Where the Raybestos Rookies finished at Homestead:
Truex Jr. 2nd
Hamlin 3rd
Bowyer 10th
Stremme 11th
Sorenson 16th
Yeley 30th

DENNY HAMLIN IN THE No. 11 FEDEX EXPRESS CHEVROLET CLINCHED RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR IN TONIGHT’S RACE AT HOMESTEAD. THIS IS A GREAT WAY TO FINISH THE YEAR. “Yeah, it was a great way to finish it. With the 17 running seventh on that restart all I need to do was get around the 9 to get second. But he moved up one spot and we lost one and we came up a little short. It’s been a great year for us. I’m ecstatic the way we ran. This is the way I wanted to end the year is with a top-five finish. These guys deserve it.” HOW LONG WILL IT BE BEFORE THE MAGNITUDE OF THIS SEASON SOAKS IN FOR YOU? EVERYBODY NEEDS A BREAK RIGHT NOW. “It’s been a great season and it’s kind of soaked in little by little with each win and each top-five finish we get. It’s just a testament to how strong this race team is. They are not putting junk under me. This is championship material stuff that’s under me and everyone knows it because of what Tony did last year. To finish third in points is a great accomplishment for us.” COULD YOU ASK FOR A BETTER RAYBESTOS ROOKIE CAMPAIGN? “No, I don’t think so. We couldn’t have been much better than what we were. Short of winning we were going to end up third in points. I feel like we just battled track position all day. Had the lug nut problem but it’s been a great year and I’m so happy.” AND YOU WON RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR. “I did? That’s cool [smiles]. It’s definitely been a good year for us. Everyone from Raybestos has supported this whole rookie class great. Going into it everyone knew this was going to be one of the strongest rookie classes ever. I couldn’t ask enough to battle Martin Truex there at the end, a fellow Raybestos Rookie guy. I’ll be glad to rip these stripes off and be considered a veteran years down the road.” THREE RAYBESTOS ROOKIES RAN IN THE TOP-FIVE LATE IN THE RACE. COMMENT ON J.J. YELEY RUNNING OUT OF GAS PRIOR TO THE GREEN-WHITE-CHECKERED. “That’s a tough break for those guys and they were going to finish in the top-five. Man, that’s a shame. He’s definitely been coming on and probably doesn’t get the credit he deserves.” YOU FINISHED THIRD TONIGHT. COMMENT ON TONIGHT’S RACE AND THOSE LAST COUPLE OF LAPS. “It was definitely exciting. Martin got a great restart and got to the outside of us. My goal was to get around Kasey and if we could do that then we were going to get second in points. But Matt moved up one spot so we were going to have to win anyway. A third-place finish is great for us. We’re going to move on and have a great 2007.” WHAT DO YOU DO FOR AN ENCORE IN 2007 AFTER THIS SEASON? “It’s hard to say. All we have to do is move our goals up. We finished third in points this year. Next year is second or better. That’s the bottom line. This race team expects to do well and it’s been a great year for us.”

MARTIN TRUEX JR. IN THE No. 1 BASS PRO SHOPS/TRACKER BOATS CHEVROLET WAS THE RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE RACE IN TONIGHT’S FORD 400. TRUEX JR. FINISHED SECOND, HIS BEST FINISH IN 45 NEXTEL CUP SERIES STARTS: “John Morris and all the guys at Bass Pro, Tracker Boats, all the people at Chevrolet, they stuck behind me all year long. We’ve struggled, it’s been a really up and down year. It seemed like nothing would ever go right and we just had a really bad string of bad luck. The last few months we’ve been running really good, running in the top-10 and top-five at times and being real consistent. It feels good to finally finish that off and not get a flat tire or break a wheel bearing or do anything stupid and finally get the finish that these guys deserve. I’m just real proud for them.” THIS IS JUST THE SECOND TIME THIS SEASON YOU’VE BEEN RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE RACE. “We’ve been building up to this at Texas, Atlanta and Dover and places like that where we’ve had really good cars and couldn’t get the finish we felt like we earned. This just feels good, to finally get what our car was capable of. We might have been one short. Our car was really good tonight. I’m just proud of Bono [Kevin Manion, crew chief] for keeping up with the car during the whole race. It’s tough. This is only the second time we’ve been the top Raybestos Rookie. It seems like every time we run good Denny is right in front of us. It almost happened again tonight but we were able to get by him so it was a good night.” WHAT DID YOU NEED TO HAVE HAPPEN FOR YOU TO HAVE A BETTER CHANCE TO WIN THE RACE? “One more caution and I think I could have done it or one more pit stop. We lost our track position there and we led for a while there and our car was really, really fast when we led. We lost our track position and got back in traffic and track position is just tough here. On new tires everybody runs around the middle and on old tires a lot of guys run around the top. You get behind people and you run ‘em down from as far back as you want and you get to ‘em and it’s hard to get by ‘em. That’s what happened. We just got back in about eighth or 10th and we could never drive back to the front until the end there and then we just ran out of time.” YOU TESTED WELL HERE AND ALMOST WON THE RACE TONIGHT. DO YOU LIKE THIS TRACK? “I’ve always enjoyed it and I’ve always had good race cars here. I’m not sure what it is but our cars have always run good here and that’s the bottom line. If you have a good car you can go fast.”

HAMLIN AND TRUEX JR. PRESS CONFERENCE

TRUEX JR.: THIS IS YOUR BEST EVER NEXTEL CUP FINISH. “It was just a great day and really a great weekend overall. Our car was really good when we tested down here and had a lot of confidence coming into this weekend. We were able to carry that into a good run. Our car was good all day long. I think we ran inside the top-10 for most of the day. They guys done a good job and made good adjustments and we were able to keep up with the racetrack and I think at one point we were probably the best car out there. When we got in the front, when we had the lead, our car was really fast and we just lost some track position and it took us a while to get it back. I’m real proud of the guys. It’s been a pretty tough season. The last few months we’ve really came together and had some good runs. It just took us a while to close the deal and tonight we were able to do it. It feels real good.”

