Raybestos Rookie Happy Hour speeds:
Montoya 2nd
Reutimann 12th
Ragan 28th
Menard 40th

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, No. 42 TEXACO/HAVOLINE DODGE: “Kind of. It’s pretty quick but we kind of lost our way a little bit in the practice. One run was good the next one was bad. It’s hard to know. We’ve been good all weekend so it’d be great to get another top-10 out of this, even a top-five.” HOW DIFFICULT IS IT GOING TO BE TO PASS HERE? “I have no idea. I can give you an idea after this afternoon after I run the Busch race. We’ve got good cars so it should be a pretty good weekend.”

DAVID RAGAN, No. 6 AAA FORD: “At times it’s good. These cars are just so close to being really loose, close to being really tight and we can get our car comfortable for a few laps. In practice certainly we’re trying to fine tune but we’re trying to change just a lot of big stuff. We’ll change front springs or front control arms and stuff that may take a little bit longer and certainly we can fine tune during the race. I feel like we’re close. We’re not where we need to be but we’ll make some changes on the AAA Ford tonight and usually at the start of the race we’ll start fine tuning it.” YOU TESTED EARLIER THIS WEEK AT MILWAUKEE. DID THAT HELP YOU HERE? “Certainly yeah. We tried a lot of stuff that, again, we wouldn’t have the time to do it on a race weekend. We’re very limited, just a 45-minute practice here, an hour practice here so to be able to go to a track and test for a full day, we get to try a lot of stuff that we normally wouldn’t get to. It helped a lot. The biggest thing that’s different is the tires. We’re on a rock-hard tire here that’s new and we were on a three-year old Goodyear at Milwaukee. There’s a lot of difference but you know, we can rule out some things and start a big file book on this Car of Tomorrow because we’re going to be stuck with it all next year.” WHERE DO YOU PASS HERE? “I feel like the fast guys are going to be able to turn underneath you and pass on the bottom just like the Busch race went at Milwaukee. We’ll see how the Busch race is here today but I feel like the guys that are going to be off a little bit or ill-handling, they’re going to be washing up the track and fighting it and the they guys that are somewhat decent are going to be able to just to turn underneath ‘em and pass on the bottom and keep on going.”

PAUL MENARD, No. 15 MENARDS/SYLVANIA CHEVROLET: “We made gains on it. We’ve been really tight basically since we unloaded yesterday and kept working on it and I think we’re pretty decent now. We run pretty consistent times and pretty comparable to other guys on same lap tires. We’ll look forward to it.” YOU HAVE LAPS HERE IN THE BUSCH SERIES. HOW DIFFERENT IS THE COT CAR HERE? “They just don’t handle as good. Busch car is so stuck to the ground. These things are kind of flopping over. They push then they get loose. It’s the same for everybody so we’ll just have to deal with it. It’s actually kind of fun to drive.” DID THE TRACK CHANGE ANY TODAY? “I don’t think so. If anything, it might be a little bit tighter but yesterday we just did qualifying runs so it’s still a little bit tight from yesterday but more tight today. But then we untaped the grill and did some things that kind of slowed the car down and made it push. I don’t think it’s changed a whole lot. It’ll probably slowly get tighter as the weekend goes on.” WHERE DO YOU PASS HERE? “I was working on the bottom, trying to get my car to turn on the bottom. We had great forward bite and we’re running an R07 motor, which has a lot of bottom end. I think if we can get it to turn on the bottom and get it hooked up we’ll be able to pass cars.”

Raybestos Rookie David Reutimann will start 17th in Sunday’s race at New Hampshire. Reutimann recently scored his best NEXTEL Cup finish 11 starts, a 15th-place finish at Michigan (race No.15).

DAVID REUTIMANN, No. 00 BURGER KING TOYOTA: YOU QUALIFIED WELL AND RAN WELL IN PRACTICE THIS MORNING. “Yes, it’s nice, I’m not going to lie. It feels good to get in these shows and then at least feel like we have something to work with in practice. Who knows as the race goes on what we’ll end up with or what adjustments we’ll have to make. The last couple weeks we’ve been slowing but surely gaining kind of gaining on some stuff. Guys are doing a good job and they’ve always worked hard. That has never stopped. It’s just starting to show up a little bit on the racetrack I think. We’re starting to get some uniformity to our cars. We’re trying to build them the same so we can try to help one another at the racetrack and all those things and I think at various points in the year we had drastically different race cars at different points. And that’s all part of trying to get this team built in a short amount of time. But now they’ve got systems in place and things are kind of uniform and it’s starting to show up.” HOW BIG WAS THE GOOD RUN THAT YOU HAD AT MICHIGAN? “It was big because number one we needed it. And number two, we were so bad in practice we just barely made it in the race. They dropped the green flag and I just drove in and moved to the top of the racetrack and let a couple guys behind me go because I didn’t even know what we had. I ran seven or eight laps and I looked up there and I was like ‘This thing doesn’t drive that bad and those guys in front of me don’t look like their cars are any better than mine.’ I was staying right there with the group there and we started kind of weaving through there, gaining some ground. Frankie [Kerr, crew chief] and those guys made a couple good pit calls and picked us up some positions there. At the end of the day it ended up being a solid run for us starting as far back as we did. And finishing where we ended up I was pretty proud of that. We need some more of that [smiles].” IS THE MAIN OBJECTIVE TO PUT TOGETHER A STRING A GOOD RACES? “It is. It’s all about trying to get some momentum going some way some how and putting a string of good races together, there’s no better way to do it. That’s the only way to do it. They only way you can gain any kind of momentum and get the guys really pumped up is to have a good run and show ‘em all the work they’re doing is paying off.” WHAT WOULD BE A GOOD FINISH FOR YOU HERE TOMORROW? “If we could get at top-10, top-15 like we did at Michigan, I think that would be a good day, especially on a small racetrack. I don’t have any Cup experience here. Of course, I didn’t have nay Cup experience at Michigan and most places we go I don’t have any Cup experience [smiles] so why should this place be any different. But this is a tough racetrack. This is a really tough racetrack. I’ve had a decent run in our traditional car, go out and be able to run good in a COT would be cool.” HOW DIFFICULT WILL PASSING BE IN THE RACE? “In practice you don’t ever get to the point where you’re out there passing a lot of guys but I’ve found that you can run a guy down from a long distance and then get to ‘em and have a really, really hard time passing ‘em. If that’s any indication, the car just seems to get tight and that being any indication of what it’ll be like I’m sure track position is going to be very important. No big surprise there. It seems like it’s that way everywhere except for Daytona and Talladega [smiles].”

DONNIE WINGO, CREW CHIEF, No. 42 TEXACO/HAVOLINE DODGE: WHAT HAS THIS PAST WEEK BEEN LIKE FOR THE TEAM? “It’s been really good. People have been a little down and out lately and just seeing them smiling, joking and having a good time it makes me feel good just being a part of it. It’s like a load has been lifted off but still we’ve got a long way to go and we’ve got to continue to keep trying to move forward. Just to be a part of it with these guys here that I’ve been with now for five years we’ve been so close so many times so many second-places and something happened right at the end. It’s big. It just makes me feel good especially for those guys.” A COUPLE OF CREW CHIEFS WERE SUSPENDED AFTER THE SONOMA RACE. HOW BIG OF A FACTOR IS THAT? “It’ll make a difference a little bit but the depth of those organizations is so deep. The way these cars are now when you are at the racetrack it mostly fine-tuning. Most all of the work is done before you ever leave the shop.”