Author: Official Release

AJ ALLMENDINGER – No. 43 Insignia/Best Buy Ford Fusion (Qualified 36th) – “It’s funny. It really doesn’t matter that much where you end up in the qualifying order. It’s one of those things where you’re just out there kind of riding along trying to not move your hands very much, just out for a Sunday drive. It wasn’t a big deal. We’ll start where we start and go from there.” HOW WAS THE LAP OVERALL? “I fell asleep at one point down the back straightaway. I took a nap, but woke up for three, luckily, just in time to make the corner. Other than that, there’s some nice scenery down the back straight. There seems like a nice party still going on from last night, so that was pretty good. I was pretty excited about that. I think I know where to hang out tonight, but, other than that, that was about it (laughing).” HOW CHALLENGING IS IT RIGHT NOW? “Ultimately, you can only control what you can control. I can control racing the car right now. I wish I had answers. I wish I could tell my team guys it’s gonna be okay. I wish I could have answers that everybody wants, but I don’t. Robbie Loomis is the guy to talk to about those answers.

For me, all we can do is just like last week, we go to the race track and come with the guys, have fun, put our heads down and try to win a race. It’s not easy. I’m not sitting at home just thinking everything is peachy. I’m a guy that stresses a lot about everything, so, in the end, we’re here racing the car. Hopefully, next weekend we’re at Texas racing the car, but we’re here, we’re having fun and it’s the same goal – go out there and win.”

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Qualified 34th) – “Qualifying laps at Talladega are not very exciting and it was uneventful. The car feels like it’s going turtle speed when you’re out there by yourself and it’s so big, but we’ll see where it stands up. Maybe the wind will come up a little bit and it’ll warm up and help us out.”

WILL YOU EXPERIMENT WITH YOUR CAR AT THE START OF THE RACE TO SEE WHAT IT CAN DO? “I think so. I think you’ve got to try some stuff tomorrow. I didn’t get a chance to in happy hour yesterday because we were working so much on the vibration, so I’m looking forward to trying a lot of stuff tomorrow.”

PAUL MENARD – No. 98 Menards Ford Fusion (Qualified 38th) – “Qualifying here is never eventful, but the race makes up for it. We lost a little bit of time from yesterday. It’s a lot less windy today, but we knew we weren’t gonna start on the pole. Hopefully, we can stay out of trouble because we’ve got a really fast race car.

We’ll try to stay out of trouble for the first 450 miles and race them the last 50.” WHAT IS YOUR PLAN FOR TOMORROW? “We’ll see where we end up in qualifying, but we tried a lot of things yesterday. Our Fusion sucks up really well. It can push the car in front and there’s no problem with handling. I can put it where I want to, it’s just a matter of being in the right line at the right time.”

ROBERT RICHARDSON, JR. – No. 34 A&W All-American Food Ford Fusion (Qualified 44th) – “It was pretty uneventful. You just take it easy around this place in qualifying and try to run smooth and make a consistent lap. I’m not sure if it was better than the mock-up run we made yesterday or not, but I imagine it was. I’m about to go talk to my crew chief and see how it stacks up.”

ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 9 Budweiser Ford Fusion (Qualified 37th) – “That was good. It was good yesterday in race practice, so that’s what I’m more worried about. I’m just gonna go race. I know there’s a lot of people on a lot of different agendas, but the beauty of the situation that I feel like I’m put in is I have absolutely no pressure. I’ve got a great opportunity next year to go drive Dale Jr’s. Nationwide car, so I’m not auditioning for a job or anything like that, so I can just go race. It’s kind of fun for me, actually.”

DAVID GILLILAND – No. 37 Taco Bell Ford Fusion (Qualified 43rd) – “This is the easiest track for qualifying from a driver’s point of view of anywhere we go. That was our first qualifying run of the whole weekend. We obviously focused everything on race trim yesterday and getting the car to drive good and draft well. I feel like our Taco Bell Ford Fusion will be good for tomorrow and that’s what’s real important.” IS THIS TRACK AN EQUALIZER FOR A TEAM LIKE YOURS THAT HAS OLDER EQUIPMENT? “Yeah, I feel like we have a better chance here of getting probably our best finish of the year than anywhere else we go, just for the simple fact that you can get up there and anything can happen. I feel if you’ve got the car driving well, you’re in the mix.

A lot of other tracks it’s hard to take a three-year-old car to a Charlotte or anywhere, really, and be competitive and feel like you’ve got a chance. But I feel like here with the way we had the car driving yesterday and the way the draft works here, and everything else that can unfold, that we actually really have a chance. It’s a good feeling and I feel good about tomorrow.”

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Crown Royal Ford Fusion (Qualified 27th) – “We’ll see where it stacks up at the end, but the car is still in race trim so you don’t really know what you’re gonna have for sure, but it seemed like the speed was reasonable, so that’s good. I’m just gonna try to race for 500 miles. All of the fans pay a lot of money to come and watch us race and I think we probably need to race all day. I’m gonna go out and run hard. Anything can happen at anytime. You can wreck the last lap as easy as you can the first lap, so you try not to put yourself in a bad position, but I’m gonna go out and race and see what we’ve got.”

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Subway Ford Fusion (Qualified 23rd) – HOW WAS YOUR LAP? “My qualifying lap was uneventful, which is what you want.

The car drove really well. I think we were competitive speed-wise and now we’ll just go race and, hopefully, we can get some of these Roush Fords nose to tail and make something happen at the end of this race.”

ANY STRATEGY? “I think we’ll try some things early in the race, but it’s still the same Talladega. There is still huge risk involved and you just want to be there at the end and then go for it.” THOUGHTS ON JIM HUNTER. “We all know Jim Hunter. I’m not too proud of the way I met him. I had a little traffic citation on the way to one of the race tracks and it was when I was running the Truck Series. I was real nervous about it because I never really had to deal with that away from home, so I didn’t know who to talk to or what to do and Jack Roush said, ‘Jim Hunter is the guy you need to go talk to.’ So I went and talked to Hunter and he put his arm around me and said, ‘Alright, we’ll take care of you. We take care of all sorts of things like this.’ From then on, to me, he was like a father figure, a guy I could trust when I went to get his opinion. He could always help me, and the traffic ticket worked out fine. It wasn’t that big of a deal, but it was only because of Hunter.”

ELLIOTT SADLER – No. 19 Hunt Brother’s Ford Fusion (Qualified 33rd) – “That was a normal Talladega lap, you just hold it straight and hold the gas down, and where you qualify is where you qualify. We’ll go get ‘em tomorrow. We’re definitely gonna race, at least at the beginning and see what happens, see what kind of position we’re in or how wild it is, but it’s gonna be a pretty wild race tomorrow with the two-car tandems we’ve figured out and all the bump drafting. It should be a really good race for everyone tomorrow to watch.”

FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES Amp Energy Juice 500 Qualifying, Page 3

October 30, 2010 Talladega Superspeedway

DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Qualified 28th) – “It was a little windier than when the session started, but I think we’ve got a great UPS Ford Fusion for tomorrow. If we could have gone out in the top five or ten, I think we would have been a few tenths faster, but it is what it is here. It’s a little windier than yesterday or what we hoped it would be, but our car is fast and I’m looking forward to tomorrow. We’ve got a lot of confidence. Our car drives well. It’s got good speed, so it’s a lot of fun to come to a track where we’ve got a good chance. Obviously, you can’t control those B factors sometimes, where you get caught in a wreck or misfortune of someone else’s doing, so it’s tough to say where we’re gonna finish, but I know we’re gonna run great.”

TRAVIS KVAPIL – No. 38 Long John Silver’s Ford Fusion (DNQ) – “Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do to make it any better, or hurt it for that matter. When you come to Talladega and Daytona, Talladega especially, you’ve got what you’ve got as far as what the race car is capable of and that’s all we had. That was the fastest we ran all weekend. We knew after our first laps yesterday that we probably weren’t gonna be in very good shape today, but we threw everything at it that we could and that’s all we’ve got. We’ll see how it shakes out, but it’s probably not gonna be good enough.”

BILL ELLIOTT – No. 26 Air National Guard Ford Fusion (Qualified 41st) – “That’s all we had. Tomorrow we’ll just run and roll and do the best we can and try to survive the day. They’re trying to pick up points and trying to do what they need to do on that end. I’m glad to help them get in the race from my standpoint. When Frankie asked me to do I knew Bobby (Labonte) was gonna be here and the first thought I had was if I’m not running good, then I’m pulling for Bobby. We’re gonna make the best of it.” ON JIM HUNTER. “Jim was a super guy. He meant a lot to this sport and he did a lot for this sport, and he’ll certainly be missed by us and everybody else. I loved his family. My wife knew his son real well. He’s the kind of guy that would come up and ask you do something and you’d just have to go do it. Jim came around this sport and he understood it as well as anybody in here and I think that will definitely be missed.” HE TOLD A LOT OF STORIES.

DID HE TELL YOU A FEW? “He always told stories, whether they were true or not that’s totally irrelevant, but, like I said, Jim was a super guy.”

Saturday, Oct. 30, 2010

Denny Darnell

Scott Sebastian

Dodge Motorsports PR

Brad Keselowski Open Interview

Amp Energy Juice 500

Talladega Superspeedway

ddarnell@darnellcommunications.net

ssebastian@darnellcommunications.net

Tweets by TeamDodge

www.media.chrysler.com

BRAD KESELOWSKI (No. 12 Penske Dodge Charger) WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON POTENTIALLY CLINCHING YOUR FIRST NASCAR NATIONWIDE SERIES CHAMPIONSHIP? “That’s pretty cool. Awesome. I never thought that I’d get to that level. To be there and insight of it is a pretty awesome goal. I’m still running worse case scenarios through my mind like don’t break a leg getting out of a rental car and stuff like that, hope that the airplane doesn’t crash or something. But it looks really good and I’m proud of what we’ve done to get to this point.”

