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Food City 500 - Ford Saturday Quotes
FORD DRIVERS TALK ABOUT SUNDAY'S BRISTOL RACE, OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM
YOU MENTIONED THAT YOU’VE MET SOME OF THE PERSONNEL. DOES THAT PERSONALIZE WHAT’S GOING ON IN IRAQ FOR YOU? "We’ve been able to meet a lot of men and women in the Air Force, and all vary in ranks from some of the biggest generals in the Air Force to people who have just recently been enlisted. When you have a situation like what’s going on now, I think everyone becomes aware of what the military does for us, but before all this broke out, I guess it gives you a little bit better sense of what all these men and women go through in the military, the sacrifices they make. It’s a different lifestyle, and one that I haven’t talked to anybody that’s unhappy. They all enjoy it. From our side of it, we’re more exposed to the recruiting side of it."
COVERAGE IS ALL OVER TV AND THE NEWSPAPERS. DO YOU HAVE A BETTER UNDERSTANDING, PERHAPS, OF WHAT’S BEING TALKED ABOUT BECAUSE OF THE TEAM’S AFFILIATION WITH THE AIR FORCE? "Not really. The military, they’re very secretive about their operation. I’ll tell you how secretive: We were out at Nellis Air Force Base with the Thunderbirds, and met all the Thunderbirds, and got a chance to see one of the new airplanes, the F/A-22, the latest, greatest fighter for the Air Force, and met the colonel that was flying it. I’d say there were about 30 people there and it was roped off. We got a chance to see it. I guess we had to send names and everything and get a clearance ahead of time. We got a chance to see it pretty up close. And there were, I guess, some of the pilots that were flying the F-15s or F-16s on that base, they came up and asked one of the commanding officers, ‘Can we go take a closer look?’ And they said, ‘No, it’s roped off.’ No question about it, they’re very strict, disciplined. It’s kind of amazing to see. This guy just rolled in, he was flying on the F-15s or F-16s and he couldn’t get any closer than a certain distance they were supposed to keep. Just a tremendous amount of organization and discipline. I’ve learned that, maybe more so, had I not been able to see the Air Force up close."
THE AMERICAN FLAG IS ON YOUR UNIFORM. SO IS THE AIR FORCE INSIGNIA. WHAT KIND OF REACTION DOES THAT GET FROM FANS? DO THEY SEEK YOU OUT AND MAKE MENTION OF IT? "I noticed when you go somewhere to sign autographs or make an appearance you get a lot people that will come up and will let you know that they were in the armed services, they were in the Air Force, and there’s a lot of camaraderie, I guess, after they either retire or the ones that enlist and do a short period of time in the Air Force. They’ll let you know that they’re in the Air Force and where they were based and they’re proud of it. Another thing I’ve noticed since we’ve been involved with the Air Force is how much of a friendly competition there is among them. You know, the Air Force wants to be the best car out there on the race track, compared to, you know, they definitely want to beat the Army car or the Marine car. There’s a lot of friendly camaraderie that goes on there."
DO YOU HAVE ANY FAMILY OR FRIENDS THAT ARE IN OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM? "No, I don’t. I grew up in a military town. I grew up in Chesapeake, which is a suburb of Norfolk, Virginia, which is a big Navy town. I was born and raised there, and lived there until I was in my 20s. So, I grew up around a town that had a lot of military presence. It’s a little different. The town’s a little different. You get a lot of people from all over the country that end up settling there, that you get a chance to meet, that normally would not have settled there had the military not been there."
AND A PATRIOTIC AREA? "At the time, we didn’t think that much about it, we were kids, we didn’t think that much about the military. As a kid, you just think that the military has a presence in every town like that. And it wasn’t too much later that we realized that that was kind of a unique situation. And I think there wasn’t a lack of respect, but probably not a respect like the military should’ve deserved in the area, just because I think it was taken for granted so much."
