Where the Raybestos Rookies will start in the Kobalt Tools 500:
Carpentier 21st
Franchitti 23rd
Hornish Jr. 33rd
Smith 41st

PATRICK CARPENTIER IN THE No. 10 CINTAS DODGE WAS THE TOP RAYBESTOS ROOKIE IN TONIGHT’S QUALIFYING SESSION. “I’ve done some roller coaster rides but never got stress like that, let me tell you. The first lap was not fast enough and we needed a much better lap on second lap and I just went in so hard through the corner and same thing in three and four and the car stuck, got sideways a little bit. The car was much better in qualifying than today. We’re getting a lot of time for practice. I’m pretty happy. The Dodge ran fine and for Cintas, hopefully we’re going to be in the race this weekend. Need to learn some more but let me tell you I gave everything I had so that’s it.” HOW MENTALLY CHALLENGING IS QUALIFYING? “It’s hard. It’s harder than I thought it would be I’ll be really honest with you. You come in and you just have fun and it’s all fun and games until the season starts and you get into it and then it gets tougher and tougher. It’s mental toughness. It’s always been about that in racing and the guys who are the toughest are going to stay and the guys that are not are going to go home so hopefully we’re tough enough here.” YOU ARE LOCKED IN THE SHOW. COMMENT ON THAT SECOND LAP OF QUALIFYING. “I gave it everything I had. I knew that Mike was silent on the radio so I knew the first lap was not quick enough. I had nothing to lose. I gave everything the second lap. It made the car a little bit loose. That’s what’s fast, you know, so it was perfectly good. I entered the corner really fast and came out loose but didn’t rub the wall. We’re going to be in the show. I’m so happy. We were so far off this morning. We came back and the team worked with all the guys to make it happen so I’m really happy.” YOU GET RACE PRACTICE ON SATURDAY. “Yeah, I need it [laughs]. You can do one lap. I did the lap and I seemed to be able to do that lap but I need practice tomorrow and make the car a little bit better and run with the guys again and do that race. We need to start accumulating some points. I wanted to do that in Vegas and got bad luck in the race so we don’t want to be too far behind. Like I said earlier, I call ‘em those Freaky Fridays because they’re tough on your nerves and it’s stressful. Hopefully we get some more points this weekend but I’m happy. When I get to run the whole weekend I love it.” DO YOU CONCENTRATE ON THOSE AROUND 35TH IN POINTS AND FOCUS ON TRYING TO BEAT THEM? “Naw, for us, honestly, there is nobody to beat. We just need to get a lot of points. We need to finish in the top-25 for us is pretty good. Every race you can start doing that and hopefully by Talladega we start getting closer to be locked in. We’re going to have to get some points before thinking to beat anybody.” THIS TRACK HAS BEEN FAVORABLE TO OPEN WHEEL GUYS IN THE PAST. “It’s been forgiving in qualifying because I got loose a couple of places and I brought it home [laughs]. I’m pretty happy about that. Hopefully it will be in the race. I just want to be there at the end of the race and it seems like with these cars it’s so difficult to battle and fight with these guys. Every time you think ‘All right, I’m comfortable enough and I’m going to start fighting with these guys’ you backed it up into the wall. You’ve got to be so patient, even if you want the learning curve to go faster, it just take a lot of time. It’s still going to take some time and for this weekend I just want to run laps, get some points.”

DARIO FRANCHITTI, No. 40 FASTENAL DODGE: “Certainly the most aggressive I’ve been just driving the car. I had to just learn it, to get on it, even when it’s not feeling so good but I have to say the Fastenal Dodge felt really good. Amazed how much grip there was on the track. Could have probably been a little bit quicker but I didn’t make any mistakes so pretty happy.” IS THERE SUCH A THING AS GETTING USED TO THE WORN OUT TRACK, THE BUMPS, AND THE CAR MOVING AROUND HERE? “Just getting used to the way that we’ve got the car setup and the way these things slide around, especially I noticed here in Atlanta with the track being worn out the tires go off a lot quicker and you lose grip. But qualifying trim, we did two practice runs and our actual run and we’re pretty happy with that. I don’t know that it’s actually going to matter because I’ve got a funny feeling that the rain is on its way.” YOU PICKED UP A LOT ON THE SECOND LAP. “I opened my shield. I had a medium smoke shield on and I was really struggling to see going into Turn 3 so I opened that and that combined me being a little bit more comfortable I was able to go a good bit quicker.”

SAM HORNISH, JR., No. 77 PENSKE TRUCK RENTAL DODGE: “It was too tight. We didn’t get a whole lot of time to do qualifying runs. We worked on race setup the early part of the session not knowing, obviously, what we’re going to get tomorrow. Being fortunate enough to know that we’re in the race we’re able to do that. Obviously we’d like to qualify better but we were just too tight and with everything going on with it sprinkling and them going on and drying, I figured the cautious approach was probably better than trying to go flat out. The big thing was keep working at it and made the Penske Truck Rental Dodge better for tomorrow and hopefully a lot better for the race. Just be smart, stay out of trouble and we need to get some good points this weekend and get ourselves back in the top-35.” HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO SIT IN PIT ROAD AND WAIT? “It was difficult enough waiting for the other cars to go let alone sitting there and seeing the track dryers stopped beside us. That’s part of the deal. You’ve got to be patient. You can’t allow things like that to get in your head and sometimes that’s pretty hard to do, to just sit there and say ‘Okay, it’s just part of the deal and it’s going to take a little bit of time.’ Once you’re all strapped in ready to go you feel like all right let’s get this over with because you want to know how you’re going to do and what the car’s got in it. We know that every time it gets darker here the cars free up. Well it didn’t really free up from where we were at in practice qualifying for us. We just missed on our setup. We knew we weren’t going to go for the pole but we definitely felt like there was a couple of tenths left out there.”