1st, Kyle Busch 7th, Jason White 10th, Mike Skinner 11th, Justin Lofton 12th, Timothy Peters 13th, David Starr 15th, Aric Almirola 16th, Jason Bowles 17th, Johanna Long 21st, Matt Lofton 24th, Todd Bodine
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 Toyota Tundra/Z-Line Designs Toyota Tundra, Kyle Busch Motorsports Starting Position: 1st How do you feel about the four women competing in the Truck race? “I think it’s great. I think that Johanna (Long), she’s done a really nice job in the starts that she’s been able to make. Unfortunately she had an engine failure right off the get-go at Vegas. I think the Martinsville, the way this place is and of course going through the NASCAR approval process, obviously it’s easy for them to make some starts here at Martinsville. I think it’s just another car number when you come up to them, you have to pass them. It’s not that they’re going to be treated or looked at any differently than anybody else.” Were you able to practice around any of the female drivers today? “I think the biggest thing is just confidence and being able to have the truck under you and being able to believe in it and knowing how far to push it. Being able to have them just get the track time and the track time they need and deserve is always beneficial. With the way our testing rules are, you can’t go test anywhere so they get their first hands on the race track when they get there. I was never around any of them today, but the more track time you get and the more laps you get, the more comfortable you feel and the better you do.” Does winning the pole help get you closer to winning the owner’s championship? “I don’t really think it sets us any closer unless there were points for qualifying. For us, I look forward to it. We’ve got a good set of five races here left to go, of course Talladega being sort of a crap shoot knowing anything can happen there. Running well there in the past so I look forward to it. I feel like we have a good shot at this and it’s something that I really, really want to do. I know that Todd (Bodine) and the Germain Racing team, they want to make sure that I don’t win the owner’s championship, but Bob’s (Germain) won one before so I’m hoping that I can go out there and maybe steal a little bit of his thunder and bring Kyle Busch Motorsports home with a championship the first year out.” How important is it for you to have sponsorship for the rest of this season in the Truck Series? “It’s really big and it’s a great help that we’re able to go out there and race knowing that we can race and we’re not racing on my money or we’re not racing race to race. It’s pretty good. I feel like the sponsors I’ve had behind me have really been a great story and a great help to me whether it’s been in the Cup Series with M&M’s or the Nationwide Series with Z-Line and NOS or the Truck Series with the abundance of partners that we’ve had this year. I’m looking forward to it. I feel like the rest of this year we can race hard, we can race for wins and we can go out there and do the best we can for all these people. Interstate Batteries is the lone one that kind of doesn’t fit in with what we’ve done so far this year at Texas. They’ll be on board with us there. Next year, again, same thing I said in Charlotte, I’m not any further along than I was there. I’ve sold five races, but we’ll be announcing that partner hopefully shortly in the next couple weeks and get on to 2011 trying to get everything else squared away and sold where they’re no more inventory left would be great.” Where does your love of the history of NASCAR come from? “I’ve been wanting to be here since I was a child – eight, nine, 10-years old or whatever it was. Finally got my opportunity and a crack at it when I was 16 and then went away for a year-and-a-half because I wasn’t old enough and then came back when I was 18. Ever since I got here, I’ve kind of never really been really well-represented I guess. The fans haven’t quite taken to me. I’ve been battling that uphill battle forever and I presume it will be a long time yet that I’ll be doing that. I’ve got great people that work with me on the side that know who I am and know that I have a heart and that I’m not the scarecrow or the lion that didn’t have the heart or whatever in the Wizard of Oz. I am a person and I do have thoughts. The tin man – the lion was the coward – well, I’m all of those anyway. Regardless of my point there, scratch that. I know a lot about the sport and I’ve grown up watching it and paying attention to it and just kind of learning about it. I like watching the old day races – sitting back and watching the races from the 70s, the 80s – the Tim Richmond special that was on. I didn’t get to catch all of it, but I was watching parts and pieces and it was pretty cool. You watch cars going through the esses at Watkins Glen and they’re sideways – the old bias-ply tires and stuff like that. It’s just fun to pay attention to the sport and you want to know about what you’re doing and how you got there and how the sport has gotten to where it is. A lot of credit goes to those guys that were before me.”
JASON WHITE, No. 23 Gunbroker.com/Pursuit Channel Toyota Tundra, Green Light Racing Starting Position: 7th How was your qualifying lap? “It wasn’t bad. First time in a Toyota, so it’s pretty exciting. Great, great power and these things turn really good, so I’m pretty excited about the race. Basically, we want to be good on the long runs tomorrow. We were one of the faster trucks on long runs. You pit once here and that’s it. We made our truck for the long runs and I think it will be pretty good in the race.”
MIKE SKINNER, No. 5 International Trucks/Monaco RV Toyota Tundra, Randy Moss Motorsports Starting Position: 10th How was your qualifying lap? “We were a little bit tight in the middle of the corner in our qualifying run. That’s usually a good sign for me and we tried to make it perfect. We took too much wedge. We took wedge out and made a tire pressure adjustment and a track bar adjustment. We just did too many things. We fixed the center. The center was perfect. The truck got in the corner and through the center of the corner, I felt, perfect. But, when I picked the throttle up, she just lit up that big old Triad Racing Technologies motor and she spun the tires halfway down the straightaway. When you’re spinning the tires instead of hooking them up, you’re losing time. All in all though, we got a good race truck this week. I’m pretty pumped up about driving it tomorrow.”
JUSTIN LOFTON, No. 7 visitPIT.com Toyota Tundra, Red Horse Racing Starting Position: 11th How was your qualifying lap? “It was pretty good. We were fighting the truck all day, getting it to rotate in the center. We definitely hit on something there. The guys did a great job all practice. We kind of got a little loose off turn four the first two laps and that warm-up lap. The second lap, I just didn’t want to push the issue and thought it’d be better to get a lap in. I’m really proud of all the guys on the No. 7 Toyota Tundra, and we’ll go racing tomorrow.”
TIMOTHY PETERS, No. 17 Nelson Toyota Tundra, Red Horse Racing Starting Position: 12th
DAVID STARR, No. 81 Zachry Toyota Tundra, Green Light Racing Starting Position: 13th How was your qualifying lap? “It’s pretty exciting. I’ll tell you, our Zachry Toyota Tundra was pretty awesome. First lap, the front tires didn’t come in. Turns one and two were pretty good, but I came down in there to turn three right past the center and it just pushed up on me really bad. I needed to hit my marks, so second lap, drove it just as hard, but the front tires stuck. Not a bad lap for us. I wanted to get into the 19s (seconds). We hadn’t done that all day and we’re in pretty solidly. I just wanted t a decent starting spot for the race because I feel like our Toyota is pretty strong.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 51 Billy Ballew Motorsports Toyota Tundra, Billy Ballew Motorsports Starting Position: 15th
JASON BOWLES, No. 15 Billy Ballew Motorsports Toyota Tundra, Billy Ballew Motorsports Starting Position: 16th
JOHANNA LONG, No. 20 Panhandle Grading & Paving Toyota Tundra, Panhandle Motorsports Starting Position: 17th
MATT LOFTON, No. 97 Strutmasters.com Toyota Tundra, Lofton Motorsports Starting Position: 21st T
ODD BODINE, No. 30 Germain.com, Germain Racing Starting Position: 24th
