DENNY HAMLIN PUTS NO. 11 FEDEX GROUND MONTE CARLO ON FRONT ROW WITH SECOND PLACE QUALIFYING POSITION

TWO-TIME POCONO WINNER DENNY HAMLIN LEADS TEAM CHEVY TO THE POCONO 500 BY QUALIFYING SECOND TO EARN A FRONT ROW STARTING SPOT. MARTIN TRUEX JR., NO. 1 BASS PRO SHOPS / TRACKER BOATS MONTE CARLO QUALIFIED THIRD.

TEAM CHEVY DRIVERS OCCUPY 10 OF TOP 13 STARTING POSITIONS FOR POCONO 500

DENNY HAMLIN, NO. 11 FEDEX GROUND MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 2nd: "We didn't get the pole. However, we're still on the front row start and we've got just as good a chance coming off of (Turn) 1 leading as we do if we would have gotten the pole. We definitely have a car that can win on Sunday."

MARTIN TRUEX, JR, NO. 1 BASS PRO SHOPS MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 3rd: "We have a good car this weekend. I am really excited about it. I just want to thank all these guys on my Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet team. They gave me a great car today. I think we will have something for them on Sunday, we will just have to wait and see.

KYLE BUSCH, NO. 5 KELLOGG'S/CARQUEST MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 4th: "We've struggled here and we've done okay here. The first year we ran okay but we weren't competitive enough. We thought we should get a better head start here at Pocono and get ready for Indy as well. We built a brand new car and it's a whale of a piece. It looks good and it runs good. Hopefully that means something for Sunday. So far, so good right now. It gives us a great starting spot for Sunday hopefully and we'll just take it from there."

DID THE CLOUD COVER HELP? "I'm not sure how much of a help that's going to be. It kind of takes time for the track to cool down when there is a cloud that comes over. But it's a pretty big cloud, so it might stay here a while longer."

TONY STEWART, NO. 20 HOME DEPOT MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 6th: - ON HIS LAP: "It was a decent lap except for the part where I messed up the entire Tunnel Turn. I think we probably could have been second or third at this point in qualifying. But that shows and speaks highly of what the team has been able to do with this car. It's really, really fast. So I think we've got something to work with this week.

"Our lap was really good except for the disadvantage of having me drive it during qualifying. I always find a way of making a mistake and I did again. I screwed up going across the tunnel turn. It was really good in turn one and really good in turn three and really good on the out lap. If I could have taken part of the out lap, we could have made one really nice lap."

ON PRELUDE: "I crashed, I ran in to the back of Kasey (Kahne) after Bobby Labonte got in the front stretch wall, I think he might have had a little help that choked everybody else. By the time I caught the mess, it was going in to turn one. But it did get me a great vantage point standing in the infield to watch a great finish with Jeff Gordon, Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch coming out of turn four three-wide for the checkered flag. It was pretty cool. It was neat to see these guys that don't get a chance to do that very often, come and drive a late model." I still haven't slept. Everybody is still saying things today that drove are saying thanks for inviting us. That's the ultimate compliment that they were that excited to go race and have fun like that."

THAT COULD WORK INTO A MINI CUP RACE "Yeah, I'm going to have to get busy building grandstands if we're going to do that. But it's fun. The hard thing is that it took a lot of work to do it and I was about one percent of the equation. The rest were all the people at Nextel and Old Spice that worked hard to make that happen."

ON THE KURT BUSCH PENALTY: "I haven't even looked. I didn't even hear about him yet. I'm not worried about him."

HAVE YOU TALKED TO HIM? "Nah, that's NASCAR's deal. We don't worry about that."

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE YOUR QUALIFYING RUN INTO A GOOD RUN ON SUNDAY? "It doesn't seem like our qualifying package and our race package are that much different. It used to be when we came here there was a large difference between the two packages. I think now they are getting closer to each other. I think if you qualify well, you probably race well. But our car was really good in race trim. I just didn't drive it very good in qualifying. I made a mistake. We should be one, maybe two spots higher than what we already are."

