Phoenix: Dodge teams first practice quotes

NOTE: Dodge Charger drivers Travis Kvapil, Ryan Newman and Jeremy Mayfield posted the top three speeds in the first Cup practice session Thursday.

TRAVIS KVAPIL (No. 77 Kodak/Jasper Dodge Charger)

"We came out here last week and tested and left here really confident. It's a brand new Charger, and it's working good. We're happy with the changes we made. We really thought when we left here that we'd have a top 10 car. We unloaded in race trim today, and I think the track temperature was a little higher than it was last week. We were slip sliding around a little bit, and our times were off a little bit from the test. The balance of the racecar is still good. This is the time of day we're going to qualify tomorrow, so we wanted to get one run in in the mid afternoon. We taped it up and put tires on it and put a good lap on the board. We're happy with it. Everybody on the team has been doing a good job, and we need to have a good run after all the finishes we've been having lately.

"We know the track is going to get a little snugger when the sun goes down and it cools off a little bit. We feel like we're going to put some adjustments in the car to compensate for that. We're really not too worried about it. We feel like when we tested out here we had that in mind. We're going to spend this evening's practice working on race trim and working on making sure we'll be decent Saturday night.

"This is just short track racing to me. It's a mile track, but it reminds me of Saturday night short track racing, and I think I've got a pretty good feeling for that."

JEREMY MAYFIELD (No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

"We had a great test here and we're running good now. We had a little problem with the steering box and we changed it. We did one qualifying run. We were running qualifying times in race trim. We put it in qualifying trim and ended up third. We're going to work on race stuff in the next practice. We've got some things to work on. We're still bottoming out a little bit, but we're going to get that fixed."

-dodge motorsports-