DALE EARNHARDT, JR. No. 8 Budweiser Monte Carlo SS Qualified 6th

ON QUALIFYING EFFORT AT MICHIGAN: "Junior (Tony Eury, Jr.) put a great setup under the car. We were solid in practice this morning and felt like there was a little more there. We were able to pull it out in qualifying. This is a good effort for our team. I think we will be pretty good on Sunday."

ON PAINT SCHEME THIS WEEKEND: "We have sort of a paint scheme that is a throw back to my Dad and my Grandfather Ralph of paint schemes they ran around the Southeast. That is always a lot of fun to change it up. I love to drive my red Budweiser car but every now and then it is kind of cool to do something a little different. I really like these opportunities to change it now and then. Budweiser brought back one of their logos from the 1950's which was a great idea. They always have a lot of fun with what we do and it is always a great team effort.

ON HIS FANS: "I depend on my fans a lot for motivation. They drive you to do as good as you can and it definitely helps a lot. We get a lot of support everywhere we go and like I said I depend on them a lot for my motivation and initiative whenever I get in the race car."

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR TRIP TO GM TECH CENTER AND PROJECT WITH THE NEW SILVERADO TRUCK? "Na, not yet. I think everyone will really like what we have come up with. Chevrolet has been really good to me and very charitable to me. Allowed me options on different things, let me drive the Corvette in the Grand Am. All those things are just gifts from Chevrolet. They are a real pleasure to work with and a real honor to have to opportunity to be able to design a car with and have some fun with it. Hopefully some people will like it in the end."

TONY STEWART, NO. 20 HOME DEPOT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO SS

"We had a decent lap. We spent most of practice in race trim and really only made a couple of mock qualifying laps. The car is good. It has a good balance, so it's giving us plenty to work with. We'll make it better in practice tomorrow and get it ready for Sunday.

TONY RAINES, NO. 96 DLP/HDTV CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO SS

"I got through (Turns) 3 and 4 about the best I've gotten through them all day but I think we gave up a little bit too much in (Turns) 1 and 2 for some reason."

KYLE BUSCH, NO. 5 KELLOGG'S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 13th

On your qualifying lap: "Very, very loose. We're just going to have to take what we can get out of it and go on into tomorrow and try and make our car a little bit better for race trim. We'll see what we can get for Sunday; we need to have a good run there in order to try to work ourselves back up in points."

Now you're going to Kentucky: "Yeah, we're getting ready to change here and head for Kentucky, go see if we can't practice the Busch car a little bit; get a little bit better there. We'll go back here later on tonight for tomorrow and as soon as practice is over tomorrow we head back out again. So back and forth quite a bit this weekend."

JEFF BURTON, NO. 31 CINGULAR WIRELESS CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 12th

Pretty good lap. "Yeah, it's not bad. We worked pretty much exclusively on race trim today. Made one or two runs and threw some stuff at it and it was a lot better. Had we spent more time on it we could have done better but I think we did the right thing by paying attention to racing because I think we learned a lot for Sunday already."

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE'S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 4th

On Mark Martin retiring: "When you feel like you don't want to do it anymore and Mark's put in a great career and I still find it hard to believe in my heart that he won't be back next year. I know he'll be in the Truck series but I still think we'll see him in a few Cup races. I just don't see him going away."

On your qualifying lap: "It was good. Loose but good. We picked up six-tenths from practice to qualifying. Can't argue with that."

On the track: "Last week at Pocono we had to come back from a pit road speed violation. That was real tough to overcome. This track shouldn't be as tough but our big goal for today is to get in the top eight; there's eight openings on pit road. That's really the way we judge our qualifying - however many pit openings there are, that's where we shoot."

BRIAN VICKERS, NO. 25 GMAC CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 3rd

You had a good run here last year: "I do like this race track. It's a lot of It's multi-groove; it's a good race and fast. We had a good car here last year; I know one year we ended up cutting a right-front tire down and that hurt our finish.

On father's day and winning Sunday: "It would be very special. My relationship with my dad is really good and we're really close; very good friends. I wish him a happy father's day and I think the best present he could ask for and I could give him is a win here. He's not here right now but I think he's going to come up. I'm not sure. I haven't talked to him on any specific plans as far as coming here but I think he is."

On the lap: "It was a good lap; very fast. I knew these GMAC guys would do a good job and stick to this 100%; be professional about it. And they did. I'm so proud of them. We're all doing our job and it's showing. Last weekend's race and the whole week last week and so far this week."

JOE NEMECHECK, NO. 01 U.S. ARMY CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 7th

Your lap: "The lap was pretty good. I'm really happy with the way the U.S. Army Chevy is driving. We've just struggled this year trying with our qualifying program and with our race setups. We're trying a few different things here this weekend trying to get our program back on track and the car's driving really well. Heading in the right direction; looking forward to the race."

TRAVIS KVAPIL, NO. 32, TIDE/DOWNY CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 23rd

"We keep making gains every week. I am proud of every one on our Tide/Downey Monte Carlo SS team. We are a single car team, we don't get to test much as a result of that but we are slowly building our notebooks and making gains every week.

