BOWYER: “That was the first part of it, qualifying so big here at Indy. This is my first time here and I wanted to start up front and that’s going to put us up front somewhere. Track position is everything and qualifying draw is very important, getting to out first. Burton got me a little bit, but hey, hats off to everybody at RCR and on this Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet. We’re going to be a force to be reckoned with. We’ve just got to get some experience, some seat time, and we’ll be there. The track here is second to none. It’s Indianapolis and this is what it’s all about. That’s what you’ve worked your whole life to get to and to get an opportunity to race here first of all and to have a fast car that’s sitting second on the board is pretty cool.” YOU ARE RACING TONIGHT. “Yeah, over at IRP. Headed there right now to practice the Busch car and hopefully have a fast hot rod over there tonight, too.” IS IT A RELIEF TO GET QUALIFYING OUT OF THE WAY? “Yeah it was. I was nervous. I knew we had to run a fast lap, knew we had the capability of running a fast lap. If I left any on the table it was in 4. I got into 4 a little deep and was just trying to get more out of it but 1 and 2, I don’t think I could have got through there much better.” DID THE QUALIFYING DRAW HELP? YOU WENT OUT EARLY. “Oh yeah, definitely. The draw was good and that put us in contention to at least have a chance at it. We just come up a little short.” YOU PRACTICED WELL AND BACKED IT UP IN QUALIFYING. “Just hats off to Gil and everybody on the Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet. They’ve been doing their homework and brought me a fast hotrod and left it up to me, put it in my hands. Unfortunately we got beat a little bit but hopefully that will hang in there for a top-five, top-10 start for sure.”

GIL MARTIN, CREW CHIEF, No. 07 JACK DANIEL’S CHEVROLET: “It was a great day for the Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet right there. I mean, you get so close like that and yeah, it’s frustrating but at the same token probably six months ago we would have never dreamed to have been sitting on the outside row with our teammate at the Indy 400. It’s bittersweet right there. We’ve been on a pretty good roll here the last few weeks. We haven’t had the finishes but the car and the team is really coming together and I’m looking for good things the rest of the season.” THE CAR HAS BEEN GOOD SINCE YOU UNLOADED HERE. “It’s been really good. We had a good test and we had a good plan coming back in here. Because of the tire situation here we didn’t practice a lot but we pretty well had a plan of what we were going to do coming in. This is one of those days, or one of those weekends you dream about. Everything has worked right so far. If it will just follow through to tomorrow it will be a good weekend.” AND YOU GET AN EXTRA $5,000 FROM RAYBESTOS. “We’ll take that any time. Raybestos has always been good to us, especially during the rookie chase right here. The $5,000 will come in handy. We’ll take all the guys out go kart riding, take out to dinner, and we’ll have a great time.”

J.J. YELEY, No. 18 IMITREX/GSK CHEVROLET: “I was going to be happy with a 49.50 and we run a .40. The car was really, really good and drove nice. I’m sure it helped going out early but Steve and the guys made some changes for our final run and it drover perfect. We just got a little bit too tight off of 4 and scrubbed a little bit of speed, maybe a little bit late to throttle. That might have been a tenth. I don’t know that it was two tenths, but regardless I’m happy with that.” FOR YOU TO RUN WELL HERE MUST BE SPECIAL. “It’s going to be, but I think qualifying is going to be more important than anything because we haven’t been on any kind of real race trim yet with a bunch of cars around it. I’m sure if a car gets as tight as it does by itself, it’s going to be a real handful in a pack. If we can end up with a top-10 that will be spectacular, keep it in the top-10 all day long and have good pit stops and put ourselves in contention to win the race.”

MARTIN TRUEX JR., No. 1 BASS PRO SHOPS/TRACKER BOATS CHEVROLET: “The car was great. It drove really good, had lots of grip, was a lot faster off the corners that it was yesterday and I barely ran any faster. I don’t know why. It’s frustrating. The car has been driving good. We had it driving good yesterday too and it wasn’t that fast. We were 15th or 18th or something on the board. We had it driving really good. I don’t know where the speed is. It’s hard to figure out right now. We did some race trim stuff yesterday. I know the track was green and we wore a right front tire out pretty quick but we were real tight. I don’t know. We’ll have to see.”

REED SORENSON, No. 41 TARGET DODGE: “We thought we’d be a little bit better than that. We weren’t expecting to do something spectacular there but we thought we’d be a little better than that. The motor sounded kind of flat and it didn’t really get through the corners too well either. So those two together we just didn’t run very good. But we’ll see what we’ve got. We’ve got two practices here coming up and we’ll see what we can do.” DO YOU PLAN TO MAKE A LOT OF CHANGES TO THE CAR? “Qualifying setup is 180 degrees different than race setup anyway. We’re just going to put it in race trim and do our regular deal and see what it does.”

DAVID STREMME, No. 40 COORS LIGHT DODGE: “It’s okay. I’m just nervous having to get in. There’s 15 cars here that half to qualify in, pretty good cars. Obviously we’re at a disadvantage going out late. The car wasn’t as good as yesterday. We got a little tight there even coming to the green off of 4 and I was just trying to be a little cautious. In all, I was pretty proud of all the guys. That should put us in a pretty decent starting spot and we can work on some stuff later today.” ARE YOU GLAD TO GET QUALIFYING OUT OF THE WAY? “Oh, real glad. I just want to get back in the top-35 [smiles]. It’s nerve racking.”

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FEDEX FREIGHT CHEVROLET: “It’s pretty good. I was fairly satisfied with it considering the conditions. We really got bit by the weather. It’s a really good run for us, hopefully a top-15, and if it ends up that way it will be a great run for us. The track just lost a lot of grip, really, from where it was earlier in the day. We were happy with a .70 or whatever we ran and that was our goal.” COMMENT ON RACING HERE AT INDY. “Well, it’s obviously got a lot of traditions and things behind it. It always feels good to come here and when you run really well you definitely like it a little bit more. This is definitely a racy racetrack. You’ve got to keep the momentum up and that’s going to be very important.” WHAT DO YOU PLAN TO FOCUS ON DURING THE FINAL PRACTICE SESSIONS? “We’ve just got to make sure that our car turns and really got to have it loose during these conditions to make sure you’re good in the race.”