CURTIS MARKHAM, SPOTTER, No. 11 FEDEX EXPRESS CHEVROLET: THIS IS A HARD STRETCH, BOUNCING BACK AND FORTH WITH YOUR DRIVER. “It’s tough. It’s tougher on the driver. He has to drive. But it’s a team thing. We all take it in stride. Is it easy? No. Is it tiring? Yes [laughs]. But that’s what we’re here to do is race so wherever they want to race we’ll go.” YOU HAVE TWO RACES WITHIN A 30-HOUR SPAN. HOW DIFFICULT IS THAT? “It’s tiring. We have to concentrate real hard being a spotter. We’ve got a lot of responsibility. We have to keep up with a lot of things. Physically it isn’t too bad but mentally, you’re drained at the end of the night. In Michigan we run practice. We were fair but nowhere near as good as we need to be. The crew chief is asking me and the driver is asking me ‘What does it look like?’ and you’ve got to give your input to it and then hop on a plane and fly to Kentucky and run the race at night, which is less stressful on the spotter. Then we get back sometime early in the morning. Personally I need a lot of sleep and I’m not going to get a lot of sleep. Hopefully when we get back here tomorrow I’ll be able to take a nap before the race and hopefully everything will be good.” CAN YOU COME IN LATE? “I’ll have to get up a 5:30 in the morning to be here by seven o’clock. If not, then you get tied up in all the traffic and then you don’t know what time you’ll get here. You still have to get up early even though you might not get to be tonight until three o’clock in the morning and get back up at 5:30.” DO YOU CARRY A RADIO FROM THE BUSCH TEAM WITH YOU? “No, I have separate radios on each truck, two of everything so there’s no conflict there at all. Fortunately, so far, we’ve had enough time to get everything together and get up on the roof.” DO YOU TRY TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF DURING THE WEEK AND GET AS MUCH REST AS YOU CAN? “Yes, I try to, but I have a wife and two kids and I also have to work during the week so when I do get home from work I try to spend some time playing with my two boys and doing things with my wife.”

KYLE HARVEY, SPOTTER, No. 18 INTERSTATE BATTERIES CHEVROLET: “It’s just the return time constraints. Everything else seems to be okay. They take pretty good care of us and try to get us the best accommodations and airplane flights and things like that. It’s a little bit hectic trying to get back to tracks with traffic and things like that. When we did Nashville we had a police escort for us that really worked. That’s my first experience of having something like that and they got us out of there and got us to the airport. My son works on the 10 car and he left 45 minutes to an hour before us and we were 15 minutes ahead of him at the airport. Going from Sonoma to Milwaukee and back to Sonoma will probably be the difficult one, with the time change and that kind of stuff. That will be the tough one.” ONCE YOU GET BACK TO THE TRACK YOU STILL HAVE TO GET BACK TO THE HOTEL. “When we got back to Pocono, we landed at Pocono at the Wilkes-Barre airport and we still had to take some of the guys that came back with us to the track where they pick up their vehicle and then went on past the track to their hotel. Denny and J.J. were kind enough to let them stay there so they didn’t have another 20-minute ride after that. We just had about a 15-minute ride to turn around and go back to our hotel.” YOU ARE MAKING AS MANY MILES AS THE DRIVER AND YOU HAVE TO STAY FOCUSED. DO YOU TRY TO GET MORE REST DURING THE WEEK? “It’s a little hard for me. I’m not complaining. This is one of the best jobs that I’ve ever had, working for Gibbs. I own a small restaurant in Mooresville [N.C.] so even after our weekend at Pocono, Monday morning at 7:00 a.m. I was at work. It would be the same if I worked in the shop. I do try to take care of myself during the week. Monday night I turn the store over to my son and go home and try to catch up on my rest. You have to train yourself and you have to tell yourself constantly to stay focused. You do have periods where all of a sudden you zone out and then you zone right back in. It might only be a millisecond but it seems like forever, sort of like when you’re going down the highway and all of a sudden you go ‘We just went five miles and I don’t remember it.’” ARE YOU MENTALLY DRAINED SUNDAY NIGHT WITH TWO RACES IN 30 HOURS? “It’s not that bad, it really isn’t. I feel more drained after Talladega and Daytona than that. I get on the airplane after those two races and I’m just completely exhausted. I’m done. You could put a fork in me.”

LORIN RAINER, SPOTTER, No. 41 TARGET DODGE: HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO STAY SHARP GOING BACK AND FORTH? “It’s okay, you just get less sleep. Other than that, it’s okay. They’re doing all the work. From my standpoint it’s pretty easy. You just get home at two or three in the morning. I know at Nashville I didn’t get to bed until three o’clock and slept in a little bit. It wasn’t bad. I wouldn’t want to do it every week but for a few weekends a year it’s okay.” DO YOU TRY TO GET AS MUCH SLEEP AS YOU CAN DURING THE WEEK? “No. What I’ll do is I’ll just come to the racetrack late on Sunday. I might have to fight a little traffic or something in the morning but the race doesn’t start until almost two o’clock. I’ll sleep in until about nine o’clock or something and just fight the traffic and get in here. That’s all I’ll do. It’s not that big of a deal for me.” WHEN YOU GET BACK FROM THE BUSCH RACE YOU STILL HAVE TO GO BACK TO THE HOTEL. “Yeah, which where we are here in Michigan is about 45 minutes from here to there. I’ve got to come from Jackson to here so by the time I land I’m looking at an hour or so to get to the hotel. It will just be a late night. It will be two or three o’clock in the morning and then I’ll sleep until nine and come up and do this deal. I’ll feel it when I get home. Like Sunday night I’m really tired from it but if I get home at 11 or something I’ll just come in to work the next day at break or something like that. It’s not that bad.” IS IT BETTER TO HAVE ONE SPOTTER WITH THE DRIVER? “I think it helps him. He just gets used to me. I think all drivers are that way. Most all the drivers are taking their spotters. He just gets used to a certain guy talking to him. Not that it’s going to slow him down or anything, but I just think it’s a comfort level. He knows what I’m going to say in all the situations. There is no ‘What do you mean by that?’ type of thing when somebody else does it. It works out okay.” DO YOU CARRY A RADIO FROM THE BUSCH TEAM WITH YOU? “Right there in my bag. I’m getting ready to go meet the golf cart and go to the helicopter and go to the airplane and I just take my radios. I’ve got the Busch channels programmed in and the Cup channels programmed in. It’s that simple.”