BOWYER: “I tell ya, two runs before that last one, we got a set of tires and the car took off like a rocket. I think I passed like five, six or seven cars and I was really happy. At first you want to get greedy. I told ‘em we wanted a little bit more and a little bit more was way too much. But it was a heck of a way to end the race. Finally something pays off for us. We’ve had such bad luck over the last month or so. It’s nice to be able to gamble a little bit and take a chance for once.” WERE YOU CLOSE ON GAS AT THE END? “Of course we were close [smiles]. I’m saving all I could. That’s probably why the 8 car passed me. I was just trying to save as much as I could and it finally paid off.” HOW CAN YOU DO THAT AND RACE HARD AT THE SAME TIME? “You can’t. That’s why when the 8 car caught me, I kind of blocked him about halfway and once he got around me I just had to let him go.” THIS WAS A VERY GOOD NIGHT FOR YOU AND THE TEAM. “That’s the way we need to do things. We just need to have things finally roll your way once. The Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet was decent. We just never could quite get a perfect balance but I think we were an eighth to 10th-place car all night long. It’s nice to finally have something go our way. About the last month, month and a half, other than Indy, if we had any luck it was bad luck. Finally a little bit of luck paid off there.” WHAT IS YOUR FOCUS WITH 11 RACES TO GO? “First of all, definitely get my teammates Jeff Burton in [the Chase]. He deserved it and has been running good all year and then get this Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet as close to 11th as we can. We’ve got a long row to hoe but I think we can do it.” THE CAR LOOKED LIKE IT CAME TO YOU LATE IN THE RACE. “Just a good call by Gil [Martin, crew chief]. We came back in and topped off with gas and that paid off for us. I’m really proud of Gil and the gamble he made. It was neat to see something finally go our way.” CAN YOU KEEP THIS MOMENTUM UP NEXT WEEK AT RICHMOND? “We’ve been running good, we just haven’t got the finishes. That’s what we’re working on is trying to get the finish. I think this is headed in the right direction and we got more to come.”

GIL MARTIN, CREW CHIEF, No. 07 JACK DANIEL’S CHEVROLET: “I’d rather be lucky than good tonight [laughs]. It’s not like we backed into it. The Jack Daniel’s car ran up front all night long. Clint did a good job, did a really good job in the pits. This team needed that right there, bad. After the last two or three weeks that we’ve had, it needed this in some kind of bad way. We couldn’t be happier about what he did. And once again we will be the top Raybestos Rookie.” WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CAR MIDWAY THROUGH THE RACE? “On the next to last stop, the set of tires we put on went extremely loose. The set right before then the car was as fast as anybody on the racetrack. Once we got that right there and got put to the back. Like they say, when you get handed lemons you make lemonade so we gambled on the fuel there at the end and what do you know? It paid off. I can’t believe it.” DID YOU TELL CLINT ON THE RADIO TO TAKE CARE OF THE FUEL? “Oh yeah, with about the last 20 laps to go right there and actually we started telling him to save fuel, save fuel and he started picking up. Maybe that’s some way I can drill into him, too, that you’ve got to back the corners up a little bit to go a little faster because he picked up about two-tenths slowing down. It’s just a great day.” YOU’VE HAD TWO TOP-FIVES IN THE LAST MONTH. HAS THIS TEAM TURNED THE CORNER? “The car’s been capable of running in the top-five for 80 percent of the season. And either something’s happened on the racetrack, we’ve had one motor failure, or just an untimely caution or something like that’s happened. Tonight it all played in our favor. If we can make that happen, yeah, I think the corner has turned for us and we’ll be looking forward to the last half of the season and looking forward to a strong next year.”

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FEDEX EXPRESS CHEVROLET: “We knew that the other cars that we were going to race with we’re going to come in so we had to do the same thing they did.” THE CAR LOOKED STRONG ALL NIGHT. “It was really good. We had a car that was a top-five car all night long and we did what we had to do to keep our track position and not risk running out of fuel.” YOU HAD A GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD FINISH. “Yeah, it was a good night for us. We dropped one spot in the points but we cut our losses. We didn’t lose that much to the 9 and I feel confident that we can run well next week at Richmond.” YOU FINISHED SIXTH AND LOST A POSITION IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS. “We definitely didn’t want to see a close fuel mileage race. I felt like we had a top-five car all day and that’s very odd when you have a race that goes from day to night. I’m very happy with our effort, another sixth-place finish. I’d like to have those top-fives but it’s still a great effort for us.” YOUR THOUGHTS HEADING INTO RICHMOND. “It’s not a comfortable margin by any means but I feel like we do have a car good enough to run top-five there. We finished second in the spring and if we finish second this race, I guarantee we’ll be in the Chase [smiles].”

STEVE ADDINGTON, CREW CHIEF, No. 18 IMITREX/INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET: “We were crunching the numbers and we were about a lap and a half short. That would have cost us about eight or 10 more positions if we had went for it so we decided to come in and get a splash.” YOU ARE NOT RACING TO MAKE THE CHASE. DOES THAT FREE YOU UP TO GAMBLE A LITTLE BIT MORE? “Yeah it does, but we’re still trying to get back to top-25, top-20 in points. We had to look at that, too, and get all the positions we could. If we had been a half-lap short or one lap, it might have been different but we were going to run out anyway.”

BOWYER PRESS CONFERENCE

“It was a good weekend for us. We qualified good and we had a decent car. We had an eighth to 10th-place car. It was too loose and we couldn’t quite get the good balance on the car all night long. I’m real proud of Gil. It’s nice to finally take a gamble and have a little luck on our side finally pay off. I just tried to back up the corners as much as I could. He called me in on that last caution and we topped off with gas and I think that was the call that made the race for us.”