KASEY KAHNE (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

NOTE: Fresh off his third win of the season last week at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in the Coca-Cola 600, Kahne stands sixth in the series standings after 12 of 36 events. Kahne is 292 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson and just 21 points out of fifth place. In four career starts at Dover, Kahne’s best finish is 16th. The 26-year-old driver from Enumclaw, Wash., will be making his 85th career start Sunday. He has four wins, 23 top fives and 29 top 10s to go along with nine poles.

COMMENT ON RACING AT DOVER “It should be a good one. Dover has always been a great track. It’ll be a great race to win. It’s always been a good surface for me. I enjoy racing on the concrete at Dover. There’s a lot of places you can move around out there to try to find speed, and we’re definitely going to be looking for it.”

WHY DO YOU NEED TO BE IN GOOD SHAPE? “Basically because it’s so hot in the car. You’re sitting there for so long and you’re so focused. Your heart rate is up and you’re trying to get every position you can. You need to be in good shape to have a good heart.”

HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU DEVOTE TO WORKING OUT? “As much as I can. We all are so busy. I bike ride and run. I don’t do any weight lifting. I mostly do cardio.”

HOW DO YOU KEEP MOMENTUM GOING FROM TRACK TO TRACK? “It’s fun to go from track to track. You have to drive the car different and communicate different on what the car needs and what you’re looking for. I really enjoy going from track to track and trying to keep the momentum going. It’s easy to keep it up if you’re running up front.”

COMMENT ON TONY STEWART’S SITUATION “Personally I just try to go out and get what I can get, get everything the car has and try to get those top 10s and lead a lap or two and get those extra bonus points and get what your car will give you. That’s what Tony tries to do, too. You try to get every spot you can, but sometimes things happen and he’s a little bit injured right now, but he’ll be fine. He’ll be back in a couple of weeks. It doesn’t affect our team very much. I talked to Tony a couple of times this week to see how he was progressing and how his shoulder was doing. You want Tony Stewart out there. He’s part of this sport and he’s one of the guys who has made this sport as big as it is right now. You want him out here. He said he was getting better every day. He probably won’t be able to do the whole race this weekend, but I’d say he’ll be back for all of Pocono and Michigan.”

DOES IT MAKE YOU THINK TWICE ABOUT RUNNING IN OTHER SERIES? You just have to think about it. You don’t want to put yourself in a bad position. Obviously as a racecar driver you’re always trying to win, so sometimes it’s hard not to put yourself in a bad position. Personally I’m going to race a little bit this season and race some sprint cars. I raced at the Chili Bowl earlier this year with Tony, and things happen. You hate it happens, but things do happen. Hopefully Tony is done getting hurt.”

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE TRACK? “Indy, just because I love Indy. I wanna win at Indy really bad. I lived there for three years, went to the Indy 500, Brickyard 400. I think it would be great to win there. The tire test was good (at Indy). Goodyear is still making another tire we’re going to bring back. We found part of the tire, part of what we were looking for, and they were happy with that. Now they’re just going to finish up with the compound. When we go back to the test with everybody else we don’t know what it’s going to be. We haven’t been on it, but it’s definitely going to be better than what we had this last week. We compared it with last year’s tire and it should end up being a pretty good tire. I was real happy we were able to work with Goodyear and they listened. I listened to them and we just tried to get the best available tire. The tire is harder than we had last year, but it’s softer than what we tested this last week.”

IS THIS RACE AS PHYSICALLY DEMANDING AS CHARLOTTE? “Charlotte is such a long race. It gets to you, but just focusing and staying with it, the track was really good down there and fast. This place will be tough. It looks like it’s going to cool off a little bit Sunday. We’ll be in the high 70s, and that’ll definitely be better than the 90s.”

COMMENT ON POCONO “Pocono is one of those tracks that you just get hot at. It’s not the toughest track on you physically for strength, but for heat and going down those long straightaways the air doesn’t usually leave the car. You get real hot. It’s a long 500-mile race. The next two weeks will be some pretty good races. It’s always hot and humid when we go to Pocono.”

COMMENT ON THE CONSISTENCY OF THE 9 TEAM THIS SEASON “We’ve definitely been consistent. We’ve had great racecars, cars that have been capable of finishing in the top 10 all but once this season. We’ve had a couple of problems that resulted in bad results, but for the way the car’s handled, the communication of the team and the way the guys have prepared these racecars has been awesome every single race. I think we can keep doing exactly what we’ve been doing for awhile. I don’t see any reason why we can’t. If everybody keeps focused and working like they have been, it’s going to be a fun summer.”

