David Stremme:

“The new Charger nose is helping us quite a bit. It’s the same car we qualified third with here in July. I think our team is a lot better. That nose has really helped and the engine shop is working hard. We’ll keep working at it and try to get faster. The good thing about it is my teammate, Montoya, is running well, too. Reed Sorenson had a lot to do with it. He was down here last week, and we learned a lot from his test. It’s always nice to be in the second group. You can learn a lot from the first group.

“Reed blew a motor last week. There was something in the valve train, but we’ll have a new motor here tomorrow to put some miles on. They’re working hard in the engine shop to get us better. We thought we were behind a little bit on our speedway engine program, but they’ve really stepped it up. Reed was so excited about the motors last week that he called me at home and told me I wouldn’t believe the motor. Everybody is really working harder. I’m really not worried about the other manufacturers or anything else that’s going on. We’re worried about our stuff. It’s starting to show. I feel totally different as a driver than I did at this time last year. We came along as a team at the end of last season and we look to continue that. I’m a lot more confident in myself and the team.”

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA:

“I think the Texaco/Havoline Dodge has been behaving really good. From what I hear we’ve stepped it up from where we were last year. It’s still very early. It’s my first test this year, so we’ll take it step by step. We’re trying different things for the car, and we’ll see what happens. I had a couple of weeks off, and it was good. Now it’s getting really busy. I’m not really thinking about it. We’ll just dive into it and see what happens. Hopefully we’ll get good results. That’s the plan. I think the new nose should help the car a lot. We’ve done a lot of work with the car of tomorrow. I think we’ll be competitive.”

TONY GLOVER:

“We’re trying pretty hard right now, and I’m not sure how hard a lot of these other guys are trying. Right now everything is going pretty good. It’s so much easier for me to test with two teams rather than just one team. You get so much more done, and it’s just a lot better deal. Last week we only had one team down here and ran into a few problems. We didn’t get quite the test we needed, but we can take what we learn this week and apply it to the 41 and it’ll be just as good. Our teams are looking good. Montoya is really cool. I think he’s going to be the real deal.”