Sears Point: GM teams qualifying quotes

TONY STEWART, NO. 20 HOME DEPOT IMPALA SS - Qualified 5th:

IS TURN 11 THE KEY SPOT? "It is for me because I always, historically, screw up turn 11. I have to get a hold of Ron Fellows or Boris (Said) or somebody and figure out why I'm losing time there. It seems like we're pretty decent everywhere else, but even on my qualifying lap I didn't think I was that good. It turned out much, much better than what I thought it was going to be.

"I slid the nose a little bit there. I was trying to make an adjustment after what we did in practice today. It wasn't a bad lap. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. It slid around all over the place, but we were still able to put up a good number, so we'll take that."

DO YOU HAVE A WINNING RACE CAR FOR SUNDAY? "We've got a contender, for sure. You know it's going to be hard with Boris (Said) and Robby (Gordon) up there right now, and some other guys who might sneak up there later in the session, so we'll have to wait and see. But we definitely have something we can work with."

ON THE CAR OF TOMORROW ON A ROAD COURSE: "It's definitely taken some getting used to. I went off in my first run here and about went off in my second run in a different spot on the race track. We can drive these cars a lot faster than what these cars can go here. The old theory that you have to slow down to go faster, that's literally what you have to do with these new cars."

DOES THE CAR OF TOMORROW LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD WITH SOME OF THE ROAD COURSE SPECIALISTS? "Looking at the practice time sheet, the times were really competitive all the way through the field. It's not how brave you are, it's how much can you slow yourself down to let the car do what it needs to do and not overdrive it. It's really easy to overdrive these new cars."

-credit: gm racing