Reutimann knows his odds, but doesn't bet them (cont'd)

After finishing fourth here in 2009, Reutimann was 11th at Texas, won the rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, then tacked on two more top-10s at Atlanta and Kansas. So there was a little frustration after Reutimann qualified 17th for Sunday's main event.

"You get aggravated sometimes, it's part of life," Reutimann said. "We just didn't get a chance to get our qualifying runs in like we needed to at the end there. I feel like we have a pretty good car off the trailer.

"The car revved good. It started similar to where we finished up last year and worked on it, kind of refined it a little bit. Actually race package-wise I feel like its pretty good. We didn't get a chance to run our qualifying lap in the way we needed to and suffered a little bit because of it, hence why I'm aggravated. One thing leads to another, leads to another."

Reutimann was a little happier after Saturday's pair of practices. He was fourth-fastest in the first 45-minute session and backed that up with a solid middle-of-the-pack run in Happy Hour as the team worked on race setups.

The only incident on Saturday came when Dale Earnhardt Jr. spun his No. 88 Chevrolet while trying to enter pit road. He was able to drive away without further incident and the car appeared to suffer no apparent damage.

Before a light rain canceled the remainder of the final practice after 45 minutes, Clint Bowyer jumped from fifth to first on the charts, followed by Juan Montoya, Mark Martin, Jimmie Johnson and Michael Waltrip Racing teammate Marcos Ambrose, who struggled with engine issues last weekend. However, Reutimann's not concerned about that.

"No, no, I think we're good," Reutimann said. "I think it was something that was pretty isolated. [Toyota Racing Development] always takes it apart and assess what the problem was and then they go back and make sure we don't have the problem again. I know we switched some stuff out to make sure just to be safe.

"I have no concerns whatsoever. I feel like we're in good shape. I hadn't even thought about it."

Instead, Reutimann would rather focus on solving what has been a tricky race surface for many drivers. His opinion, as the asphalt was weathered, the racing has gotten better, mainly because the tires aren't nearly as hard.

"When we first came out here, the place was just insanely fast," Reutimann said. "[Goodyear] ended up having a very hard tire to make sure the tires would live because of the extreme temperatures that we were seeing on the surface of the tires. They were very, very hard and very unforgiving so it was like you were hooked to the race track one minute and the next minute it was spun around backed into the fence.

"It is just one of those deals where the track aged really well. It has some more races on it and the grooves have widened out. Goodyear continues to refine their tire and bring a better tire back every time we've been here and they've done a lot of tire testing here. I think all in all, it's a combination of the track getting better, us getting a little bit better handle on the cars and Goodyear constantly refining their tires and I think it's still a very tricky race track, a very fast race track still but it's not as an extreme of a race track it was when we first started coming here."