Las Vegas — Turning out a fast lap of 173.182 mph in 31.181 seconds, Greg Biffle claimed the third qualifying position in tonight’s NEXTEL Cup qualifying session for Sunday’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. While the last race’s winner was glad to have such a good run, Biffle was a little disappointed he didn’t win the pole award in the No. 16 National Guard Taurus he believed good enough to do so.

Ryan Newman took the pole position, while Ford driver Elliott Sadler earned the outside pole position. Biffle’s teammates Kurt Busch and Matt Kenseth qualified fifth and eighth, respectively.

GREG BIFFLE - NO. 16 NATIONAL GUARD/SUBWAY TAURUS (QUALIFIED THIRD)
ARE YOU FRUSTRATED?
"Oh yeah. I feel bad for the guys. It almost brings tears to my eyes. I had an awesome race car there, but I just got too loose down there in [Turns] 3 and 4. That was definitely a pole run. It would have been on the pole for sure. It's a great race car for Sunday, I hope. We haven't had it in race trim yet, of course that's an unknown so no predictions this time, but it was a great, great run there. The guys had the car perfect. I told them not to touch it, but I was just a little too loose down here."

THIS TEAM HAS TURNED THE CORNER HASN'T IT?
"It has. The National Guard, the whole Roush team, Doug [Richert, crew chief] and Bobby [Bakeef, car chief] and all the guys - we've got a few new guys on the team this year and everybody is working really hard. If I can just be calm as a driver and not make mistakes, I think we'll get there."

KURT BUSCH - NO. 97 IRWIN/SHARPIE TAURUS (QUALIFIED FIFTH)
"We've talked about how Newman goes into ludicrous speed before and mine was ridiculous speed. I drove off into 1 more than I ever have before. These new tires allow you to stick a little better and I wanted to test it. I was starting to see three 7's line up, but we came up a bit short. We had a cherry mixed in somewhere."

WHAT ABOUT THE RACE ON SUNDAY?
"I've always done OK qualifying at this place, but in the race we usually burn a right-front off. With these new tires you have to be that much more careful, so this will help us back off our setup and run for the full 400 miles. Usually, we're too aggressive, so this should help."

MATT KENSETH - NO. 17 DEWALT TAURUS (QUALIFIED EIGHTH)
IS IT GOOD TO COME BACK TO A PLACE YOU RUN SO WELL AT?
"Yeah, we've been running good this year we just don't have the finishes. We had something break at Daytona and we got a fender knocked off and I got a flat tire at California, but we ran good. We had a real competitive car at Daytona and led laps at California, and I feel like we'll run real good here this weekend too. We've got a lot of work to do between now and Sunday, but I'm real confident about our chances. I think we've got a real good car here. It's the same car we had at California and, hopefully, we can get the finish this week."

WHAT IS IT ABOUT ROUSH HERE?
"Some of it is probably luck. I think a lot of races you can sit and watch and the fastest car doesn't necessarily win the race. We've been real fortunate to have the fastest car the last couple of years and Mark [Martin] and Jeff Burton have had the fastest car a few times and not had any misfortune or have anything go wrong. They've executed well on pit road and had good pit strategy and all that - right place at the right time. So there are a lot of things that go into it. We've had good cars, but we've had good fortune also."

DALE JARRETT - NO. 88 UPS TAURUS (QUALIFIED 13TH)
"Everything was pretty good. We didn't work much on qualifying stuff today, so we made kind of a guess at it as far as what we needed to do. The car has been a little bit on the loose side, so that's what we've been working towards and made it better. As the day cools off these cars are gonna go a lot faster. I'd like to blame it on an early draw, but the fastest guy here went right before me, so you can't blame it on that."

RYAN WAS PRETTY FAST.
"When you go around Ryan you don't have much of an excuse. When he goes out and puts down that fast lap you can't blame it on the track not being exactly right, but we made a pickup there and that part of it's good. I think we learned some things for race setup today, so hopefully that'll all work out for us. It was a reasonable effort, but it's gonna keep getting cooler here and these guys are gonna go faster and faster. But we'll take that and do what we can with them on Sunday."

MARK MARTIN - NO. 6 VIAGRA TAURUS (QUALIFIED 19TH)
"I'm disappointed in myself. I should have told these guys and should have identified this thing in January. We'll do a great job with it in Sunday and get us a top-10 and go to Atlanta with both barrels blazing, but this car is just not got the potential that some of our cars do and that we should. We'll struggle along with this thing here on Sunday and get us a top-10."

