MONTOYA: “That’s pretty good. We started pretty bad. We were really loose at the start of practice and we did a lot of changes. The first couple of changes we did, they all worked so when you do that it makes it a lot easier because you’re not guessing. You’re not trying to throw everything at it to see what works so that really helped us. In three and four I had to get out of the gas. It got tight coming out of four, but one and two was pretty good. It’ll be up there. I don’t think it’ll be pole but it’ll be close.” HOW IS THE CAR IN RACE TRIM? “It was pretty good. Generally, we’ve been pretty decent so we’ll see. We’ve still got tomorrow to work on it.” WHY IS THE TRACK GETTING FASTER? “It’s just cooling down so there’s a little bit more grip out there but you know it was really good out there. The Texaco/Havoline Dodge car was pretty good. It was a little loose in practice and there it just got a little tight coming out of four and there may be a little more lap time there.” WILL THAT LAP HOLD UP? “I really doubt it. It’ll be close but if we can get a top-five start out of this, it’s very important if you can start up front and tracks like this, it makes night and day for a good race.”

MONTOYA PRESS CONFERENCE
COMMENT ON YOUR RUN TODAY. “It was pretty good, the car was pretty good. We started really loose today. We did quite a few changes but the good thing today is, like last week, we really struggled, is every change we did actually worked. And when you can nail change after change after change, all of a sudden you’re really competitive. We just need to work a little harder to make sure every time we come into the race weekend we can actually be competitive straight off the bat.” DO YOU FEEL MORE COMFORTABLE AT THESE TRACKS THE SECOND TIME AROUND? “Yeah. The thing is that I’ve noticed compared with open wheel that I’ve done before is there’s so many different racetracks that by the time you get back to it you’re like ‘Where did I used to brake here?’ And that’s pretty hard to figure out, okay I need to come here and I need to do this and I think that’s very different. Like in F1 when we’re going from racetrack to racetrack, every racetrack is so different that you know exactly what to do where here, each one is a little similar, each one you do something quite close. And when you do all those things together it’s really hard but I seem to pick it up pretty easy so that really helps.” HAVE OTHER PEOPLE THAT YOU’VE RACED AGAINST BEEN RINGING YOUR PHONE OFF THE HOOK? “Not really, no. I didn’t know Jacque was testing in Talladega Monday and Tuesday. I heard he came on Tuesday. I had no idea he was driving the car there. I know he came to say hi on Tuesday and I couldn’t see him. I’m looking forward to seeing him. It’ll be exciting to see what he can do this weekend. I’m amazed his first race, it was so soon, in the truck series.”

AJ ALLMENDINGER IN THE No. 84 RED BULL TOYOTA WILL START 11TH AT DOVER, HIS BEST QUALIFYING EFFORT IN 13 NEXTEL CUP SERIES RACES. ALLMENDINGER MISSED ALL OF PRACTICE WITH AN ENGINE PROBLEM. “I really didn’t know what to expect. Basically, we had a bungee cord holding the shift lever so it would stick in fourth gear in the car. First of all, thanks to my guys for working their butts off. They were down, they couldn’t get me back out in practice but the motor was destroyed. They had to put everything brand new in there. Thanks a ton to BV and his guys because that was his setup. All we could do was take what they had in practice and he was fast and happy. It wasn’t really fortunate for him. He had to go out early but it allowed us to kind of listen to him and thanks to him and those guys for giving us a setup because that’s all we had to go off of.” YOU HAVE FACED A LOT OF CHALLENGES THIS SEASON BUT THIS MUST BE RIGHT AT THE TOP. “Oh yeah. We can conquer, just getting in the race at Loudon and then getting in there like that, we can do a lot of things this year.” THIS IS THE BEST START OF YOUR CAREER. “That definitely wasn’t expected. I didn’t know if we were going to be able to get in the race. We finished a lot of challenges and that was probably the biggest so far this year. The guys put all the 83 stuff in, just threw it together and like I said, I had to hold the gears in one and three so it stuck in first and third gear, just everything we went through. Hopefully that transfers us to at least working on the race setup tomorrow and having a decent run.” YOU HAVE QUALIFIED FOR FIVE CONSECUTIVE RACES AND COMPLETED JUST ABOUT EVERY LAP. “It kind of all compounds itself. The Busch deal and getting more laps gives me a lot more confidence, which allows me to be more confident when I give information to the team and they feel confident. It just feeds off each other. California was a great run. Richmond, we had a decent finish [but] the car wasn’t very good. Loudon, definitely not what we want to run in the races, but we’re still there and you’ve got to have those races, unfortunately, sometimes to learn where you struggle. These bigger banked tracks we’re a bit better at so hopefully we have a good day tomorrow, have a decent car on Sunday and same thing: just run all the laps.” THIS MUST GIVE YOU A BOOST OF CONFIDENCE. “Oh yeah. Like I said, getting in the race at Loudon last week, that was a big confidence because there’s no hints or secrets that we sucked there the first time. We weren’t very good the second time but we got in the race and that was what was important right now. You go through something like this and get myself confidence that I can have something bad happen and still be able to get in this race instead of where everything has to be perfect to get in. That’s a big deal and like I said, hopefully we can just continue out the rest of the year and have some momentum going into next year.” HAVE YOU HAD A DIFFICULT TIME GOING FROM THE TRADITIONAL BUSCH CAR TO THE COT? “I’ve only done it twice now and to me Dover is a little bit different because they’re not as different where like at Richmond a Busch car is just loose. It’s the same thing. You kind of feel the car jump into the banking. Once it sits you want to get back to power as soon as possible. So in that sense they’re not a ton different so that was a big deal today being able to just run the Busch practice and jump into the COT and still be able to go out and do it unlike Richmond where it was a bit different. Any laps in anything I’m happy to have.”

DAVID REUTIMANN, No. 00 DOMINOS.COM TOYOTA: “Any time you can pick up from practice and you’re not bad in practice, that’s always a good thing. As long as we’re in, I’m happy in most cases and hopefully the weather will be good enough where we can make race runs tomorrow so it’s good in the race, too.” YOU WILL HAVE PRACTICE TIM IN THE CUP CAR AND THE BUSCH RACE ON SATURDAY SO YOU MIGHT BE PRETTY GOOD IN THE CUP RACE. “The COT stuff drives so much different than the Busch car does. You can use a lot from one to the other but lap time on the racetrack is never a bad thing. I missed the race earlier this year so running circles around this place you learn something every lap.” DO YOU LIKE THIS PLACE? “It’s okay, yeah, it’s not bad. I don’t dislike it. I didn’t have a warm and fuzzy feeling for it when I left here last time just because we had a bad deal there. We’re in the show and that was our goal coming here. Now we switch gears here and try to be good for the race.

DAVID RAGAN, No. 6 AAA FORD: “I’m a little disappointed. I wish we could have backed up what we ran in practice but it was just a little free, just chasing the car a little bit on exits and couldn’t get in the throttle where I needed to. Not the lap we wanted but I think our race car is a pretty good car. We’ll just have to see how it is on Saturday.” DID THE TRACK CHANGE FROM PRACTICE TO QUALIFYING? “Maybe, I don’t know. We felt like we were pretty good at the end of practice but I doubt we changed anything. The track might have changed a little then you always try to get that little extra in qualifying. Maybe I just overdrove it a little. It’s not the lap we wanted but it’s not we haven’t race our way from the back this year.”