Where the Raybestos Rookies qualified at Charlotte:
Yeley 4th
Hamlin 8th
Bowyer 15th
Sorenson 23rd
Stremme 25th
Truex Jr. 27th

CLINT BOWYER, No. 07 JACK DANIEL’S COUNTRY COCKTAILS CHEVROLET: “It was an all right lap for when we went out. Anytime you can beat the likes of Mark Martin and Carl Edwards, that’s pretty good. They’re pretty tough cookies up there. We ran a little bit faster than them so that’s a good lap for the Jack Daniel’s car and we’ll just see how it holds up. It’s going to fall pretty hard here before too long. There’s a lot of cars behind us, obviously. We’re just going to have to see where it goes. This car has been good.”

J.J. YELEY IN THE No. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET WAS THE TOP RAYBESTOS ROOKIE QUALIFIER AT CHARLOTTE. THIS IS A BACKUP CAR BUT IT’S THE SAME CAR YOU RAN IN THE NEXTEL OPEN. “Before I got in the car Steve Addington said the car was going to stick so I had no worries about going out there and putting down a good lap. It’s just disappointing because the car we brought was a little bit better than this one, aero-wise. The Interstate Batteries Chevrolet was really good. I’m still pretty disappointed that I crashed the car and this is only the second time in my short NASCAR career that I’ve had to bring a backup car out before I even got to qualify or even in the race. I don’t like tearing up equipment because I know someone back at the shop is going to have to fix it. The only way I can do something good is go out there and try to win the race for them now. I think the problem with being a Raybestos Rookie is being a little overzealous. I know this race is going to be the longest race that I’ve ever been in my career. It’s longer than the Indianapolis 500. I’m going to go out there and ride, bide my time and make sure that I’m there for the end because I think that’s what happens: guys get too impatient to run up front there too early because this race is just so very long.” HAS TONY STEWART SHOWED YOU THE ROPES ON HOW TO GET AROUND HERE? “Tony has shown me how to spin and not hit the fence. I just didn’t follow very good [smiles]. I’ve been here before and we really haven’t struggled. When I’m struggling at certain racetracks is generally when I go try to get something out of Tony for advice. Everything is looking good. I’ve been looking forward to coming back to the mile-and-a-half, the mile-and-a-half cars run really well. I’m just disappointed that I crashed the primary because it was a little bit better than this car. This is the car that I ran at the Open last week so I know it’s a good racecar. I know that getting in it and qualifying is going to be easy enough to do but the other car had a little bit more downforce in the front. That’s something that we struggled a lit bit with in the race was being behind cars and losing the nose. I was looking forward to running that other car in traffic but unfortunately it’s not very aerodynamic right now.” HOW IMPORTANT IS IT FOR YOU AS A RAYBESTOS ROOKIE TO GET YOUR CONFIDENCE BACK AND RUN WELL UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES? “Oh, it doesn’t mean much. All the cars that we have a Joe Gibbs Racing are good. We put the same setup that we had in the other car. Obviously it was the daytime earlier and we’ve got nighttime track conditions that are completely different. If I would have crashed and we went out to qualify 20 minutes later I would have been a little bit more worried but I know that no matter what happened or what car the conditions were going to be dramatically different. The last thing that I asked Steve Addington before I left the hauler was ‘Is it going to stick?’ and he assured me that it was. If I crashed number two of the day I could just blame it on him.”

DAVID STREMME, No. 40 LONESTAR STEAKHOUSE DODGE: “It wasn’t bad. I thought definitely we could run a lot better and I screwed up some there just trying too hard. But we’re in solid. We’re trying hard but yet we’ve got to be conservative until we get back in the top-35. I’m proud of my guys. We’ve got a really good racecar. This thing run good in the Open and I’m just proud of everybody. We’re really getting things turned around here.” YOU PICKED UP SEVEN TENTHS OF A SECOND FROM PRACTICE. “We ran a 28.80 here testing and I thought we could repeat that. The car is just a little different. It’s good enough to get us in.”

MARTIN TRUEX JR., No. 1 BASS PRO SHOPS/TRACKER BOATS CHEVROLET: ARE YOU GUYS STILL STRUGGLING? “Yeah, sort of. I mean, practice was and we threw some stuff at it for qualifying and it was a lot better. I was happy. The guys are working hard. We just don’t have this tire figured out. It really threw us a bigger curve than it seems to most other teams for some reason. For some reason, what we do don’t work on this tire. The guys are working hard and that was definitely a big improvement from practice and from last week. We’ll keep working on it.” DOES THAT MEAN THAT PRACTICE ON SATURDAY IS MORE IMPORTANT FOR YOU GUYS? “Absolutely. The tough part about those practices is that they are going to be in the daytime again and the track is so much different at night. We were real disappointed in our run last week and we’re just working hard to try to do a better job.”

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FEDEX FREIGHT CHEVROLET: “It was really loose. I just couldn’t hang on to it. I felt like we had a shot at the pole but we had a tire issue that we found out about after practice was over. I don’t know whether we had to put on stickers or not. They’re going to tell me now. They said they weren’t going to tell me. Evidently it was pretty bad. We might have had to put on stickers.”

REED SORENSON, No. 41 TARGET DODGE: “It was a pretty good lap. The track is a lot faster now. It’s nice to actually get some grip out there. When it was sunny it was really slick. It was pretty cool.” WAS IT A DISADVANTAGE TO GO OUT LATE? “I think right after 10 cars went out, that’s when you wanted to go out. You didn’t want to go out in the beginning.” ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE CAR IN RACE SETUP? “We planned to spend a lot more time in qualifying trim in practice and we only did two qualifying runs in practice. We didn’t do any when we tested here and just did those two in practice. We ran race trim before that. It was really bad to begin with so we had to keep working on it to get it better. We’ve just got to go back and figure some things out, but we did get it a lot better.”