Richmond Qualifying Notes & Quotes
Written by John Davison · May 14, 2005
Dodge drivers Kasey Kahne and Ryan Newman headed the chart following qualifying for the Chevy American Revolution 400 Friday. For the second race in a row, Kahne earned the pole position ahead of Newman. Here, thanks to various teams and manufacturers, are the collected notes and quotes from qualifying:
Tony Stewart No. 20 The Home Depot Chevrolet 3rd position - Hopefully it’s a good enough time. It’s 3/10 faster than what we ran in practice, so it’s a great time for The Home Depot Chevrolet. Zippy and everybody has really dug in hard this weekend, knowing it’s one of our better tracks. Maybe this will be the weekend.
We’ll see if that holds up. There are some really good cars still to go out. Hopefully this will give us a top-5 spot and it would be great if it could hold up for the pole but there are some good cars behind us. The key is getting a good pit stop and good starting spot for tomorrow night.
Kevin Harvick No. 29 GM Goodwrench Chevrolet 7th position - Yeah, it was a good run for the GM Goodwrench Chevrolet. We made a run real late there in qualifying. We had to make some adjustments to the car. We felt we had a lot better race car than we had a qualifying car. I think going late helped us, but still a good lap for the GM Goodwrench Chevrolet.
HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO START UP NEAR THE FRONT AT RICHMOND? That’s a good question because I’ve never started up near the front. It’s definitely good to qualify up front. But we’re looking forward to it.
Kyle Busch No. 5 Kellogg’s/Star Wars Episode III Chevrolet 10th position - The lap was really good. The Star Wars car acted well in qualifying. It wasn’t so good in practice. We kind of struggled a little bit with it. The guys made some awesome changes there between practice and qualifying in order to get it better for the race. It seems as though we should be pretty good. Hopefully when we take the tape off and make a few other adjustments to it, we should be alright. This impound procedure has kind of been kicking our butt lately. If we can run up somewhere near the front, I think we’ll be pretty decent with that.
Jeff Burton No. 31 Cingular Wireless 12TH position - HOW WAS YOUR LAP? Well, that was pretty good. The first lap was very good. A great first lap and then I tried to get a little bit more, and couldn’t get any more, so it’s going to be a decent starting spot. I thought we had a shot at the pole tonight. I’m happy with the lap. It should get us a top-15 starting spot and we can contend for a win from there.
TEMPERATURES Yeah, it’s going to be a lot warmer tomorrow. It’s going to be a lot slicker when we start. When it cools down, I expect conditions will be a lot like they were today.
Dave Blaney No. 07 Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet 19th position - HOW DID YOUR LAP GO? It wasn’t a bad lap. We’ve been fighting tight all day and we still were a little bit tight. We’ll see. Get us a decent starting spot there.
Jeff Gordon No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet 20th position - You know, you have the impound rules you’re going to give up a little bit if you work on your race setup. I think we’ve got a great race car. And I thought we were going to have a good qualifying run. I got down into 1 and got in there really deep. The car hadn’t shown any signs of loose and I was feeling really good about it. And right as I got down in there, that thing really cut on me and the back thing came around. I’m just happy right now to still have a race car in one piece.
Michael Waltrip No. 15 NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet 23rd position - HOW WAS YOUR LAP? It was boring
HOW DID YOU CAR FEEL? It felt loose. I got it sideways in the center on both turns on that second lap and so, instead of turning left with the gas wide open, I’m turning right and waiting on the gas. I just was classic “loose.”
Really good feeling car. I’m proud of that lap, considering how sideways I was. It was within a tenth of being in the ballpark. It was just a little bit too loose today.
Mike Bliss, No. 0 Net Zero Best Buy Chevrolet 24th position - That surprised me. We didn’t do a qualifying attempt in practice because we weren’t very good. We changed a lot of stuff. I was a little bit surprised at how good it was. I told Bootie (Barker) we better free it up a lot more now because if it ran that good in practice. I’m excited. I think the Net Zero Best Buy Monte Carlo is going to be good. I love this race track. It’s a lot of fun to run it under the night.
Joe Nemechek No. 01 U.S. Army Chevrolet 25th position - You’re locked in with a limited practice. I think my Army Chevy is good. Just getting the one lap there really hurt me. I’ll take it.
Jimmie Johnson No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet 28th position - I’m thinking it’s going to be a top 15, top 10 which we’d be very happy with. We were, I think 40th in practice. I was having a pretty hard time with things. Chad went to the drawing board and did some things with setup and it went well. We had a little carbuerator problem on my lap, so we’re worried and concerned right now with what it may be. Something coming up off the turns. We’ll cross our fingers and see how it works out.
THE TEMPERATURE WILL BE MUCH DIFFERENT TOMORROW. DOES THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE HERE? I usually get looser at night. So, maybe the track frees up as the sun goes down. We typically don’t see much of a swing in the track here. I don’t know why. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. No. 8 Budweiser Chevrolet 27th position - It was way better than we practiced. I was kind of happy with the lap. We normally run pretty good here. I think it will be a good race car but we just have to find a little bit more grip overall. It was a good lap.
DID YOU MAKE MANY CHANGES BETWEEN PRACTICE AND QUALIFYING? Not many. We were pretty happy with the way the car drove as it was setup to race. It’s a crapshoot when you tape it up for qualifying. It’s what you got to do.
Brian Vickers No. 25 GMAC/ditech.com Chevrolet 29th position - We definitely picked up some in the second lap. The first lap the car was just sliding all over the place. We were just extremely tight in practice. We made a bunch of big changes. I think the car is a lot better but even coming to the white flag lap the car was still pretty loose and that hurt the last lap too.
Mike Wallace No. 4 Lucas Oil Chevrolet 30th position - We’re real happy with that. We always want to improve on what we ran in practice. We ran a 30 something in practice and then we went out and ran a 10-something in qualifying. So, real happy. There were a lot of This team has stepped up all year long and given us better race cars. The whole Lucas Oil team, Morgan McClure. You know, this is a really good group of guys. We’re having fun.
Bobby Hamilton, Jr. No. 32 Tide Chevrolet 32nd position - Good. It started off bad in practice, but qualifying was okay.
Robby Gordon No. 7 Jim Beam Chevrolet 33rd position - Well, obviously we’re third of three but pretty happy with time. We went faster than in practice by 2 and a half tenths. We think that will get us in the show.We’ll see how qualifying goes from here on out. We’re hoping to get the Jim Beam car in the show and have a good race from there.
Scott Riggs No. 10 Valvoline Chevrolet 36th position - ARE YOU HAPPY WITH YOUR QUALIFYING LAP? No, not at all. The track is a lot cooler. I expected us to run a lot faster than that. I just got into the corner a little too hot down there in Turn 1 on my second lap and cost me a lot.
Jason Leffler No. 11 FedEx Ground Chevrolet 38th position - It wasn’t a very good lap. Down in One and Two we were a little loose. Turn Three and Four was really good and better than we’ve been all though practice. All in all it’s good enough to get us in the field. We’ll go racing tomorrow.
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