NASCAR Cup

Fontana: Toyota teams qualifying quotes, notes

Four Toyota Camrys will start Sunday's Auto Club 500. Dave Blaney in the No. 22 Caterpillar Camry will start in the 14th position. Brian Vickers in the No. 83 Red Bull Camry will start in the 15th position. David Reutimann in the No. 00 Domino's ...

Edited: Feb 24, 2007, 5:16 AM

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Four Toyota Camrys will start Sunday's Auto Club 500. Dave Blaney in the No. 22 Caterpillar Camry will start in the 14th position. Brian Vickers in the No. 83 Red Bull Camry will start in the 15th position. David Reutimann in the No. 00 Domino's Camry will start in the 33rd position. And Dale Jarrett in the No. 44 UPS Camry will start in the 43rd position. Blaney's 14th place qualifying effort marks his career-best California Speedway starting position in eight Nextel Cup starts that he's made at the speedway.

David Reutimann holds the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series track qualifying record at California Speedway when he sat on the pole last season with a time of 40.228 seconds at 178.98 mph. Vickers will be making his first start of the 2007 season in Sunday's Auto Club 500. Vickers has started on the front row at California Speedway three times in his Cup career including a pole award in September of 2004. Vickers posted the ninth fastest time during this morning's practice session.

Toyota visited victory lane in October of 2004 when Todd Bodine brought his Tundra to the checkered flag.

***

DAVE BLANEY, No. 22 Caterpillar Toyota Camry, Bill Davis Racing:

On today's qualifying run: "It was a good run. We picked up a bit from practice, we're always happy about that. The cars are pretty good the first lap on the track. We've been pretty pleased. We kind of messed up our very last run in practice, 30-something on the board. I was just hoping to get in the top-15. It was a decent day."

***

BRIAN VICKERS, No. 83 Red Bull Toyota Camry, Team Red Bull:

On today's qualifying run and making it into the field: "It was good. We had a good car. All the guys at Red Bull and Toyota did a great job putting it together. We started out good, but unfortunately we didn't get to practice much because of the entire inspection process. I feel like we had a better car than what we qualified here, we had at least a top-10 car. I was just trying to be conservative. I didn't want to go out there and try for the pole when we didn't need the pole, we just needed to make the race. We accomplished our goals and we're going to go race on Sunday and get some laps in."

***

DAVID REUTIMANN, No. 00 omino's Pizza Toyota Camry, Michael Waltrip DRacing:

On the emotion of today's qualifying: "I'm really, really happy that we got in, but I'm a little discouraged at the way it all went down with Michael (Waltrip). He deserves to be in this race too. It's unfortunate, but I'm happy that we're in and we've got to get into the top-35 in points because I'm not sure I can live like this much longer. It's not easy for anybody and it's not going to get any easier until we get ourselves solidified in the top-35. Everybody's doing a good job and our team's coming together and working well together. The guys are learning what I like and we're communicating better and all those things together are helping us become a better team."

On the car's performance in qualifying: "It was pretty free from the center off and that's where we lost a lot of our time. We lost a lot, but we didn't lose as much as I thought we did."

***

MATT BORLAND, Crew Chief, No. 44 UPS Toyota Camry, Michael Waltrip Racing:

On the problem Jarrett experienced during today's qualifying: "We broke a transmission. We aren't sure why. It wasn't anything special. We thought it would be a safe transmission. It's frustrating because we didn't get a chance to qualify. I guess it is better to find it now than 50 laps into the race."

-credit: toyota motorsports

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