RICKY RUDD - NO. 21 MOTORCRAFT GENUINE PARTS TAURUS (QUALIFIED 33RD)
"I'm not real super happy with it, but it was better than we ran in practice. At least we didn't slow up. We've been sort of struggling since we've been here and we came here the other week and worked on nothing but race trim. The track is hotter now and I wish we would have qualified better. I think we'll be OK racing. I think it's gonna race well because that's what we worked on for two or three days."

BIFFLE PRESS CONFERENCE
YOU MUST BE FEELING PRETTY GOOD RIGHT NOW.
"Actually, truth be known, I feel terrible. I had a car to qualify on the pole here and any driver is disappointed when he doesn't live up to what he thinks he can do and what the car can do, but I'm really happy to start third here, I guess. I'm still kind of beating myself up and probably will half the night because of that small mistake I made over there. Ryan said he was watching on TV and I had him beat until I got right over there [in Turn 3]. I got a little bit loose in the center and probably was trying too hard. I was trying for too much. I should have slowed it up just a little bit more getting in that corner and I had it. Hey, I can't complain with third. The National Guard team is working really hard and they've given me great race cars. Now it's my turn to live up to driving them to the front and keeping them there."

ROUSH HAS WON FIVE OF SEVEN. IS IT YOUR TURN SUNDAY?
"I hope so. Las Vegas hasn't been good to me in a NEXTEL Cup car. I qualified eighth last year and 20-some laps in we lost an engine, but we're hoping to have a better run here on Sunday. We think we can for sure. We don't think we're as fast as we were at California, but, of course, it's a different format. Happy Hour is tomorrow, so I don't know how my car is in race trim. I know in qualifying trim it's pretty decent. I feel it's the fastest car here, so we'll see tomorrow afternoon."

THIRD HERE TODAY, BUT DOES IT MAKE YOU THINK BACK TO THE FIRST TIME YOU CAME HERE IN A CUP CAR?
"It's something I think about all the time - that our team just failed to provide a good enough car to make the field with. It's just what it boils down to. This is Kyle Busch's first time here in a Cup car and he qualifies fourth. It's not the driver, it's the equipment you're driving and we were just unprepared when we came here in 2003, and we're prepared now."

DID YOU FIND SOMETHING IN PRACTICE TO GIVE YOU SOME OPTIMISM FOR A TOP-FIVE ON SUNDAY?
"I'd like to answer that the best I can, but that question is really for Doug. After we tested poorly here, which 15th or 20th, I don't know where we were at because timing and scoring wasn't working, but we weren't the fastest car. They went back to the drawing board back at the shop and worked hard on why we weren't as good as we were. We found some stuff that Mark Martin was doing that we felt would help our race car some. We found some stuff right at the end of the test that made our car turn better in the center that we didn't get a chance to really do some more testing with because it was right at the end of the day. So they worked hard on some of those things and brought it back and it's a lot better. So, yes, we did find some things that I feel we might be a top-five car now, but the telltale is tomorrow in race trim. Where do we stack up. This car feels like it's backing up faster. What I mean by that is one lap it's fast and the next lap it's not so fast and the next lap it's kind of slow. The California car didn't do that. It was fast, fast, fast lap after lap. Qualifying and racing are so different still when you're in this format. You don't really know until tomorrow what I've got for Sunday."

WHERE DID YOU BOBBLE?
"Down there in 3 and 4. I probably carried a little bit too much speed in it. Elliott [Sadler] and I were talking about it out there on the grid before we went out and qualified the Busch car that the track picked up a lot of speed. It cooled down a bunch and there was a lot of grip and we got across 1 and 2 so much faster that we were going down the backstretch two or three miles an hour faster than we had been. I tried to carry that speed into 3 and 4 and it just didn't work."

HOW MUCH WERE YOU BACKING OFF IN THREE AND FOUR?
"It's what we call roll the car across the center, so the less brake I use and the longer I stay on the throttle and the slower I come off the throttle, obviously, the faster I'm gonna be going when I'm turning down in there and trying to go across the center. It's within a mile an hour or two of speed that the car will stick or won't stick, so you just have to know what that threshold is and be right there, but not be over it and not be too far under it to where you say, 'Gee, I wish I would have went a little bit faster,' and missed the pole by a little bit."