TALK ABOUT YOUR QUALIFYING RUN. “Well, we ran a little faster in practice. The first lap Cowboy (Kevin Starland), my crew chief, came across and said we ran a .60, and I thought, ‘Man, I’m going to have to try a little harder.’ The second lap I tried a little harder and the truck was almost perfect. It was just a little free in three and four, so that made it exciting, and we ended up with a lap just barely good enough to beat Jack. I thought it was one of my better qualifying efforts personally. Usually I end up messing up a lap like that, but sometimes they go well.”

“I was just listening to Steve Park, and I can surely vouch for how tough this place is. Last year I showed up and ran about 20 laps in practice and I destroyed a truck. And then we ran about six or seven laps in the race and destroyed another truck. That was really a low point in my career. That was an ugly, ugly weekend. So it’s really nice, not to jinx ourselves, but things are going a lot better this year. We still have two whole trucks, and at this point last year we had one that was pretty wadded up. I’m just really proud of this Superchips team, Cowboy, Roush Racing. Being here reminds me a lot of that day, and that was really the day I realized how much this team was behind because I hadn’t proven I could do this to that point and that was such a bad weekend, and I expected everyone to kind of abandon me but they didn’t. That was kind of the changing point of our season last year.”

“I’m not really certain; I don’t have enough experience here to tell you the difference in the tires. The one thing I do notice is that there are a lot more really fast trucks. I watched the tape from here last year and noticed that this year is a lot different in the level of competition. The bar has been raised a little bit. Goodyear did a great job with the tires, and everybody has developed their trucks just a little more and the level of competition is rising just a little bit. Next year may even be faster.”