IS THERE ANYTHING ABOUT CLINCHING THE CHAMPIONSHIP AT TEXAS THAT WOULD MAKE IT MORE MEANINGFUL? “A couple things that I like about Texas. Obviously, it a great place to race at and we seem to get great crowds. I certainly want to win for the fans, as many fans as possible. That would be cool, kind of unique. I made my first Cup start there. That track has a few things that I really enjoy about it.”

HAVE YOU TALKED TO ROGER ABOUT THAT IT’S GOING TO BE PENSKE’S FIRST NASCAR CHAMPIONSHIP? “A little bit, yeah. I think he’s along the same lines as I am, you don’t count your chickens before they hatch. They’re ready. There’s a crack in the egg; they’re not hatched yet. I feel pretty good about it.”

EVEN AT THIS STAGE WHEN IT LOOKS LIKE YOU COULD CRUISE THE REST OF THE WAY? “Yeah, you know me. I’m not going to cruise. You just don’t count anything. Anything can happen. I could break my leg tomorrow and not be able to drive the last three races. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to do anything stupid. It is a pretty awesome accomplishment. I hope it’s something that I can look back on for years to come and think about how awesome this year has been. I’m pretty proud of it.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK HAS BEEN THE KEY? “The consistency. It’s still the old point’s format in the Nationwide Series and I’ve always been a big fan of it. It rewards smart racing. Smart racing is finishing and getting the best finish that you can every week, setting yourself up for strong, consistent runs week after week after week. It’s about average finishes. We have a great average finish. Obviously, we’ve won six races which helps. It might not be as many as Kyle (Busch), but you set yourself up for when you have that one race where it’s like, ‘man, I can really drive way over my head to win this race and the odds are that I’ll probably crash and finish 30th or 35th.’ That’s all offset by if you win four of those races instead of finishing second or third and you have that one wreck, it wipes it all out. I think that there’s a style that comes with running a race with that mentality.”

IS THAT A LEARNING PROCESS THAT CAN CARRY FORWARD FOR YOU? “Yeah. It’s a lot different over here (in Cup) from the standpoint of how the Chase affects the way that you race. There are some things that you can carry forward. I think more or less, the commitment and the drive that it takes to run the whole season, that’s probably the largest part that you can take.

“I still have moderate respect for everyone in the Chase because with 10 races to go, it’s easy to be ready for the off-season. I’ll give everyone the runs in it, especially Jimmie (Johnson). He seems to be able to turn the wick up where everybody else seems to be sinking. That final charge, where if you were a runner, there’s that last two or three miles where it’s going from running eight-minute miles to six-minute miles and he’s able to do that. It’s like everyone is running a mile in 7:35 and fall off to an 8:30. That’s pretty special.”

DO YOU FIND YOURSELF IN THAT POSITION? IT’S A LONG SEASON. WHAT DO YOU DO TO MOTIVATE YOURSELF AT THE END OF THE SEASON? “There’s not one thing that you’re going to be able to do. You have to have fun at what you do for it to be tolerable. There’s going to be spots where it’s just not fun. There are races that we all have where you say, ‘God dang, get me out of here.’ You need to have fun. You need to enjoy the people you work around; that’s probably one of the major keys. You take a vacation when you can. The biggest thing that makes it fun is when you have fast race cars. You just need to execute. It keeps you from stressing out. I think the guys up front have way less stress than the guys in the middle of the pack just from that standpoint alone.”

WAS THERE ANY POINT AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SEASON THAT YOU HAD DOUBTS IF YOU COULD WIN THE NNS CHAMPIONSHIP? “I expected to run good. But there was an expectation that breakdowns would be a problem. Normal problems with a new team, parts left loose. Without testing, you don’t have a real chance to really R & D things or look for failures. You would think that those things would pop up, but knock on wood, they haven’t. I would say that there was an expectation that it’s going to be hard to win a championship with a new team from that standpoint alone. Who knows, maybe those gremlins will jump up at the end of the year or even next year and I’ll have to pay for this later down the road. I think that it was a lot to ask coming into the season to win the championship this year. It just makes it that much sweeter.”

HOW COME YOU AND CREW CHIEF PAUL WOLFE SEEM TO CLICK TO WELL? “I think that we have good communication and he builds fast race cars. Between the two, that’s what it takes. I think the approach that I have towards racing is quite a bit different than a lot of drivers and for some reason, we just complement each other. Some of the areas that I think about are different areas that he thinks about. I feel trapped when I don’t have a fast race car because I don’t necessarily know how to make it fast and Paul knows how to make it fast. The way that I go about racing and breakdown the races, I try to be a step ahead of the race, there’s not a lot of drivers that do that. I think that it’s very helpful to Paul. There’s not one magic thing, it’s everything. You do everything right and it just clicks. You have to have chemistry and Paul and I have that.”

HAS THAT MADE IT MORE FRUSTRATING ON THE CUP SIDE? “Absolutely. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had weeks where I’ve felt that we’ve run good, but the majority hasn’t been that way. We still have a lot of work to do.”

HAS THE NATIONWIDE SERIES TAKEN ANYTHING AWAY FROM YOUR CUP PERFORMANCE? “I think that I get stronger by running the Nationwide car. There have been races, like Loudon for example, that I qualified on the pole and thought that was a direct reflection of not running the Nationwide car and being able to focus on a qualifying run. But I noticed that as soon as I got to the race, I felt less prepared as usual. So I think that there’s a tradeoff there. You might gain something one part of the weekend and lose it at another part.”

WHY DO YOU THINK THAT THE PENSKE TEAMS HAVE BEEN SO STRONG WITH THIS NEW NATIONWIDE CAR? “I think the Dodge in general is a really good car, the way that it’s been designed. There were concerns about it at the beginning, the way that the front fascia has this huge gap inside the headlight area, that inside the wind tunnel it would create a downforce discrepancy against the other makes. But we’ve seen that hasn’t been an issue. We were really worried about that. I don’t have a great answer for that other than the approach that we’ve taken with the program, the crew chiefs have taken and engineering has taken, almost treating it likes it’s its own identity. I think a lot of other groups and teams have treated it as an old Cup car. We’ve treated it as its own entity because it is different than a Cup car and requires different things.”

(more)

KNOWING THAT EVEYONE IS CHASING THE PENSKE CARS, HOW DO YOU GUYS KEEP DIGGING AND MOVING FORWARD? “You just keep working. You keep your eyes open and stay sharp and you have to keep finding speed. It’s a never-ending challenge. They only way to do that is to work your butt off 24-7, whether that’s testing or whatever it may be.”

IS IT HARD TO BELIEVE THAT ROGER HASN’T WON A NASCAR CHAMPIONSHIP? “It is. It’s very strange to walk through the building and see all those Indy 500 pictures where’s he’s won and not see a NASCAR championship. Don’t get me wrong, there’s pictures of him with Ryan (Newman) or Kurt (Busch) throughout the years and even Rusty (Wallace). It’s unbelievable that there’s not one of him holding a (NASCAR) championship trophy. When I came to Penske Racing, that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to win him a championship. That makes it more special.”

HOW GOOD DO YOU HAVE TO BE INSIDE THE CUP GARAGE NEXT YEAR? “I have this question in my mind a little while back with leaving Hendrick. You always talk about your stock rising and dropping. I try to look to other people and get their opinions and asked them, ‘Where do you think that I am in this sport right now?’ I was like, ‘Winning this championship is pretty cool.’ I think winning the championship on the Nationwide side kind of keeps my stock level. If I was solely on the Cup side and judged, I think a lot of people would say the stock has dropped. It kind of levels it back out which is something that I appreciate. From a garage perspective, not just my team, but it keeps everyone thinking about it from the point that this sport is about attracting top people to your team, whether it’s pit crews or over the wall guys or mechanics, or spotters. And when you win and your stock is at a high level, it’s easier to do that. It’s easier to get the 12-second tire changer because of that. That’s really important for a driver to be successful because this is such a team sport and when you run well and they see that, you attract talent and it keeps you going.”

YOUR’RE WIN AT TALLADEGA LAST YEAR HAD A HUGE IMPACT ON YOUR CAREER? “It did have a big impact. I don’t know how my career would have been different if I hadn’t won it. I wish that I could say that I had it planned that way, but I really didn’t. I would have rather just passed him cleanly and just won the race. Looking back at it, every time growing up through the sport, from the Late Model level to the Trucks to the Nationwide to the Cup, there was always that instance where you’re rocked back on your heels and you’re like, ‘This sport is about to kick me out.’ You’re like a prize fighter, you’re dizzy. You’ve taken a couple punches and when that moment happens, I don’t know how, I consider it pure luck and things have just worked out in my favor. I got an opportunity to win a race or to get in great equipment and kind of fell back forward and something has happened. I had that opportunity in 2007 to drive that Germain truck when I feel like my career was over. And then ‘boom’ instantly back on the map, but I didn’t win a race. I was right there leading a race and got wrecked. I was like, ‘Alright, there will be other days.’ It was about a year and a half later driving Dale Earnhardt Jr’s Nationwide car when I was leading at Vegas and felt like I had a strong shot at winning and got wrecked again. Every time that it happened, whether it was those two lows or at another level, the people that were involved always said the same thing, ‘Hey man, I’m sorry. You’ll get another opportunity. You’ll get another break.’ At that moment you don’t know that. At the moment, you’re on the back of your heels. You’re like that could be it. What if I never get the opportunity to win again? What if my cars go to hell? What if I lose an edge? You don’t know. So when that moment came at Talladega last year, the same thing ran through my mind.”

Friday, Oct. 29, 2010

Dodge Motorsports PR

Kurt Busch Open Interview

AMP Energy Juice 500

Talladega Superspeedway

Tweets by TeamDodge

www.media.chrysler.com

KURT BUSCH (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger) A COUPLE DRIVERS WERE OVER 200 MPH IN THE DRAFT TODAY. DO YOU ANTICIPATE A TWO-CAR BREAKAWAY ON SUNDAY? “Yeah, there’s something about when two cars hook up with each other, they can really gain speed. The third car can’t keep up. It’s as if the air comes off the first car, clears that second car and lands straight on the third and slows it up. You’re going to see two-car breakaways. Whether you see it in the middle portion of the race or towards the end, there’s probably going to be two or three different groups of two-car tandems because that seems to be the magic number.”

