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"We had a team meeting this morning and I said that between me, Ashley {Force, his daughter], and Robert [Hight], one of us had to win this race for Eric. I remember how happy he was when he won here last year because he's from this area. He had that goofy smile and was eating ice cream and just having a blast. We wanted to win and dedicate it to Eric.” — John Force after beating Del Worsham in the final, referring to teammate Eric Medlen, the defending Sonoma race champion who died earlier this year following an accident in testing at Gainesville, FL
"The Friday night run is a big, big deal. I think it has become as important as any round of racing. When I pull up to the line on Friday night, I get butterflies in my stomach, because I know that this is critical to winning the race.” — Mike Ashley after going 4.743-seconds at 326.79 mph on Friday night to earn the number-one starting spot for the fourth time this year. His speed also set a new track record, his sixth speed record of the season
"It was hunting for the center line pretty hard, and I jerked it back twice but I was still right over there. I was a little scared of getting on the line or nicking a timing block, so even with the good E.T. and the big speed, I think I might have clicked it just a little early. But, all in all, that's the sort of thing we're looking for, and this is a track where we tend to find it. A nice clean lap, the car sounds great, nothing goes boom, and it even shuts off without hurting itself, so I'm very happy with that.” — Del Worsham on his first qualifying lap that left him 5th on Friday night and held up for that position for Sunday
“The conditions were tricky. As you could tell by the times, the crew chiefs were really trying to slow everything down to get the cars down the track. And then somebody would go out and run a killer number and make you think that it could be done. So, it was just very tricky.” — Ron Capps after qualifying 12th
"It is a relief knowing you're in when you run, because so many little things can go wrong on any lap and, had one of those four guys knocked us out, we would have all been sweating bullets over things like broken blower belts, or faulty burst panels, or whatever. I guess, in hindsight, it would have been big and dramatic to get bumped out by those guys and then bump our way back in, but I'd rather be safely in than dramatic.” — Jeff Arend after jumping up from 16th to 13th with his last qualifying pass, on watching Bob Gilbertson, Scott Kalitta, Tim Wilkerson and Jerry Toliver all fail to break into the field as they ran just before him in the final session on Saturday
"We don't know what's happened for sure but we think it's the body. Roush, who makes all the bodies, took ours after Seattle. After the way Tommy's (Johnson Jr.) came apart in Seattle they wanted to fix it. So, they strengthened the front end and in doing so, they added weight. They said it wasn't much, but it's 22 pounds heavier. So, we think the car is out of balance. It's so heavy; you can hardly pick it up. The added weight probably ruined the integrity of the car. It couldn't transfer the weight properly on the run, so it smoked the tires.” — Wilkerson after his DNQ, on losing traction in all four qualifying attempts
“We had a systems failure and the guys took apart our ignition box, looking for the gremlin that affected our qualifying at Seattle and Sonoma. Dale (Armstrong, crew chief) and the crew cut apart everything in the MSD box and finally traced it to a piece of rubber that was used as insulation. It turned out there was carbon in the rubber and it was enough to conduct four volts of electricity. That was enough to start the timers that set off the engine retarders and slowed us down.” — Jerry Toliver after his DNQ, explaining some of the nuances that can spell the difference between packing up Saturday night or racing on Sunday