Mark Martin, driver of the No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion, has two NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series wins at Atlanta Motor Speedway and comes into this weekend fifth in the point standings. He held a Q&A session behind his hauler shortly before Friday’s practice.

MARK MARTIN – No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion – CAN YOU BREAK DOWN WHY YOU LIKE THIS TRACK SO MUCH? “I like the mile-and-a-half race tracks and this is very much a handling race track. I hate tracks that aren’t handling race tracks, but this is huge for handling and that’s the big reason.” DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE GROOVE HERE OR DOES IT DEPEND ON HOW YOUR CAR IS WORKING? “It’s multiple grooves for those guys, but it’s only one groove for me – the bottom. Win, lose or indifferent that’s where I’ll be.” HOW HAS THE TRUCK BEEN SO FAR THIS YEAR? “We got off to a good start. We’ve had a great effort by Mike Beam and the Scotts team. We’ve got a really nice Ford truck there and we’re having fun, but we could have been not as fortunate and not won either race, so you can’t be a total hog. You have to be realistic about it. We’ve been blessed with great performance and good opportunities and things worked out for us.” WILL IT BE HARD TO HAND THE STEERING WHEEL TO DAVID RAGAN? “No. I’m pretty busy. It’s not gonna be too hard for me. I just don’t really have a hard time with watching these races because I’ve got so much going on. I think I’ll be fine.” DO THINGS CHANGE MUCH GOING FROM TRUCK TO CAR AS FAR AS YOUR LINE ON THE TRACK? “The Busch car to the Cup car is not a big change. It’s never a problem. The truck is. It is big. It’s a big difference.” WHAT ABOUT THE IROC CAR? “The IROC car is a car is a car is a car, but the truck is different. I don’t drop that in the same category as Busch. Cup and IROC, that’s all different but it’s not a big deal. The truck is really a bit different.” CARL WAS THE KING HERE LAST YEAR. DOES IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO COME TO A PLACE WHERE YOU’VE RUN WELL, ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE STRUGGLING? “It depends on Carl’s confidence. He might come in here worried that he wouldn’t live up to his expectations, or he might come in here with great confidence knowing that he was gonna live up to his expectation. So it depends on the individual. Certainly the result is more important than how you feel about things.” DO YOU THINK IT’S GOING TO BE HARD FOR CARL TO COME BACK AND HAVE A SEASON LIKE LAST YEAR? “Carl ran real good in California and he ran good or fine at Daytona. He had one bad race and I don’t think that means anything just because he had one bad race. I think you’re just getting ahead of yourself on that. Just because he’s not stacked up in the points doesn’t mean he’s not gonna get there and have the great success that we all know he will have.” HOW DO YOU STAY FRESH ON A DAY LIKE TODAY WITH THREE PRACTICES, TWO QUALIFYING SESSIONS AND THEN A RACE TONIGHT? “I laid down for about 45 minutes a while ago and I took half of a Goody’s powder, so I’m ready to go now.” ARE YOU A CAT NAPPER? “Yeah, I don’t always go to sleep but I do rest. I don’t really go to sleep, but I definitely do like to lay down if I can for a half-hour or so and re-charge my battery.”


Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion, will be trying for his third straight NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series win at Atlanta Motor Speedway in Sunday’s Golden Corral 500. He spoke about that after Friday’s practice session behind his team’s hauler.

