REED SORENSON, No. 41 TARGET DODGE: “I came up here a couple of weeks ago. We had our Busch car up here and ran some laps and got to figure out a little bit about the track and that way I could think about it before I came back.” HOW BIG OF A FACTOR IS THE HEAT GOING TO BE HERE? “It is pretty warm out there. It’s not as humid here as it is back where we’re from. It’s still hot. I don’t think it will be too bad. I’m just going to try to worry about the track and just hopefully drink enough fluids to not worry about the heat.” WHAT DID YOU LEARN HERE IN THE BUSCH CAR? “Everything. I had never seen the place before so every time I went out I was learning something.” DID YOU SPIN OUT WHEN YOU WERE BY YOURSELF? “If you spin out on an oval you’re probably going to tear something up. I never went off course. I spun out once going into 11. I didn’t really spin out all the way but I almost hit the tires over there once. But that was the only close encounter we had.” HOW HARD DO YOU PUSH IT ON A TRACK YOU’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE? “At the test I just took it easy to begin with and just slowly got faster and faster. There’s no reason to go out there and do something stupid. You just kind of do whatever you’re comfortable with and slowly get faster and faster and see what it will take.”

DENNY HAMLIN, FEDEX FREIGHT CHEVROLET: “It’s definitely going to be a lot different. I’m looking forward to it. I definitely love road course racing. We’re just going to try to ease into here in practice and work our way up to getting up to speed. If we can do that we’ll be quite all right.” WILL THIS BE THE MOST DEMANDING RACE OF THE SEASON BECAUSE OF THE HEAT AND THE SHIFTING? “I’m not sure it’s going to be really demanding, but I think it will definitely be a question mark as far as the points are concerned. These next two weeks will be really, really big for our team. If we can just get out of here and Daytona with no problems we should be in good shape.” IS THERE ANY STRATEGY HERE? “It’s going to be hard to tell. I talked to the guys and they just said ‘Man, just stay on the course and get yourself a top-10.’ I think it will take a little bit more than that. We’ll see what we’ve got. Everybody knows that Joe Gibbs has got great stuff on road courses. When the driver steps up, we should be okay.” WHEN YOU APPROACH RACING ON A TRACK YOU’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE, IS IT DIFFERENT ON A ROAD COURSE VERSUS AN OVAL? “Yes it is. It’s quite a bit different. It just takes a different type of racing. You use all the same techniques. You want to get off the corners. That’s what it’s all about. The problem is we’re so used to turning left and learning how to setup left-handers that we forget how to set up rights. That’s the biggest thing on these road courses. We’re going backwards anyway so it’s definitely a challenge. But I’m sure that me and these other Raybestos Rookie are up to it.” WILL YOU LEAVE HERE SATURDAY MORNING FOR MILWAUKEE? “That’s what we plan on doing. I think I’m going to be the only driver that’s going to have to cut practice short. I’m not really happy about that but I’ve got obligations to Rockwell at Milwaukee. Hopefully we can get our car dialed in early.”