EDDIE WOOD – co-owner, No. 21 Motorcraft Taurus – "To me, I know all those people, the people that everyone’s watching on TV on CNN and all the networks – Gen. (John) Jumper and Gen. (Richard) Myers, I know those guys. You know, it’s just like it’s a part of you, it’s personal, because you know the people, they’re real people. We went to the wind tunnel Thursday night and got one of those satellite radios so we could listen to CNN and all the news channels coming up the road, just to keep up with what was going on. And, it’s just like it’s a part of you. I’ve been up top spotting and just couldn’t wait to get back down here to see what’s going on. While I was up there the whole deal broke loose again. Like I say, we know all those guys, and it’s really special to have them on our race car. It makes you feel like more of an American. We’re not doing any fighting, obviously, but we’re representing them to help get people to join the Air Force or the armed services, whatever they choose. And, right now, the thing to be is patriotic, and it just makes you feel that way. Racing is patriotic, this form of racing, especially, and it just makes you feel really proud."
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM IS EVERYWHERE IN THE MEDIA. THAT YOU KNOW SOME OF THE KEY PLAYERS, DOES THAT MAKE IT EASIER OR HARDER FOR YOU? "If you don’t know someone, you think, ‘Well, they’re just doing it,’ and you really don’t think that much about it. But, once you’ve met these guys, they’re real people. They’ve got the same interests and all that you and I do, and they’ve got families. It’s amazing the load that these people have on them that are making all the decisions, and the quickness they have to make them in. It’s just amazing to me, I’m just proud to know them. We know a lot of generals in the Air Force, I know a lot of people in the Navy because my son drives the Navy truck – I know Adm. (Vernon) Clark – and it’s just a great honor to say you know those guys. You see them on TV and say, ‘I know him.’ It just makes you feel a part of it."
ASIDE FROM THOSE IN THE AIR FORCE WHOM YOU’VE MET, DO YOU KNOW ANYONE ELSE INVOLVED, LIKE FAMILY OR FRIENDS? "No, not necessarily that is immediate family or anybody I really know. I know a lot of people in the Air Force, yes. But, I feel like I know them all just because I know those guys. Just last week we spoke with Mickey Handy, Gen. (John) Handy’s wife. You’d have to be me to know what I’m talking about, but you talk to those people and they talk to you like you’re somebody they’ve known for 20 or 30 years. But, they’re big people. They’re controlling what’s going on in the world right now. If you knew those people like I do, you wouldn’t think twice about what’s going on. I mean, they’re in control."
A FLAG IS ALWAYS ON THE HAULER… "We’ve always tried to have a flag in our pit, on our truck during the week. We always have had and always will have. We’ve always tried to have an American flag on our uniforms, on our Sunday stuff. If you’re not an American, you don’t need to be here, you know what I mean?"
WHERE DOES THAT PATRIOTISM COME FROM? "I don’t know. There are very few things that I’m close to. Like I’ve said, we race. I don’t golf or hunt. I don’t have any hobbies, I just race. That’s all I care about, and the people I care about, a lot are in the military. It’s America, racing, God, family, that kind of thing. That’s just the way we are."
SO THE AIR FORCE ON YOUR CAR AND THE NAVY ON JON’S TRUCK IS MORE THAN JUST A DECAL… "To me it is. It really is."
AND, A NASCAR AUDIENCE IS PROBABLY AS PATRIOTIC AN AUDIENCE THAT YOU’LL FIND… "You’d be hard-pressed to find a group this large – you’re going to have 160,000 people on Sunday – and I can’t imagine that you’d find a more patriotic group anywhere around, whether it’s a sporting event or any type of entertainment, you’d be hard-pressed. Red, white and blue is what these people are. I think that is one of those things that helps to make our sport what it is today."
