WILL POWER (No. 12 Team Verizon Wireless, first):
“It was obvious in the first session that you had to use reds (tires) to get through. So it was a matter of saving your reds a little bit and saving your energy to the final round. That’s sort of what I did. I saved my big lap until the end. A great job by the team. They had to swap everything over on this car, with an all new crew, new engineer and everything. They did a good job. We’re looking to have a strong race tomorrow and hopefully move up in the championship.”
DARIO FRANCHITTI (No. 10 Target Chip Ganassi Racing, second):
“I’m happy to be back at Long Beach. I love the track. I love the atmosphere. There’s such a buzz about the place all week. The balance of the Target car was really good there at the end. I was just trying to get a clear lap. You run to the limit so much here in qualifying. We had a really good lap going, and I ran out of fuel in Turn 9. Starting second’s not bad. It’s better than fifth at St. Pete. And the Target team did a great job rebuilding the car after I had a little indiscretion this morning. So I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”
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RAPHAEL MATOS (No. 2 US Air Force Luczo Dragon Racing, third):
“I’ve got to give all the credit to the boys here on the Luczo Dragon team. It was a great comeback from St. Pete. We had a huge wreck in St. Pete, and the guys put the car back together. I’ve got to thank the whole team. They did an awesome job. I also want to thank our sponsors, McAfee, the Air Force and the Marines. I want to thank all of the people who have been helping us and supporting our program. It’s been just an amazing year for us.”
E.J. VISO (No. 13 PDVSA HVM Racing, fourth):
“It was a great day. The tires were good. Everything happened as we expected. We’ve had very good pace on this track since we came here. Things didn’t come together in St. Pete, but hopefully it will happen here in Long Beach. So far the team performance has been great, and I’m very proud to be in my second season with this team.”
JUSTIN WILSON (No. 18 Z-Line Designs, fifth):
“We gave it all we had today but came up a bit short for the No. 18 Z-Line Designs/Dale Coyne Racing team. I think we used the red stripes a bit too early in the second session and really had nothing left for the last run.”
SCOTT DIXON (No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing, sixth):
“We were trying to put on another set of tires, and it didn’t really work out the way we wanted it to. The set we were trying to put on wasn’t what the Target boys had, and we were going to put on a flat-spotted set of tires, so it was kind of chaos in the pits there. It’s disappointing. Qualifying is so important on road and street courses and we had a chance to start up front. We just didn’t make the most of the chance.”
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