MARTIN TRUEX JR., BASS PRO SHOPS/TRACKER BOATS CHEVROLET:

YOU HAVE HAD SUCCESS HERE IN THE PAST AND THIS TRACK IS CLOSE TO HOME. “It’s always good to come back to a place that you’re familiar with. I have a lot of good memories from this place and a lot of people come here to watch me. It makes it extra special when we do good. It’s perfect place for us to come and kind of get our season back on track.”

YOU BROUGHT YOUR WHOLE BUSCH CREW UP TO THE CUP SERIES. DOES THAT HELP YOUR TRANSITION? “As far as communication goes, yes, it’s been really good. Nothing has really changed there. It’s helped me feel real comfortable with the team and working with the team but it probably didn’t help with the learning curve. We’re all new at it instead of just me so it’s taken us a little bit of time to kind of figure out the things we need to do and the things that work for us with these Cup cars. They are a little bit different than what we’re used to and it’s taken us a little bit of time to get used to it. We’ve kind of been running pretty decent here the last month and a half or so but we’ve really lost a lot of spots in the points from just having things happen to us: blown engines, wrecking, and just having things happen. We’ve been pretty pleased with the way that we’ve been running all the way up to Charlotte when we kind of had a rough couple of weeks there. But we feel like this is a good place for us to come and have a good run. Our car was real good in practice this morning and I look forward to this weekend.”

WILL YOUR SUCCESS IN THE BUSCH CAR HELP YOU THIS WEEKEND? “I think so. I know the feel that I need to run good here. I know what I’m looking for so it’s just a matter of whether or not we can get that in the car and get the car to do what I need it to do. This morning was a good step in the right direction for us. We were a little bit tight but we were real competitive with our speeds and we ended up being pretty fast. We’ve got some more time to work on it so hopefully we can get it driving just the way that I need it to and if we can get it the way I need it, I think we will have a shot at it.”

COMMENT ON YOUR LEARNING CURVE IN THE CUP SERIES. “I think so, as a whole team it has. We’re still trying to figure out what the do with these cars to make them run better. We’ve been running competitively, I think. We’ve had a tough month and a half or so and lost a lot of points like I said. We’ve been running decent, 15th to top-20 every week, which is not easy to do in this series. We’ve been pretty proud of that. We’ve had some rough races in the past month and a half that have really hurt us in the points which there is nothing you can do about that. That’s just racing. As long as we’re running competitively we’ll be happy. It’s definitely been a little bit of a wake-up call as tough as it’s been on us but Bono and the guys are working real hard, sticking together, building cars all the time and trying to make them better. We’re still learning a lot from the 8 team. They’ve been really running well and doing a lot of things. We’re just trying to learn what we need to do to run good. Sometimes we find that we try the same stuff and it doesn’t work for me, for whatever reason, whether our cars are different or what. So we’re still just kind of feeling it out and trying to find all the stuff that works for us.”

COMMENT ON YOUR EIGHTH-PLACE FINISH AT TEXAS. “We ran like fifth all day there. We were really competitive. We lost a few spots toward the end of the race because the track kind of got away from us but that was really a confidence booster for the whole team and we were really looking forward to going back to places like that, like Charlotte. It just didn’t seem to transfer to things we learned there. We went to Phoenix and had a really good run, ran in the top-10 all night there and that’s kind of where everything started going downhill on us. We ran seventh, eighth all night long and ran out of gas with a few laps to go. We ended up 12th and then they told us we were speeding on pit road coming to the checkered flag and we ended up 22nd. Then we crashed at Talladega, we blew up at Richmond, and it’s kind of been ever since that deal at Phoenix everything just snowballed on us. This is a good place for us to turn it all around right here. It’s my favorite track on the whole circuit and a place that I know if I can get my car to do what I need for it to do, I can go out there and run up front and have a shot at winning the race. I feel more comfortable here than any place we go.”

YOU WON TWO CHAMPIONSHIPS IN BUSCH. HAS IT BEEN TOUGH GOING FROM ALL THAT SUCCESS TO BEING A RAYBESTOS ROOKIE IN CUP? “No, not really. I kind of knew coming in what it was going to be. I knew it wasn’t going to be running in the top five every weekend and having a shot to win every race like it was. I was realistic in my approach. It’s humbled me a lot, that’s for sure. I’m still having fun racing and I still feel like we can do this. We just need to get things on track and we need to have a little bit of luck, which is what you need in racing and is always tough to come by. I’m having fun still and this is what I love. I’m not going to give up until I’m winning races every weekend.”

