Reed Sorenson (No. 41 Target Dodge Charger)

Was your run enough to stick? “Probably not. You know we went second there. That’s not good you want to go about last, especially when you are qualifying at 5:30 p.m. That is about the worst draw you can get except for the No. 8 car there. It’s the best I could do. The car is good. The car is good in race trim and wherever that puts us we are happy with it so we will be okay.”

How nice would it be to give Ganassi a NASCAR win at Indy? “I think it would be great especially for himself and hopefully any of us drivers that race for him. I feel pretty good about it. It’s a lot better car than we had last year. It was fast in race trim like I said, so qualifying trim is just part of it. You can’t help where you go out so that is the best that I could do at this certain point in time. I am sure it will get faster. It takes a long time to qualify 50 cars so once it starts getting close to 7:00 p.m. it will start getting really fast.”

KASEY KAHNE, (Driver of the No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

Tell me about that lap? “It was good. The car felt good. It was in the racetrack. It was really balanced in the racetrack. Everything felt really good.”

How much difference does the 2006 body make? “It’s the entire package that’s better. The engine is better. The body is better. I don’t know if it’s just the nose or the balance of the car. We found a balance last year, and we hit it again for this week.”

How do you feel about the car now? “I look forward to the race. This week is the first time all year we’ve had a car that can run in the top 10. If we do the right things we can get a good finish. I look forward to stuff like that.”

RYAN NEWMAN, (Driver of the No. 12 alltel Dodge Charger)

How important is starting position here? “It’s so important to start up front. We only did one qualifying run here with the alltel Dodge and hopefully it will hold up really well. I think it will get quicker as it the sun goes down or the track cools off. Anyway, it’s a good run for us and we picked up a lot. We only did one qualifying run and it’s nice to pick up seven-tenths with a hotter racetrack.”

Were you out fishing in the infield earlier? “Yeah, me and Martin Truex went out there. We caught a couple of fish and it was a lot of fun. I appreciate the speedway letting us go out there.”

Is this a big family weekend for you? “It’s a coincidence that it’s home. It’s just a big race and it’s important for us to do well. We had a good step toward that today and hopefully we’ll keep that going tomorrow.”

KURT BUSCH, (Driver of the No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger)

How was your lap? “It was a good lap, I thought, all the way around. We ran about what we ran in practice, except just a touch slower. We might fall back a little further than we were in practice with folks going out later on with the track cooling off. We’re happy with what we did, we just feel like we needed to gain a little speed to be in the top 10 solidly.”

Did you get enough practice time today to get a good feel for the car? “Definitely. We spent most of our time in race trim and working on the Miller Lite Dodge for the longer run, even though our long runs today were only a short time due to the tires showing excessive wear. Tomorrow, it’s more of a guessing game on how long we can go on tires.”

How long do you think you can go on the tires? “It’s going to small early on as far as the long runs and it will open up later on. If there’s a mandatory caution around lap 20 that would be a smart idea.”

Kyle Petty (No. 45 Marathon American Sprint Motor Oil Dodge Charger)

Talk about the partnership with Evernham Motorsports – it’s almost like a four-car team? “Oh yeah. Through Dodge, corporate Dodge, we get our engines and work with Ray on those. If you look at Sammy (Johns) and Ray’s group and you look at our group, when we sit down in the truck and start talking, we got the setups for the 9, 19 and the 10 and they have the setups for the 43 and 45. That’s an alliance, that’s not a partnership. It’s not money thing. That’s not anything business. It’s just a strategic alliance from a technical standpoint. I think Dodge is instrumental in helping us do that. Ray’s instrumental, and our think our guys at Petty Enterprises are instrumental. With Robby and those guys, we’ve got a good group that can work together for the betterment of the manufacturer Dodge and the betterment of these two teams who have struggled this year. If we all pull in the same direction, we’ll get stronger faster.