THERE IS TREMENDOUS MEDIA COVERAGE OF WHAT’S GOING ON IN IRAQ. ARE YOU FOLLOWING ALL OF IT OR ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A DIVERSION? "No, I think I’m keeping up more because it’s there. I wonder sometimes if we’re getting into too much information, but it is great to have that and the opportunity to see exactly what is happening. Before, it used to be, really, days, weeks before we had any idea of what was taking place. This is up-to-the-minute, and it’s very intriguing, and I think that’s where I realize just how prepared we were to go in there and do what we had to do. None of us wanted to see this war happen, but I think that it was time that we did make a stand, and our people seem to be extremely prepared and ready to do their jobs. So, yeah, I’ve been keeping up with it quite a bit. When I get a little bit too much of that then I can always turn on the NCAA and get a little bit of my basketball fix."
DO YOU HAVE ANY FAMILY OR FRIENDS OR NEIGHBORS IN OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM? "No, I really don’t. I’m fortunate in that respect. But over the last few years as our armed forces have gotten involved in this sport and more have been able to come around, you remember people that you’ve met there. I’ve been very fortunate to meet a lot, and certainly wish them all the best and keep their families in our prayers."
ON HIS FINISHES DRIVING WITH VETERANS AT ROCKINGHAM AND DARLINGTON AND HOW MUCH THEY MEAN TO HIM. "It’s tough to lose races, but I think the biggest thing is there’s always lessons learned when you do lose a race. And there haven’t been many drivers to come in and just win when they show up at a race track. Examples are Dale Jarrett finished six times in the second-place position at Rockingham before he had won there. And at Darlington, there have been a lot of winners there, but winners that usually win in their seventh or eight races. I think Terry Labonte has the record there to win in his fifth start. And that was my fifth start there at Darlington last Sunday. So you have to go through hardships of losing very close races or going through lessons learned, and the way that both of those races went it looks like I pulled away a valuable lesson from each of those. And I’ll carry those with me until we go back there in the fall and hopefully have more of a successful run and being able to pull away at the end of the races, instead of just being able to maintain. I think those are going to be the big keys for me when I go back to those two types of race tracks. But the battles that I had with Dale Jarrett was just something that you dream about as a kid, and again at Darlington with Ricky Craven. The way that it turns out is one car is a little bit faster than the other, one car maybe burned his tires off quicker, one car has less experience than the other, or one car has been knowing to running up front lately. So there’s good things that came out of it and it’s something I’ll never forget, I’ll cherish. We’ll take those as lessons learned, and so that we can get into Victory Lane when it comes time to it next time."
DO YOU HAVE A SENSE OF HISTORY ABOUT RACING? "With the way that I grew up, it’s a little bit different than most Winston Cup racers. I grew up on the West Coast, watching these races on TV, and the same with Ricky Craven. He grew up in Maine, watching these races on TV. And you grab at history, you get a sense for what these races mean by the way the media talks about it, by the way you read about it in the paper Monday morning. And for what that track is to me, it’s probably the crown jewel of all race tracks for me. The way that they explain that place, the way it was built, back in the ’40s, to only race, maybe, 100 miles an hour. And here we are qualifying at that race track in the 170 mile-an-hour range, and you can’t race two-wide going into turn one. It’s a place that’s so abrasive on tires, the only place that can halfway compare to it is Rockingham, and that’s in the same sand region in the country where the asphalt is very difficult to lay down. The history behind that place is one within itself, as afar as the Southern 500 – that would be the most prestigious race that Kurt Busch can win. For me, that is the most prestigious race. There’s allure that drags everybody to Daytona. My hometown is Las Vegas. Those are probably the top-three race tracks, next to Indianapolis. And for me to be able to compete there and be in a position to win races early in my career, I think it is a little bit of a tribute to how much I respect the place, and how much you have to respect the race track before you even go there."