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE PUSH DRAFT HERE AT TALLADEGA? “Talladega is just so wide and so generous that it really doesn’t challenge the setup as far as how much grip you have. You’re going to have plenty of grip, so it’s easy to draft and bump around pretty hard. You just hope that you have a smart guy behind you holding the wheel because if the guy behind isn’t connected to the guy in front properly, then big things can happen in a big way with somebody getting turned in front of the entire field. So we hope that things go smooth, yet in practice you have to be able to handle it. Everybody looked very stable and nobody was stepping out of line.”

IN 2004, DID YOU FEEL PRESSURE AND HOW DID YOU DEAL WITH IT? WILL JIMMIE JOHNSON FEEL PRESSURE? “This race (at Talladega) was earlier in the Chase schedule back in 2004. Now, it’s more towards the end. You have to always think that things can go wrong here; you just go in with the best attitude that you can have. This is the race where we were able to take over the point lead for the first time and never looked back. I believe Talladega is that big turning point in the Chase. You never know what can happen. If you survive this race, if you can come home with a good solid finish and you’re in the point lead or lead group, you don’t look back. You take off and run. Guys like (Jimmie) Johnson, (Kevin) Harvick, (Denny) Hamlin, those three have separated themselves and they want to stay out of trouble this weekend. They want to breathe a breath of fresh air afterwards, if they survive. Then they can attack the final three races because that’s what the Chase comes down to.”

“Can Johnson feel pressure? Of course and it’s up to others to do such. We’re too far behind. You have to have Hamlin in there, Harvick in there pushing hard and to make Johnson feel that he’s got some competition that he hasn’t had before. In ’04, we had the tightest Chase race; we had the most guys (still in the championship picture) going into the last four races. When you have more guys in the mix, there’s a lot more going on.”

DO YOU FEEL THE ‘HAVE AT IT BOYS’ MANTRA HAS BEEN POSITIVE THIS YEAR? “The racing action has just been better on the track. The times that you’ve seen great short-track racing or even the high speed superspeedways and mile-and-half tracks where you have chassis configuration versus aerodynamics, guys have challenged each other and raced hard and raced well. Yeah, some guys run into each other or bump here and there. Whether one guy gets spun out or ends up wrecked or it’s just good door-to-door, all of it has to be taken into consideration.

“Sometimes you get to the end of the year and you go, ‘All right, my slate is clean.’ You hope that you go down to Daytona with as many friends as you can find. You don’t really need to get together with others to see who’s on what side or who isn’t. It’s more or less every man for himself.”

DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU STILL KEEP SCORE IN YOUR OWN HEAD? “I learned from the Honorable Jimmy Spencer on how to keep track of things over time. So yeah, you keep track of guys.”

WHO DO YOU DECIDE TO PAIR UP WITH DURING THE RACE FOR A TWO-CAR RUN? “That’s tough. With this new configuration car and Talladega, definitely two guys break away. That’s something Ryan Newman and I saw back in 2008 when we were teammates. We were practicing in practice how to do the move. Teams and different guys have seen their pattern with it and how long you can stay with it. You start to overheat if you stay behind somebody too long. I made a move last year to jump up in front of my future teammate Brad Keselowski and he ended up timing it just wrong to where I ended up in the inside fence and a big wreck started. That was with just a lap and a half to go. You have your final pit stop and after that, you digest who you’ve been running with all day. Who’s been good all day? Who can you trust? And who would you want to team up with on the frontside or backside of the two-car draft. It really happens after the last pit stop, but you’ve been taking notes all day.”

IS TE TYPE OF CAR NOT AS IMPORTANT IN CHOOSING A DRAFTING PARTNER? “Some guys just have the overall raw speed and those are the ones that push really well because they can carry a car that’s a little slower than them to that two-car speed and take off. If you have a mediocre car pushing you, it doesn’t seem to hook up as well.”

IS IT WEIRD TO THINK THAT ROGER HAS NEVER WON A NASCAR CHAMPIONSHIP YET? “Absolutely. It’s amazing to think that he hasn’t won one and that it can happen just around the corner. We’ve got to have Brad do even better than those Gibbs guys because (they) have the overall owner’s championship lead now where Brad has the driver’s championship lead. I hope that Brad wins it. I hope that he wraps it up at Texas next week. We still need to push hard for Roger to give him his championship. It would be really odd that Brad would win it (driver’s championship) and not get the owner’s championship brought home.”

DO YOU CHOOSE A DRAFTING PARTNER BASED OFF THE RACE ON SUNDAY OR OTHER FACTORS? “It comes down to the day’s events; who’s got the fastest car that day. You put those guys in a category of who you’ve run well with in the past. A guy like Kasey Kahne right now, you look for him in the 9 car and he isn’t there, he’s in the 83. Are those guys up to speed with their program on that 83 to draft with? We’ll see on Sunday. A guy like Kasey, I’ve always drafted well with. Right now, I don’t know if he has the normal package in the 83 car.”

A LARGE MAJORITY OF GUYS (40%) HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN CRASHES HERE AT TALLADEGA, IS THAT ACCEPATBLE? “That’s what makes our sport exciting and fun to enjoy. The excitement level that is part of restrictor-plate racing, it’s the Russian roulette atmosphere. ‘Hey, is my number going to get pulled today. Am I going to survive?’ That’s the whole Talladega atmosphere. Daytona will fit into that next year when it has fresh asphalt and we’re all bunched up in tighter packs. Daytona used to separate a bit and handling was more of an issue. It’s just part of the game. I’ve said that this is the toughest race in the Chase because you can’t predict what’s going to happen. You don’t know how to avoid the big one. And this is that wild card. That’s what wild cards do; they create statistics that don’t match other tracks.”

Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, is looking to bounce back from a 33rd-place finish at Martinsville last weekend. He spoke with reporters about a variety of issues after practice.

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – “I’ve had restrictor plate cars that are just as smooth as glass and then some that have a vibration.

It’s weird that our cars right now, whether it’s the gear, the driveshaft, the angle – whatever is going on – there’s extreme vibration, a real high, harmonic vibration which is kind of aggravating inside. We’re working on it. We got it better, but we’re gonna look at a few more things, but I think we got most of it out of it.”

CARL SAID HE FELT IT BEFORE, BUT IT’S HARD TO DUPLICATE AT THE SHOP.

“We’ve had some issue with our cars vibrating on about every race track. We’ve complained a little bit about it, but here it’s been extraordinarily different. It’s a different vibration and it’s a real high frequency, meaning it’s a real fine vibration. It almost hurts your body being in the seat, it’s transferring the vibration through your body so much. We don’t know what it is, but it’s obvious we don’t have something happy inside there. Something is not lined up perfect.”

HOW BIG OF A DEAL WOULD IT BE IF GANASSI MOVED TO FORD? “I think it would be great for Ford to have more teams in the sport. That being said, I don’t believe there would be a technology alliance between them and us. It would purely be them using the engine. I don’t think there would be any communication between the teams at that point, similar to a Hendrick and another Chevy team. They pretty much keep their information to themselves.”

HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THAT VIBRATION? “You just have to deal with it inside the car. We know it has to do with speed also because when it’s vibrating it takes energy. It’s not as smooth as it can be. I doubt whether we’re gonna have it all the way fixed. We’re just gonna have to work harder with straight line testing and some other things to figure out what it is before we come to tracks like this.”

IS IT ANYMORE PHYSICALLY DEMANDING? “A little bit. Depending on the vibration it blurs your vision a little bit because your head is vibrating against the headrest, or you’ve got to hold your head off the headrest. You forget about it after they throw the green flag, but in practice you’re more sensitive because you’re more relaxed, but the car does have a lot of vibration.”

ARE THE SPEEDS ABOUT WHAT YOU EXPECTED? “Yeah, I think so. We’ve kind of been faster and slower. I think the speed is okay.”

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES

AMP ENERGY JUICE 500

TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY

TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT

October 29, 2010

 

TONY STEWART, NO. 14 OFFICE DEPOT/OLD SPICE CHEVROLET met with media and discussed car speeds during practice, have at it boys, drafting partners, re-paving at Daytona, and more. Full Transcript:

HOW WAS THE CAR IN PRACTICE?

“I think it’s pretty decent. I guarantee we’re a lot better than we were in the spring here. So I’m pretty excited about it so far.”

WHEN YOU’RE SEARCHING FOR A DRAFTING PARTNER, IS IT MORE ABOUT HOW THE GUY DRIVES OR HOW HIS CAR CUTS THROUGH THE AIR? HOW DO YOU GO THROUGH THAT PROCESS OF FIGURING?

“It’s both. It’s both. It can be the best driver out there but if his car is not fast, you’ve got to pick somebody who is quick. But you can have the fastest guy out there but if he’s somebody that you’re nervous around, you might choose somebody else. So it’s an evaluation that you go through the whole course of the race. You don’t really make that decision necessarily before the race starts as much as you watch what guys are doing during the race and kind of evaluate it as you go.”

SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE?

“Absolutely. And without warning too (laughter)”.

DENNY HAMLIN AND KYLE BUSCH BOTH WENT OVER 201 MPH DURING PRACTICE. SOMETIMES 200 MPH SEEMS TO BE NASCARS POINT WHERE THEY MIGHT MAKE A CHANGE TO THE PLATE. DID YOU FEEL ANY MORE UNCOMFORTABLE OUT THERE THAN NORMAL?

“I never got pushed so I never got up there. I don’t think it’s any different than it was in the spring so to me it’s a non-event right now.”

ON THE DAYTONA REPAVING PROJECT, WHAT DO YOU THINK IT’S GOING TO BE LIKE?