WHAT’S BEEN THE BIGGEST CHANGE THIS SEASON? “The biggest change has probably been the team and the attitude of the guys and the preparation of the racecars. They’re doing an awesome job. We had some good tests in the off season with Kenny Francis (team director). I just felt like we hit it off quick, hit some new setups quick and we’ve been building on that, making things better and better. Kenny has played a huge role. He put this team together two years ago. It showed how good they were with Jeremy Mayfield. To put these setups in these cars and the communication we’ve had at the racetrack during practice and during the race has been awesome. He’s been a big part of what’s going on. It didn’t him long to figure out what to give me. I don’t know how he knew what to do, but it’s worked out well. The communication has been really good between us. That’s probably the biggest thing.”

DO YOU THINK THE PENALTY FOR THE 5 TEAM AT CHARLOTTE WAS JUSTIFIED? “I think he’ll think about it next time before he does that. That was a huge penalty. I was thinking $25,000 because that’s a normal deal for something like that, but I guess when you have an official holding your arm and you pull him out on the racetrack you get a bigger fine.”

DO YOU THINK DOVER OWES YOU ONE? “I don’t if any track owes someone one. I can go out there and hit oil the first lap again this year. You just never know what’s going to happen, but this is a track I’ve liked since my very first Busch race in 2002. It’s been a track I’ve always enjoyed racing at and would like to win at someday. As good as our cars are running right now, as good as our Dodge Chargers are, this could be the race. I don’t have any problems here. It’s a great track. You can move up the track if you get tight and run high or low, pass cars whenever you want to if your car is a little bit better than theirs. It’s just a fun track to race.”

IS THERE A LOT OF INTERACTION AMONG THE EVERNHAM MOTORSPORTS TEAMS? “Since the beginning of the year the 10 and the 9 have worked close together. Rodney (10 car team director Childers) and Kenny Francis have really worked well together. I think that’s why the 9 has won races. The 19 over the last couple of weeks has been working with us, too. Over the last few weeks I think the three teams have been working well with each other, have learned a lot from each other and it’s going to keep growing. Just figuring out what each tire is looking for… When we were at Charlotte it was a really hard tire on a new surface and between the three teams we put all our information together and found out what the tire was looking for and we all had strong runs there.”

WHY WASN’T THE COMMUNICATION WITH THE 19 EARLIER? “I really don’t know why it wasn’t, but the 10 and 9 were there. The 19 was there. They’d come in and get some information. We’d go back out and we just never had anything to say, but I think now all three teams are running a lot closer setups and really working better together. I don’t know why it wasn’t there at the start of the year, but it is now.”

YOU’VE WON 3 OF 12 RACES. HOW DO YOU IMPROVE ON THAT? “That’s great. It’s more than I would have expected at this point of the season. You want to keep improving. You want to do everything you can to win more and keep finishing up front. I think the biggest thing we can improve on is not having a bad spark plug wire, which was no fault of anyone at Evernham Motorsports, it just happened. Not having an engine problem at Martinsville, make sure the driver doesn’t make any mistakes and crash a racecar. Those are the kind of things we can keep working on and improving. The way we’ve been running and finishing and our results when we are running, I don’t know if we can improve that. We’ve got to keep working hard to improve it, but it’s the little things that’ll hurt you more than running consistently like we have been this year.”

IS IT TOO EARLY TO THINK ABOUT THE CHASE? “Yeah, it’s too early. I definitely think about it and think about making sure I’m there and making sure I race the right way for the next 10 races to make it to that point and have our Dodge Charger in that race, but I haven’t really looked past that. It’s just all about getting the points each week and making it to the final 10. We’re halfway there, but we’ve got a long way to go.”

WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT SCOTT RIGGS NOW THAT YOU DIDN’T KNOW AT THE START OF THE SEASON? “He’s a better driver than I thought he was. He’s a better communicator with the team. I didn’t know the guy at all. He’s a cool guy. He’s got a family and he tells me about his son every once in awhile and his family. He’s a good guy. I really like working with Scott and having him as part of Evernham Motorsports. When was he up front and going for wins in the past? I never really thought except in the Busch Series. Now he is. Talking to him and knowing what my car feels like and what his car feels like too and watching him race, you know he’s got some good car control and he gets after it and he’s aggressive. That’s pretty cool. He’s a great driver. In the Busch Series I always had decent racecars and my team worked hard to give me the best racecars we could have, but when I jumped into the 9 car it was like I was in the best car out here. I’ve got the best team, the best racecar and the best mentor, Bill Elliott and I was happy as could be to be there.”

