Gilliland and Johns to Drive No. 25 Car for Team Rensi

November 18, 2006 -- Homestead-Miami Speedway -- Team Rensi Motorsports announced today that David Gilliland and Richard Johns would share time next season in the No. 25 freecreditreport.com Ford Fusion in the NASCAR Busch Series. Gilliland, Johns and team owner Ed Rensi spoke about the deal at a press conference Saturday afternoon at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Below are some highlights.

DAVID GILLILAND - No. 25 freecreditreport.com Ford Fusion - "First of all, I'm very, very excited and thankful for the opportunity to run in the Busch Series with Team Rensi and freecreditreport racing. Freecreditreport has been a sponsor this year and I think they've done very well. I think they've represented themselves very well and I'm very excited and thankful for the opportunity. We're looking for this to really help out because a lot of the tracks I haven't been to and I'm looking forward to using the Busch Series to learn. We've had some success this year. We won a Busch race at Kentucky Speedway and we just look forward to winning many more races in the Busch Series with Team Rensi and freecreditreport. I'm just really excited and looking forward to the opportunity."

RICHARD JOHNS - No. 25 freecreditreport.com Ford Fusion - "I'm just extremely excited about this opportunity. This is the shot that I've been waiting for all my life. I've been working ever since I was born I think to be in racing and be a driver, so thanks to Mr. Rensi and everybody at freecreditreport.com and everybody at Team Rensi Motorsports, this opportunity is unbelievable. It's kind of a dream come true for me and working with David, I'm sure, is gonna be a pleasure and seeing what he's been able to do the last few months in the Cup car, I'm really excited to work with him and try and turn Team Rensi Motorsports into the premier Busch Series team."

ED RENSI, Car Owner - No. 25 freecreditreport.com Ford Fusion - "We're delighted to have these really two terrific young men driving for us. If I would have known he (David) was going to win that Kentucky race, we would have wrecked him (laughing). But I'm glad he's driving for us now. The relationship we have with freecreditreport.com is gonna be a very special one. They're very aggressive marketers and NASCAR is all about selling stuff and we're gonna do everything we can to help them increase their business, their market share and to sell more products. We've got a great relationship with Robert Yates Racing. They've been our engine supplier since basically the beginning. We're really looking forward to this coming year. With a great marketing partner like freecreditreport. With two great young drivers like this, in being in the marketing opportunity that NASCAR presents, I think is really going to be special. We are pumped up about next year and it's going to be incumbent upon me to give these two young fellas the equipment they need to get to the front because I know they have it within themselves to do that. If they don't get there, it will be because of what I didn't do."

RICHARD JOHNS CONTINUED - WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN YOU'RE NOT DRIVING THE BUSCH CAR? "My plans right now are to race as many races as I possibly can, but also with Team Rensi Motorsports I'm also the engineer, so I'll be traveling to all of the races actually and be working in the engineering capacity when I'm not in the seat. So off weekends and weekends when there are races on Sundays, things like that, I'll try to get in the late model and keep cutting my teeth on the short tracks in the southeast."

DAVID GILLILAND CONTINUED - ARE THERE ANY NEGATIVES TO RUNNING BOTH THE BUSCH AND CUP SERIES? "I've talked to a lot of drivers like Carl Edwards and Kevin Harvick and they've said there is no really downside. You're just a little bit busier, obviously, but for what you learn and what you gain from running the Busch Series races the day before the Cup races is a way bigger plus, and that's what we're looking to do. This year we went and had some good qualifying runs in the Cup car towards the beginning of the year, but it's just so hard to know in practice what the car needs and how the car needs to feel for a race track that you've never raced on, so I'm real excited about running the Busch car. They're really fun to drive and I'm just really looking forward to using that to help our Cup program and using them both to help each other. Todd Parrott is real excited about the Busch program and everybody's got a great, positive attitude about both series. I think as long as you have all of that in place, it's gonna be a win-win for both. For the third time since joining Robert Yates Racing in August, David Gilliland, driver of the No. 38 M&M's Fusion, was Ford's highest qualifier for a NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series race when he qualified ninth for Sunday's Ford 400. Gilliland, who won the pole at Talladega in October, spoke about his success before practice on Saturday.