J.J. YELEY, No. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET: YOU ARE ALREADY LOADING UP ON FLUIDS. “I’ve been loading up on a bunch. It’s already a struggle here at Sonoma. I had to find my parking pass, couldn’t find the right gate but I made it here and I’m on time. I’m hoping they got the course marked better than they do the gates around this place and I won’t get lost [smiles].” YOU HAVE LAPS ON A ROAD COURSE. WILL THAT MAKE IT ANY EASIER? “Probably not. There’s a lot of teams, I guess, that found a loophole in the rule that came out here and tested. I know that J.D [Gibbs, team president] and Joe Gibbs Racing called and they told him no. We didn’t come here and test. A lot of other teams did and I guess they’re not going to be penalized for it. I’m very disappointed that NASCAR is not going to take some kind of action to make it fair. Take 15-20 minutes of practice away from them but they’re not going to do that so me and Denny are a little bit behind as far as that. I know that some drivers picked up more than a second by just having some laps here at the racetrack. Hopefully we’re just better than them. We don’t need to practice. We can go out there and beat them.” DO YOU JUST HAVE TO STAY ON THE COURSE ALL DAY? “Yeah, I think this place is definitely going to be more difficult and more crucial as far as staying on the course versus Watkins Glen. I knew what used to be a lot of sand traps is now pavement at Watkins Glen where here, hopefully they have enough tow trucks to get us out [smiles]. You study pictures, you study maps and your shift points, but until you get out there and see the difference in elevation changes and having cars in front of you, it’s just going to be a totally different deal.” CAN YOU MAKE A MISTAKE HERE AND GET BY WITH IT? “I think it just depends on where you go off. I think it’s just where you make a mistake. Hopefully, when you do it, you’re not so far off course that you can’t get back on. You watch a lot of different videos where guys get in tire barriers. A tire barrier is worse to hit than hitting a wall. They just seem to chew up racecars and spit them back out. Staying on course it going to be the main thing. You don’t do a whole lot of shifting here so as long as you don’t maybe wheel hop a little bit getting into a couple corners where you really have to downshift, I think it should be pretty good.” HOW BIG OF A FACTOR IS HEAT GOING TO BE? “It’s going to be tough because I know this by far is going to be the hottest race by far we’ve had all year long. You’re doing a lot more work inside the cockpit than what you normally do, having to shift and turn left and right. You’re focusing a lot more. This is probably the toughest race that we’ll run so far this year.”

CLINT BOWYER, No. 07 JACK DANIEL’S CHEVROLET: “Having laps on a road course in just the last month, going to VIR and making laps, coming out here and making some laps, it just gets you acclimated back to your surroundings: banging gears and downshifts and things like that. Those are the key things on a road course, if you can get in the corners and get your downshifts down. When I race with the road course aces that come in, the ringers, that’s usually where they can beat you the most is just getting in the corner deeper and getting it woaed down. You back off early and they bury it off in there and they can pass you pretty easy. Those are just some of the things that we have to pick up on.” WILL YOU HAVE TO CUT PRACTICE SHORT ON SATURDAY TO GET TO MILWAUKEE? “Yeah, I guess so. That’s what I hear anyway. Again. That’s going to be hard, to.” IT’S GOING TO BE HOT HERE ON SUNDAY. HOW DO YOU PREPARE? “Hydration. That’s all you can do. You’ve got to be mentally tough this weekend going back and forth. You’re going to be tired, too. Not only are you going to be hot and sweaty, you’re going to be pretty worn out with lack of sleep and things like that. You have to recline and get as comfortable as we can in Kevin’s plane going back and forth. And on the other hand, you still have to keep the electrolytes in you, keep fluids in you, and just stay hydrated. When it’s hot like this you sweat a lot and the cars are hot inside of them. You’ve just got to be aware of that. That’s the biggest thing. It’s no different and kind of reminds you of motorcross racing back in the day. Be out in it and lucky for us we don’t have the motorhomes to go back in and lounge around in the air conditioning. The best thing to do is stay out in it and let your body get used to it and keep hydrated.” AND HOPE IT DOESN’T RAIN IN MILWAUKEE. “Hope it doesn’t rain in Milwaukee [smiles]. The deal with Milwaukee, though, is about the top six or seven are all us [NEXTEL Cup drivers] anyway so I don’t think it would be that big of a deal, won’t be that big of a hit [in Busch Series points]. It’s not like I’m going to sneak over and gain a hundred or so points on Harvick. We’re all going to stay here.

