BUSCH: Darlington pre-race notes

DURA-LUBE 200 PRESENTED BY PEP BOYS 200 PRE-RACE NOTES

RANDY LAJOIE (No. 20 Fina Chevrolet) -- I can't wait for the race. I've always run well here at Darlington. This car has finished second here a couple of times. I'm really glad to be hooked up with Bace Motorsports and have Fina as a sponsor. I've always liked this race track. We're going to start turning our season around right here. This track is really neat. I'm glad I'm one of the guys who has gotten a handle on it (LaJoie is a former Busch Pole winner here). Qualifying will be major-league important. We're good in qualifying but some guys are better. What we really worry about is our race setup -- not our qualifying setup. Maybe I can cut a good lap.

CURTIS MARKHAM (No. 63 Lysol Pontiac) -- A good finish at Darlington is always critical, especially when you're running for points. This is a tough race track. You really have to pay attention, be patient and avoid everything that's happening if you can help it. Hopefully we'll come out of here with a top-10 finish and keep ourselves up in the points. Qualifying is really tough here -- especially when you mix in the Winston Cup drivers with the Busch drivers. Since this is only my second year (as a full-time BGN driver), qualifying is real important. If you can start up front you can usually avoid all of the trouble. We're concentrating on a good qualifying effort. This year has been better so far than we had hoped for. We set ourselves some high goals for last year and we really didn't meet them. This year we really haven't set any goals except that when we leave the shop we feel like we're prepared to qualify well and run up front.

PHIL PARSONS (No. 10 ChannelLock Tools Chevrolet) -- Qualifying is always important at Darlington because you want to start up front as far as possible so you can dodge some of the trouble. Race-wise, when you start 42 or 43 cars, if you have trouble and are knocked out of the race you can lose 100 points easy. Right now we're not thinking points too much. Sure, we're chasing them but it's too early to be thinking about anything in the title chase. We'll run every lap we can and make every effort to get back out if we do have trouble. What's really nice to know is that we'll have the possibility of a provisional start to fall back on. Darlington has been good to me. I've never won here but I've finished second and have a number of top-five finishes. We hope to keep that string going this weekend.