CAN DRIVERS FROM TODAY HAVE COMPETED 40 YEARS AGO, AND COULD DRIVERS FROM 40 YEARS AGO COMPETE TODAY? OR, CAN’T YOU MAKE THOSE COMPARISONS "I think you can. I think you can take a race car and make it competitive at specific race tracks, and drivers are always adaptive to new situations, and that’s the way that I look at it anyhow. I don’t have a set pattern on how I’m going to set a car up or how I’m going to drive it at a specific race track, because times change so quickly. Jimmy Fennig and I laughed at our setup that we won the spring race with here last year, because it’s going to be that much different today when we start Happy Hour. And so the era of drivers that came before me and created the sport for what we have today. Obviously, we’re a different type of breed, more of the southern crowd, and they were ones that, I guess, it’s kind of like what Craven and I did last week, they’d bump and grind and do whatever it took to get the victory. And so there’s signs of that now, in the present, and then of course there’s a new era of the sponsorship type roles and being able to be media savvy and do a lot of different outside things than just drive, where some of those southern boys might’ve just flung the camera out of the way because they were too upset to talk to them. But, you know, if they had to do it, like what we have to do, they would end up adapting to the situation. So there’s a lot of great things that you can take from them, but yet you have to mold to the new situation that is through the present."
ON THE ENGINE PROGRAM, ITS PROBLEMS AT ATLANTA AND WHETHER HE CAUGHT GRIEF ABOUT HIS COMMENTS. "It’s difficult. When you start off a season you want to get a solid footing as far as points, and make sure that when you do have trouble midseason or you have a mechanical DNF that it doesn’t hurt you too terribly bad. And it’s tough to swallow those early on in a season. And it’s tough we had to use two DNF’s already towards what we’re trying to accumulate by the end of the year. And with the way our lulls have been, it hasn’t been the same problem underneath the hood, it’s been something here or something there. And obviously there’s a lot of effort that’s being put into it and I respect the work that gets done up in Michigan, it’s just difficult to deal with sometimes, and I did flip up at Atlanta, I was a bit upset, and any driver is going to be upset when they’re standing in the pit area while there’s a race going around them. So I didn’t deal with it the right way, and Jack let me know about it, and we’re going to move forward, obviously, because that’s what we’re supposed to do. This is a short-track weekend, next weekend we go to Texas, a track very similar to Atlanta in motors, and I hope that it can stay together and that we can have a competitive finish."
ON THE COMPETITION AT BRISTOL. "That’s probably the best question about Bristol Motor Speedway, is the competition on how it’s been raced. I looked at the time sheet yesterday. Last place to make it into the show was Robbie Gordon with a 15.36. Well, that 15.36 would sit on the pole for the fall race by a tenth of a second. Whether the temperatures are warmer when we come here in the fall, yeah, they are. But I think it’s been the evolution of short track racing within the garage area to step up the competition by that much. You exclude Ryan Newman, which we all try to do on Fridays, he’s unbelievable, I can tell you that, and an .06 is what Jeff Gordon ran to a .36, so it’s three-tenths from first to last to making the race. And that’s the competition that we through here at Bristol. It’s similar at Martinsville, it’s similar at Richmond. The smaller the race track, the tighter the competition, the more difficult it is to pass somebody. Bristol, when you’re on, you’re on. You can hit your marks, you can be right on the bottom of the track, you can leave the corner with forward bite. Nobody’s going to get by you. I had that experience here last spring. We ended up staying out a little longer with our tires and made sure that our track position was the most important value to our win. And when somebody gets in behind you, I mean, like last week, I had to have power-steering problems for Ricky Craven to catch us. Here, you’re not likely to have a problem, and there’s going to be a green-flag re-start, somebody’s going to be right on him, and if they’re better with cold tires, they’re going to try the best that they can to get by him. And usually the only way here is to sweat ’em so hard that you slip ’em into a mistake, or if you’re racing somebody that really isn’t intimidated by anybody behind you, then you’ve got to be able to utilize some of the fenders and noses and tails on these cars to move your way around. There’s repercussions that come with that, there’s the value that you hold within yourself when you do that. And then of course there’s different things that you have to do when it’s a certain driver in front of you. So you have to weight out a lot of different options."
SOME DRIVERS HAVE SAID THAT WHAT THEY WANT TO SAY THEY CAN’T BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO BE CAREFUL. DO YOU FEEL THAT YOU CAN STILL SPEAK YOUR MIND? "She’s asking am I going to fall into the cereal box type mode of drivers. I think that the way I’ve been able to work different situations, and I’ve been real happy with the way Rubbermaid has opened up to me, and it’s primarily about your sponsor and knowing what their objective is. And within our unique operation, we’ve got 32 different companies at Newell Rubbermaid, and so I’m a representative of 32 different media outlets, I guess we could call it, to try to sell consumer products to America. And so it’s something where you have to be a bit out of the ordinary to try push that type of product. And so they’ve helped me to understand different situations better. And of course there’s the owner’s side of things where it’s not necessarily a positive thing to say sometimes, but yet the sponsor the agrees with it. So there’s a unique balance that is I see within my organization and then with the way that our other Roush drivers handle it, it might not be the template that Roush has set forth, and so I’ve got to do a better job fitting into the Roush template and not necessarily our primary sponsor’s way of trying to do things. It’s been fun, it’s a challenge and it’s something where you try to spend too much time outside the race track, but there is good things that can happen outside the race track."
MORE ON THE MOTORS. "There’s so many races. I can start this year with 2003. I may have jumped the gun and been too abrasive with the situation. We’re sixth in points right now, after a motor failure. We’ve still got 30 races to go. No real big issue. You’re allowed to have one or two type of failures. Last year we just didn’t have two failures in August, things added up. Both Charlotte races we were leading and we dropped a cylinder. There is an occasion of 12 motors that failed me, whether it was in Happy Hour or in race conditions that took away from our practice time or away from our finish. And so that is a big hurdle that we have to overcome. And the way that this year started, it didn’t seem like there was any light at the end of the tunnel. And so I have to very hopeful that we can cure the problem. We go into Texas obviously with a whole new revamped process because Atlanta failed us. We’ve got new crankshafts, we’ve got new rods, there’s a new process behind everything, whereas Jack’s trying to catch up and make sure that he does the right things within the motor program. And then yet he might hold on too strongly because that is his baby. He needs to let his engineers and his motor development department in Michigan take over the primary role."
ON TAKING A CAR RIGHT TO THE EDGE. "He’s asking about car control and my success contributed to it, and not necessarily going over the edge. Last week was a tough race for me with the power steering failing me. It’s a perfect example. And I had to weigh a few different options at the end of that race. I had 15 laps to go, I had the orange car catching me, and I couldn’t turn the wheel to the right to save the car if I did slip a wheel or have something not go my way. So I had to drive a push into the car to make sure that I constantly had the same amount of wheel input turned into the wheel. And by doing that, I chewed up the right front tire. And so I knew that was going to happen, I knew that I needed to stay off that tire, and I needed to make sure that I carried my momentum through the corner. One and two was much easier to do without power steering, but three and four were just a bear. And that’s where I ended up losing most of my time. I couldn’t maintain speed through the top side of turn four. Places like here at Bristol, you’re always sliding coming off the corner. You’ve got to make sure that you keep the rear tires planted to the race track. There’s been a lot of times where I might’ve stepped over the boundary, but I wouldn’t have known that unless I didn’t try it. So there’s things that I think I need to do in this part of my career to understand the car more thoroughly, and then later on drive it within the realms of the car’s capability and know when I’ve got to finish the race and know when we’ve got a chance to win it."
HOW MUCH HAVE YOU CHANGED FROM YOUR ROOKIE YEAR. "It’s been a challenge obviously to come into Winston Cup with the lack of experience that I’ve had, just one year in the Craftsman Truck Series, and year before that I was racing Southwest Tour cars, two years before that I was racing Legend cars, like what you see on the quarter-mile at Charlotte Motor Speedway as the support division on a Tuesday night shootout or something. You know, this is my third year in Winston Cup; it’s the most years I’ve ever spent in any racing series. One year in trucks, two years in Southwest Tour, and years before that it was just one here, one year there, just dabbling around, trying to know which way I needed to go. So this is a much more comfortable situation. The experiences that I have can now chart together, instead of, ‘Well, I did this in trucks,’ or ‘Well, I did this in Southwest.’ Well, ‘I did this in Winston Cup.’ And now it’s easier to go through the past notes and understand what I have to do for the future. And so those are big steps that I’ve taken since my rookie year. Obviously, my rookie year, I struggled the most at Rockingham and Darlington. Now, they’re my two most favorite race tracks. And so I think that’s a big key from where I was my rookie year."
ON THE ETIQUETTE OF DRIVING AT BRISTOL. "Asking about how do you weight your options when you try to pass somebody here with the bump and run or as Jeff Gordon stated, if you’re slow enough as the leader and you let somebody, yeah, it is your own fault. That’s the primary reason why you end up with a bump and run is because the leader isn’t quick enough to maintain his speed. I ran here last year in the fall with Johnny Benson. With about 100 laps to go, he was leading, I was in second. I said I was just going to ride around, we’ve got a 100 to go, and as soon as he slips I’m going to jump on him. He slipped going into three, I think, on the first lap after the re-start, and I went underneath him and he drove me down onto the apron of the race track, and beat up the right side a little bit, but I pulled away as the leader. That’s the first option I think a driver chooses is to follow and to see if there’s a mistake made by the leader. When you are the leader and you’re a little bit slower, it’s going to be easier for you to make a mistake because you’re worried about, in your mind, about being self-conscious and slow and holding up that second-place guy, so you’re going to be off your line and off your marks a little bit. And then as time progresses, if that leader’s still leading and the second-place car is quicker, you still continue to wait for a mistake, and then you begin to add mistakes into the repertoire, whether you sweat ’em hard going into a corner, you can get somebody loose by staying right on top of ’em going into a corner here. You can get ’em loose being right in the middle of the corner right behind ’em, and then you can start to maneuver them around a little bit on the exit of the corner, if you will. But usually if you’re the second-place car and you catch the leader, it’s due to the fact that they’re slower and you just study where they’re slower on the race track – whether they’re struggling with turn two or whether they’re struggling getting into turn three, you try to take advantage of their mistake and their weak point and you get by them."
ON THE FANS AND BRISTOL. "He’s asking, this place sells out all the time, and the reason for that is because of the excitement level, and do I feel like an entertainer when I’m here. This place, you show up and obviously it’s different looking than any other race track we go to. You walk inside, it surrounds you, it circumferences you and it almost suffocates you until you learn to see that there is a race track there. And you feel like you’re a Roman god racing your chariot around with your horse in front of you, and you got spikes sticking out the side, and you got to do whatever it takes to win this race, and make sure that everyone’s on top of their head afterwards. This is the toughest place to try to win at consistently, and to make sure that things go your way. And there is somewhat of that entertainment value, but when we strap our helmets on and get inside the car, there’s a stage in the race where we do one specific thing. There’s a stage in the race where we’re studying our chassis. There’s a stage in the race where we’re trying to position ourselves to move forward, and to make sure that we’re in contention and in the right position at the end of the race. And so we don’t necessarily feel that we’re an entertainment business, but it comes out that way, the way that the media and the way that Bruton advertises this race track, and it puts on great shows. That’s why fans dig it, because they can come in here in the night during the summertime and enjoy their time, they can come here in the daytime in the spring, the weather’s great. And so it’s a track that lends itself to entertainment and excitement because it’s so different."
