FUNNY CAR

“Releasing Paul was a difficult decision, and one that I didn’t make lightly. I am grateful for what he has done for the team and me. He tuned me to my career best 4.873, he taught the team how to work together, and we went to race after race and didn’t hurt parts. But exciting things are happening for us, with some announcements coming soon, and we need a commitment from Paul that he can’t give us now that he is with Jeff Arend’s team.” -- Terry Haddock after missing the cut in qualifying, explaining why he’s replacing Paul Smith with Terry Manzer as his new crew chief

“That’s step one. The game plan was to come here and win the race. To qualify number one is always just a little bit of bonus for us.” -- Lee Beard after tuning Whit Bazemore to a field-leading 4.770-secs pass at 321.27 mph

“We are more than ready this weekend, with equipment that I think includes the kitchen sink.” -- Jeff Arend before qualifying 15th, then falling to Cruz Pedregon in round one

“Well you never like to be in the bottom-half of the field, but so far this season there have been a lot of race winners that have come from the bottom half.” -- Tony Pedregon after qualifying 12th

“I hate to make excuses, but this is one of the disadvantages of wearing glasses. My glasses fogged up and I couldn’t see a thing. Rarely does that happen, but it’s hot in the

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car and the cold weather here at Bristol today wasn’t a good combination. It’s really hard because the car ran so good. The car runs well and something like this bites us. It’s frustrating.” -- Tommy Johnson Jr. on his .178 reaction in round one that led to him losing to a holeshot by Gary Scelzi

“I knew I got out of the groove, and then when the tire caught, it shot toward the wall. I had the wheel turned all the way as hard as I could. I couldn’t tell if I hit the wall or not, until I got out of the car and the word came out that I was DNQd. Well as we all say out here, ‘that’s drag racing.’” -- Tim Wilkerson after brushing the wall with his headers in round one, handing the win to Phil Burkart, who went up in smoke and took nearly 15 seconds to cover the quarter mile

“He was gone. His car got really little, really fast. I never knew he hit the wall, I just came putting around the corner at the end and he was out of his car and visibly mad. I couldn’t believe it, and I’m sure Timmy couldn’t either. These things happen, even to great drivers.” -- Burkart on his view of the race against Wilkerson

“First round is a killer, and I’m always very relieved and very happy to get through it.”
-- Del Worsham after scoring a narrow victory over Jerry Toliver

“We were just a little too aggressive.” -- T. Pedregon on smoking the tires against Eric Medlen in the first round

“A few pairs before us, the right lane started to get a bald spot near the starting line and we pulled the tires loose early in the run. This is another learning experience for our car.” -- Ron Capps on his first-round loss to Gary Densham

“It’s hard to feel sad, even though I hate losing with a passion, when we ran so well and Baze and his team just ran better.” -- Scelzi on losing a close race in the second round to teammate Bazemore

“When it smoked them, I expected to see him head on down the track, but he wasn’t there. So I hit it again, and they smoked again. I still didn’t see him, so I just kept hitting it and a couple of times was able to feather it about half-throttle, which is really hard to do in a bucking bronco like that. Out at half-track, with the clutch timers now all fouled up and the clutch about locked up, every time I hit it the front end would come up, the horizon would disappear, and all I could see was sky. It was a rush, I’ll tell you that.” -- Burkart after his wild, tire-smoking win over C. Pedregon in round two