“For the second run, I slowed it down just a little bit and when it went out there in the middle and went one to one, the blower belt broke off. We probably stressed it on the first run when we smoked the tires, and probably should have changed it.” -- Wilkerson after qualifying 11th, on his two Saturday efforts

"This has been a tough season so far because we have high expectations about what this team is capable of doing. We'll get there, but it's just taking a little longer than we wanted.” -- Gary Densham after qualifying 14th

"Now, of course, we'll come out tomorrow and it's likely we'll see something totally different in terms of conditions. If the cloud cover hangs around a little, like it did today, and the air stays nice and cool, like it did today, you'll need 4.7s to win tomorrow in round one. If it gets a little cooler, which it might, you could see something we haven't seen much of this weekend, tire shake. If the sun comes out and bakes the track before we get on it, you could see tire spin. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.” -- Phil Burkart making predictions after qualifying in the 16th and last position for raceday

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"For the last qualifying run on Saturday I switched to my old helmet and realized that I could see the groove a lot better. There's a lot of vibration when you drive one of these cars and I think that's what caused me to get out of the groove on two of the qualifying runs, even hitting the wall on Friday. Evidently the new helmet was too small for my big head so I'll be using my old hat until I get one that is more comfortable." -- Bob Gilbertson after missing the cut, on the new helmet he tried out in Brainerd

"We were doing okay for a while there, far enough that I began to think we might just make it. But it let loose in a hurry out there, and though I pedaled it once to get back in the race, he was pulling away. On one hand, it's not like we were the class of the field all weekend and then got bitten by the lane bug, but it is pretty frustrating when it gets that uneven out there. Had the lanes been even, we had a chance. As it was, we didn't have much of one. That's frustrating." -- Burkart after losing traction in the opening round against Medlen

"Unfortunately, the race track beat us up pretty good. They sprayed so much of that glue on the track after the oil down and all it did was make the track greasy. It wasn't any good at all. Until six or seven pairs of cars ran down it, it wasn't worth a darn. As we sat and waited, I backed it up, and backed it up, and backed it up some more. I even did it sitting at the starting line while we waited for one of the clean ups. I really thought it was backed up enough, but you can see that it didn't work.” -- Wilkerson on waiting through two oildown cleanups in his lane before blazing the hides in a first-round loss to Worsham

"We have some problem that has developed here. We're not sure what exactly that is. We struggled in qualifying and I'm having trouble keeping the car in the groove. So, we're going to make a decision on what we're going to do for Memphis, but we're going to make some kind of major change." -- Scelzi referring to the next stop on the 2005 NHRA circuit after losing to Tony Bartone in the opening round at Brainerd

"Unfortunately, Novelli just killed the track and put us almost 40 minutes behind and the track was in the sun a long time. Our Matco Tools guys backed the car down a huge amount and the track just didn't hold it. They made all the right moves and Dan (Olson, co-crew chief) even said if we had it to do over again, he would have done the exact same thing, and that's how far we backed the car down. It's part of racing, but I really feel the NHRA needs to look at the licensing procedure and they need to make sure that the drivers—all of us—do the right thing when there's a problem. A guy blowing up on the starting line and coasting down the center of the track on raceday is unacceptable and it hurts all the competitors, the fans, and the entire sport, and it should not be allowed to happen.” -- Whit Bazemore telling it like it is after suffering a first-round loss in a pedalfest against Tony Pedregon

“The track could not take the power we wanted to give it—it is not clear to me if it had anything to do with the oildown or not.” -- Cruz Pedregon after falling to Tommy Johnson in the second round

"We use the term 'one lane track' loosely, because it can mean different things. If there's a bad bump in one lane, or a totally bald area by the starting line, it can truly be almost impossible to get down. The oildown was huge, and a real problem, but it didn't make it impossible to get down the right lane, it just made it very, very, hard. What had been a very even track, with room to maneuver in both lanes, became very narrow and tight on the right side. You couldn't miss by a hair. You had to be perfect, and that's hard to do with a Funny Car." -- Worsham on the difficulty of racing in the right-hand lane at Brainerd after losing traction against Force in round two