COMMENT ON YOUR PERFORMANCE THIS YEAR. “It’s kind of hard to judge yourself on the racetrack. I feel like I do a good job with the things that I need to accomplish. I haven’t wrecked cars in qualifying or practice and done things like that and that’s something that you can hold your head high about. I feel like I’ve made good decisions in races. I haven’t done anything stupid, wrecking people or nothing. I feel like I’ve gained a lot of respect and that’s kind of the things that you do as a driver and just trying to keep my team motivated and keep communication good. We’re just trying to find the few things that we need to make our cars run better.”

HOW DIFFICULT IS MAKING A DRIVER CHANGE IN THE RACE? “It was really pretty easy for us because we run all the same stuff. Our seats are alike, our seat belts are the same, the way we sit in them is the same so it was real easy for us. We didn’t even actually practice. The only thing we did was make sure that the lap belts stayed out of the seat when I got in so it was real simple. Some guys run different style seats or belts or something. It might be a little difficult for them when they jump in to just hook everything up because they are searching for everything and they are not familiar where everything goes and how it clips in and buckles and tightens. For us it was real easy. Obviously you’re talking about the Tony Stewart situation. I imagine they have Ricky Rudd’s stuff all in the car and Tony is just sitting in his stuff so it will be easy for him to unhook it. And Ricky should be comfortable hooking himself back in. At a mile track, I don’t think it will be a problem.”

ARE YOU HOPEFUL GOING FORWARD IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE SEASON? “I think so. What people don’t realize is that if you find two or three-tenths in this series, you go from running 15th to leading. It’s that close and that competitive. I think we’re heading in the right direction and the things that we’ve been doing have been working for us. Charlotte aside last week, we’ve been running really good. We’ve been close. When I say really good, legitimately we’ve been a 10th to 15th-place car for a while now and that’s good for us, I think. There are some places where we haven’t been so good. We’re learning as we go. We’re figuring out some things that don’t work and that’s the biggest thing is just trying things that don’t work so you don’t ever have to try them again, getting ideas out of the way. These cars respond different than our Busch cars did and things that we were doing over there don’t necessarily work over here. It’s kind of taken us a little while to throw them out and say ‘That’s not going to work anymore.’ It’s going to take a little bit more time but I feel like we’ve done a good job and if we can keep getting the finishes that we deserve we’ll be really good. It’s just a matter of staying out of trouble and keeping bad things from happening and the good finishes will come with that. We are our biggest critics right now as a team, me and Bono and all the guys. We want to do good and run well and we feel like we’ve been doing that and we’ve been doing a pretty good job of that lately. The finishes don’t show it but we take good things out of every race and take them back to the shop and work on them and try to make them better.”

DO YOU PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE STANDINGS? “No, I really don’t pay much attention. We’re pretty far out of it I think right now but they take your best 16 finishes or something like that so there’s no reason we can’t still do it. We’ve been getting outrun by Denny, mostly. Denny has been doing a great job and his car seems to be fast everywhere he goes. He’s going a great job. We just need to get our stuff better. We need to unload off the trailer better than we have been and when you do that you’ll race better.” YOU ARE NOT IN THE BUSCH RACE THIS WEEKEND. “I think I’m going to run the second race here. This was one of the ones that I wanted to definitely run. I don’t know why we didn’t run this one but we’re going to run the second one I think.”

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE GOALS FOR YOUR TEAM FOR THE REST OF THE SEASON? “Just do the best we can every week. I don’t think we have anything written down that says we want to do this and we want to do that. We want to be the best we can be. We want to win races and we want to run up front every week and until we do that we’re not going to quit digging and quit trying.”

WHAT ABOUT THIS TRACK BRINGS OUT THE BEST IN YOU? “I’m not sure. The first race I ran here with Chance 2 back in 2003 we ran like second or third all day long and ended up getting in a wreck at the end of the race and not finishing. Since then, the last four times we’ve been here we’ve been second or first. I’m not sure what it’s been about it. I ran my Busch North car here and I was really fast the first time I got here. I’ve always enjoyed the track for some reason. It’s always fit my driving style. It’s a lot of fun to drive on.”