Matt Kenseth

They do hit each other pretty hard. It was just hard to pass, and to get anybody a big run outside you had to hit them pretty hard to give them a shot at getting some momentum.

Our performance has been up and our finishes have been a little bit better, so I think everybody has been a little bit more excited the last couple of months, ... I think your goals are to try and win every week, and I think when you're running better in general it's probably a little bit less of a grind and everybody is more excited to get to the track when you're running good.

We were a sitting duck. We knew we wanted to put four tires on the car because we ran so good all day, but we knew a bunch of them were going to take just two.

Well, he did what he had to do. Whatever Kurt feels good about tonight. I wouldn't have done that to him. I would have passed him the right way, or I wouldn't have passed him.

Not until they tell me what I did. I put my hand up, asked him, 'Why did you do that' That's all I did. What did I do

I hate green-white-checker finishes just because they are so nerve-wrecking. I spun the tires a little and they said 'Jimmie is outside' and I was just holding on trying to get a run off the corner.

Last year we made the top 10, I felt like in my heart that we weren't going to run for the championship anyway. I didn't think we were running good enough.

I didn't have any reason to be mad at him. I just apologized. I messed up. I'd be mad if was him, too. So I hope everything is OK.

He Stewart is out here a week ago, making ridiculous statements, getting everyone all upset because he says we are going to kill someone. Then he comes out here and does that kind of stuff all day. Was it intentional It looked that way to me.

Okay, enough about me. You all thought getting shoved by Jeff Gordon at Bristol was controversial. That's peanuts compared to what went down in Texas.

If I thought he was gonna try to take a swing at me or something like that, I probably wouldn't have gone over there.

He knocked me out of the way. I thought if he had a run on me, had me beat, that would have been OK. But he drove extra hard and knocked me out of the way. I thought it was a cheap shot.

I'm just really disappointed. I thought (NASCAR president) Mike Helton did a great job all week explaining it in the drivers' meeting that it was about aggressive driving and not necessarily bump drafting. Tony took me out intentionally.

We led all day and thought we had the best car. My guys had great pit stops and got me out front. I did everything I could at the end. If I had driven any harder, we were going to wreck. I just got beat.

I thought we were out of it. There are still a couple of races to go. We'll see what we can do.

It was a great day for the guys, ... We kept making adjustments to the car and got good enough. Until two to go, I thought I was racing Carl for the win. It's great to be up front all day. The disappointing thing is I think we had the car to win. We're here to win and whenever you don't win, it's disappointing.

Tony took me out intentionally, there's no two ways about that. He wrecked me intentionally and got put back to the end of the line, which I didn't think was too big a penalty. It's really disappointing. (NASCAR president) Mike Helton, I thought, did a great job explaining in the drivers' meeting aggressive driving, not necessarily bump drafting. (Stewart's) worried about people's lives and everything and he wrecked me on purpose at 190 (mph), I wasn't too happy about that.

I was even with Earnhardt and everybody just piles in that line all the time.

If it would've been any other time in the race he would have gone right by me, but right there you've got to race all you can for that position. And the way the leaders were going at it, I thought it maybe could've been for the win, so ... I just told him I was waiting for him to turn me.

It never hurts to get track time at the same track in basically the same car (with regard to bodywork and chassis setup) that you're going to run all week.

The most fun track we race on may be at Atlanta. You can run the white line or you can have the right rear scraping the fence and probably run the same lap times, so you never have an excuse for not passing a car in front of you. There are a lot of good grooves at Atlanta. It's a good race for the drivers and good fun for the fans.

Kenseth, the 2003 series champion, was happy just to get a crack at his second title. I'm relieved, but I'm more than relieved. I'm excited, ... We were way behind two months ago. We just kept digging and digging. I feel like we have some momentum.

I really have to thank Greg Biffle, we didn't do a qualifying run today and we took a lot of his stuff. That's a great lap for us.

Not really. Today I still have bad feelings. It would be hard for me not to.

I feel bad for Greg. He had the best car today. But I feel like we had the second or third best car.