HAMLIN: TALK ABOUT YOUR RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR SEASON. YOU FINISHED THIRD IN POINTS AND WON TWICE, SWEEPING BOTH RACES AT POCONO. “This has definitely been a year that exceed every expectation myself and everyone on the team had. Our ultimate goal at the beginning of the year was to try to win Raybestos Rookie of the Year and finish top-15 in points and we far exceed that. I told J.D. [Gibbs, Team President] don’t get all excited now and expect me to finish top- three from now on in the points. These seasons don’t come by very often. What I’m excited about is I know the potential of me as a driver is not nearly at its peak yet and we’re still competitive the way we are. It’s just a great building year and I guess nothing less but second in the points from here on out.”

TRUEX JR.: DOVER SEEMED TO BE A TURNING POINT. WHAT’S BEEN DIFFERENT HERE LATELY? We figured out a lot of things throughout the season and that was just about the time where we started putting ‘em all together, I think. We started running some new cars that we were building and it just took us a long time to find some things that worked. There were so many times where we had just a decent car and we make bad adjustments on it and make bad decisions on changes in Happy Hour and that really hurt our car for the start of the race. It just took us a while to build up that notebook and that confidence and that set of things that we could use each week. For a long time there we were just shooting in the dark and it took us a while to get us some experience and some confidence and once we got that we just got on a roll and our cars have been running really good ever since. Just credit it to my team for giving me great cars and doing a great job adjusting on it and making ‘em drive the way I need them to.” WHAT HAPPENED WITH KASEY KAHNE ON THAT LAST RESTART? DID HE HAVE A PROBLEM? “He used too much brake and not enough gas [smiles].

HAMLIN: WHAT HAPPENED WITH KASEY KAHNE ON THAT LAST RESTART? “That’s the way I saw it. I think mainly me and him bogged each other down. We run side-by-side too much and that kind of opened up the door for Martin to just blow by us both. I was looking out for myself and didn’t even pay attention to what was behind me.”

TRUEX JR.: TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU’VE LEARNED OVER THESE LAST 10 RACES AND TALK ABOUT HOW YOU’RE GOING TO FOCUS ON THAT GOING INTO 2007. “Well really the biggest change for us has been our cars. We come to the racetrack now and we unload and our car is competitive and it’s something that you can tune on. You’re not throwing four springs and four shocks and your front-end geometry is not off. You’re not just throwing things at it constantly. You get there and you’re close. You know what you have works. You just need to fine-tune it and that’s been the big thing. We’ve been able to come the track and know what we have is going to work where for a long time we didn’t know that. We were just kind of, not guessing, but not having full confidence that it was the right thing to do and now we kind of how what works for us and we know it works good. It’s a lot easier for us.”

HAMLIN: PLEASE EXPLAIN THE RUNNING BET THAT YOU HAD WITH TONY AND WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO TELL HIM NOW. “Well, it was just more of a competitive thing. He finished fourth in his Raybestos Rookie year and we were able to beat that and I think that’s the best that anyone has done since ‘60 or ‘50 or ‘40 or something, I don’t know [NOTE: Hamlin now holds the best championship finish by a Raybestos Rookie in NASCAR’s modern era. James Hylton owns the best finish by a Raybestos Rookie in the sport’s history, a second-place effort in 1966]. It was just fun to be competitive with Tony in that kind of way. We were able to finish higher in the points than he did in his rookie year. But I’d trade it for just his stats alone when I’m done with my career.” WHAT WAS THE BET? “Just a handshake, really. We didn’t really bet anything.” DID YOU THINK YOU HAD ANYTHING FOR GREG BIFFLE OR WAS HIS CAR JUST TOO STRONG TONIGHT? “I didn’t think I had anything for Greg. I thought I had something for the 9 and to tell you the truth I didn’t know the 1 was coming as what he was. I thought I had J.J. behind me. No one told me he ran out of fuel. I figured I had at least someone there to kind of hold other people up for a little while to let me work on the 9. At the time I thought all I needed to do was get around the 9 and get into second in points but as it turned out I needed to win the race so it didn’t matter anyway.” WITH ABOUT 80 LAPS TO GO YOU HAD TO PIT TWICE TO FIX A MISTAKE. HOW HARD WAS IT TO SETTLE YOURSELF BACK DOWN WHEN THAT OCCURRED? “I was fine. As long as I didn’t key the mic I was fine. I had a lot of emotions going on because we had just preached ‘Nice, easy smooth stop, nothing fast’ and we dropped the jack before the lug nuts were ready. That was very frustrating because I had spent 170 laps trying to get to the front from starting 33rd and had finally got in the top-seven or eight and that happened. I figured we had just fell back to fifth or sixth in points. Who know where we were going to end up so I was angry at the time but I settled myself back down.”

TRUEX JR.: IS IT UNREALISTIC TO THINK OR EVEN EXPECT THAT TWO DEI CARS WILL BE IN THE CHASE NEXT YEAR? “I don’t think it’s unrealistic. Since the Chase started I think we’ve ran in the top-10 in every single race or had cars capable of finishing in the top-10 every single race and they’ve been at all different sort of racetracks. I feel like my team is definitely capable of doing it. I feel like our equipment has come a long way. Obviously, Junior made it this year and now we’ve got a year of experience under our belt. I don’t think it’s out of our reach by any means.”