NASCAR Cup Series

"“I’m not used to this. Our normal deal is to be scared once a weekend -- three times is a lot to ask out of us. You know it is really exciting, especially once you get down to the end and you’re in the game and you got a shot at it. Not a huge fan of the cool down deal."

With the season opener Daytona and one-mile anomaly Phoenix under his belt, Brian Vickers heads into Sunday’s race in Las Vegas needing to establish speed on the first of 17 intermediate track races this season.

JAMIE MCMURRAY, NO. 1 CESSNA CHEVROLET SS, met with members of the media at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and discussed his thoughts on the No. 1 Chevrolet SS teams season thus far, the new qualifying procedure and other topics.

Longtime Richard Childress Racing partners Realtree and Bad Boy Buggies® are joining the effort to support Austin Dillon's rookie campaign in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series by announcing primary partnership of the No. 3 Chevrolet SS for the March 16 race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

MATT KENSETH, No. 20 Dollar General Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing - How was yesterday’s test session? “I thought our test went pretty good. We seem to have decent speed -- just worked on a lot of different things."

"I remember watching it being built and racing over at the short track over the corner there and having some fun, being able to hone in my skills, I guess and somehow make it to this level. It’s been a journey, but it’s always fun to come back and race here and we won in 2009 and look forward to always being able to try to capture another win here if we can.

“The challenges here at Vegas are the bumps in (Turns) 1 and 2. To me, the bumps are worse getting into Turn 3 than they’ve been in quite a while. I don’t know if it’s just because of the heat of the summer or the cold of what it is, but the track definitely has more character than it used to have.

“It’s always an interesting race because it’s so early in the season and usually one of our first big tracks that we compete on. You find out how you stack up and where you are at. Phoenix went well for us.

The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif. has partnered with Auto Club Speedway as the title sponsor of NASCAR’s Pole Day on March 21. NASCAR’s new “knockout” elimination qualifying will set the pole sitter for the Auto Club 400 scheduled to run Sunday, March 23.

Bowyer will attend Tuesday’s night’s NHL game between the Carolina Hurricanes and the New York Rangers at the PNC Center in Raleigh, NC, as part of a promotional event for the upcoming STP 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway on March 30.