Subway 500 - Rookie Saturday Quotes

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER ADVANCE MATERIAL FOR THE SUBWAY 500 NASCAR NEXTEL CUP SERIES RACE AT MARTINSVILLE SPEEDWAY, OCTOBER 21, 2005.

Denny Hamlin will start fifth in Sunday’s Subway 500 at Martinsville Speedway. He was third following the first practice session this morning, behind Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart. Hamlin is a Raybestos Rookie in the NASCAR Busch Series and will compete later today in the Sam’s Town 250 at Memphis (Tenn.) Motorsports Park.

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FEDEX FREIGHT CHEVROLET: “I think we ended up third there in practice. I’m really pumped about tomorrow and we’ll see how it goes in the final practice. I’ve got to cut the final practice a half-hour short so I can get on an airplane. We’ll try to get all of our runs in early in practice. I’m pretty psyched about it. I felt like we were pretty good in qualifying trim. We ended fifth and it looks like we’re even better in race trim. This is definitely a race that we have a shot at.” IS THE CAR PRETTY MUCH FLAWLESS? “We need to get a little bit better on the longer run. It falls off quite a bit as well as a lot of guys do. We just need to get a tenth, tenth and a half better on the long haul. On the short runs it hauls.” HAVE YOU HAD TO JUGGLE A LOT THIS WEEKEND WITH THE BUSCH CAR? YOU’RE STILL IN THE TOP-FIVE IN POINTS IN BUSCH. “That’s the main goal at the end of the year, is to stay in that top-five. We need to keep our eye on the prize there and go to Memphis today and have a great race. We need to get a good solid top-five, top-10 finish out of that and come back here on Sunday and have a little fun.” HOW DIFFERENT DO YOU DRIVE THE CUP CAR HERE VERSUS THE LATE MODEL? “You drive it pretty much the exact same. You just try to stay off the brake as much as possible. That keeps the car rolling a lot better and keeps the heat out of the front tires. It’s pretty much the same game plan, the only difference is that you’ve got 300 extra laps and a lot more time to just be patient.” HAVE YOU HAD PROBLEMS ADJUSTING TO HOW THE CUP CAR FEELS VERSUS THE BUSCH CAR? “No, I don’t think so. I can pretty much distinguish. When we’re at the same racetrack in practices or back to back and stuff like that, it’s a little tough. It takes a few laps to adjust. Short-track racing is pretty much the same, it doesn’t matter what car you’re in. It’s all working out right now and hopefully it will be a sign of things to come.” HAS THE NEXTEL CUP SERIES BEEN OVERWHELMING? HAS IT BEEN COMPLETELY DIFFERENT? “I really thought that it would be, not more challenging because it’s the hardest sport on earth to get into, but I thought I would struggle a lot more. But I might still do it down the road. I don’t know. I’m looking forward to this week and next week and they still haven’t said who is driving the last three races. It’s kind of wait and see.” HOW MUCH PRESSURE IS THERE ON YOU THIS WEEKEND AT MARTINSVILLE? “I really don’t feel any pressure. We had our great run last week. We had a good solid qualifying run this week and our great race run last week. I feel like no matter what happens the next two races I feel like I’ve done the best I could.” ARE YOU CLOSE TO WINNING A RACE IN THE BUSCH SERIES? “We’ve got to get our program there a little bit better than what it is right now. Other than that, that’s really the only thing really holding us back from winning. We’re right there, close, but just can’t seem to pull one off.”

JIMMY MAKAR, COMPETITION DIRECTOR, JOE GIBBS RACING: WHY PUT DENNY HAMLIN THE CAR FOR A FEW RACES THIS SEASON? “Well, the biggest thing was just to give him the opportunity to see what he could do. We’re trying to find someone for the 11 car. When you look on the outside what’s out there and what’s available out there, the caliber of people out there aren’t what we’re looking for, for the 11 car. The people that we’d like to get in the car are tied up in contracts and such so it’s really not much choice. We came in house and looked in house, we had Denny and J.J. [Yeley] sitting over on the Busch side doing a really, really good job for us. We thought we might as well give them an opportunity to see what they could do here. It was an opportunity for them to kind of measure themselves up and for us to measure them up to what they could do. We all think that, especially Denny, hasn’t got a lot of experience, even on the Busch side. We were kind of just going to give him a shot at this and give him a taste of what’s going on but he’s done a very good job for us. That’s the big thing right now, is to kind of evaluate and see where he’s at and give him the opportunity to see where he’s at in relation to everybody else on the Cup side.” HOW RISKY IS IT FOR A TEAM TO TAP A RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE AS A DRIVER? “It’s obviously risky. You send these guys to tracks that they haven’t seen before with the type of cars that they haven’t driven before, either aerodynamically or horsepower, thing they’re not used to, so you always take a chance. You can do a few things to help that out. You can go test with them and give them an opportunity to learn without pressure of competition that we have on the weekend. But everything that we do is a risk. You’ve got to weigh your risks versus your gains and your goals and then decide what to do from there.” WHAT MAKES A WEEKEND A SUCCESS FOR EITHER HAMLIN OR YELEY? IS THE BOTTOM LINE WHERE THEY FINISH? “Obviously a finish is important to the FedEx group. The team needs good finishes for the point standings. We really need to finish solidly inside the top-35 for next year so that’s a major goal that’s always there. But the other one is to give Denny an opportunity to finish the race, to run and to learn and to experience what it’s like to run 500 laps here and see what happens to the racetrack, how it changes, just give him some experience. That’s the main thing. It’s not going to do any good to run really, really good for 200 laps and then have some kind of a failure and fall out of the race. That’s not what we need to do. We need for him to run 500 laps here.”