“Now, the problem with an alliance some times is this: If one team starts running better, they quit sharing with the other team. With a partnership or a buyout, everybody is trying to get better or they’re going to get forced to get better. So that’s difference between a partnership and an alliance – you have to trust the people you’re dealing with. Ray’s been straight up with us and Dodge has been nothing but straight up with us from the very beginning six or seven years ago when we started this, so we don’t have a lot qualms about that.”

Is that what drove the alliance is that you were struggling? “We both are. We both have trouble with the COT. We both thought we were going to be better with the COT than what we showed. And we both struggled with this year’s Charger so we went back to last year’s Charger to see how it works. John and Bobby both have great races in it. We took them out of the races in the pits, they weren’t beat on the racetrack last week at Chicago. So they had good runs there. When we showed the wind tunnel data and some of the technical stuff that we had from those cars and showed it to Ray, he compared it to the cars they were bringing here and the cars they ran there, it was like ‘Okay, you got us beat’. Aero-wise it’s better. We’re not going to leave that laying on the table if we’ve got to race against Hendrick and Gibbs and these guys. We can’t leave X number of counts of downforce or X number of horsepower laying on the table. I think they worked really hard this week and we worked really hard this week to get these cars put together to bring them back up here.

How much difference can you tell in the cars? “They’re totally different. I haven’t driven a car in six weeks, so it’s a big change for me to come from driving the ’07 car to jump in to a place like this driving this car. This feels like the way we’ve been looking for the car to feel all year, to me. That’s what Bobby said. That’s what John said at Chicago. They said ‘You’re going to like this car because it feels like what our car felt like last year. You would think going backward to last year’s is a step back, but it’s not a step back when you look at the numbers. It’s a step back to where we were, but it’s not a step back from the numbers that we need to see.”

SCOTT RIGGS, (Driver of the No. 10 Stanley Tools/Valvoline Dodge Charger)

How badly did you need this run? “We needed to run good. We needed to get in the show. I can’t say enough about these guys and the job that worked extra hard this week to totally rebuild this car. They did a lot of extra work and a lot of hard work and they had to make a lot of tough decisions back at the shop to decide what we were going to do with the car we brought here. I think we made the right decisions to do what we did. The car wasn’t quite as fast as it was in practice. It was a little loose there. I don’t know what kind of adjustments must have done that. I though we stayed pretty close to our baseline of what we ran in practice. I’m proud of all the guys on the Stanley Tools Dodge. It’s a team effort and I didn’t want to screw up my part of the bargain out there on the track.”

How is the car with the old nose? “We definitely have a lot better race car than we had all season this year. So it’s definitely a better race car. As far as balance-wise, we were a little too free there for some reason. We put on our last set of tires there in practice and we were a little too loose. We thought the small changes we made must have done that to us so we backed up on those changes. We were still way free there in qualifying trim. It felt real free to me coming off of turn four to the green. I sort of guarded against it and tried to make the most of it. If I had to do it over again, I’d probably try to tighten it up and go for it. It’s a good effort on everybody’s part.”

BOBBY LABONTE, (Driver of the No. 43 Cheerios/Betty Crocker Dodge Charger)

How was your car? “We’ve been off all day. We really haven’t found the speed we needed to find. We don’t really have it as good as we need to have it. There’s still a lot of work to do on the car. We had it last week at Chicago. We’ll have to play catch-up starting past mid-pack. If we make the right changes tonight we’ll be okay.”

DAVID STREMME, (Driver of the No. 40 Target Dodge Charger)

What is Ganassi’s secret here today? “They’ve done a good job building the cars to come here. We were a little to free there and it cost us some spots. But, we’ll be alright on Sunday. I wish we had a little bit better starting spot than that, but we’ll be okay. They’ve done a really good job with the engines and everything.”

How special is it to run here? “It’s pretty cool. I haven’t spent that much time here on Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Just coming back to Indiana, with lots of friends and family here, makes it a pretty good time. I want to go out and run well for them and for our sponsor Target and for everyone else, too. We made it through qualifying so we’ll go on from here.”

