4th, KASEY KAHNE 9th, JOEY LOGANO 11th, DENNY HAMLIN 14th, BOBBY LABONTE 15th, CASEY MEARS 19th, DAVID REUTIMANN 20th, KYLE BUSCH 21st, MARTIN TRUEX JR. 22nd, MICHAEL MCDOWELL 26th, JOE NEMECHEK 32nd, MIKE SKINNER 37th, BRIAN VICKERS
KASEY KAHNE, No. 4 Red Bull Toyota Camry, Red Bull Racing Team Starting Position: 4th How is your knee feeling after practice and qualifying today? “It actually feels pretty good. It’s a little bit tight just from swelling, but the meniscus and all of that stuff is good to go now. I’m just tired of having my knee’s worked on. That was a really good run right there. Our Red Bull Toyota was fast. The car felt good. I got moving my hands a little bit off of (turn) 4 that second lap and gave up — thought maybe we could’ve ran a flat, but I still think it’s a pretty solid lap.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 20 Home Depot Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing Starting Position: 9th How has your car been handling here at Richmond? “The Home Depot Toyota wasn’t really good in the first practice. We didn’t really focus much on qualifying. We focused a lot on race trim because we were so far off. Zip (Greg Zipadelli, crew chief) and the guys did a great job. Got the car good by the end of the second practice and qualifying is just a guessing game for us. I’m actually pretty happy with what we got there so far. I feel like I left a little bit out there. I overdrove it a little bit.”
When do you determine when to work on your qualifying? “If you are close, you feel like you can go to qualifying trim and focus on that, but we weren’t close enough on race trim to do any of that. So, we were better off working on the race car making sure it’s good and then just kind of winging it here (for qualifying).”
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FedEx Freight Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing Starting Position: 11th Were you pleased with how everything went at your charity event last night? “It was a lot of fun. To have these guys come out and put on an event like that, it was a lot of fun. We’re just going to try to make it as big as we can possibly go. The sky is the limit for that race. Obviously, first time here at RIR (Richmond International Raceway) I think it was overall a success.”
What do you know at this race track that maybe other drivers don’t know? “I think you just like a race track. You succeed at it one time and it becomes your favorite race track. I don’t know what it is. I think a lot of it is you’re at home, you’re a little bit more relaxed and things like that. The confidence is always higher so you tend to perform better at race tracks where that is the case.”
How do you feel about this weekend? “I feel good about our weekend. I’m interested to see how tonight is going to go in the Nationwide car. Obviously, high expectations. We’re going to try to have that overall finish and stay at three (wins) for the weekend. We’ve got one race down and one win and we’ve got to keep going.”
Are you happy with your race car? “Yeah, I think so. I think in race trim our car was pretty good. Qualifying has never been my particular forte and I think this is going to put us somewhere in the low teens and I’ll be pretty happy with that.”
Do you put more pressure on yourself racing at your home track in front of your fans? “No one is going to put anymore pressure on myself than me. I’m my own worst critic, no doubt about it. People think that they don’t like the way that I drive and I agree sometimes. It’s no different. For me, I’m just looking forward to this weekend. We need this weekend to kind of get back on track and I think it’s the perfect time to do it.”
BOBBY LABONTE, No. 47 Kingsford Toyota Camry, JTG-Daugherty Racing Starting Position: 14th Are you pleased with your qualifying run? “The track has obviously cooled off a lot. Everybody has done their picking up for qualifying. We were just a little bit free on late exit on the first lap. I was a little free to the white and I let that hurt me — and when you’re talking thousandths, maybe possibly. It was really good the second lap and really happy in race trim. We feel really good about all that. I think it’s a good qualifying run. I don’t know how fast these guys can go if the track cools off — keeps cooling off. It’s kind of a weird deal. I’m not sure why it’s picked where the track changes the most temperature and that’s where we qualify. If you want to make it even, it should be something like in the middle of the day or at night. Instead of right now — you know the sun is going down. It is what it is. We went out and ran a pretty good lap. So, we’ll see where it stacks us up.”
CASEY MEARS, No. 13 GEICO Toyota Camry, Germain Racing Starting Position: 15th
DAVID REUTIMANN, No. 00 Aaron’s Dream Machine Toyota Camry, Michael Waltrip Racing Starting Position: 19th How is your race car? “It’s okay. We kind of bounced back and forth on some things during the day and never really got super happy with it, but got it better. Hopefully, it will hang in there and be a good car for the race.”
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 M&M’s Pretzel Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing Starting Position: 20th How is your race car? “It’s not that fast in qualifying. It felt pretty good in practice race trim-wise. I just wasn’t able to quite get what we asked for in qualifying there, but typically our qualifying isn’t our strong suit here.”
MARTIN TRUEX JR., No. 56 NAPA AUTO PARTS Toyota Camry, Michael Waltrip Starting Position: 21st
MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 66 Racehp.com Toyota Camry, PRISM Motorsports Starting Position: 22nd
JOE NEMECHEK, No. 87 NEMCO Toyota Camry, NEMCO Motorsports Starting Position: 26th
MIKE SKINNER, No. 60 Big Red Toyota Camry, Germain Racing Starting Position: 32nd
BRIAN VICKERS, No. 83 Red Bull Toyota Camry, Red Bull Racing Team Starting Position: 37th How was your qualifying run? “We needed to be better than that. We were just tight and loose off getting the throttle down. We’ll talk about making it better and see what happens.”
