CASEY MEARS, NO. 5 KELLOGG’S / CARQUEST IMPALA SS:

“We found some things that seem like it might helped it out a little bit. The Kellogg’s / Carquest Chevrolet is running good. It’s really hard to tell. These cars are so much tighter. You go out there and you think man, this thing feels horrible. But then they say you’ve got pretty competitive lap times. So relative to the field, I think we’re pretty good. It’s just hard to get a good balance on what is good in this car because it just doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t turn very well. So we’ve got to continue to work at it and I think it looks like we’re not going to get a whole lot of practice in today but I think we’ve got a good place to start and we’ve got a good starting spot, and so we’ll see how it goes from there.”

WHEN YOU COME TO FONTANA, THIS IS YOUR HOME TURF. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU WHEN PEOPLE TELL YOU THEY HAVE SEEN YOUR DAD OR YOUR GRANDFATHER RACE? “It’s fun. When we come back here you get a lot of memories with dad (Roger Mears) and Rick (Mears) racing at Ontario and then they used to come down here and race at Ascot Park and Riverside. There is just a lot of history here in Southern California for my family. It’s funny because we usually see people coming out of the woodwork that we haven’t seen for years, from the off-road races and from he early days. My dad actually ran some stock car races at Riverside. It’s fun to come back and talk to everybody.”

CLINT BOWYER, NO. 07 DIRECTV IMPALA SS:

“These cars are a handful. You’re going to have to get up on the wheel to make it happen this year. And that’s a lot of fun for us drivers. It should make for an interesting race out of this California track. I’m looking forward to it really. I like no practice, you know. A little bit of practice is fine with me to see what you got and make the best of the race.”

MARK MARTIN, NO. 8 PRINCIPAL FINANCIAL GROUP IMPALA SS:

ON MAKING 700TH START IN CUP COMPETITION: "It means I have been around a long time. I want to thank Principal Financial; they have been around longer - 125 years. Longer than I have. I have had good fortune of driving fast cars and working with really great people all through the years. What is important to me is how fast we went in those starts, taking the green flag in those races. Pretty fired up. Our No. 8 car is fast this weekend, really fast."

ON CUP PRACTICE BEING CANCELED: "I am really glad. We came out for a two day test and at the end of the first day, I got out and turned it over to Aric (Almirola) so I didn't run the second day. We were almost the heat that day, I mean we were really fast, top of the board all afternoon. Really strong. We were fourth fastest right out of the gate here. Made a couple of adjustments, the car was really loose and got it to tighten up.

“It is all things we can easily get back out of the car tomorrow if the track latches down. I am glad there is no more practice. Now, I don't know what our car is going to do at lap 15 versus other cars, but I do know it has speed, a lot of speed. If I am able to stay on the tires and manage them from there, we should be a contender. Now we don't have experience with these cars, so I don't know what is acceptable. It does spin the tires, it is loose in, hard to turn in the corners. All of those things. I don't know if that is acceptable or not until we place it in competition tomorrow. But for 10 laps it looks really good against the competition."