RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER INSPECTION DAY QUOTES FOR THE FOOD CITY 500 NASCAR NEXTEL CUP SERIES RACE AT BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY, MARCH 22, 2007.

DONNIE WINGO, CREW CHIEF, No. 42 TEXACO/HAVOLINE DODGE: HOW BIG OF A PROJECT HAS THE CAR OF TOMORROW BEEN FOR CHIP GANASSI RACING WITH FELIX SABATES? “It’s been a huge project. Any time you’ve got a new car you’re trying to develop because you’ve got a totally different concept, a totally different way of running bump stops instead of just coil-binding. You’ve got a certain height you can go to and that’s it. It’s been a challenge but everybody will get it. It’s just going to take some time.”

HAVE YOU BEEN SURPRISED AT THE INSPECTION PROCESS TODAY? “It’s pretty much what I expected. It’s taken a little bit longer than I expected but it’s pretty much what I expected. The way this grid goes on it takes a little bit more time than it did before. Everybody is just going to have to show patience. It’ll take time. Once they get it all figured out I’m sure it’ll be a lot smoother.”

HOW MANY MAN HOURS DO YOU HAVE IN THIS CAR? “I mean it’s the same car that we tested. It probably don’t take as long to put the bodies on ‘em as it did because you’ve got a certain thing that you have to go to and once they built a few it was a lot easier to get to. You probably don’t have as many as you have in the other cars but when you’re trying to run two cars in one season, if you get started a little bit late on the COTs, which some of the templates and stuff come out a little bit late, it just puts you behind.”

THIS SEASON YOU’VE BEEN RACING THE TRADITIONAL CAR AND PREPARING THE COT FLEET. HOW DO YOU FIND THE BALANCE? “It’s tough to do because there are a few things that I missed or some of our guys missed as far as exactly what kind of bolts that you have to use for your wing and things like that. You definitely have to stay focused on what you’re doing. And myself, I’ve got to get caught-up a lot more on the Car of Tomorrow because I’ve been focusing on the other car so much.”

WHAT KIND OF RACE WILL WE SEE HERE AT BRISTOL? “I don’t know that it’s going to change the race that much, to start with, at a place like Bristol. I don’t know that it’s going to make that much difference. The higher weight and little bit heavier right side cars, sure, it’s going to make a little bit of difference but as far as how it’s going to impact the race, it’s still going to be a bump and bang fest at Bristol like it always is. And Martinsville I feel will be the same way.”

CAN YOU USE THE SAME SETUPS AT BRISTOL AND MARTINSVILLE THAT YOU’VE USED IN THE PAST OR WILL YOU HAVE TO START ALL OVER? “Yeah, kind of sorta. You can use the same thing. We basically started the way [at the test] the way we ran here before and we’ll start tomorrow very similar. You’ve just got to stop the car at a certain point where it don’t travel so much and hits the splitter.”

TONY EURY SR., CREW CHIEF, No. 15 MENARDS/PEAK ANTIFREEZE CHEVROLET: “I think we’ve probably put in probably one of the best efforts here besides Petty Enterprises. We went to the first test they had with it and they made so many changes they made our car obsolete right off the bat so we kind of backed off and said ‘Y’all need to figure out what you’re going to do here before we spend anymore money.’ NASCAR wasn’t really happy with us when we did that but we spent a whole lot of money to build that first car. The first car that we’ve got that is inspected and ready to run is car nine so we’ve got eight cars that threw away before we got one that was legal here. We put a lot of effort into it. We didn’t go to Michigan with them when they tested but we’ve been to Atlanta, we’ve been to Charlotte and we’ve run a lot of miles at Lakeland with it and South Boston and we did one Talladega test, I think. I think we’ve put in a pretty good effort with it. We’re still not happy with the results that we get from it but we have put in a pretty good effort and hopefully it’ll pay off in the end.”

HOW DO YOU FIND THE BALANCE BETWEEN RACING THE TRADITIONAL CAR AND PREPARING THE COT? “We’re just working hard, working a lot of hours. Paul [Menard] ran the COT the first time this year at Lakeland. That was the first time that he’d been in it. Martin and Dale Jr. had been doing all the testing previous and Paul had never been in it. We really concentrated on our Daytona stuff trying to get in the Daytona race that we didn’t make. Went to Vegas and focused really good on our open, big track stuff. We’ve been working hard for the last month on COT trying to get that thing down pat. There’s just so much difference between the two, there’s no comparison. We actually just ran yesterday at South Boston a little bit, just trying to pick out the car that we want to run at Martinsville because we’ve got two different kinds of cars that we built. I’m really not sure which style we’re really happy with. We think we’ve got it down to which style we’re happy with but we’re not just perfectly sure. Each one of our teams has four COTs done and every team has a fifth one but they’re not done. Some are still in the fab shop, a couple of them are in the body shop. But most of the teams and people that we talked to here today, some of ‘em are bringing their backup cars here tomorrow because they’re not done yet. That kind of makes you feel pretty good that we did get a head start, a little bit, on some people. It’s just not very many people that have very many cars right now.”

