Where the Raybestos Rookies qualified at New Hampshire:
Hamlin 5th
Stremme 6th
Truex Jr. 11th
Bowyer 18th
Sorenson 31st
Yeley 36th

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FEDEX EXPRESS CHEVROLET: KEVIN HARVICK JUST HIT YOU WITH A PIE. IS THAT PAYBACK? “I guess it is. It definitely ain’t over yet. We’re going to keep this going. This is a lot of fun. It was a great effort for us and hopefully that puts us somewhere I the top-10, top-15. Usually you don’t gain a lot of speed here in qualifying so to maintain and pick up a little bit, that was good.” THAT WASN’T PAYBACK FOR SOMETHING ON THAT TRACK. IT WAS FOR SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED ON TELEVISION. “Yeah, definitely. But I still owe him for the Busch race here in the spring. It ain’t over yet. This is terrible.” IS THIS THE SAME CAR YOU HAD HERE IN JULY? “Yeah, same car. Same one we ran both Richmond races. It’s been pretty good for us. It’s pretty much our prime short track car and we haven’t really tore it up so it’s not too bad. It was really good in practice in race trim. It was better than it was in the spring so we’ll see where we end up.” THIS IS A GOOD TRACK FOR YOU. “It really is. It’s been a great racetrack, even through the truck days and the Busch days. It’s been one of my best racetracks so I’m glad to start the Chase here.”

DAVID STREMME, No. 40 LONE STAR STEAKHOUSE DODGE: “I kind of blew the second lap a little bit down in 3 and 4. But the guys did a good job. It’s a big difference from when we run here in the spring or in the summer. It’s the same car, I just feel pretty good about it. We’ve got a better notebook and I feel a little bit better. Our short track program has definitely turned around and we’re working on next year already testing the car of tomorrow quite a bit. It shows what type of organization this is. We’re working on some intermediate stuff. I’ve got a brand new car I’m going to run at Kansas and we’ll see how that ends up.” WHAT MAKES THIS PLACE SO DIFFERENT IN JUST A COUPLE OF MONTHS? “Just my team more than anything. We’ve got a little better notes with this car. It was brand new here a couple of months ago and now we’ve got some notes with it.”

J.J. YELEY, No. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET: “We just struggled with the car in practice being too tight. It’s just like the front end is on ice. We just can get the car to rotate in the center very good. We worked on it. We weren’t very good when we unloaded. We got the car better and better. I thought we were going to be back in the ballpark, made some changes and thought we were going to be better for qualifying. The car acted just like it did in our qualifying run. It needs to rotate better. I’ve got all the faith in the guys to make some changes. We’re trying something different from what we had here in the spring and we had a pretty decent car back then. We’re going to make some changes and see if we can’t get better in happy hour.”

REED SORENSON, No. 41 TARGET DODGE: “That’s not very good. That’s what we ran in race trim earlier this year in practice so that’s not very good. We’re a little loose in, a little tight in the center and a little loose off. It didn’t feel that bad. We have a good race car and we’ll be all right.” THAT’S SURPRISING BECAUSE THIS CAR RAN WELL HERE IN THE JULY RACE. “I ran a .70 in race trim in practice so it seems to be fine. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it or anything. It just didn’t qualify very good.”

MARTIN TRUEX JR., No. 1 BASS PRO SHOPS/TRACKER BOATS CHEVROLET: “I thought we’d done a little better than that. The track was really slick for me the first lap and so I had to change the way I drove the car. I should have drove it like it was going to stick like it did in practice and I’d have got a little bit more, not much. It was a good lap. We weren’t that good when we got here and went back towards where we were last time we were here and got it going pretty good so I’m pretty happy with it.” IT SEEMS LIKE THIS TEAM IS PERFORMING BETTER. “That’s absolutely true. We’ve been running a lot, lot better a big, big improvement. It just stinks when you can’t show it. Last week we had a really, really good car that was capable of running in the top-five, easy. I was really disappointed we had all those problems the first pit stop of the night. We just never got to show what we could do. Maybe the luck will turn around finally. It’s been tough all year, the luck. Every time we seem like we run good something bad happens to us. I hope that ends so we can show what we can do.” THIS IS YOUR HOMETOWN RACE. YOU MUST WANT TO PERFOM WELL HERE. “I’d love to do good here. I’ve always done well here in the past. This is part of the reason why I got this far in my racing career is because of this place. It’d be real special for me to run good here on Sunday.”

DAVID STREMME PRESS CONFERENCE

THIS IS YOUR BEST QUALIFYING EFFORT SINCE JULY. DOES THIS GIVE YOU SOME MOMENTUM FOR THE NEXT 10 RACES? “We’ve shown a lot of progress but there’s a lot going on within our organization with changes and everything. We’re just really starting to build toward next year. They put a lot of emphasis in our short track cars this year. We’ve got Kansas City coming up that I’ve got a brand new intermediate car. From the ground up, they’ve redesigned everything. There’s a lot of changes, even in personnel with John Fernandez coming on as our manager and everything. It’s going to take a little bit to get used to the changes but Reed and I are behind our organization 100 percent and we’ll just keep digging as a team to try to get better.”