How important is starting position? “We’ll be a lot better than last year. We had a great car but started in the back and never could get to the front. It’s important to start toward the front here. As long as we have a good car here on Sunday, which I think we do, that’s what matters most.”

Elliott Sadler (No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

How was your lap? “We’re just a little bit tight. I really wanted to try to make a shot at the pole. We were really fast in practice. My car just tightened up a little bit too much on me. All in all a really good day. To come from where were in Chicago to now, my guys have really worked hard. We’ve got a really good piece for tomorrow. We’ve got to run 400 miles tomorrow in the Allstate 400 and see what we’ve got.”

Juan Pablo Montoya (No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger)

How was your qualifying lap? The lap was pretty good until Turn 4. We were right there with Reed and got a little too loose coming out of 4, and I had to get on the gas. I think the lap was pretty good. Reed did a pretty good job, and the whole Ganassi organization did an amazing job. They've been stepping up the game every week. It's good to see a team going in the right direction, and actually to get the front row here at Indianapolis I think is a big deal for Chip and everybody.

How key is it to have that track position early? I think we just got to be patient, work with the car and see what happens. I think tire wear is going to be a big thing to start with. I think my tire wear was pretty good in practice, so just got to be patient and just try to run a good, clean race and see at the end whether you have a chance of winning or get really good points. For the whole team it's important to score really good points; and being up front, it's a big deal.

How do you compare driving an IndyCar and winning the 500 to driving a Cup car here at the Speedway? I think they're very different cars. Both are a lot of fun. You know, when you come to the Indy 500, you've got like three weeks or four weeks or whatever just to keep working on the car, fine-tune it here, fine-tune it there, do long runs, short runs. By the time you get to the race, if you do good work, you're going to have a really good car. Where here, you know, I'd have been here running the oval for seven years, the only time I run it is when I did the Indy 500. You get two-and-a-half hours of running and that's it, one-lap qualifying and getting to the race. So we start a little bit behind in practice, like today was hard. We were struggling. We made a lot of changes, and I thought our car at the end was pretty good.

Can you just take us through that, you and your teammate in the front row, Chip Ganassi and everybody hugging down there, and your lap? It was good. I thought I had a chance at it, and I thought it was going to be very close. Coming through the last corner, I went wide open a little bit too early, and the car stepped out and I couldn't keep it wide open. Everywhere else I managed to keep it wide open when it stepped out and just was a little too greedy. Reed has been really fast all day today. We started really far back, we struggled. And my whole Texaco team did an amazing job bringing the car to a competitive stage, and it's good. It's good. I think we should have a very competitive car tomorrow. So I think it's great. It shows, you know, you can start seeing indications where the team is going, where the team is heading. There's going to be great weekends; there's still going to be some bad ones. But it's nice to see, to show everybody what the team can do.

Some people talking about how your experience with the Indy race a few years ago might translate to today. Do you hold anything to that or is this a whole different animal for you? Completely different animal. It probably helped me a little through Turn 1. I changed my line for qualifying a little bit, and it paid off. I was really bad getting into the bottom, I was really loose. I just run a groove higher, and it really worked pretty good.

You said you've come to appreciate your 500 victory a little more as time has gone by. Have you also gotten a better appreciation for what this place means to Chip? Yeah, I think it's a big, you know, a big deal for everybody coming to Indianapolis, a big deal. I think the six years I was here coming to Formula One, it was funny, most of the years we came here, we had great cars and had the worst luck. So, you know, being competitive again is great. You know, we did it with the 500, and, you know, hopefully either of us or any of the three drivers can win tomorrow. Of course, I would rather it be me than anybody else; but if it's not me, hopefully any of the other two Ganassi cars.

It's been said at Indianapolis that this is really a road race with no right-hand turns, at least you try not to have too many. Is that what your experience has been, that this is more of a road course feel than an oval feel? Not really. It's the same feel. The feel is the same feel I had when I came here and drove the open-wheel. It's four corners, each one is a little -- they're supposed to be equal but each one is a little different, and each one has its little tricks. In open-wheel, it's very good around this place, and I'm still learning a little bit where to go and where not to go and what to do. There's a lot of transitions in the racetrack that are very important to run good, and we're just learning them.