“It’s a lot different. It’s nice. It’s very similar to here (Talladega). That’s how smooth it is. It’s the same construction company so they’re doing a really good job on it. It’s going to have some imperfections in it but that’s what adds the character back into it and that’s what was so special about Daytona in the first place but they have done an excellent job. It’s pretty amazing to think we raced there in July and that they are as far along as they are.

“It just amazes me; the engineering side, and watching the equipment work. To sit there and think about putting a roller on top of a 31degree banking and have to figure out how to keep that roller even pressure left to right is pretty remarkable to see who they do all that.”

HOW DO YOU THINK NASCAR’S “HAVE AT IT BOYS” HAS WORKED OUT? DO THE FANS SEEM TO LIKE IT? WHAT ABOUT THE DRIVERS?

“I think it’s been fine. The good thing is that the drivers are always pretty good about policing things. The more corporate America was involved, and it’s not a bad thing, but I think NASCAR tried to protect everybody on that standpoint and I think we lost the balance in the equation. So this year I think what NASCAR has done has kind of put it back to where it should be.”

WAS THERE AN OCCASION OF ‘HAVE AT IT BOYS’ THAT WAS FUN TO WATCH?

“Well, it’s never fun because you can get caught up in it. But you understand why it happens and it’s nice to know that you don’t have to rely on NASCAR to settle petty disputes. We can do it amongst ourselves and the good thing is NASCAR is there in case it doesn’t get resolved and it gets out of control and that’s the way it always was.”

HAVE YOU BEEN SCRATCHING YOUR HEAD OVER THE SPEEDING PENALTIES?

“No, not at all. We know where it was at last week and we know why it happened. We made the adjustment and we didn’t have it the rest of the day. But you know it just shows everybody is pushing to get everything they can get. Nobody wants to lose anything; especially on pit road. So, we’re pushing that envelope as far as we can.”

AT TALLADEGA IT WOULDN’T MATTER AS MUCH AS A PLACE LIKE MARTINSVILLE, RIGHT?

“No. not at all. This is a place where you don’t mind if; you know, the last stop is the one that you’re really the most concerned about. The rest of them during the day are really a non-event. Guys are going to get shuffled back and forth so much that this is the one weekend that I probably lean on the crew guys the least except for that last stop. That last one is when I want a good one.”

IS THIS THE LAST REAL CHANCE FOR THE CHASE TO GET SHAKEN UP? ONCE WE COME OUT OF HERE ARE WE GOING TO KNOW PRETTY MUCH WHO IS IN IT?

“Well, I would think so. But you look at some of these races this year, week to week there are places that you wouldn’t think would be a big mix-up deal and there’s guys that have had problems. That’s the thing. Every week is an opportunity for it but this is a bigger opportunity than most.”

About Chevrolet: Chevrolet is a global automotive brand, with annual sales of about 3.5 million vehicles in more than 130 countries. Chevrolet provides consumers with fuel-efficient, safe and reliable vehicles that deliver high quality, expressive design, spirited performance and value. In the U.S., the Chevrolet portfolio includes: iconic performance cars, such as Corvette and Camaro; dependable, long lasting pickups and SUVs, such as Silverado and Suburban; and award-winning passenger cars and crossovers, such as Malibu, Equinox and Traverse. Chevrolet also offers “gas-friendly to gas-free” solutions including the Cruze Eco and Volt, both arriving in late 2010. Cruze Eco will offer up to 40 mpg highway while the Chevrolet Volt will offer up to 40 miles of electric, gas-free driving and an additional 300 miles of extended range (based on GM testing; official EPA estimates not yet available). Most new Chevrolet models offer OnStar safety, security, and convenience technologies including OnStar Hands-Free Calling, Automatic Crash Response, and Stolen Vehicle Slowdown. More information regarding Chevrolet models, fuel solutions, and OnStar availability can be found at www.chevrolet.com.

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES

AMP ENERGY JUICE 500

TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY

TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT

October 29, 2010

 

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET, met with members of the media at Talladega Superspeedway and discussed racing at Talladega, tight points battle, the role of teammates and other topics. Full transcript:

 

YOU HAVE A SIX POINT LEAD IN POINTS HEADING INTO TALLADEGA, YOU HAVE SAID ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS THIS YEAR THAT THIS IS A “WILD CARD”, YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE RACE ON SUNDAY: “It definitely is the wild card. There is a lot of risk at every track we go to but at this, we’ve all been here enough to see it, there really is no safe place to be on the track. It seems like you can prolong your opportunity to crash until later in the event which is a strategy we’ve played over the years. But at the end, when everyone is still trying to get the best finish they can, it’s just full chaos at that point. I think coming to the checkered last year, Mark (Martin) and I were nose to tail, obviously in a tight points battle, the crash collected him and fortunately it didn’t collect us and we went on. So, with all that being said, we are excited to be here. I really, really do enjoy racing at this race track. I had a blast here in the spring, when you come back at the end of the year and the points are on the line, it is a more stressful event. If we come out of here close to the No. 29 (Kevin Harvick) and the No. 11 (Denny Hamlin), I know we have a great chance to race in from there. If things go our way and we have a gap or something at that point, then we just have to be smart in the final three races and race accordingly. So, we’ll know a lot more Sunday afternoon. We’ll all have a better understanding of how the final three races will go. We’ll just do our best until then and try to stay out of trouble.”

CONSIDERING HARVICK’S RECORD ON PLATE TRACKS THIS YEAR, WINNING TWO OUT OF THREE, LED THE MOST LAPS IN THE DAYTONA 500 AS WELL, IS THIS HIS BEST CHANCE TO BREAK OUT IN THIS CHASE AND TAKE A LITTLE COMMAND AWAY FROM YOU AND DENNY AND ALSO COULD THIS BE HIS LAST CHANCE? “Gosh, I think with both the No. 11 and the No. 29, this track is really anybody’s race, anybody has a shot to win. In the past, I know our record doesn’t show as a favorite but a lot of it has been because of the strategy we’ve run. We just haven’t been at the front; we’ve been at the back trying to be smart. But, if I take this race out of it and look forward, the No. 29 is going to be great at Phoenix, their mile-and-a-half, two-mile program has been awesome and there are two mile-and-a-half tracks left on the circuit. You look at the No. 11 and the fact that he has won at Texas and also at Homestead, and it is no slouch on the flat miles, he’s going to be competitive there too. I don’t think this is anyone’s last chance to break out. I think that all three drivers that are in contention right now have four really good race tracks, especially the final three for all three teams.

“I don’t think so; I really don’t think this is Kevin’s best chance. I think that the three tracks remaining, in my eyes, I think more about Phoenix than anything because of his success there over the years and how many laps he has at that track. That is probably the track he is smiling the most about, I would expect.”

BECAUSE OF THE REPAVE AT DAYTONA, YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TESTING, WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE A MODIFICATION OF THE CURRENT TESTING PROGRAM OR IN TODAY’S ECONOMY WOULD THAT SEND THE WRONG MESSAGE? “I understand the economy and the difficult situations that puts the race teams in. We’ve talked about it for years and there are a few options that would work but at the end of the day, I think a handful of test sessions for all of the race teams at different tracks where we can collect data would be beneficial for everyone. There is arguments that say come in a day early, let the teams have the day and go about it that way. At one point, we had I think five test sessions that were open test session for the sport to come in and run. That would be an option. Or, you open it up and let teams travel to maybe five tracks of their choice to collect information. Either way, I think if they regulate it and keep it a low number, it will be better for everyone. Yes, it is going to cost a little bit of money, but teams are going to get so much out of it from a technical standpoint. I think it will help improve the racing, or at least take it in the right direction and make all the cars competitive.”

DRIVERS AND CREW CHIEFS ARE CONTROL FREAKS SO GOING TO A PLACE WHERE YOU HAVE NO CONTROL OVER ANYTHING, WHO IS THIS RACE TOUGHER ON, YOU OR CHAD? “I would have to think that it is more difficult for the crew chief, because at least in the car, you are occupied and feel like you are connected to what is taking place. I know from watching my younger brother race, I’m more worried for him and worried about the race watching someone I care about being in a race than I ever have been being in the race. So, I would have to think it is along those lines because all he has is a button to push really connected to the car to talk to the driver and outside of that there is not much he can do. His hands are really tied from where he is sitting.”

BECAUSE OF THE RANDOM NATURE, IF YOU HAVE A BAD DAY HERE, ARE YOU ABLE TO BE MORE PHILOSOPHICAL ABOUT IT THAN YOU WOULD BE THAN IF YOU HAD A BAD DAY AT ATLANTA OR MARTINSVILLE? “A bad day here, is easy to kind of write off. You think ‘well, guys didn’t work with me; I picked the wrong; caught up in the big wreck’. You can kind of write it off. The cars are so equal here, there are small little gains in performance the teams can find but it’s not like Texas. If you are off at Texas and finish 25^th, that is probably because you had a poor performance and went down a lap or two because of running slowly where you won’t see that here.”

BEFORE THE CHASE STARTED, YOU SAID YOU WOULD GLADLY TAKE A 10^TH OR 15^TH PLACE FINISH HERE AND BASICALLY WATCH THE RACE FROM YOUR COUCH, NOW THAT WE ARE HERE AND AS CLOSE AS THE CHASE IS, DO YOU STILL FEEL THAT WAY OR DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU NEED TO USE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO  TRY TO GAIN SOME POINT? “I always want an opportunity to gain points. Especially the past three years we’ve left here, this has been a very good track for us in the points.

I’m hopeful for that but the worrying that is going to go on over the next few days, especially during 499 miles of the race really, even 500, because I think Mark (Martin) was within a mile of the finish line when he got taken out last year running in the top-10 and ended up sliding across the finish line on his roof. There is a lot of stress that goes on leading into it. As tight as the points are, we’re going to have to race and I’m excited for the opportunity to race for this thing. At the end of the day, max points would be ideal, but we’ll just see how things shake out.”

