Notes: Kyle Busch trying to solve Turns 3 and 4 at AMS

HAMPTON, Ga. -- If Kyle Busch is to repeat as the winner of the Kobalt Tools 500 on Sunday, he knows he'll have to solve the third and fourth corners at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Busch, who will do double duty in the Cup race and Saturday's American Commercial Lines 200 Camping World Truck Series race, struggled with the new tire combination at AMS during Friday's practice, as did many other drivers.

"The tire here they chose again is pretty difficult to handle," Busch said. "We're not sure what's going on with it. It's very inconsistent.

"The truck seemed to be pretty good this morning -- we weren't bad there. But the car's not been to our liking. We've been all over the place with it. A lot of guys are saying the same things about it. We felt like we hit on something in Turns 1 and 2, but we've missed 3 and 4. We haven't been able to hit it down there yet."

Busch qualified ninth at 185.891 mph (29.824 seconds).

Busch's victory in last year's race was the first for Toyota in the Cup series. In 35 races since then, he has won eight times.

Liking it slick

Carl Edwards, ninth in points, hasn't had the start he would have liked this season, but he's looking forward to Sunday's race, even if it means slipping and sliding for 500 miles.

"The track is real slippery," Edwards acknowledged between practice and qualifying. "It's pretty wild. That's fun, though. I like this place when it's like that. It's a track that you can run three-wide on, but, at the same time the car moves around quite a bit.

"It's totally different from a place like Charlotte or Vegas, where the car is really nailed down. You can get a little aggressive with the wheel here. It's fun."

Edwards was 29th in qualifying at 183.881 mph (30.150 seconds).

Edwards has three wins at Atlanta, including the last race run at the 1.54-mile speedway (Oct. 26, 2008).

Focus on engines

Everyone will be listening to their engines a little closer than usual this weekend in Atlanta.

A rash of engine problems plagued some of the top contenders last weekend at Las Vegas, putting the focus on durability for Sunday's Kobalt Tools 500.

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"All the manufacturers have been bit by the bug," Bobby Labonte said. "It seems like everybody caught a sinus infection."

At Las Vegas, five Toyota teams had to change engines for various reasons leading up to the race. Matt Kenseth, trying to become the first driver to win the first three events of the season, ran into problems during warmups and lasted six laps once the green flag dropped in his Ford.

David Ragan and Carl Edwards, both driving Fords, also had engines fail. So did Mark Martin, whose Chevrolet went out for the second week in a row.

Several drivers said the problems at Vegas could possibly be traced to the Goodyear tires. Not that there was anything wrong with them -- quite the opposite.

"Goodyear should be congratulated for the tire it brought last week," said Kurt Busch, who had his own mechanical problems. "We got to RPMs we didn't expect to get to. I think we were running about 9,800. That's a lot of RPMs for an engine. I don't think you saw more than 9,600 last year. It caught some teams off guard."

The cars are not expected to have the same grip on the Atlanta track, which caused all sorts of problems for Goodyear at last year's fall race. That should reduce the stress on the engines.

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Back to school

Bobby Labonte wasn't trying to prove he's smarter than a fifth grader; he simply wondered whether the fifth-grade class he visited Friday morning at Cotton Indian Elementary in Stockbridge, Ga., would know who he was.

"This was a bunch of fifth graders, and I won the championship in 2000," Labonte said. "I just thank goodness their parents told them who I was before I got there."

Labonte appeared at the school on behalf of his sponsor, Ask.com, to talk to the class about Internet safety and to make a donation of computers as part of the Safe Search Schools program, which is designed to steer children away from offensive or potentially harmful sites when surfing the Internet.

"We're trying to help raise awareness of Internet safety," Labonte said. "As a dad with two kids at home and a big computer sitting there, I know how important it is to have Internet safety at home."

One lucky student, William Starr, got a ride to school from the former Cup champion. Starr certainly knew who Labonte was. He attended the last race Labonte won at Atlanta, in 2003.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.