JUAN PABLO MONTOYA (No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger)

“Two weeks ago I was happy with a 19th-place finish, and I finished eighth today and I’m a little disappointed. We made a mistake in the pits, and we really didn’t lose too much. We just couldn’t get going in the beginning, and that cost us a lot. We couldn’t keep up with the guys in front and always had four or five backmarkers between the guys and myself. It was hard, but from there on the car was good. The Texaco/Havoline Dodge car was amazing today. Racing is racing. “I don’t know. He (Tony Stewart) just got really close to me. He got me loose. I went into him and he spun. I tried to pass him three or four times and he never gave me room. I went in a little different and got really loose, and I don’t know what happened. We touched a little bit and the next I see he’s spinning.

“I don’t think Chip hired me to run 20th every weekend, and I didn’t come here to run 20th every weekend. Is it going to happen? Yeah, it’s going to happen a lot of weekends, but our aim is to run up front.

“The car got better today, and it was really good when I was in clean air in front of the leaders. Then when we were in traffic it was just way too tight. I think anybody’s that’s seen me race knows that (I’m not going to back down). I respect everybody. Anybody who has a run at me I’ll give them enough room to race, but that’s just racing.”

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

“It’s just frustrating. These kinds of tracks were our strongest last year, and we thought we’d be able to make up some points this weekend. We just couldn’t get a handle on things today. We’ve got 19 more races to make the Chase, so we’ll just keep plugging away to earn the most points we can each week.”

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

“We battled it and did as good as we could today. It was decent, but it was hard to get hold of much. We got a decent finish, so we’ll keep working on it and try to get it better. I got everything I could out of it. It was on the verge of disaster all day and we did things not to have that crash, so it was all right.”

KENNY FRANCIS (Team Director No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

“Kasey never gave up. The guy in the pits never gave up. We worked on it and tried to get the best finish we could. We knew coming into the race that we didn’t feel like our car was going to handle the way we wanted it. It didn’t handle very good at the start and we lost a couple of laps, but we kept working on it and finally it wasn’t too bad at the end. It was competitive at the end. He got 20th, so we’ll just have to take that and build on it and go on. We really don’t know why we’re missing it a little bit on these downforce tracks. The first couple of races we had pretty good cars and we had a blown motor and a couple of accidents. This one we just missed the setup. This is a little different body. We were trying something to make it a little better and we probably made it a little bit worse. We’ll just have to go back and regroup.”

KURT BUSCH (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger)

“Our hearts dropped when we saw the yellow pop out, being in position for a real good run. Who knew where we would have ended up? Still, it’s not as much of a hardship as Roy (crew chief McCauley) and (his wife) Amy are going through. That was in my mind when we were up front leading by about half a lap. It felt like we had everything in place for what we needed to do for the Miller Lite Dodge to win. Out front, the Dodge liked it. It liked the hot conditions today. It just didn’t seem like we had the fuel mileage we needed. We had to pit a lap or two short, and that lap or two short killed us at the end. It bit us today, but we’ve still got great Penske-Jasper power. We’re much better on the mile and a half tracks, and that was the big picture here today. It gives us motivation. It was bittersweet knowing we had a car that could have won today and didn’t, but all-in-all with the big picture it was a good day for us.”

ROGER PENSKE (Owner Penske Racing)

“I think Kurt drove a great race today. This is a major step forward for us on a mile and a half track. I think the crew did a great job with Troy Raker stepping in as crew chief because Roy has his personal thing with his wife. We got the yellow right as we pitted, and that was just bad luck, but we’re building. We had a good car at Atlanta and we had a good car here, and I think that’s going to help us as we get toward the end of the season. We led some laps today, and you can’t win unless you lead laps. We did that today, and if you remember Kurt led the most laps at Daytona. We’ve got a lot of racing left, and I think we’re going to lead a lot more laps before it’s all said and done.”

DAVID STREMME (No. 40 Coors Light Dodge Charger)

“That was a great top 10 finish, and it’s a career best, but I thought we were headed for a better finish today. Still, a top 10 at Texas is pretty good and we moved back up to 12th in the series standings. We’ve done what we set out to do in these first few races. We wanted to get top 15 finishes and do the best we could in the points. We just need to keep doing what we’re doing and we’ll be OK.”