WE SAW TEAMMATES COME INTO PLAY LAST WEEK WHEN KYLE BUSCH RACED YOU PRETTY HARD AND TOOK AWAY THAT POSITION, IS THIS A PLACE WHERE TEAMMATES CAN STRATEGIZE AND HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS CAN SORT OF FOCUS ON THE NO. 48 AND WHAT THEY NEED TO DO TO GET WEDGED IN THERE BETWEEN THE CHALLENGERS? “Your teammates can help you on a restrictor-plate track probably more so than anywhere else. The way that the bump drafting works now if you can just have one of your teammates push you at the end of the race, be in the right position to push you, that can really be helpful. It is so difficult to find each other and get linked up at the end of the race, so I don’t think you can really strategize on how you get together. You just look for one another. I’m hopeful that my teammates will keep an eye out for me and if I need to get into a slot, will cut me some slack. At the end of the race, if they have a decision to push two or three different cars, that they would pick pushing me and help us out. I also think that it is important during to race to make sure that you have other friends on the track just to increase your odds of someone pushing you given the opportunity comes along. I feel good with my three teammates and hopefully the Stewart-Haas cars as well. I will just try to build more relationships on the track during the first 400 miles.”

IF IT IS A WILD FINAL 10 LAPS AND YOU HAVE THREE HENDRICK CARS UP THERE ALONG WITH YOUR CLOSEST COMPETITORS, DO YOUR TEAMMATES HELP YOU THEN AND TRY TO WEDGE THOSE OTHERS OUT OR ARE THEY RACING FOR THEMSELVES? “I would think that if they are up there racing for the wins, I would expect, I don’t mean this in negative way, I would expect about my teammates to be thinking about winning for their own reasons. If they are fighting for the win, they shouldn’t be thinking about where is the No. 48. At the end of the day, if they are taking the win away from the No. 29 or the No. 11, then they are helping me with that 10 point margin that they can take away. If you are mid-pack and really don’t have a shot to win, then I think their mind would activate ‘hey, there is the No. 48 how can we help’. But, if they are racing for the win, they are going to stay focused on that.”

TWO-CAR BREAKAWAYS HAVE BEEN THE COMBINATION IN THE LAST TWO SPRING RACES WITH CARL EDWARDS AND BRAD KESELOWSKI AND THEN KEVIN HARVICK AND JAMIE MCMURRAY HERE, DO YOU THINK THAT WILL COME INTO PLAY SUNDAY? “We can all make it happen and we do it at different points during the race. Being in the right situation at the end of the race is really the key. The examples you mentioned, those guys played it right and were at the head of the line essentially and got hooked up and got going. It’s tough to do it and every driver through the field is trying to make it happen with two or three to go. It is just tough to create the circumstances because once you get hooked up, if the road is full of cars in front of you, you have nowhere to take that speed and momentum. Circumstances really have to be correct to make it happen. That is one of the few tools that we have and that position, the guy in second place, most times comes out on top. You’re looking for that opportunity as well and you are thinking ‘ok, at worst, I might finish second here, but I have a really good chance of winning the race so let’s lock bumpers’. At some point, you seem to become disconnected so you know you can hold on for maybe a lap or two laps connected and you take your chance and go. At that point, just hope you don’t get disconnected because if you do, the speed and inertia of the pack coming it’s going to eat you up and you are going to finish 15^th or something.”

DENNY (HAMLIN) HAS SAID HIS STRATEGY IS TO BE WHEREVER YOU ARE ON THE TRACK, HOW WELL DO YOU RACE WITH THE NO. 29 (KEVIN HARVICK) AND THE NO. 11 (DENNY HAMLIN) AT RESTRICTOR PLATE TRACKS? “I’ve had a lot of good luck and success over the years with both guys. When it comes to the end of the race, I guarantee you that everyone, we’re all going to scatter from one another and try to not help, say the No. 11 is behind me, he’s not going to push me to the front, there is no chance or the No. 29, it’s just not what you are going to do. I think for the first 70%-80% of the race, it is probably smart to ride together and if something happens to one guy, it happens to all of us. I also think there Is another angle that you may want to stay away from one another. That way if you take three cars out, now it brings fourth, fifth and sixth back into the equation. There are so many ways to think through it and I’ve said all along that I really don’t get caught up in all of that. Denny loves playing the odds and is very focused on that side of things and it works for him. For me, Chad and I have a great strategy in mind, we know what we are going to do and we will get out there and race. At the end of the day, you have to race here for a finish and we need to make sure we race at the right time and with the right cars.”

About Chevrolet: Chevrolet is a global automotive brand, with annual sales of about 3.5 million vehicles in more than 130 countries. Chevrolet provides consumers with fuel-efficient, safe and reliable vehicles that deliver high quality, expressive design, spirited performance and value. In the U.S., the Chevrolet portfolio includes: iconic performance cars, such as Corvette and Camaro; dependable, long lasting pickups and SUVs, such as Silverado and Suburban; and award-winning passenger cars and crossovers, such as Malibu, Equinox and Traverse. Chevrolet also offers “gas-friendly to gas-free” solutions including the Cruze Eco and Volt, both arriving in late 2010. Cruze Eco will offer up to 40 mpg highway while the Chevrolet Volt will offer up to 40 miles of electric, gas-free driving and an additional 300 miles of extended range (based on GM testing; official EPA estimates not yet available). Most new Chevrolet models offer OnStar safety, security, and convenience technologies including OnStar Hands-Free Calling, Automatic Crash Response, and Stolen Vehicle Slowdown. More information regarding Chevrolet models, fuel solutions, and OnStar availability can be found at www.chevrolet.com.

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES

AMP ENERGY JUICE 500

TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY

TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT

October 29, 2010

 

KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 SHELL/PENNZOIL CHEVROLET met with media and discussed upcoming team plans, strategy at Talladega, winning at Talladega, and more. Full Transcript:

 

ON SPONSORSHIPS FOR 2011

“Yes that is really just the beginning of a lot of things that are going to happen over the next few weeks.  Really excited to have Rheem and Menards on board really for myself and Clint and Paul, and Austin to have some fun in the Nationwide car so we are excited to get all that going and obviously RCR is going to be a big part of that and those are things that took so long in the contract negotiating phase really from the driver’s side on the Cup side was to just get a lot of things situated that would make both companies better and I believe that with everything we have at KHI and everything that happens at RCR it’s just going to make things better and easier.”

WITH YOUR DOMINANCE IN RESTRICTOR PLATE RACES THIS YEAR IS THIS RACE SORT OF YOUR CHANCE TO TAKE COMMAND OF THIS CHASE RACE?\

“We have gone through so many…….what we thought were speed bumps in this Chase…….with the first one being Dover and the second one being Charlotte and the third one being Martinsville. We feel really comfortable about the next four weeks but obviously at this place anything can happen whether you are leading the race or running last you can wind up in somebody else’s mess but I enjoy the restrictor plate racing and its obviously something you have to think about a lot, there is a lot of strategy involved in it, and you have to have fast cars.  We have been able to put all those things on the race track this year and if this was the last race of the year, I would be pretty excited about it.”

YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE TO LET IT ENTER YOUR MIND THAT YOU ARE CAPABLE OF RUNNING UP FRONT WHILE YOUR COMPETITORS COULD GET BEHIND IN THE MESS AND GET COLLECTED?

“You have the possibility of having a breakout or having a disaster.  We go into this race with the same attitude that we have had for the rest of them.  Just go out and race as hard as we can and try and put ourselves in position to win the race and if you are not going to win, take the most points that you can. 

So if we wreck, we will come in and fix the car as fast as we can and take the most points we can and when we get done we will see where everybody else is at and assess what we need to do for the next week.  So it’s just one week at a time, one lap at a time, and otherwise it would be just way too stressful.”

ON HOW RACE STRATEGY COMES INTO PLAY AT TALLADEGA DIFFERENTLY THAN OTHER RACE TRACKS

“A lot of it is going to depend on today and how we think our car is performing.  How we feel like our car is pushing people and how we feel like we get pushed.  And then the second thing that will dictate that is qualifying.  So we really won’t have a firm decision on how we will race until Saturday afternoon and Gil and I will sit down and decide on how we want to approach the race.  How we approached it last time…………we may approach it that way or we may not.  It just depends on the performance of the race car and where we qualify.”

JEFF BURTON SAID THAT YOU AND HE MET ON TUESDAY ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEKEND.  HOW WOULD YOU CHARACTERIZE THAT MEETING?

“Well, a lot can be made out of things that we say on the radio and obviously neither one of us did a very good job at that.  The thing about Jeff and I is that there is a lot of respect there and we have had those spats before and we can handle those things in about five minutes.  So it’s very easy for the two of us to talk about those things and figure out how we can make that situation better for not only us but our race teams and try to do better next time.  So very simple, very convenient, very easy meeting and that was it.”

WHAT’S THE DYNAMIC FOR HAVING THREE RCR TEAMMATES IN THE CHASE?

“For us right now, as a team, everybody wants to win. Everybody knows that right now we all want to win the championship. I think obviously with Clint (Bowyer)and the Cheerios team move to help us out with the pit crew showed how badly they want the whole company to win. I think Jeff (Burton) is the same way. He wants to win a race but everybody wants to do the best they can but we want to win the championship too. They’re going to do whatever they can do to help us and I don’t think there’s any question about that.”

IS WHAT YOU DID WITH THE PIT CREW CHANGE LIKE FOOTBALL CHANGING OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE?

“Yeah, you have guys that are performing better than others right now on pit road. And those guys happen to be the group off the No. 33 car and we were having trouble on pit road and Richard (Childress) made the call to change those things around and that’s what we did.”

WITH ECR ENGINES BEING DO DOMINANT ACROSS THE BOARD AND IN PLATE TRACKS THIS YEAR, DO YOU EXPECT THAT YOU WOULD GET HELP FROM YOUR OWN TEAMMATES AND FROM THE NO. 1 (MCMURRAY) AND THE NO. 42 (MONTOYA)?

