KASEY KAHNE (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

COMMENT ON WINNING YOUR THIRD RACE OF THE SEASON “The team did a great job all night long. The pit stops were awesome. Kenny and Keith kept working together to figure out the right adjustments to make. The tire situation was crazy. We were putting on two tires most of the time, no tires once in awhile. It was a good race. I knew we needed big adjustments to win this race. They did it. The guys stepped up on pit road and had a great pit stop. The did some things to the right rear and added some tape to the front of our Dodge Charger and it took off. I was pretty happy as good as it felt as soon as I left the pits on that run.”

TALK ABOUT THE STRETCH RUN “It was a heck of a battle. My spotter told me Kenseth was coming. Jimmie and the 99 were side by side and I really had nowhere to go, so I was trying to figure out where to go. Finally the high side opened. I think I got Jimmie in three and four and maybe Carl on the bottom of three and four a lap or two later. The car was handling great at that time. Before that caution we’d made one or two laps since the pit stop, and we were saving fuel. The car was cutting 10 times better than it was the pit stop before that. By that time I knew we had a car that could race. That’s all I’ve ever wanted here, to have a car that could race with Jimmie at the end. Every time you get to the end of the race you know Jimmie Johnson is the guys to beat. We finally got to that point and had a car that could race him for the win.”

COMMENT ON SCOTT RIGGS’ TONIGHT “I don’t know what happened to him in the pits, but I knew he was going to be tough. He was driving away from us. He qualified on the pole. That’s an accomplishment to qualify first at Charlotte. Then he ran up front all night long. They stuck with their car. They kept making it better. The communication must be good there. Then they had a couple of problems at the end that took them out. When I said we need to make some adjustments to win this race, I was talking about Scott Riggs and Jimmie Johnson.”

HOW DID YOU STAY ON THE LEAD LAP WHEN YOU CAME TO THE PITS AND THE CAUTION CAME OUT? “At that time I was really happy with my racecar. We had fought our way from the back. I didn’t know if we were going to have to do it again or not. At the time it happened I thought we were probably going to go a lap down because we were pitting when the yellow came out. From what I understand we made it to the start-finish line in time and we never went a lap down and everybody else had to pit, so actually the pit stop was perfect timing.”

TALK ABOUT THE RHYTHM OF THE RACE “Early on we kept getting cautions for debris and cars would spin. Something would happen, and I was like ‘man, these small fuel cells are hurting us.’ Every time there was a yellow tonight you had to pit for fuel because the fuel window was so small. It was frustrating the first 100-150 laps. Then our car was better and things started flowing better and it seemed like we had more green-flag runs. Once we got past that point I was fine with the tire and the track and the small fuel cells.”

RAY EVERNHAM (Owner, CEO Evernham Motorsports)

ARE YOU SURPRISED HOW MUCH KASEY HAS IMPROVED SINCE LAST YEAR? “Not really. When I hired him I knew he was a smart racer and it would just take a little time. This is a tough sport. You go up and down in it, but he studies hard, and he’s committed to doing the things it takes to win races and communicating with the guys. They’ve been working hard. He comes to the shop every week and he and Kenny talk about what they’re doing.”

COMMENT ON SCOTT RIGGS’ NIGHT “I was a little upset as a car owner should be. You see the guys work so hard. That crew works really hard. Mistakes in the pits have taken them out of a couple of races and a mistake tonight, again a mistake we shouldn’t have made. We’ll just have to get to the bottom of it. The good news is that Scott Riggs has shown he can drive a racecar and win races. They should have been in position to win tonight. We’ve just got to sit down tomorrow and stop inflicting wounds on ourselves. It would have been good to run in the top five, maybe 1-2 tonight, again a huge disappointment. The one thing I am going to go to the NASCAR trailer about is the car didn’t carry the gas can out of the pits, the gasman did when they were pushing the car. I really don’t understand the call on that, but I imagine it’ll get explained to me.”