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion – HOW DOES IT FEEL TO COME BACK AND ARE THE MEMORIES STILL THAT FRESH? “Yeah, I was thinking about that in practice when I was sitting in the car. I can’t believe it’s only been a year. This day a year ago we hadn’t won a Nextel Cup race. We weren’t sure if we had a sponsor or not for the season. So much has changed and I’m so grateful for everything that’s happened in a year, but I love coming back here.” ARE YOU LOCKING INTO A CERTAIN GROOVE HERE OR DOES IT CHANGE? “At Atlanta Motor Speedway you can run multiple grooves. I like running the outside groove but only when it’s fast. We set up our Office Depot Ford today to run right around the bottom. I might have run one lap on the top just to see what it was like, but we were pretty good down there. You never know. When the race starts the fast groove might be right around the white line for the whole day and not up on the top like it was last time.” THE WEATHER MIGHT BE DICEY ON SUNDAY. HOW DOES THAT EFFECT YOUR WEEKEND? “I was fortunate enough to go do the Weather Channel this morning and I got a real good look at the weather. They said there might be a little bit of rain, so we spent a lot of time in race trim during practice. We made only two runs in qualifying trim, I guess. That’s kind of our strategy – just spend a little more time working on the race car trying to make it right.” THIRD TIME THE CHARM HERE? “That would be unbelievable. I don’t know how probability works. Everytime you go to the race track you have the same chance of winning no matter how you performed in the past, so I’m trying not to think about what happened before – just go out and do the same thing we did the first time and the second time and if we get the same result, man, that would be unbelievable.” IT WOULD BE BACKFLIP TIME. “Yeah, it would be a fun backflip to do for three in a row.” DOES THIS TRACK COME AT A GOOD TIME FOR YOU? “Coming to this track is what we need right now. We need to just come out of here with a top five run, just like we did at California, maybe lead some laps and move ourselves up in the points. We had such a terrible week at Daytona and then Las Vegas was surprisingly bad. We didn’t expect that so we need a good one.” HOW HARD IS IT NOT TO PRESS OR OVERTHINK COMING INTO THIS RACE? “That’s a great point. I caught myself a little bit this week getting a little nervous thinking, ‘Man, I’ve got to go win this race again.’ But that’s not the case. The case is we have to be in the top 10 in points at Richmond in the fall and that’s all that we have to do. To do that, we can’t wreck and we can’t mess up. If we run second, we run second. I’m not gonna wreck the car trying to win it.” LAST YEAR THINGS FELL INTO PLACE BUT THIS YEAR IT’S GONE THE OTHER WAY. “I said at the end of last year that we had a great year and barely made the chase. We had a lot of good luck and things went our way a lot, but we did have some bad luck too. We went to Bristol and wrecked in qualifying, wrecked out of Martinsville, wrecked at Talladega, wrecked at the second Daytona. Hopefully, we won’t have anymore bad luck this year. We’re not changing our strategy. I’m not panicking. We’re not doing anything, but if we go to Martinsville and Bristol and Talladega and wreck, that’s gonna make for a miserable season, but we go to every race the same.” WHAT IS IT ABOUT ATLANTA THAT YOU LIKE? “I think the thing I really love the most about Atlanta is just the pace of the race track, the way the banking is built and the way the corner entry is it reminds me of just a big dirt track. It’s the same pace of what I’ve been used to growing up.” WILL NOT BEING ABLE TO TEST MARTINSVILLE BE A BIG FACTOR FOR YOU? “As long as it’s the same for everyone there’s really no difference. I would love to go and spend about two weeks straight at Martinsville and run a million laps, but that’s not gonna happen so we just have to go there and do the best we can. I’m telling you, one of these days we’re gonna get it. We’re gonna haul the mail at Martinsville. We’re gonna run great at the road courses. I’m not giving up. I don’t care if I’m 40 years old when I finally catch on, but we’re gonna keep working at it.” WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO TO GET BETTER? “We’re gonna go try to test at some short track somewhere. NASCAR is doing a good job of limiting testing. Whatever they can do to make it to where there’s less testing going on makes it easier on everyone.” WHEN YOU HAVE A BAD RACE LIKE VEGAS IS IT HARDER TO TAKE BECAUSE OF THE SUCCESS YOU HAD LAST YEAR? “Honestly, I’ve failed way more times than I’ve succeeded and some of my failures have been a lot worse and more embarrassing than Las Vegas that’s for sure. I’m pretty confident I know what we did wrong at Las Vegas and that’s comforting. If we were to run that bad and not know what we did wrong, that would be pretty scary so, I guess, no. It doesn’t bother me.” DID YOU PICK THE WRONG SPRINGS? “Yeah, we tried some stuff that we probably shouldn’t have. We brought a new car and tried some things. We brought the same car here and it’s fast, so it wasn’t the car. It was the springs we put on it.” IS THIS THE CAR YOU WON BOTH TIMES WITH LAST YEAR? “No, this is a brand new car. It was new at Vegas. That’s Bob Osborne. He’s ice cold. I couldn’t believe he decided to bring the same car here. I was nervous about that.” WHAT ABOUT THE CAR FROM LAST YEAR? “We had two different cars, but Bob doesn’t believe in that same car thing. That’s something new to me. He’s not scared to do great at a track and bring a whole different car. He relies on the data of the wind tunnel stuff so that’s pretty cool.” HOW MUCH ARE YOU COUNTING ON TURNING THINGS AROUND THIS WEEKEND? “Atlanta Motor Speedway couldn’t come at a better time for the Office Depot team. I guess we’ve run three races so far and we’ve run terribly at two of them. We need Atlanta. We need to come here and run well. We need to have a top three or top five day and that would help a lot.” IS THE CONFIDENCE STILL HIGH? “Oh yeah. All it took was about three laps of practice and they told me the times. I feel like this is gonna be a great race for us.” WHAT DID ATLANTA DO FOR YOU PERSONALLY? “I’m really glad we raced at Atlanta, that’s for sure. It kind of made our year last year. That first win got us Office Depot as a sponsor and got the momentum going for the year. The second win was spectacular too, so Atlanta means a lot to me.” ALL THESE QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW TERRIBLE IT IS MUST TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU HAVE A LOT OF SUCCESS. “That’s fine with me. I agree with everybody standing here. We want to do better than we’re doing right now. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be the competitors that we are. Our whole team wants to perform at the highest level and to do that we have to have a little bit of luck, but we can also be better at some decision-making stuff and I can do a little better job driving. If it was all easy it wouldn’t be this much fun when you win.”