HOW WOULD SIZE UP YOUR FIRST TRUCK RACE AT DAYTONA? "It was over before I knew it. It was a race where I had no idea what the draft meant. I had no idea what a 250-mile race meant. I didn’t know when it was time to step on the throttle or when it was time to lift. There was so many elements that I had to learn in just one specific race, and I think I wrecked three or four times, but I still
finished second. It’s a matter of bringing the car home for a finish at the end of the day, and that’s what I did. It was a little rough obviously with the way that I handled situations on the race track. And so it was a big lesson learned right away. Obviously it wasn’t a late-model race, which I thought it was, where you just had to go to the front and win. And so there was much more etiquette involved and the rapport that I burned with the drivers that race, it took me all year just to rebuild. And I think by the end of the year when I dominated the Fontana race, it showed the amount of things I learned throughout the year, to create that final outcome, which was to win the final race, knowing that was my last race in the series."
YOU SAID THE SETUP IS DIFFERENT. HOW MUCH WILL THAT AFFECT TIRE WEAR? "We’ve seen in the past that you can go about 150 laps on tires here and still maintain a decent lap time and that’s what it took for Elliott Sadler to win and that’s how I won in the spring. The spring race is a bit more conservative on tires than it is here when we come back at night during the summertime. When we come back in the summertime it’s much warmer, it’s at night, it’s much more difficult to make the car turn. So you have to do things with the setup that abuse the tires in a different way to make the car turn. Because obviously lap time is more important than tire wear here. So again we’re going to go down that road of abusing the tires and making sure we can maintain our lap time quicker this time, instead of trying to maneuver 150 laps out of a set of tires. We saw at the fall race, we stayed out with 120 to go, where Jeff Gordon, Rusty Wallace and a few others came in with 80 to go, and they prevailed. So I think that’s the way it’s going to go this time. We’ve got a couple of more aggressive springs and shocks in the car, just to try and get a better balance with the tires, so that they wear out after about 120 laps instead of 150 laps."
ON TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY, AND WHETHER THE ASPHALT IS AGING. "It’s hard to say. I haven’t been there to see. We know that there was two new race tracks last year, Chicago and Kansas, that were on the schedule, and if you ask me, the asphalt didn’t change between those two race tracks, and they go through harsh winters. There’s a lot of snow in the Chicago area, there’s a lot of temperature change in the Kansas City area that upsets race tracks and how they mature. So Texas, it’s more in the south, it sees a lot of rain, and that probably has taken a lot of the tar out of the asphalt and it’ll make it a different feel. I don’t know if it’s going to be more abrasive on the tires, if that’s what the slower pace means, or if the fact that is has less grip. We’ll see when we get there. But it’s a track where a lot of races race on it, truck series, Busch series, IRL, the Cup series, there’s probably a couple other events that I don’t know about, and that’s what it takes to help groom in a race track and develop a second groove is more races on the race track. And so that’s where Vegas was a benefit of that. They had three or four truck races, four or five Busch races, they had IRL cars out there. They had a lot of events before the Winston Cup series showed up. And so that’s what’s going to happen over time with some of these other tracks as they’re able to mature."
ON HIS TEAMMATE MATT KENSETH LEADING THE POINTS. "He’s asking about Matt Kenseth leading the points, and a lot of people thought we’d be leading the points at this point. Is it a surprise to me? No, it’s not a surprise. It’s actually a complete joy to see one of our Roush cars leading the points. Mark has struggled, obviously, with a couple of DNF’s, and Burton had a couple so far this year. I mean, it’s something where if you’re consistent, you’re going to be on top of the points. That’s the way Winston Cup pays their points out, and that’s what you have to do, and he’s been running competitively. He got in a wreck at Darlington and he still finished eighth. And that’s what kind of effort it takes to win a championship. So, they’ve been able to piece good runs together, they won out in Las Vegas, where I never thought a Ford would win ever on that day, and he was able to pull it through and get the victory for him. It’s been a great thing to see, and there’s still a long way to go, and it’s good that he’s up there, and hopefully I can catch up with him and it’ll be the two of us battling for the championship instead of any other team."
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