JOHNNY BENSON Jr -30- Pennzoil
"We're pretty excited about it. It wasn't a bad lap. It was a little slippery here and there. We were a little loose in one and two. But all in all, we'd been tight, so that was good. We got it loosened up. It looked like from Busch practice everybody got loose. So that was going in our favor."
KYLE PETTY -42- Coors Light
"I don't think I've been this happy since I used to sit on poles down here. We're really pleased. I think we said it at Daytona, 'If we can get through Daytona with the Pontiacs and run competitive, we feel like we'll be strong everywhere else.' We've come down here and all the Pontiacs are running really, really good down here. "We were OK here last year. Look at Ward. He ran good down here last year with the old car. A mile and under, we're OK. I think this is a good indication of us as a group. This group is competitive. I think Atlanta is going to be our first big test car-wise. All of us were so far off at Atlanta last year. We had some top-10 cars and some top-10 cars, but we didn't have any top-five cars. When we come to Rockingham, now we've got top- five cars. If we can do that at Atlanta, we'll be OK. "I don't remember four Pontiac drivers being in race sometimes. What are you talking about four in the top 11? think that says a lot. I think that says a lot for the car. I think if you just step back and look at that one statistic, of everything Pontiac has done over the last four or five years, I think we've finally got a car that is competitive and can represent Pontiac the way it should be represented."
BOBBY HAMILTON -43- STP
"We're real happy with it. We unloaded this thing with the race setup, and tried some different shocks and things and didn't like that. We put the race setup back under it where it wasn't taped all the way down, and qualified that. It's ready to race right now. The lap went good. The car just feels real racy. Instead of screwing with the car we just decided to live with the race setup. We pulled a good enough where we won't have to adjust the car too much. It drives perfect. It would have been pretty cool if all five Pontiac drivers had gotten in the top-10. We came pretty close."
WARD BURTON -22- MBNA
"The guys made a big change right before qualifying, and that was the quickest lap we've run today. The crew pulled me through again. The lap was pretty good. Had I been able to practice for one lap the way it is now, I could have actually been better. The change picked me up about two-and-a-half tenths. "Let's not talk about two in a row yet I'm not going to put any more pressure on us. What we've got to do is finish. I want to avenge myself from last weekend when I hit the wall at Daytona. I'm not really sure what I did. I guess I didn't respond quick enough when the car tightened up. We want to get out of here with a solid run, whether we win or not. If we have a chance to win we'll know late Sunday. The main thing is to run all the laps and get some points."
RICK MAST -1- Hooters
"The car handled pretty good. The motor just didn't run. The motor wasn't running all day. The car was off a little bit, but we got it pretty good the last time out in practice. When I qualified the car it was real good as far as how it handled. This particular motor we built in the winter, and it's just a lot worse than we thought it was. We've got some other ones to go in it."