CASEY MEARS (No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger)

NOTE: Mears ranks 11th in the series standings, 38 points out of 10th place. He finished 10th in his last start at the Monster Mile and will be making career start No. 121 on Sunday.

DO YOU THINK THE PENALTY AGAINST KYLE BUSCH WAS JUSTIFIED? “No, I really don’t. It doesn’t matter to me. At the end of the day what he did (last week at Lowe’s Motor Speedway) didn’t affect me at all. Do I agree with his reaction? No. Did NASCAR agree with it? No. Did it affect me? Really, no. I felt bad before I saw his reaction that I took him out. It was my fault. I didn’t mean to. It was a racing incident and he overreacted to it, but it didn’t affect me at all. How he reacts to his issues is his own deal.”

YOU TWO HAD PROBLEMS AT PHOENIX, TOO. “Yeah, it’s funny. If you get into it with a guy a couple of times people think there might be an issue. There’s really no issue at all. I just happened to be the guy around him at the time, and last weekend he just happened to be around me. There’s no issue at all. He did what he did. I spun out. I don’t agree with what he did, but at the same time it doesn’t affect me. How ever NASCAR wanted to handle it is fine with me. They wanted to handle it in a certain way and they did. They feel like that’s the right thing, so that’s fine.”

HOW DOES THROWING SOMETHING AT A GUY’S CAR MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER? “That’s a good question. I’ve never done it. You’d have to ask those guys who have done it. When you slam your finger in a drawer or something, you jump up and down and cuss and scream and you might throw whatever’s in your hand. Then five minutes later you’re over it. Really, probably what he did is just a natural reaction from being mad, but the thing you’ve got to know and learn in this sport is you’re not at home and you’re not by yourself. You’re responsible for your reactions. One of these days he’ll learn that and we’ll all go on. My race ended up the way it did, and what he did didn’t change anything for me so it doesn’t bother me that much. I know a lot of people saw it on TV and thought it was wrong. Obviously there have been several comments that support that, but at the end of the day I really don’t care that much.”

YOUR CAR WAS PRETTY GOOD AT CHARLOTTE “We made some decent gains at Charlotte. We ran inside the top five at Daytona and that was the last place until Charlotte. We’ve been consistent and came home with a couple of top 10s and the majority of top 15s and top 20s. At Charlotte we had a car that was capable of running in the top five. When that incident happened, I didn’t understand why the car changed the way that it did. All night long when we came in and didn’t take tires and took fuel only, the car was maybe a little loose for a lap and then it got really tight. That time we came in and just took fuel only and it got really, really loose and got looser. I’m not here to make excuses. Maybe we had a small hole in the tire or something, but the more I think about it the stranger it gets because it never reacted that way all night. It was disappointing. We led so many laps in the Busch race and had a good chance to win that and ran out of fuel. In the Cup race we ran in the top five and thought we had a car that was capable of getting a good finish. We didn’t get the finishes and results we wanted, but we had a pretty good weekend.”

COMMENT ON RUNNING AT DOVER “We’ve had three or four top-10 cars here and only got one top 10. Right now I don’t know how we’re going to be. I’m really, really loose, a lot looser than I’ve ever been here. I don’t know if it’s the new tire or what. We didn’t focus much on qualifying trim. I like this track. It’s a lot of fun to drive, but the car’s got to be right around this place or it’s no fun.”

HAVE YOU BEEN ANGRY HERE BEFORE? “When I got into it with my teammate? I was really angry because I was so excited about my racecar that day. It was one of the best cars I’ve ever had here. We were marching right up through the field. A situation is a situation, but I thought he (Jamie McMurray) kept pinching me when he could have given me room. He gave the first two guys before me room. I think one reason I was so frustrated with myself because if it had been anybody except my teammate I would have wrecked him and not wrecked myself trying to miss him. When your car is right around this place it’s fun, but a small mistake can be a big mistake here because you’re carrying so much speed through the corners. If you get a little loose you get real loose real fast.”

COMMENT ON THE POINTS “We’re real good at maintaining our 11th spot. Like last week at Charlotte, what a great opportunity to get back in the top 10. We come out with a 21st place finish. We’ve been good at doing that. We need to take the opportunities we have and capitalize on them. My job is to try to get inside the top 10. That won’t change from the first race to the 26th. I don’t want to have to go to Richmond and find out if we’re going to make it or not. I’d like to be seventh or eighth going into Richmond and take some of the pressure off. That’s my goal. We need to focus on putting some solid runs together, not making any mistakes and finishing every race we can and hopefully get solidly in the top 10. We’ve got a shot. I hate to race defensive, but at the same time we’ve got 10 races at the end not to race defensive.”