ON TALKING WITH KURT BUSCH "We'll probably talk tonight. We'll go talk tonight about it. That's between me and him. We'll get it settled out. That's the thing about guys in this series. Guys in this series always find ways to work this out so you can go back to having fun and racing on Sunday."

J.J. YELEY - NO. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 11th: - ON HIS LAP: "We are pretty happy with the lap. If you are going to go out there and really put down at lap there's a chance that you are going to go to far. So we put down a nice conservative lap and hopefully we'll end up in or near the top-10. You have a lot more to gain by being conservative so you can get slowed down and pick up the throttle early, then if you roll too much speed and get tight. With the straight-aways as long as they are here, as soon as you pick up the throttle the faster your lap is going to be. When we made our mock qualifying run the car was really tight and I just couldn't pick up the throttle enough. The guys went to work on the car and the Interstate Batteries car turning really good. I think I could have gone out there and run a bit harder and maybe picked up two-tenths but I think the pole is going to be a guy that goes out the last five spots or so."

QUALIFYING IS USUALLY A PRETTY GOOD BAROMETER OF HOW YOU ARE GOING TO RACE. DO YOU FEEL GOOD ABOUT SUNDAY AFTER THE STRONG LAP? "We don't ever have horsepower issues at Joe Gibbs Racing. We have the new Chevy RO7 engine here they are putting out a substantial amount of power. You definitely need to have horsepower here but at the same time you need a car that turns well. Having three distinct turns here getting the setup is something difficult. But as long as you get off the money turn, turn three, your day will go pretty good."

DALE EARNHARDT, JR, NO. 8 BUDWEISER MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 13th: "We are pretty pleased with that lap. I had some help from Martin and his guys with some things that really helped our car. He had a pretty good lap too. We are all running pretty good right now so we are all pretty excited. There was SOMETHING laying in the middle of the garage area when I came through to get in the garage stall but the car is ok. The SOMETHING is ok too."

ON BEING CLOSE TO BEING IN THE CHASE: "We have been inching closer and closer each week. That is where we really want to be. We want to make that Chase. We accomplished one of our goals so far which was to win a race. The next one is to make the Chase. I am real happy with my team. They have been working hard and doing a great job for me. We just need to click off some more wins to get a shot at the Championship."

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE'S MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 7th: "We really like this track. We always have a good setup here and Chad Knaus is one of the best on working out a great strategy. I hate being that far off the pole, 6/10th is a lot, so some work to do there. Not a bad lap though. I think a little too tight. I think we had the tires mislead us there at the end. We tightened the car up and it was pretty tight the whole run. A little smarter now and feel really good about the effort we put up. Not the best in qualifying but as long as we are in the top-five, top-10 it is ok with me. Chad really works on turn three from a setup side.

"When I get in the car on the race weekend, we are just trying to fix the biggest problem, what ever that is. He has all things considered in both ends of the setup. If I am struggling in turn one, we try to fix that or whatever the biggest problem is at that point."

JEFF BURTON, NO. 31 AT&T RACING MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 10th: - "I gave up a lot of speed in the tunnel turn and the exit of one. I don't know, maybe I need to be playing basketball today. I have a great car; that helped us get a decent lap. If I wouldn't have lost so much, we were going to go faster for sure but hope we end up in the top-15. When I do a bad job, if we end up in the top-15, that isn't too bad."

WARD BURTON, NO. 4 STATE WATER HEATERS MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 20th: "We had a solid car at the end of practice. All these guys on this State Water Heaters Chevrolet have made really good adjustments. We were off a little when we got here. We picked up about 8/10th during practice and now another second so we are going to be racing Sunday and that is what it is all about. We are doing this with about as little money as anybody can do it with, probably the lowest amount in the garage. I am so proud of the effort these guys put forth. If we could ever get the kind of support some of our competition has got, we could beat some of them. These guys are my heroes, they work their tales off."

