“I was a little concerned this morning when it was cool; I thought we might get bumped. But, we held on, so we get the check."— Richard Hogan, crew chief for Melanie Troxel, after she held on to earn her career-first Top Fuel pole position
"The track was pretty good Saturday afternoon, too, but we didn't have enough power. The car shook like my old Dodge truck runs—rough."— Clay Millican after placing 5th in the qualifying order
"After spinning the tires on the first run, it made us a little more cautious than we needed to be, but we wanted to make sure the car went down the track and it did."— Larry Dixon after qualifying 12th
“We knew we took a risk coming here with a brand new car that had never made a run before.”— Doug Herbert after qualifying 14th
“We made our quickest run of the weekend, but it wasn't good enough."— Bob Vandergriff after falling to David Grubnic in the first round
"I hate to let down my team like that. I've got to get better.— Will on losing to a holeshot by Morgan Lucas in round one
"He was leading at half-track. Normally, I would've shut it off then but I knew we had to get a full run on the new car for Wes (Cerny), Tony (Shortall, crew chief and assistant crew chief, respectively) and the crew.”— McClenathan on his opening-round loss to Rod Fuller
"The tires started shaking and I pedaled it. I couldn't get the car back in the lane so I just shut it off. (Crew chief) Mike (Kloeber) says he's still struggling with the tune-up when the
sun comes out. It used to be that we would pray for sunshine.”— Clay Millican on his loss in round two to Grubnic
“I knew it was going to be a very close race. They took lane choice and I really thought that this might be the type of situation when the reaction time made a difference. I was trying to be really on the mark and I think the combination of that and the fact the car was staged deeper than I intended it to be just didn't work together.” — Troxel on going red by .034 against Fuller in round two
"It doesn't matter that it was the end of our streak of going to final rounds. Any time you feel like you let your team down, it's tough. You don't want to be the weak link. It's different when it's the car. There are a lot of different factors, everything that goes into it. As a driver, that's one of the hardest things that you can go through.”— Troxel again, referring to reaching the previous six final-rounds (five this year)
"Getting by Rod a second time in the final here is something. I thought he was going to put us in the right lane but he didn't and when I saw Capps go down the left lane it made me feel real good."— D. Kalitta on prevailing in a repeat of last year’s Top Fuel final at Bristol by going 4.537 seconds at a track record 331.53 mph while Fuller lost traction at the hit of the throttle