Knowing that you do have a good piece now, does your outlook for having a chance to pull this off change? I don't know. I really don't know. (Laughter). I think the guy to beat tomorrow is going to be Reed, to be realistic. I think he would do a good job through the day, and we might have a chance. But he was just very quick in practice, and, you know, it's good to see him do it well. He won last weekend, and it was great for the team and for the whole organization. To be competitive again, it's great.

Ryan Newman (No. 12 Alltel Dodge Charger)

The biggest thing was the fact that we picked up so much time from practice. The alltel Dodge was, you know, 34th or whatever in practice and the guys did a good job. Did one qualifying run, we worked on race trim the entire time. Got one qualifying run in at the very end, and that made a big difference. For me just to be able to get a feel for what the car was going to be like and to make some changes on the car and work with what we learned from Kurt and the 2 car were doing to make improvements on the car was definitely thankful and paid off. So to pick up seven-tenths in worst conditions was a great run for us. Wish we could have been a little bit better. Been on the front row here before, so third is a good starting spot. Where we were at many points today, it was a great improvement and the guys did a great job hustling with the car.

Which of the Dodges have the ’06 nose? I believe the Ganassi cars and the Penske cars, to my knowledge. Outside maybe of some single-car teams, I think that's it. I think Petty cars and Evernham cars have the '07 nose, but I'm not 100 percent sure on that.

What do you feel is different in the car with the old nose? I think the old nose made more downforce, but the percentage wasn't correct, especially for race trim. So I think we made the right decision, obviously, to bring the '07 car here. And outside of that, either car is legal, doesn't really matter. Just a matter of who's there on Sunday and who's standing in Victory Lane.

I'm wondering if you could be the person to beat? Do you think Sorenson is not the guy to beat tomorrow as Juan just said? Everybody is the person to beat. Track position is so important. We've seen in places like Richmond even where just a mediocre car gets out front and the guys that are good most of the day get in the back and they can't pass. Everybody is a competitor and you can be your own worst enemy. So we have to stay focused and do our things right and hopefully we're in the right position at the end of the day to capitalize.

Ryan we heard a lot about tires earlier today. Kind of relate tires to the weather conditions and how things changed as the day went from earlier to later: The idea was we wanted to have -- I guess they gave us a long practice session to fill the rubber in on the racetrack and the grooves. Honestly, I'm not sure why the racetrack is the way it is, the grooving and whatnot. I assume it's to make the track smoother but it's definitely made it a different situation with the tires. Obviously Goodyear has a tire that was the same compound that we had here last year. There were a couple incidents in the race, but outside of that, it kind of is the way it is. I still anticipate seeing the competition at some point tomorrow just because no team out there has done a fuel run in practice and we were all seeing corded tires. But the weather itself, you know, having three-and-a-half hours today to practice or whatever it was was plenty of time to be able to get tuned in. The guys tuned in tomorrow did their work today. It should be business as usual once we get past either the competition caution or the first fuel tank, fuel run.

Reed Sorenson (No. 41 Target Dodge Charger)

What are your emotions about being on the pole for the Brickyard? It's obviously an awesome place to get our first pole. First pole got in the Cup car for Target for me. I'm pretty excited. I know it means a lot for Chip and everybody involved. Hopefully we can stay up there all day tomorrow. I think we've got a pretty good race car. It was really good in race trim and then we put it in qualifying trim, and it was really good, as well. It should be pretty good.

You've got top two qualifiers today, your thoughts about that coming in tomorrow's race. Just the team's worked hard, we continue to work hard week in and week out on a lot of things. You know, while we can work hard back at the shop to come up with great equipment, you still need drivers to push the button, and certainly the two guys on the front row tomorrow pushed the button today when it came to doing the lap, and doing what's important. Now it's just a matter of focusing on the race.