Elliott Sadler, driver of the No. 38 M&M’s Ford Fusion, is eighth in the point standings. He addressed the media at his hauler following Friday’s practice.”

ELLIOTT SADLER – No. 38 M&M’s Ford Fusion – HOW WOULD YOU RATE THE FUSION ON A SCALE OF 1-10? “The Fusion is doing very good. You look at what Roush is doing. They’re being very competitive and leading a lot of laps whether it’s the Busch race or the Cup race. I think it’s a great tool. I don’t think we’ve hit it yet, exactly what we need to have for it, but we’re gonna keep working as hard as we can.” DO YOU LIKE ATLANTA? “I like Atlanta. I think it’s one of my favorite race tracks to race at, not because it’s fast. It’s great that it’s a fast race track, but you can run on the bottom, you can run in the middle, you can run up high. You can do a lot of different things here at Atlanta to change the handling characteristics of your car, so I really enjoy coming to this race track for that.” WILL THE POSSIBLE BAD WEATHER ON SUNDAY AFFECT YOUR PREPARATIONS? “It doesn’t. We can’t worry about the weather and all the other things we have to deal with. We’re gonna come here and get the car as best we can, do all the work we need to do and the weather will take care of itself. We’re all gonna have to race one day no matter what the weather is so we’ll just build some adjustments into it and see what happens.” EVERY RACE HAS BEEN A GREEN-WHITE-CHECKERED FINISH. HOW MUCH MORE ON THE WHEEL ARE YOU DOWN THE STRETCH OF THESE THINGS? “You’ve got to be paying attention all the time. I think racing has changed so much in the last four or five years. You’re pretty much racing like you’re qualifying each and every lap. You’ve got to be up on the wheel and you’ve got to be ready for these green-white-checkereds because it’s gonna happen. Last week we gained eight positions in two laps, so it was a benefit to us. We were just in the right place at the right time, but we have to make sure we’re up on the wheel each and every lap because of that.” WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE GREEN-WHITE-CHECKERED FINISH? “I think it’s good for the ticketholders. Fans pay a lot of money to come and see us, so we should have one shot at a green-white-checkered. We’re all getting used to it now and it’s part of the deal, so it doesn’t bother us. It’s pretty interesting sometimes, but it’s part of racing. It created one heck of a race last week between Matt Kenseth and Jimmie Johnson.” IN ESSENCE, THOUGH, A GREEN-WHITE-CHECKERED ISN’T MUCH DIFFERENT FROM RACING BACK TO THE CAUTION IS IT? “It’s racing until the caution comes out. When the caution comes out we quit racing no matter what, but I think you’ve got to try to give the fans at least one attempt to try to end these things under green. It’s no fun for anybody anymore to end them under caution, so I think the fans look forward to a green-white-checkered. I think some of the drivers, depending on what kind of position you’re in, are looking forward to it. But even under that situation when the caution comes out you slow down, so you’re not really racing back. I think the sport is a lot safer because of that.”