Monte Carlo Bristol qualifying notes

Food City 500 Qualifying
Friday, March 23, 2001
Bristol Motor Speedway

Kevin Harvick, No. 29 GM Goodwrench Service Plus Chevrolet Monte Carlo (qualified 3rd):
"We're pretty good. It was actually a little bit loose and you've just got to hold on and try to keep it off the fence. These Goodwrench guys have given me an awesome car since we unloaded. Mark Martin still hasn't gone, and he's one of the one's we're looking at (to knock him off the pole). I can hardly talk, I'm shaking so much."

Bobby Hamilton, No. 55 Square D Chevrolet Monte Carlo (qualified 6th):
"Real good time. That's about what we run in practice. We throwed about three different set-ups at that thing, but these Square D Chevrolet guys have been doing real good. The biggest thing that we stumbled across is that me and Joe (Nemechek) has been working together real close the last couple of weeks. We're starting to see how multi-car teams succeed at that. We're happy with it. Like I said to some other folks, I can see now how two-car teams work well."

Dale Earnhardt Jr., No. 8 Budweiser Chevrolet Monte Carlo (qualified 9th):
"That's better than we ran in practice, so we're pretty happy. We've just worked hard to get that. We're satisfied with the progress we've made this morning to get the speed out of the car. We've been working on the car and hopefully its more driver error than car error. Track position's real important here."

Jeff Gordon, No. 24 Dupont Chevrolet Monte Carlo (qualified 15th):
"The car was really, really good there toward the end of practice when we put new tires on. It was a little bit tight. We might have freed it up too much."

Jerry Nadeau, No. 25 UAW-Delphi Chevrolet Monte Carlo (qualified 22nd):
"The car ran okay in practice. I think we were around 25th. We've made some changes and hopefully we'll be better."

Mike Skinner, No. 31 Lowe's Chevrolet Monte Carlo (qualified 33rd):
"I'm not sure what happened to the Lowe's Chevy. It was pretty good in practice, but it got so loose just now I could hardly drive it. We've always qualified well here, but just didn't quite hit on it today. We were hoping for a lot more. Qualifying is so important here because you're stuck on the backstretch pit road if you don't qualify well. I guess we'll start from the backstretch and do the best we can to come to the front. We made what we thought were a few small changes right before qualifying, but they obviously didn't work."

Steve Park, No. 1 Pennzoil Chevrolet Monte Carlo (qualified 17th):
"We're working on the car to try to get it where it needs to be. Bristol's a tough place. It's a place where you need to be on your toes. It's like flying a jet fighter in a gymnasium. You haul butt around here in a short amount of time, so you've got to be on your toes. But it's one of the best places that we go to. I love racing here and I know the race fans love when we come here to race."

About hitting the wall during practice:
"It surprised us. It caught me by surprise. It's not something you set out to do. We're on the edge of competition here and to go around Bristol here in just a sub-15-second lap, you're wide open. It doesn't leave much room for error. Somebody could have leaked a little water or a little bit of oil and we might have got into something."

About racing in Bristol:
"It's just getting back to the grass roots of racing. The half-mile short track is where this sport started. And that's why I think we put on such a great show here at Bristol. It's a bunch of good racecar drivers and good racecars on a short race track putting on a great show for a tremendous amount of race fans. How many people in this place? One hundred sixty, a hundred-seventy thousand people? It's just incredible. And I know it makes the hair stand up on my arms on Sunday afternoon when we come out here and they say, 'Gentlemen, start your engines ', and the crowd goes crazy. It's probably one of the best places to go racing."

Do you have to make any repairs to the rear deck of the car?
"We can define duck-tape. That's tape used to repair a car after an altercation on the racetrack. And we've got plenty of yellow duck-tape for the Pennzoil car."

-Team Monte Carlo