Mark Martin, driver of the No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion, is fifth in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series point standings going into this weekend’s race. Martin, who won this race in 1997, spoke about the challenges road course racing offers prior to practice on Friday.

MARK MARTIN – No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion – HAVE THERE BEEN MORE TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS FOR ROAD COURSES THAN OVALS OVER THE YEARS? “I don’t think more than ovals. I never did heel and toe downshift anyway, even before we did Jerichos (transmission). I downshifted the same way I do now, so that hasn’t changed for me. Technically speaking I think it’s about the same as the ovals as far as the advancements. There have been a lot of advancements in shock technology and things, but we’ve seen that everywhere.”

HOW WILL THE HEAT TREAT YOU GUYS INSIDE THE CAR THIS WEEKEND? “It won’t be nice to them and it won’t be nice to us either. It’s been hot out here before and made for a really tough race, especially if the red flag it, which I hope we don’t have. That’s the worst. It’s brutal for the drivers if they red flag it.”

THERE ARE ONLY FOUR GUYS IN THIS RACE WHO HAVE EVER WON IT BEFORE. WHAT MAKES A GOOD ROAD RACER? “I grew up in Arkansas driving on the dirt roads – hilly and turning dirt roads – the same thing as this – and I did a lot of driving as fast as I could go and stay out of the ditch. That’s all I do here. It’s the same thing.” YOU DO A LOT WITH AAA AND TEEN SAFETY. “Yeah, not only the teen driving safety program but also child like safety seats and stuff like that – child passenger safety as well. We’re working on that quite a bit and I’m really pleased and excited to be working on something so important. It’s probably been the highlight of 2006 for me and I’m having a lot of fun with it.”

IT DOESN’T SEEM LIKE KIDS HAVE TO GO THROUGH THE SAME TYPE OF TRAINING AS YEARS AGO, DO YOU AGREE? “I don’t know if I agree with that. I think it’s a lot tougher today than it used to be to get a driver’s license. They have the graduated driver’s license now and they’re working more on that in more states to restrict teens, curfews and the number of teens that can be in a car – those kind of things. It’s all real important work.”

HALF OF THE TOP 16 DRIVERS ARE FROM WESTERN STATES. WHY IS THAT? “Because they’re good. The best are working their way into the series no matter where they’re front. The best are working their way in.”

ARE THERE PEOPLE WHO ARE BEAT BEFORE THEY GET THROUGH THE GATES HERE TO A DEGREE? “Not me (laughing). I don’t know. Attitude does have a little bit to do with it, but some of these guys that don’t have the best attitude if they climbed in the best car, their attitude would change. So, yeah, attitude from a driver will make a difference. Attitude from a team will make a difference. At the end of the day, there are very few that can carry a poor driver or a poor car to a great finish here or a great showing, so it really takes all of that. But a good car will do wonders for a guy’s confidence.”

WHEN YOU’VE GOT A GOOD CAR IS THE HARDEST THING HERE TO STAY PATIENT AND NOT TRY TO GO TOO HARD TOO FAST? “I think more than that even is know your limits. On an oval knowing your limits is sort of confined. There is only so much in that area. Here there is everywhere. Knowing your limits on braking, knowing your limits on downshifting, knowing your limits on every part of the course, knowing your limits on how far you can stick a tire off the course and not get in trouble. There are so many more opportunities to mess your weekend up here than there are at an oval, so I think it’s even more in knowing your limitations than it is patience, but it does take a great amount of patience as well.”

HERE THERE AREN’T A LOT OF PLACES TO REST. “And every place is different on the race track at a lot of turns because you don’t make that turn as many times, you don’t make as many laps. You do turn one at Pocono every lap and you do it for a lap. It takes longer and you do less laps here and you have a dozen different turns to mess with that do different things, so the window of opportunity for messing up is greater here and bigger here.”

IN 10 WEEKS THE CHASE STARTS. WHAT ARE YOU DOING AS A TEAM TO TRY AND GET SOME MOMENTUM? “We’re just trying to get our pit stops strong on pit road and keep our race car sharp.”

ARE YOU DOING ANYTHING DIFFERENT THAN THE PAST COUPLE OF YEARS TO WIN THE TITLE? “No, we tried as hard as we could then and we’re still trying as hard as we can. That’s all you can do is try as hard as you can.”

Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion, spoke about this weekend’s race following Friday’s practice session.

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – WHAT KIND OF RACE WILL YOU RACE THIS WEEKEND BECAUSE NOT MANY OF THE TOP FIVE GUYS IN POINTS HAVE DONE THAT WELL HERE? “You try to race the same as every week. You try to run competitively and run hard and try to get the best finish you can get, but there is your own set of challenges here. Sometimes you are your own worst enemy. You have to race the track and your car more so than your competitors and pit strategy is real important, so it’s kind of one of those races where you’ve got to do everything right – stay out of trouble, call the race right so you don’t get bad track position and do a lot of that stuff. Last year we ran really good and got beat a little bit on fuel mileage and finished 11th, so it wasn’t terrible. Hopefully we can improve on that.”

HOW IS THE TRACK WITH THE HEAT AND ALL – IS IT SLIPPERY? “Yeah, in general the hotter it gets, the more slipperier the surface will get, so it’s definitely slick out there today. We only run here once a year and can’t test anyway, so it’s the same for everybody.”

HOW DO YOU PREPARE FOR SUNDAY WITH THE HEAT? “Just stay hydrated and try to get some rest. Our car has been pretty comfortable. Even though it’s a relatively short race, it’s usually one of the more physically demanding races. For me, I’m not real comfortable at road courses. I’m maybe a little more intense and it gets real hot here with the braking and all that stuff.”

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT SUNDAY? “It’s definitely not one of my best places. I think every time you come back you get more experience and you probably feel a little bit more comfortable and hopefully do a little bit better job, but as hard as it is sometimes for me to maybe drive the car – when we get the cars right, we can usually run pretty fast, it’s just hard for me to know exactly what to put in the car here. When the car is doing something, I tell them what it’s doing, but it’s hard for me to tell them what to do to fix it a lot of times, so that’s probably what we struggle with more than anything.”

HAVE YOU DONE THE BONDURANT THING BEFORE? “I did a school the first time I came, but the cars and everything are so different. We’ve been to the track enough, I know where all the corners are so I think that Bondurant school gives you some good advice and it gives you a guy teaching you a little bit, but you’ve still got to get in your own car and be able to drive it with your own setup and all that.”

WHAT’S THE HARDEST PART ABOUT THIS TRACK? “The whole thing. I don’t know. It’s just small and hard to pass.”

HOW MUCH DOES IT HELP HAVING SO MANY TEAMMATES TO SHARE INFORMATION? “I’d probably be able to tell you better Sunday night, but it’s always important to be able to work together. Mark has always done really good at road course and Jamie has run real good at road courses. We all went to Road Atlanta and did some testing a couple weeks ago with Boris (Said) and hopefully some of the stuff we learned through all of the testing there will apply a little bit to here anyway.”

DOES ATTITUDE HELP COMING TO A PLACE LIKE THIS? “I don’t know. I’ve been to places before and said, ‘Man, I don’t like coming here. I don’t think we’ll run good.’ And then I’d end up running good, and vice versa. I’ve been to places saying, ‘Yeah, this is my favorite track. I can’t wait to run here and get going,’ and then end up having something go wrong or running like crap. I don’t know that it matters. I think it’s always important to have a good attitude and to put forth 100 percent effort at it, but you might not necessarily like something and still be able to do OK, or the other way around.”

IT SEEMS YOUNG GUYS ARE TOLD TO BE SMOOTH OUT THERE AND THEN THEY GO TOO FAR WITH THAT. IS IT A FINE LINE? “I think the biggest thing is that the way we work on these cars at ovals is totally opposite of here. My hardest thing here is that we’ve cars, when we could figure out what we’re doing we could run pretty quick, but when we’re off I have a hard time figuring what to do to make it on.”

PLUS RACE DAY STRATEGY IS KIND OF OPPOSITE. “Yeah, and we’ve been beat on fuel mileage and all that stuff here a couple of times, so hopefully a lot of times you don’t have to have a great car and you can sneak out a good finish if you do the strategy just right and the cautions fall just right and you’re getting the right mileage and all that kind of stuff. So, hopefully, we can do all that right.”

