AJ ALLMENDINGER, No. 84 RED BULL TOYOTA: “Great job by the Red Bull team. I don’t know if that’s going to get us in. Obviously it’s going to get faster. We’re going to have to sit here and watch. That’s going to be hard. I was happy with my lap, not so much the first one. The second one was good. It’s one of those things that I was so nervous before qualifying but my crew chief, Rick Viers, he’s as cool as the other side of the pillow. He just kind of keeps me cool and we’re all good. This is the same car that we had at Phoenix but we tested [at Richmond]. They’ve been working hard on it and we’re improving it. I hope that gets us in. It’s obviously going to get cooler but I’m pleased no matter what.”

DAVID RAGAN, No. 6 AAA TRAVEL FORD: “It was pretty good. I wished we could have picked up a little bit more. That was a pickup of about a tenth or so from practice. I wish we could have run about a .60 or something. But we’ve got a pretty good racecar, I think. It hurt me a little bit jumping out of the Busch car back in the Cup car but we’ll race ‘em tomorrow.” YOU WERE THE FIFTH CAR OUT TO MAKE A RUN. DID THAT HURT YOU IN QUALIFYING? “Depends on how cool it gets. Usually it would hurt us a lot more. I don’t think it’s going to hurt much. Maybe a little but not much.”

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, No. 42 TEXACO/HAVOLINE DODGE: “We improved a lot from practice. We have a really good racecar, just in qualifying, I wasn’t that happy with it. What worries me is the track is getting cooler and the sun is going to go down. The track is just going to get faster. You hear that [cheering from the crowd]? Exactly, that’s the problem right there.” ARE YOU GETTING MORE ACCLIMATED TO THESE CARS? “No, it’s more about the team. The whole team has struggled the last few races on the Car of Tomorrow so as a team we needed to improve and I think we have. I don’t think we’re there yet but I had just two clean laps. I was more concerned about getting a clean lap than a fast lap.” ARE YOU GETTING MORE ACCLIMATED TO BOUNCING BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN THE CUP CAR AND THE BUSCH CAR? “It’s a big deal. It’s not easy. Not 20 minutes ago, a half-hour ago, I was doing the other car.”

DAVID REUTIMANN, No. 00 DOMINO’S TOYOTA: ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THAT LAP? “Yeah, I think so. I just hope it holds up. You know, sure, you’d like to be in the top-five or top-10 or whatever but you’ve gotta beat those eight guys. That’s my concern right now. A couple of guys, the 22 and some other guys we’ve got to dodge, and that’s the main deal right now. So hopefully if we can dodge a couple more of ‘em we’ll know that we will be in.” YOU AND ALLMENDINGER BOTH SAID YOU HOPE TO MAKE THE RACE AFTER POSTING A TIME INSIDE THE TOP-10. “The thing that screws with your head and changes your perspective on everything is all you’re worried about is outrunning those guys. And after you make sure you outrun those guys you’re like ‘Well, where did we end up overall’ so it’s completely opposite of what normal people do.” SO THE FIRST THING YOU LOOK AT IS WHERE YOU RAN IN RELATION TO THE OTHER DRIVERS WHO HAVE TO QUALIFY ON SPEED? “That’s all I even look at. I don’t even look at anybody else. It doesn’t make a difference. If you don’t outrun those guys you won’t even have to worry about it. And then the other side of the deal you’ve got is we haven’t make a race run since we’ve been here. Everything we’ve been doing is qualifying so now, good Lord willing we get in the race tomorrow, we’re just going to have to start and hopefully get it close, I hope.” THAT COULD BE HUGE HERE. “It could be huge. At Talladega, there’s not much handling and we all know that. But this place is different. It’s all about handling here.”

PAUL MENARD, No. 15 MENARDS/MOEN CHEVROLET (NOTE: MENARD WAS THE FINAL DRIVER TO EARN A STARTING POSITION IN SATURDAY NIGHT’S RACE) “We picked up a lot of time but we kind of figured we would with the track cooling off but it didn’t really change a whole lot. The car was driving pretty decent in practice. We made just a couple little changes and kind of relied on our qualifying order to help us out because we were going out late. That kind of blew out the window with everybody kind of jumping in line and we actually went out probably 15 cars early and that kind of hurt us. This is nerve racking. It’s a tough deal but Pops and all the guys give me a good car each week and we just keep working on it.” HOW DIFFICULT IS IT AFTER YOU QUALIFY TO SIT AND WATCH? “I start playing my Sudoku game and just try to forget about it. It’s my lucky game, I guess. Every time I play it, I played that at Talladega and we got in, too, so I keep that close. It’s nerve racking.” HOW FAR BEHIND ARE YOU ONCE THE RACE STARTS? “We didn’t do any race runs so it’s going to be interesting. We’ll get with the 8 and the 1 and kind of see where they’re at. Our setup is quite a bit different. I know Dale Jr. is pretty happy with his race runs so we’ll compare notes. We can’t really change a whole lot but at least we’ve got kind of an idea of where we need to go. If we need to make a big change at the start of the race we can probably do that.”

RAYBESTOS ROOKIE CROWN ROYAL 400 QUALIFYING NOTES: