STEPHEN LEICHT, No. 90 CITIFINANCIAL FORD: HOW BIG OF A CHALLENGE IS RUNNING A LIMITED SCHEDULE TO A DRIVER WITH LIMITED EXPERIENCE? “It’s tough. I think it’s even tougher when obviously you’re in a car that you’re not used to in a new series and going to new tracks that you’ve never seen and you have to adapt very quickly. It’s very hard to jump in and out of a car but the rest of this year I’m running the Busch car so that’s definitely a good thing, being able to run 10, 12 races in a row constantly. So by the end of the year, hopefully, I’ll be feeling pretty comfortable. The plan is to finish the season in the Busch car and just focus on that right now.”

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE SEASON? “Just get our car running good. We’ve been having some bad luck lately and know we’ve got better cars than that. I know I’ve got to learn on these tracks that I’ve never been to and need to get up to speed a little bit faster, learn a little bit more as soon as I can, as soon as we get here. I need to be studying the track and what I need to do and then get with the crew after we’ve been out a couple times and work on the car and get the car better.”

HAVE YOU USED COMPUTER GAMES? “I’ve been on the computer games quite a bit. Some of the tracks have been harder on the games than they actually are in real life. When that happens, I just quit playing the games and I just say forget it, I’m just going to practice at the racetrack [smiles]. I do get on those a lot. It doesn’t really give you the feel of the car around the track. It gives you the look of what you’re going see when you’re out there. You can get the picture of the track in your mind and at least know what you’re going to be out there with, what you’re up against.”

HOW MUCH CAN YOU LEARN WHEN THE CUP GUYS RACE IN THIS SERIES? “Everybody’s car is going to drive different and your car is going to tell you where you need to be on the racetrack for it to run the best. But, especially here at California, I’ve never been here before, you go out there and those kind of drivers know where you can and cannot run and you’ll be able to see a variety of them running high, low and middle and you’ll at least know the what the range of lines are and where you can or can’t run. To end this season on a strong note would be great. It gets confidence going in me as a driver as well as the team and the whole team has done a great job. We need some good finishes to get some confidence back in the whole team.”

HAS IT BEEN A BIG ADJUSTMENT COMING INTO THE BUSCH SERIES? “From what I’m used to it has. There’s a lot more work involved. It’s a lot more intense, the competition is a lot tougher, but as tough as the competition was where I came from in ASA it’s twice as tough in Busch and Cup. And Cup is even tougher than Busch. And to be in the Busch Series it’s almost like running a Cup race. You’ve got 20 Cup drivers running almost every Busch race. You finish in the top-15 you’ve done your homework and you’ve done a good job, especially against a Cup driver running week in and week out. If those guys weren’t running in here, you wouldn’t see half the cars winning the races that are winning them now. It would be Regan Smith or David Green. Not that they’re not running well, but they’re having trouble beating these Cup regulars. They’re able to take the information that’s running really well on their Cup car and bring it over to the Busch car and perform well.”

HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO WORK TOGETHER WITH DAVID GILLILAND? “A little bit but not much. We haven’t had any tests together. He’s only been there a short period of time. He’s only run two races so far but he’s doing a good job. He was very fast at Michigan before he had trouble with the primary car. Our Cup cars are really starting to pick up the pace. Skip Eyler is my crew chief on the Busch car and he’s helped our Cup cars as well as our Busch car and he’s really getting our stuff back on track. The whole organization is working their butts off right now.”

IS THE GOAL TO FINISH IN THE TOP-10 AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE THIS SEASON? “Definitely. We’ve had two top-10s this year. I had one a Kentucky and Mark Goossens had one at Mexico earlier this year. I think if we can get a couple of top-10s established here before long, before the end of the year, then the next goal would be a top-five or even better. First we have to get to that top-10 staging area and then we can work our way up.”