KASEY KAHNE (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

“Pocono is different because you’ve got three different corners and you’ve got to have your car handling in all of them to go fast. Just knowing the track is a big part of it. I really like racing here. I like the track It’s pretty different and fun and there’s a lot to it. It’s a good track for me. You’ve just got to get your car right and work on doing that. To me turn 3 is usually the most difficult one just because usually you can have your car right everywhere else and three will be pretty decent. If you’re off a little bit, three is going to be bad. Three is the hardest corner for me and it leads down a long straightaway, so you need to get off of it pretty good. If you don’t you get eaten up down the straightaway.

COMMENT ON RACING AT WILLIAMS GROVE “I’m pretty excited really. It’s one of the tracks I really enjoyed racing and watching. I haven’t gotten to race there in a long time. It’ll be great to have our Foundation Race out there on June 27th. Hopefully a lot of people will show up and enjoy it. It’s going to be a lot of fun. A hope a big crowd of fans come and enjoy watching. I know Dave Blaney is going to come, and I’m working on a few more drivers and all the best Pennsylvania guys. It should make for a fun evening. Back then I just wanted to win races. I didn’t care how I did it. I just wanted to run up front and Williams-Grove was a track I wanted to win at.”

COMMENT ON KURT BUSCH’S PENALTY “I don’t know. I don’t really care. You have to take care of the people on pit road. That’s for sure. You don’t do anything to cause anybody on pit road harm. It’s hard enough to do what they have to do with all of us on pit road trying to do a pit stop. That’s hard enough to take care of that, let alone have somebody else when would you least be expecting to have a car close to yours. You have to take care of those drivers. We’re in a big 3,500-pound car and they’re all by themselves. You have to take care of them. Whether that was right or wrong or what all happened there, go ask somebody else. I don’t really know. I’m not going to do it. I’ll tell you that much.”

WHAT WOULD A COT RACE BE LIKE HERE? “The cars would be slower for one. The cars are very aero independent. They were really tough at Dover last week. You’d get behind a car and instantly slow down a tenth to two tenths. They need some work on these types of tracks I feel. I really enjoyed the race. I really enjoyed driving the car of tomorrow. In order to make them a better race when you get to a bigger track where aero is even bigger than what it was at Dover, we’ve got to keep working on that. I don’t think they’re ready for Pocono yet. Definitely for aero (Dover provided the biggest test yet). There wasn’t a car out there that got behind a car and picked up speed or ran the same speed. Every single car dropped off a tenth and cars that weren’t handling perfect would drop off two or three tenths. That makes it tough to pass when you’re wheeling a car like that. They’re just like any other racecar. “

DO YOU THINK THIS RACE IS TOO LONG? “Yes. I don’t know if you’d have a better race no matter what you do. It just all comes down to how everybody is at the end and where the restart is and if the cars are close together. Three hundred laps could be a really bad race. Five hundred laps could be a bad race. You don’t know, but 500 is a long time here. I think 400 would be plenty for the fans and drivers and teams and NASCAR and everybody.”

DO YOU HAVE MORE CONFIDENCE AFTER YOUR RUN AT DOVER? “Yeah, I feel good. I felt like that was our best weekend of the year, qualifying, practice and then the race. That was our best weekend of the year. I feel good about it.”

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO SAVE FUEL? “It’s tough to save fuel. There are little things you can do. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t seem to work as well. I thought I saved a lot of fuel before and ran out just at the same time I would have if I didn’t save fuel, so there’s a few things you can do that I know works. Other things you think works but may not. At this place, under green flag laps, saving fuel is pretty tough.”

HOW CLOSE IS THE FUEL CALCULATIONS? “They’re usually pretty close on their calls and what they do. If they think you can save a little bit of fuel they’ll go for it, and it can happen for sure. If you car is handling good you can save more fuel than if your car is pushing the nose. The tighter you are the more fuel you use up. Casey Mears had a good car at Charlotte and it worked fine because he had such a good car there, too.”

