it’s quite in here like there’s no air on this thing’ [laughs]. It was cool. The car was driving really good in Happy Hour and it’s fast. It’s got all the things that we need to run good so we’ll see.” YOU HAVE A SECOND CHANCE TO SHOW HOW GOOD THIS CAR IS IN RACE TRIM. “Yeah we do and this race, there is a greater emphasis on handling because of the temperature. If it handles like it did yesterday and it’s as fast as it was today, we should be in good shape.” WILL THE TRACK BE SLICK TOMORROW NIGHT? “Really, really slick, wearing out tires. A lot of guys will be pushing and a lot of guys will be loose. A lot of guys will be all over the board but we seem to get ours to drive pretty good. As long as it’s good in traffic and it sucks up and we can stay out of those wrecks we’ll be in really good shape, I think.” DOES A GOOD QUALIFYING RUN HELP YOU AVOID THE BIG ONE? “Well, it’s good for pit selection, definitely. The Big One could happen anywhere so it doesn’t really matter. You just hope you’re not in it.” IS THERE ANY STRATEGY HERE? “Get to the front if it’ll go there.”

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FEDEX HOME DELIVERY CHEVROLET: “That’s a really good run for us. I’m extremely happy with that. I figured we’d be in the 30s. This is the same car that qualified in the 30s at Talladega but it’s our Bud Shootout winning car. We know we have a really good car in race trim. We just have to be patient and be around for all 160 laps.” YOU QUALIFIED LATE IN THE SESSION. DID THAT WORK TO YOUR ADVANTAGE? “I’m not really sure. I ran faster in my Busch car in the steaming heat of the day than I did in the cool so I don’t think weather means a whole lot here. This is just kind of a crapshoot where you end up anyway. I’m pretty happy with our efforts. The car drives excellent. This car drives 10 times better than my Busch car and usually it’s the other way around. I was very happy with it in practice. We didn’t have blazing speed but I could hold it wide open for the course of a fuel run and that was very important.” DID YOU HAVE DRAFTING HELP IN PRACTICE? “I had a little bit of drafting help and I feel like come the race it takes over half the race for you to establish relationships enough to get it right.” ARE YOU GETTING BETTER AND BETTER AT PLATE RACING? “I feel like I’m getting a lot better. The telling tale of all that is going out there and running well in the race. We did great in the Shootout. We just have to have the right help and we can do it again.” DOES WINNING THE SHOOTOOUT GIVE YOU CONFIDENCE THIS WEEKEND? “It does. There are some aspects that are a lot different. The Shootout is all-out. It doesn’t matter if you crash as long as you win. If that’s the case, you do things that normally wouldn’t do. When we come here we’ve got to be a little bit more cautious. We’re trying to get in that top-10 so we definitely have to take the more conservative approach.” HOW IMPORTANT IS PIT SELECTION HERE? “It’s going to be really big, especially here. You want to pit down on the end of pit road as far as possible. We’ll try to take that and do the best we can with it. It’s pretty much in the driver’s hands here.”

STREMME PRESS CONFERENCE

“We actually did a lot of qualifying runs just to make sure that we got in the field solid. We’re not far off both Reed and Casey, my teammates. They run in the draft and we don’t really have a much different setup than they do. This is a car that they put a new body on. It’s the same chassis that I ran in the 500. I wish it was back in February and the year was starting out so we could start the year off a little different. I’m pretty proud of my team. We have a lot of changes going on within our whole organization and it’s Definitely benefiting us. Our performance keeps getting better every week.” DO YOU FEEL GOOD ABOUT WHERE THINGS ARE HEADED FOR YOU? “I was a little upset that I was out last week but not really, not in the situation that we’re in. Scott Pruett is a really good road racer. He just had some bad luck and got involved in some incidents. But on the other hand, we put ourselves in a bad situation at the beginning of the year, getting behind. I feel like we’re really turning our program around and we’re running better. We’re testing, building new cars. It wasn’t a bad deal. When the garage opening first thing yesterday, I was there helping my guys unload the trailer because I didn’t get to see them last week. It’s been a pretty good time down here. I’m looking forward to tomorrow because there were a lot of cars that didn’t qualify in but I feel we’ll be able to race well as well.” WHY DID YOU STRUGGLE IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE SEASON? “It’s not to knock anybody but we just built cars like a Ford and it just didn’t work on the Dodge. I had different cars than my teammates and it’s a struggle to try and compare when we just veer off so far: chassis, bodies, everything. What they did was kind of eliminate all that. At Darlington we showed that we run a lot better. We still didn’t end up with a finish that deserved because we had a part break. At Michigan I really wished we could have finished the race out because we had a really good car in Happy Hour. We were having to play catch-up at the beginning of the race due to the weather conditions but we ended up 19th. Every week I see a lot of improvements. Our organization is going through a lot of changes. Chip and Felix are doing a lot of stuff there trying to find people to put in place and we’re behind them 100 percent. It’s a whole different atmosphere, different cars, everything with the 40 team.”