RICKY RUDD, No. 21 U.S. Air Force/Motorcraft Taurus - "We knew we were pretty good, we unloaded and we were top-six, -seven, -eight or -nine coming into this session. Man, it's such a pleasure. The car does all the work. We've had some pretty good cars the last couple of weeks in qualifying, but I've been overdriving it, trying to compensate. The car was there, we just didn't get the pole, but it was there."

THIS TEAM HAS SHOWN IMPROVEMENT OVER THE PAST THREE WEEKS. "No question it's coming together. We made up three laps the hard way last week at California. We had a fifth-, eighth-place car last week, ended up 17th just because we just didn't have track position when we needed it late when we had to make all those laps up. But these are not the cars that Fatback - he's got some cars going under construction right now and they won't be ready probably three or four more races away, so I'm pretty excited about seeing those."