DENNY HAMLIN AND MARTIN TRUEX JR PUT MONTE CARLO SS IN 2ND & 3RD STARTING SPOTS FOR POCONO 500

POST QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPTS

DENNY HAMLIN, NO. 11 FEDEX GROUND MONTE CARLO SS - Qualified 2nd
MARTIN TRUEX JR., NO. 1 BASS PRO SHOPS MONTE CARLO - Qualified 3rd

HAMLIN: TELL US ABOUT QUALLIFYING: "I definitely wasn't as optimistic about qualifying this time as I was in the past. Today our car was really, really good in race trim. We ran about five laps or so. We have a little graph on our monitors that stipulates where your lap times go and we were just making straight lines. That's really good at this race track. The tires wear here. We saw some guys lay down some fast laps and then it would shoot up north. We definitely have a car that can win on Sunday."

HAMLIN: IS IT HARD NOT TO COME INTO THIS RACE WITH SUCH CONFIDENCE THAT YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO MAKE THE ADJUSTMENTS TO GET BETTER? "Yeah, definitely. We unloaded like we did in the second race, and ended up working our way back to where we were in the first race during the course of practice. It's the same car, but there is virtually nothing the same other than the seat and center roll cage. But it unloaded just like it did in the first race and the second race and it was really good. We weren't top of the charts last year in practice by any means, but in the race we really showed up. I think it's going to be the same song, second verse this year."

HAMLIN: DID YOU THINK YOU HAD ANYTHING FOR RYAN NEWMAN'S LAP? "I didn't - until I actually went out on the race track. When he laid that lap down I was sitting in the motor coach. I didn't think I could until I got on the race track and sped up down the back stretch and went through the tunnel turn, I realized the track had a ton of grip. After that, I really thought I had a shot at him. I got through Turn 1 and didn't think there was anybody who could be faster than us through there. But when I got to the Tunnel Turn it was driver error. I got loose in and lost a ton of time through there. So, we lost it by three-tenths. It's kind of a wash. We would have been right there on top of his lap. We could have gone either way had I hit my marks. Either way it was still a good run for us. We didn't get the pole. However, we're still on the front row start and we've got just as good a chance coming off of (Turn) 1 leading as we do if we would have gotten the pole."

HAMLIN: WHAT IS IT ABOUT POCONO THAT SUITS YOUR DRIVING STYLE SO WELL? "For some reason, I can really figure out what the car is doing here. On flat tracks in particular, it seems like I can really read the car really good and I just get a good feel for it here. It's one of few race tracks where I can really feel the front tire and the throttle. I think that translates into speed when you can work on the car a lot better."

TRUEX JR: DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOUR WIN AT DOVER IS KICKING THE GATE IN AND YOU'RE READY TO RIP HERE? "Absolutely. We've been on a steady climb in the standings since California, where we were 42nd, I think, after there. We've had a good season. But things are just starting to go the way we need them to. We've had some great race cars but not much to show for it for a good part of the year. It feels good to show it finally. I'm just real happy with my race team. They're doing a great job. All the guys are working real well together. The difference right now is whether we unload a good car or a decent car we can make it better no matter what. That's been the key for us."

TRUEX JR: DO YOU EVER FIND YOURSELF WONDERING WHAT IT WAS THAT HELPED MAKE THAT TURN SO THAT YOU CAN STORE IT AWAY FOR LATER IN CASE YOU NEED IT? "From our side and what we've been working on, I don't think it's been a switch. It's been a gradual increase in performance. Since the end of last year we've had really good cars. We've run in the top five and top 10 a lot. We haven't had a car that we would dominate like we did last week, but we've had cars that are capable of winning races. The first two this year we thought we could win - the (Daytona) 500 we ran real strong. At California we didn't get to show what we had. We qualified up front and were running fourth when we blew up. We've had good cars. We've had a lot of unfortunate things happen to us but that's all part of racing. We're kind of hitting our stride and showing what we've got now and getting the results that we deserve."