DAVID GILLILAND, No. 72 DUTCH QUALITY STONE DODGE: IS YOUR TEAM COMPARABLE, FUNDING-WISE, TO BREWCO OR PPC RACING? “No, it’s not comparable. We only have three racecars. We’re definitely under funded. We don’t even have our own pit cart yet. We’re borrowing that from Travis Carter right now. We’re getting there and hopefully with some sponsorship this weekend it will help take that team to the next level where they need to be, also.” HOW TOUGH WAS IT TO PICK UP A FAMILY AND MOVE FROM CALIFORNIA TO NORTH CAROLINA? “I was born and raised in southern California and I had a very good deal there last year running the Winston West Series and we were very successful in that. Clay called and we had talked about running some Busch races and I came home and told my wife ‘We’re moving to North Carolina in two weeks.’ She wanted to know about the contract and everything else and we didn’t have it so it took a little time in convincing her to do it. She’s happy today that we did. It’s been great. We love it out there. The schools have been great. My kids have really enjoyed it. The people out there are much friendlier. We’ve really enjoyed living there.” YOU’RE GOING TO BE THERE FOR A WHILE. “I hope so. Hopefully last week will help us stay there a little bit longer. We have a house in Mooresville.” HOW CRAZY HAS THIS WEEK BEEN FOR YOU? “This week has been absolutely incredible. We’ve been doing a lot of radio interviews and I’ve got a lot of practice. It’s been really good for me and helping me be prepared for some media stuff if we can do this again. It’s been great.” WHAT WAS YOUR MINDSET IN THE CLOSING LAPS AT KENTUCKY? “We were just super, super focused. We had a good car since the time we unloaded off the trailer and we were good in practice. Our main goal was try and put together a good finish. We’ve had good cars throughout the year and we haven’t put together good finishes. A lot of little things have bit us. Our main goal was to put together a good finish. It started out as a top-10 and then we got up into the top-10. Then it went to a top-five and we got up into the top-five and then at that point I was like we definitely have a car capable of winning this race and that’s all that I was focused on. None of the emotions and all that really set in that we had won until I pulled on to pit road and everybody was out there giving up high-fives, from all the different crews and different things like that. That’s when it all really started to sink in. It finally completely sunk in about yesterday [laughs]. It’s been a crazy week. Every morning I wake up I’ve got to ask myself again ‘Is this really coming true?’” HOW HAPPY WAS BILLY WILBURN? “Billy Wilburn was very happy. I didn’t realize that was his first win as a crew chief. He had gotten second a couple of times with Rusty Wallace and those guys. It’s been great for him. His phone has been ringing off the hook. A lot of the Cup crew chiefs that he’s worked with through the years, everybody has called him and congratulated him. It’s been very satisfying for him, which he deserves it. He’s one of the hardest working people that I’ve ever worked with. I told him that when I joined this team that I’ve never worked with anybody as dedicated to my racing as myself and when I found him I knew that it was going to be a good team.” DO YOU THINK MORE TEAMS WILL TAKE THE APPROACH OF RUNNING A LIMITED SCHEDULE? “For us, there’s no way we could have accomplished what we accomplished by running a full schedule. Looking at that, I’d recommend it. It’s tough because of the way the points are set up. If we would have ran the first five races and got in, it would have made our lives a little easier not having to qualify for the races but we didn’t start the team to just make races. Billy had a lot of confidence in myself and I had a lot of confidence in him and we just felt in our hearts that we could do it.” HOW SURPRISED ARE YOU AT THE WAY THIS WIN HAS BEEN PERCIEVED? “I’m just happy to be a part of it. It’s amazing to me, like you said, all the articles and as big of a deal as everybody is making of it. We’re just doing what we do. We race and go out there and try to win every time that we’re on the track. To me it’s surprising because back on North Carolina everybody is saying that it’s a big upset and this stuff. Yesterday I came and walked up and down the garage area of the Winston West guys that I had raced with for the past two years and they were like ‘We knew you could do it.’ It’s just a different deal. It’s not that I haven’t been racing and we haven’t won races. It’s just that we haven’t won races at that level. It’s been very exciting and we’ve enjoyed it.” DOES IT HELP THAT YOU’VE GROWN UP IN A RACING FAMILY AND SEEN THE UPS AND DOWNS? “Yeah, absolutely. I was telling Billy the other day that racing is the most emotionally crazy roller coaster ride that you can ever go through. You can come and unload and be good in practice, crash the car in the next practice or not qualify good and then in the race be leading and have a bad pit stop. It’s just up and down and up and down. It’s tough on the ol’ emotions. You’ve just got to kind of even out. When the highs are high, kind of store some of it to take away from the lows and kind of balance it out. So that’s what we’re going to try to do and hopefully it will carry us through the rest of the year.”