NASCAR Cup

Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Charlotte qualifying

DALE EARNHARDT Jr. (No. 8 Budweiser Chevrolet Monte Carlo) "Here at Charlotte the cars have been real comfortable. We've obviously hit on something that's really made the car exceptionally quick. This car is a little bit better than the ...

Edited: Apr 15, 2002, 11:45 PM

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DALE EARNHARDT Jr. (No. 8 Budweiser Chevrolet Monte Carlo) "Here at Charlotte the cars have been real comfortable. We've obviously hit on something that's really made the car exceptionally quick. This car is a little bit better than the one we brought to The Winston. We tested both of them about a month or three weeks ago. This is the car we ran at Texas and won Texas with. The car we ran last week in The Winston we ran at Atlanta. This car is a tick better downforce wise, and we showed that tonight. When we put the pedal down, the harder you drove it in there, the harder it stuck because more air was on it. I'd like to go out and try a couple more times because I think I could get through one and two wide open. "To do things here in front of the home crowd is fun for any athlete. It's a different type of feeling and a different type of enjoyment. It's not any more enjoyable. It's probably a little more memorable. It's cool. Charlotte is a great place. I've watched a lot of races here. I'm come here since I was a little kid playing over there on the road course during the 600 when they use to park all the makeshift tents over there. We'd come into town and dad would be racing around the track and I'd be hanging out with the neighbors in the infield. I've been here for a long time. Then, I never had any anticipation that I'd be running around it, especially that fast. "I get nervous about different things. The more success we have, the more nervous I get. I feel like I'm a pretty good judge of my potential and my team's potential. If I feel like we're capable of doing it, I'm not that nervous. If I feel like people are expecting us to win and I feel like we don't have a shot, then I get nervous. I just don't want to fail anybody or disappoint anybody, but tonight I felt very confident. We practiced well today, and I kept telling the guys the car was a heck of a lot better than it was than it was showing on the time sheet. We were fast on the time sheet, but I still felt like we could go faster. I knew that car was capable of running in the 28.80s. If there's a driver here that can do it, it wasn't me. It's fun to be able to have that good of a car. It makes me look a lot better than I am. That car is awesome. It drives so good and handles so easy. I could do whatever I wanted with it in The Winston. Six hundred miles is a long way, but I feel like we've got just as good a car for the race as we had here tonight. If we can keep it in one piece and not have any mechanical failures on it and keep the fenders on it and not have any problems on pit road, we'll be in the top five, I pretty much guarantee you. "Going into this year, I feel a lot more comfortable. I feel like we've got better downforce package, a better handling car, a better tire. The track for some reason feels better to me. I'm just getting around it better. We qualified fine, I think eighth fastest here last year. When the race started it was uncomfortable for me. I couldn't get comfortable all night long. I'm going to be much more aggressive Sunday because we've got a much better race car. "I'm very happy about the way things are going for me. We experienced success quite quickly in the Busch Series and it's happening the same here in the Winston Cup Series. I didn't expect it to come this quick."

STEVE PARK (No. 1 Pennzoil Chevrolet Monte Carlo) "We just didn't get the power we needed out of the engine. The Pennzoil car ran a great line. I got into one and two without lifting, and it was handling great. We'll be OK for the race."

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