SCOTT RIGGS (No. 10 Valvoline/Stanley Tools/Cars 2 Dodge Charger)

“We made a couple of mistakes in the pits early, but we were able to overcome those. There at the end, that late in the race, it ran out of gas on me and then to get called in for taking equipment out of the pits you just can’t recover from that that late. We ran out of gas coming down pit road and then the guys were pushing me out of the pit box. They said they brought their equipment out of the pit box. I don’t really know what happened. All I know is we had to come back in and go to the tail end of all the leaders. There were so many cars on the lead lap tonight with so many cautions it was hard to get back up through there.

“The car was better once we got that set of left-side tires off. We had one set of left-side tires that were terrible. We were trying to adjust around it. We put rights on it and nothing would help. Finally we came back in and changed those lefts and all of a sudden we had a good racecar again and drove back up to the front.

“I’m not sure if we ran out of gas. Something went out and I had to flip all the fans and turn both batteries on. They had to put gas in it to get it to come back to life. We’re not sure what happened. It shouldn’t have been that close on fuel. We just couldn’t overcome that.

“Kasey was saving gas there (when Riggs passed him for the lead). He wasn’t getting quite as good gas mileage as we were. He was pretty tight, and making me even tighter behind him. When I started driving in the corner and pushing him up the racetrack a little bit, I got by him and got gone. The 48 was trying to run me down. Jimmie was coming pretty fast, but we were able to maintain our distance on him, about two seconds. We ran out of gas coming down to our last pit stop. I look forward to Dover. The guys were apologetic about what happened tonight, but I told them as long as they gave me good cars like that every week we can’t keep having things like that happen to us. We can’t keep making mistakes every week. We’ve got to get better and have a little better luck and we’ll finally win one of these things.

“Our confidence is up because we know we can run well. At the same time we’re still putting a lot of pressure on ourselves not to make mistakes and then we make mistakes. We just need to pull together as a team and not point fingers at each other and make sure we all stay confident in each other and remember we are a team. It takes every single one of us and we don’t need anybody getting down. We need to keep this momentum going. Evernham as a whole I feel great about it. I think the 19 has turned the corner. He had a good run tonight. We had a good car tonight and Kasey is on top right now.

“This is the same car we had at Texas, and it was good there. We were coming, running Kasey down there and Kasey ended up winning. We made some mistakes there late in the race. We know the car is good and we know we’re doing a good job of dialing it in where it needs to be. It takes everything. It takes the whole race to be good and get a good finish.”

REED SORENSON (No. 41 Target Dodge Charger)

“The car was pretty good all night. We had a right front jackbolt unscrewed and that hurt us a little bit. With about a hundred laps to go we realized what was going on because the right front tire was about cut in half by the fender. We got it fixed and the car was a lot better. It feels good to finish 10th. That’s what we need to do to get some rhythm going. We got 11th at Darlington and 10th here, so we got some momentum going. It was a long race. I’m not sure how long it took, but it felt like forever. It was actually fun for me at the end. We got our car where we needed it for those last 100 miles.”

KURT BUSCH (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger)

“It was real tight and real loose at the same time. It was hard to get a handle on it today. We made adjustments on it, and man that thing snapped around. It was real hot and slick, and it was just real hard to get the adjustments right. We did real good last night. Our Busch car drives 100 percent different than our Cup car, so we’ve got some homework to do. I’m all right. I can’t wait to go to Dover.”

JEREMY MAYFIELD (No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

“We had a great starting spot for our No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger and after the first 100 laps, I felt like we could make something happen tonight. But the car continued to be tight, no matter whether we took two tires or four tires or what adjustments we made. Our team did a great job on pit stops tonight – and there were a lot of them – and they really helped us gain spots even with our handling problems. But we couldn’t overcome the tight car to get up there and race with the leaders when it mattered. I take this weekend as a good sign of where this team is going. We’re getting a handle on this car and we’re getting better and better every week. We’ve got some tracks coming up that I really like, so I think everything will work out OK.”