GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 National Guard Ford Fusion (Qualified 7th) – “The track is really slick right now and I wasn’t expecting that. I made some changes to my car to free it up a little bit and it was just really loose qualifying right there. I wish I wouldn’t have made those changes, but I really don’t have a big history with this race track of what it does and it just got hot and slick for me probably. I felt like we could have been down in the flats or something and ended up doing a .60, but, oh well. It’s cooling off fast right now, so a lot of guys will end up beating us.”

BORIS SAID – No. 60 Sobe No Fear Ford Fusion (Qualified 5th) – CAN YOU WIN ON SUNDAY? “I don’t know. I’ve got all the equipment. I’ve got a great team. I’ve got a Roush-Yates engine. Jack Roush sold us a really fast car and I’ve got a great sponsor in Sobe No Fear Energy drink. For a new team and me being a part owner of it and Frank Stoddard and Mark Simo it’s a dream come true, but you don’t know how much pressure there is just to qualify. I don’t think that’s a pole lap. I think Tony Stewart or Kurt Busch will probably get the pole, but we’re in the show and that’s what matters. We’ll have a chance on Sunday.” YOU MIGHT HAVE THE POLE. “I think Jeff Gordon made a rare, rare mistake. Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch are the ones that are gonna be up there, I think. They were fast all day, but for a first time effort, our own little private team with four or five employees, it says a lot for Sobe No Fear. We’ve got a lot of fans out there who drink Sobe No Fear and our number one goal was to get in this market and race and show off our energy drink brand and take Red Bull down. With the might of Pepsi behind Sobe, we’re gonna clip the wings off that bull.” CAN YOUR PIT CREW KEEP YOU IN CONTENTION ON SUNDAY? “I don’t know. It’s our first time together and you never know. There could definitely be some mistakes. These guys have been doing this for years and it takes a long time to get that chemistry together, but we’ve run practice and haven’t had any problems. So far, so good. We definitely have a chance. Our goal for the race is to be in the top five with 30 laps to go and then you never know, our goals might change and maybe see where we stand for a chance to win.”

MARK MARTIN – No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion (Qualified 8th) – “It’s just pathetic. We have just been horrible. I can’t believe that we ran that fast. I’m really thrilled with that. I thought we were gonna qualify about 20th or so. That will give us a decent starting spot, but we’re in big, big trouble unless we find out why this thing is so evil. We’ve got an hour and a half tomorrow. I hope we figure it out. I haven’t been able to help them at all today. I felt really bad. I haven’t been able to tell them how to make it better for me. The thing is just out of control. I wish I could tell them what it needs. We’ve got to get it tightened up, but we’ve got to get it turning too. That’s a hard thing to do and pick up about a second a lap on top of that. We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

JAMIE MCMURRAY – No. 26 Crown Royal Ford Fusion (Qualified 2nd) – “I didn’t drive hard enough, but I told Bob on my mock up run that I didn’t drive real hard, but stayed on the track. I just tried to run a smooth lap. I talked to Boris just before I went out and he said, ‘Man, it’s really slick.’ So I didn’t drive hard enough, but you get out now and wish you had tried harder. But if you go off the race track you put yourself in a bad position before the race even starts and it’s frustrating, so it was a good day for the Crown Royal Ford Fusion.” YOU CAN DO THIS CAN’T YOU? “Infineon is one of my favorite tracks. I don’t run as well at Watkins Glen, but I enjoy coming here. We unloaded and the car was a top five car off the truck and ended up ninth in practice. We just went out and made a smooth lap. You look at it now and you wish you would have drove a little harder and had a shot at the pole. I didn’t really think we had a shot at the pole, but we made some good adjustments to our car just before qualifying. Every year I’ve been here, when it came time to qualify I couldn’t figure out where all the grip went and this year we had a lot of grip.”

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (Qualified 9th) – “I thought I’d go a little quicker than that. We adjusted a little bit and probably over-adjusted. I had it a little too tight. I’ve been good in the esses all day and we just kind of wrecked it in the esses to try and help it everywhere else, so I thought we missed it by just a little bit but that was still good.” WAS THE TRACK SLICKER THAN YOU THOUGHT? “No, everything felt about normal. The changes we made with the chassis just didn’t agree with the fast parts of the track and that kind of hurt me a little bit.”

JAMIE MCMURRAY PRESS CONFERENCE

HOW WAS YOUR LAP? “From the time that we unloaded the car was quick. We made just a few small, minor adjustments to it and when I made my bonsai run in practice I didn’t really drive the car hard enough and still ended up like ninth quickest. We made a few adjustments for qualifying and when my lap was over I came on the radio and told them I didn’t drive hard enough, but the car had a lot of grip and still ended up second so that was a good day for us.”

HOW ABOUT THE HEAT THIS WEEKEND AND THE TRACK? “When it gets hot it just loses grip. The track gets greasy and more than likely if you’re loose, you get a little bit looser and if you’re tight, you get tighter. But I don’t notice the track cool down that much from the start to the end. I think the biggest difference would have been, it’s always hard to go first even if there hasn’t been another type of tire on the race track, but I think when you add those together it’s tough to be the first two or three guys to go on the track anywhere.”

WHAT ABOUT THE TRACK FOR SUNDAY? “We did the exact same thing in practice. We had a setup in the car that I wouldn’t have guessed would have qualified very well because it’s mainly just on trying to get the car to go forward on old tires, but I think the bigger story on Sunday is gonna be the heat. Every year here it’s hot. You get out of the car and you’re exhausted and it’s like 10 degrees hotter here than what it’s been the past two or three years, so I think for all of these guys having to run two series, I think they’re gonna have big issues (laughing). I think it’s gonna be a challenge for everybody, but especially for the guys that are gonna fly all night long. It’s gonna be hot.”

JEFF GORDON AND TONY STEWART WERE FAVORITES AND DIDN’T QUALIFY UP FRONT. YOUR THOUGHTS. “I think if Jeff Gordon doesn’t run off the race track he’s on the pole. I don’t know that for sure, but he was a half-second faster than the second-place car in practice. If he could have just maintained what he ran in practice, he would have been on the pole still by half-a-second, so I think him not running off the race track, we’d all be moved back one spot. I don’t know, but Kurt has always been good at road races. The whole time he drove the 97 car they were quick at all of them, so I don’t think it’s a surprise at all.”

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR PROGRAM AND ITS TURNAROUND? “It’s still hit and miss. It’s certainly not 100 percent great, but my crew chief Bob Osborne flew out here with me. I asked him last week, ‘Why don’t you go with me and we’ll go out a day early and play golf.’ We both enjoy playing golf. I said, ‘We’ll go out and just be guys,’ just to try to get to know each other. It’s tough when you switch race teams to get to know everyone and we already had a crew chief swap on the team, so just about the time you feel like you’re getting to know the first one they were switched. I think this is my seventh or eighth week with Bob and I still don’t know him very well. I don’t know him at all away from the race track and I don’t feel like, whenever we make adjustments to the car, my first three years of Cup I would always say, ‘This is what I think we should do.’ Donnie (Wingo) would always put ideas in my head and I would say, ‘This is what I want to do,’ and I haven’t been able to do that because I don’t know him well enough. I didn’t feel comfortable enough around him, so we came out here early and had two great days of just being guys away from the race track and playing golf and enjoying ourselves. We still have a little bit of work to do to our race team to get it as consistent as what all of the other Roush cars are, but it’s cool to be able to come to a road course and run well. We obviously have run well at some of the ovals, but if you ask anyone internally they know that our program is not yet perfect by any means, but it’s getting better every week.”