Raybestos Rookie Happy Hour speeds:
Montoya 17th
Ragan 22nd
Menard 32nd
Allmendinger 38th
Reutimann 40th

Juan Pablo Montoya was the top Raybestos Rookie in both practice sessions this afternoon at California Speedway. Montoya was 19th in the first session and 17th in the final practice.

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, No. 42 WRIGLEY’S BIG RED DODGE: ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE CAR? “We were like good, bad. To tell you the truth, it feels terrible but I guess everybody else’s does because it doesn’t look that bad in the lap times. I don’t think we’ve got a winning car. I think there’s a lot of things that we tried. We tried a lot of things, big things. When you are good, you just try to fine-tune it and we are just trying to find the point to start fine-tuning it. We done a lot of improvements and tomorrow, if everything falls into place great it’d be a top-10 I think.” THIS RACE IS LIKE THE COCA-COLA 600 WHERE YOU START IN THE DAYTIME AND FINISH AT NIGHT. HOW DO YOU KEEP UP WITH THE RACETRACK? “It’s hard because for us it was maybe a little looser when it was really hot and slick. You want to be a little conservative. I’d rather run a little tight to start with but at the same time you don’t want to be too tight because then you go a lap down too early. It’s always a compromise.” DAVID STREMME, YOUR TEAMMATE, WAS FIFTH AFTER THIS PRACTICE. THAT MUST BE ENCOURAGING. “I think the 41 (Reed Sorenson) may have a little bit better racecar than the 40 (Stremme). We’ll see.” COMMENT ON THE GLARE IN TURN 3. “I’m pretty comfortable in three. I’m struggling more in Turn 1 that Turn 3.”