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT RACING IN CANADA? “It would be all right. It’s always interesting to go somewhere new and race. It doesn’t matter to me that much where we race. It’s fun to travel and go to different parts of the country and go all over the place and see different areas, so I don’t know where we’d race or much about it, but it would be all right.”

IT COULD BE MONTREAL ON A ROAD COURSE IN THE BUSCH SERIES. WOULD YOU RACE THERE? “I don’t know. A lot of that depends on sponsors and schedules and all that stuff. I’m not a big proponent of like what a lot of guys are doing this weekend with here and Milwaukee. I wouldn’t go do that. That’s way too much traveling. I would love to race Milwaukee, but I think that takes away too much from what I’m trying to here for me. So it depends on that. If it’s a weekend where we could go do it – like if it was an off weekend or something like that – I’d probably think about trying to get something put together to do it.”

DO GUYS SPEND MORE TIME ON ROAD COURSES NOW? “We tested the road courses every year while we were able to and this is the first year I think we haven’t because we can’t anymore with the new rules. I think we’ve always put a lot of effort into it – building cars to try to build the best cars we build and we used to try and test when we could test although we can’t anymore, so I think that we’ve always put a lot of effort into it.”

WHAT SEPARATES DRIVERS HERE? “I think it’s a little bit of everything. Obviously Tony (Stewart) and Jeff (Gordon) are two of the most talented guys on the road course, but they still have to be able to have the car to do it too. They’ve been able to get their stuff right. They’re really good at it. They enjoy it and they run up front pretty much everywhere besides the road courses.”

After a rough start to the season, Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 National Guard Ford Fusion, has finally cracked the top 10 in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series point standings. Biffle has moved from 23rd after the Talladega race to his current position of 10th. He spoke about this weekend and his rise in the standings prior to qualifying.

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 National Guard Ford Fusion – HOW ARE YOU HERE? “I’m having a good time. I’m really, really happy with the race car. We tested it at Road Atlanta and it ran really well. I like road racing. I haven’t always been the best at it, but I’ve been able to pretty much stay on the track most of the day. The brakes were working good and the car is turning and shifting good, so I’m happy.”

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO GO SLOW TO GO FAST? “It’s something that I can’t do. I have a hard time with it. You can’t overdrive the corners because you pay the price so bad by getting back to the gas and that’s where I get beat. I followed Jeff Burton around one time and Matt when we first started and I’m on their bumper when we’re turning into the corner, but they’re just back to the gas earlier than me and then they’d stretch out that four car lengths. We’re going through the esses and doing whatever and I’d kind of close in a little bit – I’d get back on them – but they just beat me back to the gas all the time. That’s a product of backing the corner up was what they call it – slowing down earlier, turning sooner and then back to the gas sooner. It’s hard to do, but you get kind of in a rhythm.”

IT MUST BE HARD TO GET A RHTHYM AT A PLACE LIKE THIS. “You would think that it would be easy – they talk about rhthym on an oval – but rhythm, it’s not hard to get but once you kind of get in the rhythm on this road race, if you get off, it takes a quarter of a lap to get back going again. On an oval it’s like, ‘OK, I screwed that up. Here we go.’ But if you are a little wide on the corner and kind of axel hopped in there and got up on the curb a little bit, now your next corner is screwed up because you’re going slower when you get to it, so your braking zone is wrong and then you’re back on the gas earlier, and then you’re running a little bit wide and you’re up on the curb on that corner, and then you’re on the wrong side of the track – you screw one thing up and it’s like a wave in the water and clear down the road it goes. It’s not like you can cut it off with a pair of scissors and start clean again, it follows you around, so when you do make a mistake it’s hard to get back on track – not physically on the track but it’s hard to get the rhythm back.”

YOUR HAULER KEEPS MOVING CLOSER AND CLOSER TO THE FRONT OF THE GARAGE. “Yeah, it’s less and less of a distance to walk each week to sign in at the truck. Five weeks ago I had to walk around the garage, seriously, looking for my truck. I had no idea where it’s at, but now I know it’s roughly 15 trucks or so from the NASCAR hauler and that I’m gonna find it somewhere. It’s nice getting back up there in the points. We’re so close and so tight right now that it can be easy to slip back a little bit. We’re gonna just focus on what we’ve been doing and not make any mistakes – overcome those flat tires with eight laps to go and just try to be the best we can.”