“I think if you go back and look at history, Jamie McMurray and I have drafted together a lot and we wind up at the front of a lot of these races and usually together. I feel comfortable around certain guys and he’s one of those guys that I feel comfortable with him pushing me and pushing his car. More of it is just coincidence than it is anything, but there has to be something to the fact that I know those group of guys that I’m comfortable with and you look for those guys during the race and hope that they’re around the same spot you are.”

ON SUNDAY, HOW AWARE ARE YOU GOING TO BE OF WHERE JIMMIE JOHNSON AND DENNY HAMLIN ARE ON THE TRACK AND WHERE THEY ARE RUNNING?

“Well I think the only thing that would change how we race is if something happens to both of them. For us, we’re going to run our own race and how we feel is the best way for us to win. There is really no other way to do that. I’m pretty sure that I know what their strategy probably is going to be and I don’t know if I fall into that category quite yet. So, it’s just a matter of doing what we think is right for our race team and we’ll have that decision come Sunday morning.”

ON THE TRUCK SIDE, WHAT WAS THE DECISIVE FACTOR FOR YOU TO PUT BUTCH (HYLTON, CREW CHIEF) AND RON HORNADAY TOGETHER?

“They just need to win. That’s really about it. That was our most solid team and Ron’s the guy we have that’s racing for the championships year in and year out and we tried a lot of different things and I felt like we had built the two-truck team with Butch and those guys into a winning team and I had been a part of that all year and as we go to the end of this year we need to be ready to go when we drop the green flag at Daytona. So it was time to start working on next year and try to get some wins this year, but really, to build the foundation for 2011.”

OVER THE COURSE OF TIME, HAD YOU NOTICED ANY CHANGES IN EITHER OF THEM THAT WOULD LEAD YOU TO BELIEVE THEY’D WORK TOGETHER SO WELL NOW?

“They’ve definitely both changed a lot. Butch worked for us back in 2005 and his approach to things is a lot different than it used to be. I like to, a lot of times, take the things that happen on the other truck that I drive on occasion to build things, and in this particular instance we built the whole team and just put it over there.”

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE SUCCESSFUL AT TALLADEGA?
“A lot of luck and a fast car (laughs). No, I mean it’s just one of those places where it definitely takes a fast car and you have to have a little bit of luck on your side to be successful here. But it’s just a big, high-speed moving chess game and you have to put yourself in position for the last couple of laps to try to be able to make the move that you think is right to win the race. it all worked out just as you would planed it out in the spring. I don’t know that it will ever work out that smooth again, but for us we were able to dodge the wrecks and put ourselves in position for those last couple of laps to make that slingshot move but you just never know if it’s going to come down to a big pack or if it’s going to be a two-car breakaway or are you going to be racing another two-car breakaway; so a lot of it is circumstances as to how you adjust. But a fast car makes things a lot easier.”

IN THE CLOSEST CHASE EVER, DO YOU FEEL LIKE JIMMIE JOHNSON CAN FEEL PRESSURE?

“He’s got to feel pressure. There is more to it than there has been in the last couple of Chases. The thing that has happened this time is we haven’t let him get too far away and the No. 11 (Hamlin) is right there with him. It’s not just put it into cruise-control and just get decent finishes and finish up front, you have to finish in the top five if you’re going to keep touch with the three cars that are up front. it’s just the way that this Chase has shaken out. If we don’t, one of those two guys are going to and I think it’s probably a good possibility over the next four weeks, that somebody will finish in the top five every week. So, if you’re not that guy, you’re probably going to lose ground.”

HOW WILL THE ALLIANCE THAT YOU HAVE WITH RCR IN THE NATIONWIDE SERIES IMPACT YOUR TRUCK SERIES TEAMS?
“Right now it’s the same type of deal. It’s chassis for all of our teams and they already share all the information that they have as far as wind tunnel. We use the same engines and they share notes every week. So that stuff is already taken effect on the truck side and has for several months actually, as they’ve gone through the season. So that’ll just stay the same.

TO A LARGE DEGREE THEY’RE ACTING ALREADY AS ONE TEAM EVEN THOUGH MAYBE ON PAPER THEY’RE NOT.

“Exactly. That was the whole intent of everything was to run more laps on the race track when you have more people; you have more parts and pieces. You keep the money in the same house as far as chassis and engines and things like that. It should make everybody stronger.”

ON THE DAYTONA TESTING IN JANUARY

“I’ve got to find somebody to drive my car. That’ll be boring (laughs). No, I think it’s going to be a necessity. I’m not a huge fan of testing but that’s going to be one that you’re going to have to go to because the track’s going to be so smooth and so much different I’ll apply to a lot of the things that happen here as far as set-ups and the way that you do things. The track is going to be the same Daytona, but a lot different. It’s definitely going to be necessary to go down there and test to make sure the tires are right and make sure the things that we thing will apply from here actually apply there.”

IS THERE A DIFFERENCE WITH THE RCR TRUCK CHASSIS FROM WHAT YOU HAD AT KHI THAT WOULD MAKE IT BETTER; THAT’S CAUSING YOU TO SWITCH?

“Really it was just about keeping the financial situations under the same roof. Nothing wrong with a Ronny Hopkins chassis like we ran. We’ve won with both of them this year. Obviously for us it’s much more convenient because it’s so much closer to our shop. But really, it’s a matter of keeping the funding in the same house.”

About Chevrolet: Chevrolet is a global automotive brand, with annual sales of about 3.5 million vehicles in more than 130 countries. Chevrolet provides consumers with fuel-efficient, safe and reliable vehicles that deliver high quality, expressive design, spirited performance and value. In the U.S., the Chevrolet portfolio includes: iconic performance cars, such as Corvette and Camaro; dependable, long lasting pickups and SUVs, such as Silverado and Suburban; and award-winning passenger cars and crossovers, such as Malibu, Equinox and Traverse. Chevrolet also offers “gas-friendly to gas-free” solutions including the Cruze Eco and Volt, both arriving in late 2010. Cruze Eco will offer up to 40 mpg highway while the Chevrolet Volt will offer up to 40 miles of electric, gas-free driving and an additional 300 miles of extended range (based on GM testing; official EPA estimates not yet available). Most new Chevrolet models offer OnStar safety, security, and convenience technologies including OnStar Hands-Free Calling, Automatic Crash Response, and Stolen Vehicle Slowdown. More information regarding Chevrolet models, fuel solutions, and OnStar availability can be found at www.chevrolet.com.

Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Subway Ford Fusion, sits sixth in
the point standings and trails leader Jimmie Johnson by 213 points.
He spoke about returning to Talladega after Friday’s first practice
session.

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Subway Ford Fusion – “We’ve got the Subway Ford
this week.  The car ran pretty well, but we’ve got a vibration that
we’re working on and trying to figure it out.  It’s not as bad as it’s
been, but we’re working on that.  I noticed when I sat down here this
stand right in front of me says ‘vibration reduction stand.’  I
thought that was pretty humorous. I should take that with me when I
leave.  That’s what we’ve been working on, but it’s a fun day for me
today.  We get to practice a couple of practices and then I’m gonna go
over to a Subway in Pell City and we’re gonna sign some autographs.
I’ve never been to Pell City, so we’ll go over there and maybe get
some lunch and meet some people at Subway, and then come back and do
Trackside Live tonight.  We haven’t tried any qualifying trim yet, so
I don’t know really what to expect for qualifying tomorrow, but we’ll
do that tomorrow.  For me, this race is an opportunity for us to cut
into our points deficit.  Most of you know my love-hate relationship
with this place and right now I’m really looking forward to it, just
because it could shake things up and it could work out in our favor,
so we’ll just go run.”  WHAT WOULD YOU THINK IF YOU GOT ONE POINT FOR
EACH LAP LED HERE?  “Are you trying to make it more dramatic?  I guess
that would be pretty interesting.  I’d have to think that through.
You can already wreck up there in the front and I think if you were
paying points for leading, there would probably be a series of wrecks
with guys leading and you still might be better off to sit in the back
and wait it out.  So it just comes down to how much risk guys are
taking.  It might even be more riskier to run up front, but that’s a
good question.”  WAS THERE A VIBRATION WITH ALL THE ROUSH CARS?  “I
was just speaking with someone on the way in and they said that, too.
I didn’t realize that Matt was having trouble.  I knew that Greg was,
but it seems like something we’re all fighting and it’s such a
difficult thing.  They always give me a hard time in the meetings
because I’m always screaming about how my car is vibrating and it
makes you just want to give up.  You’re like that guy on TV that
swears he saw a UFO and everybody is like, ‘Yeah, okay,’ because they
can’t duplicate it in the shop and they can’t duplicate it on the
chassis dyno, so it’s one of those things you chase around.  In the
race car, it feels like it robs horsepower and it robs speed, so it’s
important to me, but I’m the only one who knows that it’s going on.
In a way, I’m glad all of our cars are doing the same thing at least,
so we can maybe work on it.”  WHAT DOES YOUR MIND GO THROUGH HERE WHEN
IT’S INTENSE?  “You’re thinking a lot of things, but here the tough
part is to understand exactly where your car is, and that’s normally
what you work on – you’re at a race track and you’re worrying about
your car and the way you’re positioning yourself on the race track,
but as important here you’ve got to have your peripheral vision
working and watching your mirrors, listening to your spotter and
understanding where everybody else is going and how much momentum they
have, and then you also have to – at the same time – think about their
possible intentions or what they are trying to do.  If you can kind of
keep that all going in your head, you can pick the right spot to move
and that’s what makes it intense – these little bitty split-second
decisions can dictate whether you go backwards or forwards.  It all
comes down to that last lap and you’ve got to make sure you pick the
right one.”                