"There are setups under these cars now that we are just working on getting our notes on which in turn is helping us get better and better each week.i We had a good finish last week at Pocono and I think here at Michigan we will have an good opportunity to have an even better run.

"Missing two races early in the season put us a behind in the points, but we are slowly climbing our way back up and we are improving each week doing that, Friday's will be a lot less stressful for us when we get in the top-35."

JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DUPONT MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 2nd

"I kept telling myself all the way down the back straightaway, don't over-drive it, don't over-drive it. And I didn't. The DuPont Chevrolet team did an awesome job all day. They kept making the car better and better it certainly didn't hurt that I went last. To have a second, third and fourth for Hendrick Motorsports is awesome.

How are you feeling after your crash at Pocono? Well, if it weren't for all the safety features Hendrick Motorsports put in the car - carbon-fiber seat, the padding and helmet and everything inside my car, I would have been a lot worse off. I'm very thankful.

PRESS CONFERENCE COMMENTS

JEFF GORDON, No. 24 DuPont Monte Carlo SS - Qualified 2nd

How was your qualifying run? "Obviously good. You're always a little disappointed when you're that close to the pole and you don't get it. All day long we've been solid. To draw a late number and have a shot at has been a lot of fun today. The guys did exactly what they needed to do to the race car. Everybody was fighting this wind (and were) a little bit loose down (turn) one and two and a little bit tight in (turn) three and four. That's exactly what I had today. I knew coming to the green it felt good. I really after it through one and two and got through there great. I just kept telling myself all the way down the back straightaway don't ove-drive it, don't-over drive it. I really didn't feel like I did but I needed to use a little bit more brake or wait a little longer to get back in throttle because the wind definitely did affect us more than I anticipated. I don't think the car could have been much better. It's just all about how much speed I carried in there. To miss it by two-hundredths of a second, that's pretty disappointing."

Do you look at Kasey Kahne as a younger version of you and where you were at his age? "Obviously there's a lot of comparisons with the background of racing he has, driving for Ray Evernham. Ray is not the crew chief (but) there's still that tie there. I think Kasey is a tremendous talent. Like we've seen throughout the years of this sport when you take a talent and you put underneath him a good piece of equipment and surround him with good people, they're going to excel. That's what those guys have right now. They're really setting the benchmark right now for all of us out there. It's good for him and has the rest of us all chasing."

Is your second-place qualifying effort a shot in the arm to help you keep your season turning around and getting back on track? "One of our goals this year was to qualify better. You look at the last three weeks, we've had two top fives and one top 10, right outside the top five. We're definitely meeting our mark there and making some big improvements there but we've still got some work to do on the balance for the race. I think this is a race track where we can really challenge ourselves with everything we've been learning. It's a big, fast, very smooth race track and you should be able to push the limits a little bit more than what we have on some of the other tracks. Like last week, it was a big track but fairly rough track so it's kind of hard to attack there and the other 1.5 mile tracks that we've been on other than Charlotte. We had kind of a crazy tire situation there but I've been looking forward to coming here. I feel like if we can make some improvements here really it's going to say a lot about our program and the things that we're learning that we're going in the right direction."

What have you done during the week on the car? What are your expectations for Sunday and how will you keep up with the track? "Part of keeping up with the race track is keeping track position. We've been giving up too much track position because the car starts to fall off and we want to make adjustments. I'm asking for certain adjustments and Steve (Letarte, crew chief) is putting his best thoughts together with the engineers up there on the box and making those adjustments and we're giving up track position to do it. You just can't give it up as much as we have been. Last week was a perfect example. I think we were running fifth or something like that and we decided to come in to make some adjustments to get better to try to win the race and we lost track position and never regained it. There's some guys that are out there that have their act together that much to where they're able to make up that track position. For us right now, I think that's what we'll focus the most on. We're obviously starting second. That's a great way to start the race with track position and have a good place to pit the car on pit road and hopefully we can have a good enough car where we don't have to think about giving up track position but we can maintain it all day."

BRIAN VICKERS, No. 25 GMAC Monte Carlo SS - Qualified 3rd

On his run: "It was a good run for us, obviously two spots not good enough. We were definitely hoping to get that pole, the first pole of the year. I'm real proud of this GMAC Chevy team. They did a great job. We started out practice in race trim. We were hitting the track. We got that fixed. We went to qualifying trim. It was too loose the first time and too tight in the second. We met in the middle and came out with a good qualifying (run)."

With everything that you've had going on this week with your future, is it tough to leave an operation like what you have right now when you have a qualifying run like this? "Like I said from the beginning, leaving Hendrick Motorsports is definitely going to be tough. It's the toughest decision I've ever had to make but it was one we made none the less. We had the information ahead of us and we made the best decision we could and we're sticking by it. The bottom line as far as the performance just comes back to exactly what we talked about last week. I'm 100 percent committed to this GMAC Chevy team right now and through the remainder of the season and the guys on the team feel the same way. Right now we're all being professional. We're doing our job and having fun at it. Nothing makes me happier than going out there and running good no matter what is in the plan for the future. But obviously Hendrick is where my heart is and where it always will be but we just had some decisions that had to be made and we made them."