Reed, you're obviously confident about your race car, but Juan was in here a little bit ago and sort of declared you the guy to beat. Do you feel you want to argue with him? (Laughter) I think both of our cars is pretty good. He thinks his is good, as well. It's hard to tell lap time-wise because there's no rubber on the track, and nobody could do a long run. It's going to be hard to tell, we'll have to wait and see tomorrow. All we could go on today is what the cars felt like. Lap time-wise, we looked really good and so did my two teammates. So we don't know what the weather is going to be like tomorrow. We ran in a little bit of shade and a little bit of sun. I think the sun is going to be out pretty much all day tomorrow, and we'll have to see what the tires will do once we put rubber on the track and it changes the way things are.

Was there a point, and Chip same for you, was there a point as the line-up kind of dwindled down that you felt pretty comfortable that you were going to stay on top? The two biggest threats we had were my two teammates. Once Juan went, he ran a really good lap, that made me breathe a little easier. And David had a really good lap, and I breathed a little easier. But I was nervous the whole time because going out second, we knew we could lay down a good lap but we were nervous about it getting cooler. The sun stayed out for us, which was good. I was nervous all the way down to the last car. Once the last car crossed the start/finish line, I felt better.

Chip Ganassi (Owner, Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates)

This has got to feel a little like deja vu having the Target colors right up front again like in 2004. Are you ready to start fielding the questions from the other manufacturers about Dodge being up front like they are with one, two, three and many other spots? Yes, certainly it is deja vu having the car up there again and obviously it's even better to have his teammate alongside him, and David 10th, as well. You know, we just seem to have something about this place that our team likes. You know, while this is certainly a high point and certainly a huge accomplishment to have the two cars up front there and all three in the top 10, you know, it's a tough question because we're trying to build our team week in and week out. We're trying to get better, better, better each week, and you get better in this business one brick at a time. You don't lay up a whole wall at once and make a big move. You make incremental steps week in and week out. And this is just another step and, you know, it's nice to know that our cars are good, our engines are good, our drivers are good. And, you know, while that sounds like a small thing, it's really not.

You know, Reed can tell you, we've been working on this for a long, long time to get our team in a position. You know, you have one car up there or, you know, we qualify -- I can't tell you how many times we qualified seventh, 22nd and 33rd, you know. You kind of think what kind of team is that, you know. We showed up here today and all our cars were quick and we were working as a team, and it paid off when it had to.

You've already been in that position with the open-wheel cars as has obviously Penske. Are you benefiting from the cross-pollination between the engineering staffs and the things that go with it or is this such a dramatically diametrically opposed racing series that there is no carryover? There is certainly some carryover, and I think more teams that combine like that will figure that out. But I still think you've got to look at it on a case-by-case basis. You know, we've been beating our head against the wall for a long time in this business, and we're going to continue to do so, and wherever that takes us. But there is some benefit of having just more heads in the game that you can get an honest answer from.

Reed Sorenson (No. 41 Target Dodge Charger)

Can you talk a little bit about the momentum you have right nowafter winning the Busch race? And also talk about the fact that you got this pole at Indianapolis and what Indianapolis means to you. Yeah, we had a great run last weekend winning, and I don't know if it's just coincidence, everybody on my Cup team was pumped up about the win. And as soon as I got here, all those guys were talking about the Busch win. It got them excited, and this will definitely get everybody pumped up on the whole team, not just mine.

So I'm pretty excited about everything from this point on. We've had some things happen this year we didn't want to, but we got a lot of stuff to look forward to the rest of the season. So everybody on the team is pumped up. This is a great way to start the weekend, and hopefully our car is good all day tomorrow and we'll finish it out.

Can you talk about Indianapolis? You know, I don't think it matters where you're from when you come into this place. It kind of opens your eyes up a little bit. First of all, how big it is. and it's been here for so long. And I've watched some races, IndyCar races from the '40s here, and this is just a really historic place. To have your name in the record books here means a lot. You know, it's just really neat to be here and to be able to do this.