Raybestos Rookie Happy Hour speeds:
Yeley 6th
Sorenson 16th
Hamlin 19th
Truex Jr. 22nd
Bowyer 27th
Stremme 31st
Sherman 42nd

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER HAPPY HOUR QUOTES FOR THE UAW-DAIMLERCHRYSLER 400 NASCAR NEXTEL CUP SERIES RACE AT CALIFORNIA SPEEDWAY, MARCH 11, 2006.

J.J. YELEY IN THE No. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET POSTED THE BEST SPEED BY A RAYBESTOS ROOKIE DURING THE FINAL PRACTICE SESSION FOR THE UAW-DAIMLERCHRYSLER 400. YELEY WAS SIXTH OVERALL WITH A LAP OF 31.998 SECONDS, 168.761 MPH. “We are very happy with the Interstate Batteries car. It’s really good on long runs. We tried a couple of different setups just trying to hit on something and see if there was something there and we always came back to what we had at the start of practice. If the car can maintain all day like that on Sunday, I’m going to have a lot of fun. I spent a lot of time on the racetrack looking for some different grooves and found some things that might be my ace in the hole when it comes time to pick off a position. All in all, it’s starting off to be a good weekend.” IS THIS A TWO-GROOVE TRACK? “I was able to pass some guys on the outside on some pretty fresh tires which surprised me. Hopefully during the race it will widen up another two or three grooves. A lot of the guys aren’t really searching very much. At race time if the groove moves up even more I think that definitely plays to my advantage. With the lap times that we were running we had our engine running right where it wanted to be in the rpm range. I know there was a little bit of an issue when we were qualifying if we maybe needed to take a little bit of gear out for some speed but we stuck with what we had. It’s a lot easier on the guys. Anytime you can give the guys less work they appreciate it.” HOW IMPORTANT IS THE BUSCH RACE TODAY? “It’s very important to me. This Busch season is equally important to me as the Cup season. We’re trying to win a championship. We’ve had a very steady first three races.”

REED SORENSON, No. 41 TARGET DODGE: HOW WAS THE CAR IN HAPPY HOUR? “Really good. It’s kind of the same deal as California. We qualified bad but we’re got a really, really good racecar. We’ll just have to pass a lot of cars [smile].” DO YOU GET MORE COMFORTABLE WITH THE MORE LAPS YOU GET ON THESE TYPE TRACKS IN THE CUP CAR? “We were good right off the truck here and we were pretty good in the test as well. We just can’t get our cars to qualify. Myself and Casey [Mears] and David [Stremme] are all in the back. I think we qualified two cars apart, all three of us, so we’ve got to get our cars better in qualifying. All three of us seem to have a really good race setup. We just can’t qualify. My Busch car is the same way. Last night in Happy Hour on old tires it was awesome and then we go to qualify and it’s almost undriveable so we’ve got our work cut out a little bit. It’s not fun to start in the back every week. I turned the same speed this morning in race trim as I did in qualifying yesterday in my Cup car.” HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? “I don’t know. It’s not supposed to be, that’s the whole problem. We’ve got to work on something. We’re going to put our heads together after this week. We kind of realized that we need to do something. It’s hard because it’s not an impound race. You’re worried about race trim so much that you get over to qualifying trim and you’ve got a good race setup and you’ve got to kind of change your train of thought and get over into qualifying mode and maybe change the setup up a little bit.” WILL THE BUSCH RACE CHANGE THE TRACK CONDITIONS AGAIN FOR THE RACE? “I think so, as long as it doesn’t rain. We’ll just start where we’re at right now. It ran so well in happy hour that we’re going to start there and work on the car as the race goes on.” WHAT IS THE KEY TO A GOOD LAP HERE? “I think you’ve got to keep it from getting tight coming off 2 and for me to be able to get good center corner speed over in 3 and 4. It’s kind of a combination of those two.” HOW SPECIAL WILL IT BE TO GO TO ATLANTA NEXT WEEK IN A NEXTEL CUP CAR? “It will be a little bit better if we can get a good run here. I’d like to turn our luck around on both ends, both Cup and Busch. We need to come out of here with two solid finishes and get some momentum heading into Atlanta.” WILL YOU HAVE A LOT OF FAMILY AND FRIENDS AT THE TRACK NEXT WEEK? “We’ll have some people, a little bit of family and a little bit of friends. A good combination.” WILL A GOOD RUN AT ATLANTA BE MORE SPECIAL THAN ANYWHERE ELSE? “I’ll take a good run anywhere. I don’t care where it is [laughs].”

MARTIN TRUEX JR., No. 1 BASS PRO SHOPS/TRACKER BOATS CHEVROLET: “We were decent until about halfway through [practice] and then the track got slicker and we got off a little bit. I was pretty happy with it there for a little while and it still isn’t all that bad. We’re losing grip and we’re fall off faster than what we need to. We’ll take a little bit of a guess at it tomorrow. We’ll take everything we learned throughout practice and look at all our notes and hopefully put the right stuff in it for tomorrow.” HOW MUCH WILL THE BUSCH RACE CHANGE THE TRACK FOR SUNDAY? “It’s just going to continue to get slicker, I think. That’s making our car worse so we need to figure out what that is. It’s kind of how we’ve been here and places like this in the past and that’s what we’re trying to figure out is how to race better, how to keep our car driving good on older tires and when the track gets slick have some grip still. And that’s what we’re fighting now. We were decent but the slicker the track gets the worse we seem to be. I just hope we can find something decent for tomorrow.

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FEDEX FREIGHT CHEVROLET: “We’re definitely not where we need to be. It’s a deal where we started decent and then just didn’t end very good. We’ve got to backtrack, for sure.” DO YOU JUST NEED MORE LAPS? “No, we got all the laps we need. We just don’t have the setup we need right now [smiles].”