Pontiac Racing Ponoco qualifying notes

BOBBY LABONTE, NO. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES PONTIAC GRAND PRIX:
"That was a good lap for us. We picked up a little bit from practice. We probably didn't pick up as much as some of the guys did, but all in all it was pretty good. I can't complain about it too much.

DOES THE NEW GOODYEAR TIRE FEEL BETTER HERE THE SECOND TIME AROUND?
"Yea, it does a little bit, so hopefully we can learn off of this and make it even better yet."

TONY STEWART, NO. 20 HOME DEPOT PONTIAC GRAND PRIX:
"That was better than what I was hoping for, honestly. We didn't practice that strong a pretty much stayed at the same speed the majority of the practice. We only picked up 3/10ths of a second from our first practice run to the last, which is pretty uncharacteristic for here. Usually you can expect to pick up a half to a full second from your first run to the end of practice. To pick up as much as we did from our practice times, I'm really pretty happy."

KEN SCHRADER, NO. 36 M&M's PONTIAC GRAND PRIX:
"We didn't have anything for those first couple of cars, or at least I didn't. That Pontiac's been handling good and those Hendrick engines have definitely been getting us down the straightaways. We'll just have to see where that puts us, but at least we know we've got a good starting spot for Sunday."

RON HORNADAY, NO. 14 CONSECO PONTIAC GRAND PRIX:
"I'm disappointed. We had some problems before qualifying. We were of the understanding that the shocks we were running were legal. We got an okay on them and have been running them the last three races, and just before qualifying we were told we couldn't run them so we had no idea what the car was going to do. I thought we could run at least a 53.50, but we just had to throw four new shocks at it. We'll just have to get clarification from NASCAR on the shocks. That just shows how this Conseco Pontiac team has been working hard. This is the same car we went up the wall on two wheels last week in Loudon, so the guys did a heck of a job of getting repaired to run here. If that gets us in we'll be happy."

-GM Racing