IS TODAY A LOT LIKE THE FIRST DAY OF INSPECTION FOR THE DAYTONA 500? “It’s really worse than Daytona because the templates that they’re using here today to inspect these cars we don’t have. We have a $14,000 template at the shop that we’re building these cars off of that’s not the approved template. We’re doing the best we can to make it fit what we have and that’s kind of why they said they were going to be a little lenient today on the cars. Unless somebody deliberately tried to stiff ‘em they’d be okay. Right now we’re just building our cars, trying to make ‘em fit where we can get through inspection and get on the racetrack. As time comes everybody will start tweaking on them here and there and they’ll find out where they can get by with this or that and it won’t be any different than the other car. But right now I think everybody is just trying to figure out what we’ve got to do to get through inspection and get on the racetrack.”

ARE YOU SURPRISED AT THE LENGTH OF INSPECTION TIME? “In five hours they are usually close to the last car. An hour and 10 minutes the fourth car came out of there today. They start at 10 o’clock and at 10 after 11 the fourth car came out from getting the spoiler put on it. And that was just in the template area. It ain’t looking real good for 50-some cars. The process is definitely going to have to speed up somewhere for sure if we’re going to do this on Fridays.”

FRANK KERR, CREW CHIEF, No. 00 DOMINO’S TOYOTA: HOW BIG OF AN UNDERTAKING HAS THE COT BEEN FOR THIS TEAM AND STILL BE COMPETITIVE WITH THE TRADITIONAL CAR? “For our operation it’s really big because we’re still building and less than six months ago we started. So we’re in a thrash just to get cars to Daytona and to the first couple of races and we still have the COTs to run. For our company it’s been quite the undertaking. Unfortunately for a start-up team like ourselves, or a single-car team, it really puts ‘em behind. It’s too much for a short period of time.”

HOW MANY HOURS DO YOU HAVE IN THIS CAR? “This car here, we’ve tested it one time here at Bristol and at that point it was the only car we had. Now we actually have two per team [smiles], which the other one is the Martinsville car, so hopefully we don’t have to use it this weekend. We’re just so far behind, trying to catch-up. We moved this week, which throws in another wrench. We’re just really far behind, just starting up and having to build twice as many cars as you should. And we’ve wrecked a couple of races here so it’s kind of hurt us.”

IS THERE ANYTHING YOU THIS TEAM HASN’T EXPERIENCED SO FAR THIS SEASON? “No, actually, no [smiles]. We were spread out in four buildings and now we’re down to two so that will probably help the company as a whole. We’re trying to do in six months or less what Hendrick has done in 25. I think we haven’t showed it yet but the 00 car has run well, just has some bad luck and get crashed. I’d say look out in six months, toward the end of the season and for sure next year.”

HAS THE INSPECTION PROCESS TODAY BEEN WHAT YOU EXPECTED? “Sure, except we got a 14-page bulletin yesterday at 3:30 about rule changes on the COT car. So looking at the inspection line here, the average has been about an hour and 20 minutes per car. I don’t know how they’re going to do it on a weekly basis and get everybody through and get to practice in a three-hour window. Either they have to change and loosen it up or check ‘em later like they did in the truck series there a few races. If they didn’t fit afterwards, you’re out.”

MARTY GAUNT, GENERAL MANAGER, TEAM RED BULL: “From the start we knew what we were getting into. It’s been quite the undertaking. We work a lot of hours; work a lot of overtime. We’re trying to build two cars and that’s why we’re one of the advocates saying ‘For ’08, let’s just go full Car of Tomorrow’ and we’re hearing a lot of the car owners are saying that, so from our respective that’s exactly what we want to do. Trying to build a new team and two different styles of cars and a new manufacturer, new engines, new bodies, there’s a lot of work involved in it. But I don’t think we’d change it for anything. Like I said, we knew what the task was at hand before we got in and we accept the challenge and move on.”

WHICH CAR GETS PRIORITY: THE TRANDITIONAL CAR OR THE COT? “It’s all important, obviously, with no points and the way the point system is structured we don’t have anything to fall back on so everything is important to us. I’d say right now we’re putting more focus on the COT car, developing that, because it looks like that’s what we’re going to be full-time with in ‘08 and beyond. And when the team was started it’s all about long term goals and the long-term future in the Cup ranks. We’re putting more emphasis on the COT car than we are the current car right now.”

HAS THIS YEAR AND BUILDING THIS TEAM BEEN MORE OF A CHALLENGE THAN YOU EXPECTED? “No, I don’t think it’s been more difficult that we expected. We knew from the start it was going to be a lot of work. Obviously we’ve had some hiccups along the way and we’ve had a couple of speed bump and maybe a roadblock here or two [smiles]. But it’s a challenge and we’re all competitors and when we get hit with a new challenge we just hit it face-on and figure out where we need to be and move forward with it. It’s everything we thought it would be. It’s highly competitive. There’s probably what we can see probably the best in years at the Cup level. There’s been so many well funded teams so it’s really hard to qualify then obviously when you do qualify get in the race and race with these guys that have doing it 20-plus years it’s a hell of a challenge. But we knew it getting in.”

WHAT STEPS IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE THIS TEAM MAKE OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS? “Both teams qualify for the race. It’s like when the 83 has qualified, the 84 hasn’t. It feels like that feels great, our car is in, but personally, I don’t feel like we’ve met any of our goals which are qualifying for the races until both cars are in. Once we get both cars into the race then we can start trying to better ourselves each and every week. Getting both cars in all the events, getting both cars in the top-35 and just do it step-by-step.”