DO YOU STRESS UNTIL IT’S DONE?  “I don’t
stress about it, I just try to really focus.  I’ve watched enough of
these things and I’ve been involved in enough of them to realize that
you just do the best you can and, at the end, one guys is gonna be in
front when you cross that finish line.  If you can separate yourself
like Brad and I did a couple of years ago, if you can separate
yourselves from the group at the end, you’re obviously doing yourself
a huge favor because then you’re only dealing with one guy – so that
would probably be the goal.  I think that’s what you’ll see.  I think
you’ll see breakout groups at the very end of the race – guys that
just commit to pushing another guy.  Everybody is getting really good
at that, so it could be pretty interesting.”  TEAMMATES SEEM TO GET IN
IT AT MARTINSVILLE.  WHY?  “I don’t know, I think it’s just
coincidence.  Usually, you leave there mad at somebody and everybody
has enough teammates now that there are gonna be times when you’re
really mad at your teammate, but that’s just racing.  You’ve got to do
the best you can to work with your teammates.  I think that’s really
important.  I’ve learned that lesson over time. Obviously, I haven’t
always worked the best with my teammates, or we haven’t gotten along
the best, but I feel like that’s one of the strongest things we have
on our team right now is I’m there to help Matt and Greg and David and
I feel like they’re doing the same with  me.  I’m just glad we’re not
having trouble and those guys can go do whatever they’re doing.  On
our team we are not ‘having at it’.  We’re doing okay.”  HOW MUCH
DIFFERENCE IS THERE BETWEEN QUALIFYING SETUP AND RACE SETUP BEING AN
IMPOUND RACE?  AND ARE WE GOING TO SEE TWO GUYS DECIDE THIS RACE BY
BREAKING AWAY?  “We’re not gonna go into qualifying trim, I believe,
or make a run by ourselves so we’ll just get the car the best we can
to  run the race and then we’ll go run our laps tomorrow.  As far as
the way the cars work together, the deal is if you can push someone’s
bumper, your car gets in a little void of low pressure behind their
car and you can just lay into it.  You guys see what happens, but I
think it’s too difficult to do that with three cars because the guy in
the middle gets choked up and wrecked, so it’s hard enough to do with
two.  I think you’re right, like we talked about earlier, it’ll be two
cars breaking away.  If you look at the last laps of the last couple
of these races, it’s been two cars breaking away – two cars over here
and two cars over there – kind of separating themselves.  If there are
a couple groups of those two-car things going on during that last lap,
it could be a pretty amazing race.  But everybody realizes that’s the
deal now, so that’s what everybody is gonna be looking for, I think.
They’re gonna be looking for somebody’s bumper to push on hard for the
last lap.”  WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON PHOENIX?  “Phoenix has been one
of my favorite tracks to go to.  That was the first place I ever raced
on pavement, so that was a big deal to me to go out there in the USAC
Silver Crown cars, so I spent a lot of nights laying in my bed
thinking about Phoenix and how to run that place.  I’ve had a lot of
success there in the Nationwide Series.  I think we sat on the pole
there maybe in the Cup car or qualified second and led a bunch one
time and that was good.  It’s a driver’s race track.  It’s a track
that the driver can make a big difference on.  Obviously, your car has
to be set up really well, but once the car is perfect, that’s a track
where it truly comes down to the driver.  If you win that race, it’s
one you can be really proud of, so I’d love to win a Cup race out
there.  That would be great, and the Nationwide races have been really
good.  I’ve really enjoyed running there.  It’s such a unique track.
It’s got bumps and it’s really unique.  I like it.”              

WITH THIS TWO-CAR BREAKAWAY CAN YOU WORK
WELL WITH JUST ABOUT ANYONE?  “Yeah, and  because of this two-car
breakaway thing and how well the cars match up bumper to bumper, it
leaves a lot of options out there.  When Brad and I had our race
there, I was in line like sixth or eighth and he just pulled up behind
me and started pushing and we pulled out and we passed everyone.  In
two laps we were however many yards ahead of the field and we were
just screaming.  We hadn’t worked together all day.  I’d never drafted
with him before and that went really well.  That could happen with
anyone.  I think you could have guys running under the white flag in
eighth or ninth position and they get matched up the right way and
pull out and go, I don’t think it matters what manufacturer the car is
and whether they’re teammates or not, it’s just gonna come down to who
gets teamed up together and if they can keep their cars together and
not wreck one another.  They’re gonna be really fast.”  THERE HAS BEEN
TALK ABOUT THE RPM ISSUES AND THE POSSIBILITY OF GANASSI COMING TO
FORD.  HOW MUCH OF A BENEFIT WOULD THAT BE HAVING WORKED WITH JAMIE
BEFORE?  “I don’t know what’s going on with RPM.  I asked the question
in the hallway there 15 minutes ago and nobody there really knew what
was going on.  That aside, the more Ford teams we can have the better.
Ford is doing a great job in the marketplace and they’ve got a lot of
resources at their disposal right now, and the more teams we can have
running Fords, the better off we’d be.  If the Ganassi guys want to
switch to Fords, that would be huge for us.  I would love to be able
to work with Jamie and Juan and their engineers, and all the people
over there.  They’ve made some really big gains and their cars are
really fast, so that would be huge for us to be able to work with
them.  The more the merrier.”  WOULD IT GIVE THE ROUSH CARS
COMPETITION IN THEIR OWN RANKS?  “I think it would help us.  I don’t
know if I’d call it competition, but maybe it would be.  It always
helps me when one of my teammates is running better than me.  It makes
me faster.  If those guys were able to come over and able to be part
of our group and they had things that were working better than us,
that’s definitely good for us.  Hopefully, we could learn from them.
Just like we talked about last week at Martinsville, we looked at
Jamie’s situation and we say, ‘Here’s a guy who changed teams and all
of a sudden can run very, very well.’  What I wouldn’t give to know
exactly what’s different.  That would be huge for us to be able to
understand what is different with Jamie running at Roush and Jamie
running at Ganassi because we would hope we could apply that stuff to
our cars and make them faster too.  So if you could have people like
that, that are close and competitive, that are close to you, that
would be great.”  HOW DO YOU THINK THE ‘HAVE AT IT’ PHILOSOPHY HAS
WORKED THIS YEAR?  “I think it’s worked out pretty well.  I haven’t
noticed a huge difference, except for maybe in the penalties and
that’s been nice for NASCAR to let us police things out there.  I know
I’ve pushed the limits of it personally, not intentionally, it’s just
that some of the results weren’t intentional – that’s for sure.  I
think it’s good and I think it says a lot for NASCAR to recognize and
stand behind the fact that the guys on the race track can police this
as well as anyone.  I think it’s a good thing.  I think it’s good for
the fans and good for the sport, and probably, in the end, better for
safety.”

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES

AMP ENERGY JUICE 500

TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY

TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT

October 29, 2010

 

JEFF BURTON, NO. 31 CATERPILLAR CHEVROLET, met with members of the media at Talladega Superspeedway and discussed racing at Talladega, race strategy, the role of teammates and other topics. Full transcript:

 

COMING OFF A SOLID RUN AT MARTINSVILLE, GIVE US YOUR THOUGHTS FOR THIS WEEKEND: “Well, it was kind of the ultimate tale of our year this year. We’ve been really, really fast and have not found a way to win races and that certainly has been disappointing. I feel like we are getting smarter and stronger. It has been painful but we are moving in the right direction. We look forward to coming here this weekend. This is always an exciting race obviously. Hope we can run in the front and have a chance to run as well as we did in the spring. We were really fast here in the spring and thought we had a great chance to win the race until when we were leading the race and got a piece of debris on the grill and had to pit real late in the race. That did us in. But we had a fast car and hopefully we can have that same speed this time.”

HAVE YOU AND KEVIN HARVICK TALKED AFTER LAST WEEKEND? “I think we are both very competitive people. Everybody on the race track is a competitive person. I think the best way I can describe it, RCR is like a family and sometimes family argue amongst themselves and carry on probably more with your family than they do with people they don’t even know. That is probably what happened with us last week. We sat down and had a great meeting and talked about it and we’ll be better teammates for it. Both of us could have handled that situation better, both of us had something to learn from it. It is completely over. And again, I think we will be stronger for it.

“It is hard man. Being teammates is hard. You always expect more out of your teammate. You are trying to be a good teammate, but you are also trying to beat your teammate and it’s a very very difficult…I’m surprised we don’t have more incidents to be quite honest. Kevin and I are good. We had a great meeting on Tuesday and again, I think in the long run it will actually help us.”

AS STRONG AS YOU WERE IN THE SPRING AND KEVIN WON THE RACE, IS YOUR ASSIGNMENT SUNDAY SINCE HE IS THE RCR GUY WITH A REAL SHOT IN THE CHASE, MORE TO GO OUT THERE AND HELP HIM AND HOOK UP WITH HIM? “You know, we’ve had zero discussion about that. We actually had discussion, and it is very clear to all of us at RCR, if you are in a position to help your teammate, you go help them. But you don’t do that if it is going to hurt you. That is kind of the way it has to be. I think you hear a lot of people, like I talked about earlier about teammates, you have a situation with a teammate the last place you want to go is Talladega the week after because teammates always get their feelings hurt here. But the reality of it is, and I think we handle it really well, is that if a teammate can help me, I want him to help me. But I don’t want him to help me if it is going to hurt them. That is not fair to them.  And by the way, I don’t want to help them, if it is going to hurt me either. So we don’t have any team orders that says ‘hey, go push Kevin. Go make it so he can do it’. If I can help Kevin, I certainly will. I won’t do that at the jeopardy of hurting me and my team and Kevin wouldn’t want me to. Kevin or Richard wouldn’t want us to do that. This is still racing. We are RCR, but at the same time, we have to go and do the very best we can for each individual team. If we don’t do that then I think we really mess with the credibility of the sport.”

