Linda Vaughn's Triumphant Return

“I’m not sure that the fastest car is going to win on Monday. We made a good run in the heat of the day on the final pass. What is going to win is not beating yourself.” — Ron Capps on going into raceday from the number-10 position

“As long as we’re in the show we have a chance to win.” — Jeff Arend after qualifying in the number-14 slot

“We have a great race car when conditions are perfect. And we are still working on creating a great race car when conditions are less than ideal.”  -- Whit Bazemore on his struggles of late after qualifying 6th at Indy

“We’re coming out swinging tomorrow, baby, because that’s all you can do.” — Scelzi on his team’s attitude heading into eliminations from the number-nine spot

“The challenge for this team has been adapting to the hotter climate, and that’s something that’s been our key focus in the last couple of races. I believe we’ve made some real progress here, especially in the last two days. We’ve probably made more progress here this weekend than we’ve made in the last six months.” — T. Pedregon on qualifying 3rd for raceday

“I feel like I’ve learned how to deal with the pressure and am pretty confident about what we have. It’s an exciting race and we’re going to have fun. Really, when we pull up to the starting line, it’s just another race. It’s important I pull to the line, in any race, like it’s the last race of my career. I always give it my all, just like every other race weekend. Coming into this race, I felt like we had an excellent shot. I still believe that. No pressure, I know we have a good car and we’ll go out there and see what we can do.”  -- Cruz Pedregon after qualifying 4th and before facing Worsham in the opening round of eliminations

“I never saw him; I don’t have a rear-view mirror in my car.” — Desham after beating team owner Force in the Skoal Showdown final

“Hey, we knew all the money was going to John Force Racing so we just lined ‘em up and raced. John got the money but I got the trophy and that’s okay with me.” — Densham again, revealing there were no ‘team orders’ at work

“We were the first pair of Funny Cars to go down the track. Qualifying bit us and that’s why we were in the first pair. You don’t have the luxury of watching any other cars go down the track when you go out first.” — Ron Capps on his round one loss to Burkart

“Our car picked a bad time to get good. We’ve been struggling to run with John and Gary so my dad (crew chief John Medlen) decided to make a engine change. The good thing is it responded immediately. The bad news is that it was too powerful for the track.” — Eric Medlen on going up in smoke against Wilkerson in the first round

“Even though it’s frustrating to lose in the first round at the 50th U.S. Nationals, we didn’t beat ourselves.” — Johnson Jr. on losing to Bazemore in the closest race of the first round

“You can make the age-old mistake of just standing all over it, like you’re going to be big heroes and stun the world by jumping up a tenth, but we learned that lesson years ago. We just wanted to make sure we got down there, and if Cruz was going to beat us he’d have to outrun us. We absolutely weren’t going to give him the round by doing anything stupid.”  -- Worsham on his first-round exit after C. Pedregon simply outran him in a close race

“We are having to spin the superchargers faster because of the 85-percent rule change. So, the superchargers go away faster, and unless you have a dyno here in the pits, it’s hard to know when one is ready to take a dive.” — T. Pedregon on why he slowed to a losing 5.015 in the second round against Bazemore

“We really thought it was going to be a pretty good day when it first started. But then we had a malfunction in the motor and number seven cylinder wouldn’t fire when we were warming up for second round. We thought we had it fixed and we took it back up there, but it still wasn’t fixed. It’s live and learn I guess. There’s not much we can do about it now.” — Wilkerson on his second-round loss to C. Pedregon

“It seems like Scelzi and I race every weekend (seven times in the last eight races, in fact). I got him two weeks ago at Memphis; he got me back today. But I hope we keep on racing (each other) because you can’t be the best unless you beat the best.”  -- Force after losing to Scelzi in round two