NASCAR WCUP: Pocono Qualifying Notes, Dale Jarrett

19 June 1999

88 DALE JARRETT Quality Care Service/Ford Credit Taurus "We normally have a good race setup here and at times have struggled here qualifying, but we were able to get through it today. Todd made a good call on making a change just before qualifying and that's what's good about our guys. They're not afraid to change things and I believe in them whenever they say something. That's what makes good race teams. This car did it last week and come Sunday it should be a good race car. I'm excited. I love to race at this place. We've got the hard part over and that's qualifying. Now we get to the fun part which is racing here."

"I don't get very upset about qualifying unless we're just not very good at all. I knew we didn't have a shot at the pole, Sterling still beat us pretty bad, but it was nice to get up front to where, hopefully, we can get some laps led early and get our bonus points there and kind of settle in." WHAT CHALLENGE DOES THIS TRACK PROVIDE? "Every corner is a challenge. It is a very difficult race track. Everybody hears us talk about compromising and you do have to do that to a certain extent, but we've always taken the philosophy that we're gonna make our car as good as we possibly can in every one of those corners and not try to give up anything anywhere. If there's some place we want to make our car better it's definitely turn three to use our Robert Yates horsepower, but we'll do what we can. It's a good race car and we'll see what we can do Sunday."

HOW WAS YOUR QUALIFYING RUN. WERE YOU SURPRISED? "Surprised would be a good word. We made a change before qualifying that we thought may help a little bit, but when Sterling ran what he did, there were only a couple of cars that had even run close to that all day -- Steve Park and Bobby (Labonte). We hadn't even been close to that, so we're definitely excited about the lap we turned. It was an exciting lap and to run that fast around here, you have to be pretty much on the edge. It was exciting." IS THIS THE SAME CAR FROM MICHIGAN? "Yeah, the same car as Michigan. The guys just cleaned it up and got it ready to go again. When you get a good race car, I think any driver will tell you that when you get something that feels good to you, you sit good in the seat and all of those things work, that's the kind of car you want to race as much as you possibly can. Even though the two tracks are totally different, the reason the car won the race last week was because it handled well and this is definitely a handling race track." IS THIS A FUN RACE TRACK FOR YOU? "The fun starts now. I wouldn't say it's a lot of fun qualifying. I've crashed here qualifying, so that part wasn't fun, but I think you have to do some different things to qualify and that makes it kind of hair-raising, but as far as racing, I love to race here. It's the challenge that it presents. You hear everybody say you have to compromise. That's a word you'll hear a million times around here this week, but we like to look at it differently and say we're gonna try to make our car as good as we can in all three corners. Obviously, if you're gonna pick a corner that you want your car best at, you're probably gonna say turn three. You want to get off of there to use the front straightaway to your advantage. That challenge it presents is fun. It took me a while to get to that point and to get to a setup that made me feel comfortable here to make it fun, but since that time I've enjoyed racing here."

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