COMMENT ON MICHIGAN “I always run good there. We have in the past anyway. I’ve got a win there, a second, a fourth and some to fives. It’s a good track for us. Whether it will be this or not, we’ve still got a lot of work to be where we want to be. Everybody is working hard. We’ll see how this weekend goes and it’ll tell us how we’ll be at Michigan I think. It’ll helps us out, I know that.”

ELLIOTT SADLER (No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

COMMENT ON THE SETUP FOR POCONO “It’s definitely a different racetrack than anything else we race at. It’s one of those tracks where you’ve got to give a little here to get a little there. You’re not going to have a perfect race car in all three corners. Usually you’re a little tight in turn one and you’re a little good in the tunnel and you’re going to be a little free in turn three. It’s just the kind of scenario this track gives you. It’s fun for me, especially when we shifted. I really liked it a lot better then. That was really cool shifting six times a lap.

“More the brakes than the engine (concerns me for the final 100 miles). We’ve had some brake problems here because you don’t downshift anymore to get into the first turn. Engine-wise, I think we’re OK. Our guys have done a good job with engine development and the new gear rule and shifting rule, we usually don’t turn a lot or rpm’s here. I think engine-wise we’ll be fine. We’ll just try to conserve the brakes as much as we can all weekend and use them up the last hundred miles.

“I like Michigan. It’s in the manufacturers’ backyard, so a lot of bragging rights come with that race. We want to go there and run well. It was my first race with the 19 car last year. We qualified outside pole and finished 10th, so it was a great weekend for us. Hopefully we can go back again next week and run well. We need some momentum right now on this team, so that would be a good place to go.

“Pocono is a good place to come. My bus drivers talks about it. He came up here on his honeymoon – his first one and his second one and his third one. It must be a pretty cool place to come. We’ve always had great fans here and they get pretty close to the action here. This place has a lot of cool attributes to it.

“I’ve already got a 25-point penalty this year. It’s very hard (to overcome), but I like penalties given out. NASCAR came to us two or three years ago and it was just fines at the time. The fines didn’t seem to be working, so they started taking points away. I think that gets a lot more attention. It’ll make everybody focus a llittle more about staying within the box of rules. Anytime you’re hit with a penalty it hurts, no matter how many it is.

“Sometimes we do get mad at each other on the racetrack, but I think we should leave it on the racetrack, period. You shouldn’t take the lives of crew members in your hands with the racecar. I’m great friends with Kurt. He’s a great guy to race with. I just think he got really upset and his emotions got the best of him and he just took it out in the wrong place. I think if he had calmed down a little bit and talked to Tony after the race everything would have been OK. Let’s leave it on the racetrack. That’s my opinion of it. He did get hit with 100 points, so I’m sure he’ll think about it next time before it happens and we all will knowing that’s a pretty stiff penalty. Try to control all your emotions the best you can, but leave it all on the track. Don’t get the pit crew members involved. I think the penalty is appropriate. It’s not unjust whatsoever.”

YOU’RE HALFWAY THOUGH THE SEASON AND STILL NOT OUT OF THE CHASE “We’re only 160 points out. These next three weekends are huge for the 19 car. Most of our struggles have come on the COT racetracks. We have two good racetracks coming up with last year’s car here at Pocono and Michigan. We had a real good test at Sears Point. We usually run pretty well out there on the road course. The next three weekends are going to be do or die for us as the 19 team. I think if we’re under 100 points when we leave Sears Point we’ve got a great chance of making The Chase. If we’re over 100 points our hill is going to be pretty steep to climb. We’ll see, but that’s the way we’re looking at it. We need to take it one race at a time, qualify well, race well and then move on to the next week, but I’d really like to be under 100 points leaving Sears Point. It’s tighter than it’s ever been It seems like four or five guys have hit it and have taken off and everybody else is bunched up. I think the competition is so tough these days, there’s not much room between the seventh place team and the 25th place team.”