THE SITUATION WITH RPM IS THE LATEST IN A SERIES OF NON-RACING PEOPLE GETTING IN THE SPORT AND NOT BEING ABLE TO STAY AFLOAT FOR WHATEVER REASON. DO YOU SEE ANY KIND OF COMMON DENOMINATOR IN THESE SITUATIONS? “I hate to lump everybody up in one pile and saying every guy that’s not a racer that comes in is not successful because. I don’t think that is fair. I think that this is different than other businesses. We have seen a lot of people come and try to bring a lot of money and obviously you have to have money to be successful. But where you spend that money is what really matters and the efficiencies that you learn to garner are really, really important. It takes years of experience I think to do that. I don’t think that they came in here and just threw money at everything. I think that they came, they paid a premium for a race team, it appears me. They paid a tremendous amount of money, probably a little over-valued. They are in at a high purchase price and now with the economy with the way it is, it is hard to make that work. It is kind of hard to fault them when you are looking a sport when they bought in at how successful the sport was. Sponsors were, I don’t want to say readily available, but obviously more available than they are now. The money being spent was greater then. Without having the years of experience to understand the ebb and flow, I think it is a little difficult to know what you are getting in to. I think they are a lot smarter now and the question is will they be strong enough to live through the learning phase. Every car owner has gone through it. Every car owner has had moments where they were really on the brink. Today it happens quicker because the investment is so much taller. I don’t want to generalize in saying well, they aren’t a Richard Childress or a Rick Hendrick or a Jack Roush and that means they don’t know what they are doing. But, without a doubt, the experience that those guys have garnered has meant a great deal to them on how they run their companies.”

IF YOU WERE TRYING TO PUT A PERCENTAGE ON  IT, HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK WHAT TRANSPIRES ON A RACE LIKE THIS WILL BE SUNDAY IS TOTALLY IN YOUR CONTROL AND HOW MUCH IS IN SOMEBODY ELSE’S CONTROL AND AS A DRIVER HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO GRASP THE FACT THAT YOU CAN DO POSSIBLY EVERY SINGLE THING RIGHT AND STILL COME UP ON THE LOSING END? “This is two of 38 races is the way I approach it. We run 38 races right? You run here different than you run everywhere else. So, you have to accept Talladega for what it is. At the same time, you have to take responsibility for your actions. It is very very difficult when things happen and there was nothing that you could do. But I don’t think it is right to go into the race with the pre-conceived notion that something is going to happen to you with nothing you can do about it.  Because that takes you off the hook and ultimately puts you on the hook if you know what I mean. I think that it is real important to every incident you are involved in at Talladega, to go back and look at it really really really closely and make sure you couldn’t do something different. Here and Bristol are the only race tracks we go to where a wreck happen and drivers get out and they say ‘that is just Bristol’ or ‘that is just plate racing’. We tend to blame to it on the racing rather than on ourselves. It is without a doubt the biggest opportunity to have something happen to you that you didn’t do anything wrong. There is no question that is here. But you can’t think like that. You have got to believe that you are going to be able to be in control. You have to believe you are going to have an impact on your result and what happens. To me, that is the only way you can approach it. This is the highest risk for being involved in something that you had absolutely nothing to do with.”

THE TWO-CAR BREAK AWAY THING PLAYED A BIG IMPACT IN THE LAST TWO SPRING RACES HERE IN TERMS OF THE FINISH, CLINT (BOWYER) SAID YOU GUYS HAVE KIND OF DISCUSSED IT, CAN YOU GIVE US YOUR TAKE ON IT? “He did? (LAUGHS) He wasn’t supposed to say that. You know, I think teammates can work with each other and make that happen but it has to be the right situation. It is hard to fabricate that. Some of it is timing. Some of it is you catch a guy at the right time. If you are third in line and your teammate is behind you, he can push you all you want. You aren’t going any faster than the guy that is in front of you. You so have to be in a position where you can have a breakaway and that is very difficult to fabricate. That is something that kind of happens on its own. If you are leading the race, I think you can fabricate that pretty well. If you are the first two cars in a line, you tend to make that thing happen. But if you’re not in the front of a pack, it is really hard to put all that stuff together to be able to take advantage of it. So if you are relying on that, I think you are probably relying on something that you don’t know you can do. We’ve seen that thing really work on two different occasions. One of them was on a restart where (Brad) Keselowski was pushing Carl (Edwards). On the restarts, the thing gets single file and kind of gets spread out for a half to three-quarters of a lap. That let that happen and then with Kevin (Harvick) and Jamie (McMurray), they were leading the race. Those are the kind of situations you have to be in to take advantage of that and I think you can. If you are in those situations, you can certainly take advantage of that but everybody is fighting to be in that position. And, there are only going to be three or four are actually in the position to take advantage of it.”

WITH THE REPAVING OF DAYTONA, THERE IS GOING TO BE SOME TESTING THERE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE NASCAR REVISIT THE TESTING POLICY ALSO WOULD THAT MAKE THE HENDRICKS, THE GIBBS AND MAYBE YOUR TEAM STRONGER AND EVEN BETTER? “I like to test but I am a proponent of the testing policy that we have in effect today. I think that if we can save the car owners some money by not testing and not having a negative impact on the race, then I think that is a great thing. If we believe that not testing hurts the racing, then we should test some more. But I don’t have any evidence that’s going on. I think going to Daytona is a great idea with the repave. There is Kentucky, there is a possibility of some other race tracks being paved. I think that we should go to those race tracks to test for obvious reasons. Short of that I don’t think that testing should be allowed because it saves the car owners a lot of money and doesn’t negatively impact the racing.  The teams that are best suited for testing or not testing are the teams that are going to be successful and it is your job as a team to structure your team so you can be successful no matter what the rule is.”

NEARLY A THIRD OF THE DRIVERS ENTERED HERE FOR THE CUP RACE HAVE FLIPPED OR GOTTEN UPSIDE DOWN AT THIS PLACE AND ALSO IN THE LAST THREE RACES HERE WITH SO MANY OF THE WRECKS IN THE LAST TEN LAPS GET WRECKED, AT WHAT POINT ARE THESE FIGURES NOT ACCEPTABLE OR WHY ARE THEY ACCEPTABLE? “There is a reason that we wreck at the end of the race and it’s because for 140 laps, 130 laps, when somebody is trying to fill a hole, you let them do it. The cost to you isn’t great so you allow it. When it starts to get to the end of the race, that spot is coveted and you want it and so you end up doing things that you wouldn’t normally do because if you don’t, you aren’t going to have a chance to win the race. That is nature of the beast. You don’t know you are going to wreck. If you lift when you really want to lift an awful lot of times, it really costs you. A lot of these wrecks when they happen, a guy didn’t not lift and he knew he was going to get in the wreck. He didn’t not life or he does something because he is trying to make something happen and it is everybody in one spot trying to make it happen and that is why we have the wrecks. I feel pretty confident that Sunday’s race will go green, caution at some point, green, green, caution at some point, green, caution, caution, caution, checkered flag. Because that seems like what they always do. At the end of the day, it is our responsibility as drivers. Restrictor plate racing puts you in positions in no other kind of racing. There’s no other kind of racing that puts you in these situations. That is why we have the wrecks.”

ABOUT FIVE YEARS AGO, THERE SEEMED TO BE A PREVAILING VIEW THAT THE RACING PEOPLE WERE GOING TO BE THERE WAS GOING TO BE SO MUCH MONEY BROUGHT IN BY THESE CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY THAT THEY COULDN’T COMPETE, MANY TEAMS WERE LOOKING FOR INVESTORS BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT THAT WAS THE ONLY WAY TO KEEP UP, BUT IF YOU LOOK AT RESULTS, THE EXAMPLE OF SUCCESS IF JOE GIBBS, WHY IS THAT? “If I had a lot of money and I went and bought an NFL team, I’m not so sure I would know how to do that. I might think I know how and I might be a great fan of the sport and I might think I know what the Panthers need to do to make a roster change to be a better team. But, the reality of it is, who knows. The reason that Richard Childress and Jack Roush and Joe Gibbs and Rick Hendrick and those guys have been here for a long time is because they know the sport. Joe did it probably quicker than the rest of them as far as his motorsports experience. He did a great job of hiring the right people to fill the void that he had in it. A great leader, a great manager, a great owner of something, that doesn’t mean he is going to be great at everything. You have to have a sense and a feel for whatever business you are in to be successful at it. As I said, me bringing, if I had the money to go buy the Panthers, Just because I have the money, doesn’t mean I know what I am doing with it. I am not being derogatory, but there is a reason that some people are successful at it and more successful than others. That is because of their skill set. That has been exhibited and not everybody is going to be as good as the good ones.”

IF NASCAR GAVE A POINT FOR EVERY LAP LED HERE, HOW WOULD THAT CHANGE THE DYNAMIC OF THIS RACE? “It would make it better. It would make it, I don’t know. A point for every lap? So if you led 100 laps, you get 100 points? That would make a difference wouldn’t it. You couldn’t ride around in the back. You would have to have to go to the front. I’m not supporting this idea, but I will say it would make this race much more exciting. It would put you in a position to have to be in the front. It would make it exciting. There are some teams on Sunday that are going to ride around in the back because there is nothing to gain from running in the front. I shouldn’t say there is nothing to gain but there is not as much to gain here as there is everywhere else. It would make a very interesting race.”

About Chevrolet: Chevrolet is a global automotive brand, with annual sales of about 3.5 million vehicles in more than 130 countries. Chevrolet provides consumers with fuel-efficient, safe and reliable vehicles that deliver high quality, expressive design, spirited performance and value. In the U.S., the Chevrolet portfolio includes: iconic performance cars, such as Corvette and Camaro; dependable, long lasting pickups and SUVs, such as Silverado and Suburban; and award-winning passenger cars and crossovers, such as Malibu, Equinox and Traverse. Chevrolet also offers “gas-friendly to gas-free” solutions including the Cruze Eco and Volt, both arriving in late 2010. Cruze Eco will offer up to 40 mpg highway while the Chevrolet Volt will offer up to 40 miles of electric, gas-free driving and an additional 300 miles of extended range (based on GM testing; official EPA estimates not yet available). Most new Chevrolet models offer OnStar safety, security, and convenience technologies including OnStar Hands-Free Calling, Automatic Crash Response, and Stolen Vehicle Slowdown. More information regarding Chevrolet models, fuel solutions, and OnStar availability can be found at www.chevrolet.com.