"With these new motor rules I think it's got everybody in a little bit of a panic because it's so hard to suck up and keep it there," according to Bobby Hamilton, driver of the STP Pontiac Grand Prix. "If you pull out it's a lot worse. I'm happy with the way the car is driving. We're pretty happy with the car."
Asked if he feels comfortable in the Grand Prix, "I feel a lot safer this year (laughing). I don't feel like I'm going o scare anybody to death, or me either. Not right now anyhow"
Kyle Petty feels his Coors Light Grand Prix is coming along. "I always felt like we were going to have a good race car. My only problem was that when they were developing the race car from the very beginning, the only problem anybody foresaw was qualifying at the superspeedways. Nobody ever said, 'This will qualify good, but it's going to race like junk.' Everybody said, 'We might have a little trouble qualifying, but we're going to be good race-wise.' I think that's basically where we're at. Rick Mast qualified real good." When asked to compare the new car to last year Kyle commented, "There's a big difference. Last year's car just doesn't compare."
Asked if he's been watching fellow Pontiac driver Rick Mast, "Yeah, I did. I talked to him and I think he pretty much explained to the other teams what they changed and what they did, and why it ran like it did."
Rick Mast, driver of the Hooters Grand Prix "Practice has confirmed what we expected. The Clash car hasn't been running good, but the 500 car has been. This morning was the first time we had the 500 car around cars, and the car is doing exactly what I expected. The big thing is going to be handling"
Mast was surprised at the peformance of the Grand Prix, "We're still way behind on the development of the car. I know our team is behind on our particular race cars. I feel like Pontiac needs a little bit more time on their end to make things a little bit better. But we came right out of the box and we were only two-and-a-half tenths off the pole. With as much time as Chevrolet has had to develop the Monte Carlo, and I was two-and-half tenths behind them right out of the box, I'm real enthused about that."
The next Pontiac team was rookie Tony Stewart at 39th, followed by Ward Burton in 48th and a very disappointed Chad Little in the last spot at 63rd.
"It's kind of hard to tell what you're going to do in qualifying -- there are too many cars out there. I'm really surprised with my run. I would have been happy with a 48.60 and we ran a 48.38. I'll take it. This Lysol Pontiac has been running good since we've been here. We haven't done a thing to it. Jeff Hensley and the team have worked real hard on this car all winter and it's paying off," Markaham explained.
"Not too good! The motor started missing as soon as I took off. It never came up to speed, so I shut it off after the first lap to see what was wrong. We had a similar miss last year, but it was more carburetor-related, and we never did get it fixed (he used a provisional, started 42nd last year and won). Asked if he can do it again he said he "didn't know."
You've got to have a lot of luck on your side and I don't want to rely on that. Maybe I'm just destined to start near the back of the pack at Daytona. There's still a lot of time left before Saturday to sort things out. We've got a lot of work to do on the John Deere Pontiac, but we know we can perform well in the race no matter where we start.
