"When you race the 13-time champ you don't go up there weak. We didn't go up there to smoke the tires. It just got fast early and got away and the tire just kept speeding up and the car wasn't.” -- Scelzi on his second-round loss to John Force

"At three-tenths of a second something broke and the engine basically quit firing on the right side, so it was a 4-cylinder Hemi.” -- Bazemore on his loss to Burkart in round two

"It just struck the tires right away to the point you know you're done, you're dead in the water, you're not going to be able to make up any ground striking the tires that early. And out of the corner of my eye I see Robert go up in smoke. I just couldn't get the tires going. I finally let off the throttle on one of the pedals and grabbed a whole lot of brake to try to stop the tires' inertia from turning. And I gave it a little bit of half throttle. It sounded like a pack full of ugly ducklings. It just sounded terrible. But it started accelerating and grabbing. And I saw him sashaying. I thought he hit the wall, to be honest. I was actually on the radio going across the finish line yelling, 'Yee-Hah.' My crew on the radio said it was kind of cool. Those kind of runs are fun when you're on the winning end." -- Ron Capps on his win in a tire-smoking pedalfest against Robert Hight in the second round

"I'm learning on every run. We made some real progress with this race car this weekend. It's stressful, but I'm having a lot of fun out there." -- Hight on the progress of his rookie season

"I know, people were wondering why we did that but that's where we were comfortable. A lot of teams were smoking the tires in the right lane, but there seemed to be a bump in the left and it was no treat. We moved to the left lane in round two, and got past the bump, but we still spun the tires down at the end and were a little lucky Bazemore had more problems than we did. Marc (Denner) and Chris (Cunningham) weren't about to risk it again. They felt they had a handle on the right lane, and that there was really nothing wrong with it, so we went over there. I completely trust these guys, so I was very comfortable with what they wanted to do. They were right. The right lane was fine." -- Burkart explaining why he chose the generally less-desirable lane for his semi-final match (which he lost) against Capps

"I actually thought we won. You are tucked back in that Dodge body so far that you can't see the guy next to you. Even in a close race you can't hear him, so I thought the light was burned out on the guardrail when I went through there. Then I saw John's light at the last second, it was on, so I knew it had to be a close race.” -- Capps on losing a close one to Force in the final round

"It doesn't matter who won this race or who won Pomona. We're not even going to look (at points) until 10 or 12 races (into the season) to even get a strategy. Bottom line, there are a lot of good race cars and race teams out there and this is just the second race." -- Force on vaulting to second place overall with his win at Phoenix

"This was a good win. We were running 4.60s last year like magic and went to Pomona two weeks ago and got overconfident and stopped reading the track and started running on ego. (Austin) Coil (crew chief) told me we were going to fix it this weekend and we did." -- Force again, after winning for the eighth time at Firebird, more than any other Funny Car driver

PRO STOCK

"Kurt and I swapped engines after Pomona to see how much difference there was in our two cars and/or engines, and it's starting to tell us a tale. Now we just have to pay attention.” -- Warren Johnson referring to his son and teammate on their search for the right combination

“The track is actually pretty decent. The rubber is a little thin on it, but everyone seems to be able to get down it. The right lane is a little suspicious in the middle of the track, with several people having a problem with the car moving around, but overall, it's not bad. Fortunately, we don't have mineshaft conditions, because then we would be in trouble. But for these atmospheric conditions, it's more than adequate, and we'll deal with it as best as possible tomorrow." -- WJ on track conditions after he qualified second