“We have a great car right now, and I expect we'll be doing this more often.” — Mike Ashley on finally breaking through with a final-round win over Jim Head
"What can we say? We've qualified number one three races in a row, and now qualified number two, so I'd say the car is running pretty good." — Ashley on his continuing good fortune in qualifying, which included a new track speed record (4.794/327.11 mph)
"We used our two brand new blowers today and they certainly are not as good as our good old one. I'm sure there's a way to use them and tune around all that, but jiminy Christmas, I'm going to have to change the whole way I run the car … I was really optimistic
about the blowers after testing. I thought they might be okay but after the first run we made with the old one and then we put the new ones on it, it's like, Wow! We still have night and day … I haven't decided what blower to run tomorrow. I've got four I need to drag behind the Suburban on the way home, and one good one. But I'm a little afraid of running the good one, because the track isn't going to be that good. First round may be okay, but after that, it may not want a good blower. And with these new blowers, if I get the fuel curve right it will go between .88 and .90. And that's going to win a lot of rounds here tomorrow. This place is not that good. A weak tune-up is what you're going to want if the sun is out.”— Tim Wilkerson after qualifying 5th, on some of the raceday decisions he was facing
“I always like racing somebody like Force because you know what you got. You know you got a killer and you'd better be on your toes. So, I'll get a good night's sleep tonight, get a good dinner, and dream about Little John all night long.”— Scelzi on his first-round pairing against John Force after qualifying 14th
"That final run was about as straight and smooth as you can do it in a Funny Car. I mean, it didn't drift or wash out at all; it just went straight down there. It finally moved around a little in the last 100-feet or so, but that's nothing compared to your standard Funny Car run when you're steering and correcting all the way.”— Del Worsham after breaking back into the field with a 15th-place effort in the final qualifying session
“It's the worst feeling to smoke them that early and coast down there knowing you're not in the show. But, honest to God, from the heart, it does not knock any of the confidence I have in our team.”— Capps on his tire-smoking final qualifying pass that left him outside the top 16 for the first time since fall 2004 and ending the longest current qualifying streak in the class at 55 events
“I felt it mixing up the cylinders and knew we weren't going to catch him so I shut it down. If your car is laboring and you're not in the lead, it's best to save it for another day.” — Cruz Pedregon after a first-round loss to Robert Hight
"We felt so good with what we had accomplished, our confidence was up and then the monkey jumped on our backs again. This has to be the most disappointing weekend of the 2007 season for us."— Gary Densham on qualifying 12th, but losing in a cloud of tire smoke to Head in the opening round
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“Our car still just isn’t consistent. We had a chance to make up some ground and didn’t get it done.”— Force after losing traction in the first round against Scelzi
"We should've won that race. We were starting to catch him at the big end, but he got ahead of us early.”— Jerry Toliver recalling his first-round loss to Wilkerson
“One of these times, he was going to slap us pretty good, and there was really no getting around that."— Worsham on his career-first loss to Ashley in round one despite making his best lap of the weekend (4.894/316.45)
“I was hauling him in like a prize Marlin at the end, catching up like he was standing still. I know you've heard this line before, but we just ran out of race track.”— Arend after barely falling short of Scott Kalitta in round one