DAVE BLANEY QUOTES:
California and Michigan are similar in a lot of ways. Is California Speedway one of those race tracks that everyone looks forward to like Michigan or does it have a different feel?
”California races quite a bit different than Michigan. California has been more of a bottom groove race track but it has widened out over the last year or two. It’s not as wide as Michigan and it has a little less bank to it so California doesn’t have quite the grip Michigan does. It wasn’t a real good track for us earlier in the season and neither was Michigan, for that matter. Hopefully, we can get it figured out this time.”

Based on Scott Miller coming on board as your crew chief, does that make you look forward to going back to a place where you struggled the first time to try and improve upon how you were in February?
“We’ve got a little different race car to take out there this time. The body is a little different on this one. Hopefully, that will pick us up from where we were last time. A ton of the way you perform at California is based on aerodynamics. You definitely need the right stuff before you can run well at Fontana. I have to thank Kevin Hamlin and Jeff Burton for allowing us to borrow one of their cars. Hopefully, we’ll bring it back in as good of shape as we found it.”

SCOTT MILLER QUOTES:
How do you approach California from a fuel mileage standpoint? Do you try and mix up your pit strategy or do you have to come up with a schedule and stick with it?
“You have to stay on schedule. Really, the only thing you do fuel mileage-wise is know exactly how far you can go. You need a real good number so that you know when it comes down to the end of the race what your drop dead lap is when you have to pit and how many cautions it’s going to take to get to the end. That’s how those races always play out. When they turn into fuel mileage races, it’s because a caution comes out really early in the fuel window and some people can make it from there and some people can’t. You just have to know what your number is and that’s what you work with. Sometimes you have to gamble on there being caution flags in there but you need to know what you can do. Those races don’t start out as fuel mileage races -- they either turn into one or they don’t by how the cautions fall. If there’s a caution that’s easily in everyone’s window, then everyone pits and it’s not a fuel mileage race. If it comes out 10 laps before that and it’s in some people’s window and not in others, then all of a sudden the complexion of the race changes.”