Mark Martin, driver of the No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion, has posted four top-10 finishes in the first five races and finds himself fourth in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series point standings. Martin spoke about this weekend and other issues prior to Friday’s practice session.

MARK MARTIN – No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion – WERE YOU SURPRISED WITH WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK BETWEEN JEFF AND MATT? “Yes and no. That’s slightly out of character for Jeff Gordon, but so is blackening Mike Bliss’ eye at the airport too last year, so I guess you can believe that his character is changing a little bit over the years.” HOW MUCH DO YOU WORRY ABOUT GETTING CAUGHT UP IN SOMEBODY ELSE’S MESS? “You don’t have time to worry about all that. Whether it’s retaliation or a lack of patience it’s all the same – it’s still a wreck. One is not much worse than the other. They’re both mistakes.” DO YOU HAVE ANY CONCERN ABOUT THE FRUSTRATION LEVEL AT THESE TRACKS? “Because two are back-to-back that doesn’t really concern me. Obviously you have a little more of it, but the race track itself – it’s not the short track that causes it – it’s Bristol and Martinsville. If we were doing these races at North Wilkesboro, for example, there would be much less because there’s a lot less frustration on that particular race track. So it has a lot to do with the layout of the track and how frustrating it is and Martinsville and Bristol – not so much the size of the race track, although that does play into it.”

HAVE YOU SEEN A CHANGE IN JEFF GORDON OVER THE YEARS? “Who hasn’t changed over the years? I think everyone has. Everyone is the sum of all their experiences and everything that has happened to them in the past and the things that they’ve learned and experienced, so I don’t see him that much different than anyone else.”

ARE YOU SURPRISED HE WAS FINED? “I didn’t know what to think. NASCAR is a little bit harder to predict today than they were five years ago. I’ve seen a lot of firsts and a lot of things. I didn’t know what to expect there. It might have been a high profile thing, but it wasn’t a big thing. It really wasn’t that big a deal, it was just sort of a high profile deal with two champions involved in it. That’s my take on it.”

HOW IMPORTANT IS A SPOTTER HERE? “It was real important last week, but it’s not as important here. Things don’t happen as fast here and you can see a little bit further ahead. Spotters are very critical everywhere nowadays with the visibility that we have, but at a place like Bristol they’re crucial. Here, it’s more like a lot of other places.”

DOES IT TAKE SOME TIME TO GET USED TO A SPOTTER? “A spotter is a relationship. It’s just like a crew chief is a relationship. You can have a great driver and a great spotter and not work well together, or have a great driver and great crew chief and not work well together just because the relationship doesn’t work as well as another one.”

DO YOU LIKE A LOT OF TALK ON THE RADIO? “If they’re talking too much I tell them not to talk so much and to be quiet. Last week I asked Pat not to give me lap times, which is the last time I can ever remember. There was so much going on that I didn’t want a lap time every time by, so you just work that stuff out. There was a lot going on at Bristol. It was pretty intense.”


Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion, is the points leader going into Sunday’s DirecTV 500. Kenseth spoke about the end of last week’s race at Bristol after practice on Friday.

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – A WEEK AFTER BRISTOL. HAVE YOU TALKED WITH JEFF? “I talked to him after the race. We had a discussion after that. It’s a new week and I think you’ve just got to go with thinking about Martinsville. This is probably one of my worst tracks and the more I think about here is how I can do better here.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT HIS PENALTY? “I don’t know. I don’t think he should have been penalized at all. The deal was my fault. I made a mistake and I should have known better to go over there and try to apologize. He’s mad. He’s running third on the last lap and got taken out, so I would have been mad too. You’ve got to have personalities in people with reactions and emotions. That’s what makes the sport so great, so I feel bad he got penalized at all because the whole deal was my fault to begin with.”

THOUGHTS ON GETTING CAUGHT UP IN ACCIDENTS HERE? “Stuff happens here. You’re going so slow that even if you get caught up in somebody else’s mess, you usually just tear the body up a little bit. You’re going pretty slow here and you can stop. The main thing I worry about here is just trying to pass. It’s very hard to pass.”

WAS JEFF THE LAST PERSON YOU WOULD EXPECT TO REACT THAT WAY? “No, not really. Everybody gets mad. It was bad timing for me to try and go up to talk to him. You’ve got a lot of emotion. Everybody is out there trying as hard as they can try, so when things don’t go right, you’re always gonna be upset.”

WILL WE SEE MORE OF THE SAME THIS WEEKEND? “Martinsville is tough to pass. I think the main thing is it’s just like Bristol – you want to get your car to handle the best you can so you don’t get in an altercation.”

THOUGHTS ON DJ AT THE END OF THE RACE ARE ALL OVER THE PLACE. WHAT DO YOU THINK HE SHOULD HAVE DONE? “He definitely had a right to be there. He had a right for that and there’s no question of that. The only thing I would say is that there’s a bit of common courtesy, usually, to get out of the way of the leaders with 10 to go, but there’s nothing that says you have to do it. He’s racing for position and he has as much right to that space as I do.”

IS THERE A CHANCE FOR PAYBACK THIS WEEK? “I don’t think very much. I don’t think that really happens as much as you guys want to say it happens. If it did, I certainly don’t think it would be the next week.” WHY CAN’T YOU GUYS JUST ALL GET ALONG? “We basically do. We basically all get along pretty good, but there’s a lot of pressure. Everybody is trying really hard. Everybody wants to win and everybody is racing as hard as they can. Everybody is trying hard and everybody is racing hard and you know you’re gonna have things happen.”

THOUGHTS ON BEING THE POINT LEADER. “It’s a good spot to be in. I feel good about that. We’re a lot farther ahead than where we were last year. I think we were 28th coming into Martinsville. There are still a lot of races left to do this year, but I definitely feel good with our strong start.”

HAVE YOU TALKED TO JARRETT? “No, I haven’t talked to him. I don’t really feel a need to talk to him. He didn’t really do anything wrong. He definitely didn’t do anything wrong. He has as much right to that space as I have for sure. It’s just that the last race he won I drafted with him and pushed him to the win when I could have chose anybody. It’s just kind of a common courtesy. With 10 to go if he was on my bumper I’d get out of the way because he didn’t have anything to gain by not getting out of the way. Whoever you’re running with, if you’re 20th and you’re one lap down or you’re 20th and on the lead lap, you still finish 20th. I was just hoping for a little room, but there’s nothing that says you have to give room or you have to get out of the way or any of that. He has as much right to that space as I do. There’s nothing that says you have to do it. It’s kind of common courtesy or kind of an unspoken thing that you hope people will try to give you some room at the end of the race.”


Dale Jarrett, driver of the No. 88 UPS Ford Fusion, is 10th in the point standings after last week’s race at Bristol. He spoke about last week’s finish at Bristol and his hopes for this weekend after practice on Friday.

DALE JARRETT – No. 88 UPS Ford Fusion – YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE END OF THE RACE WITH MATT BEHIND YOU. “I wasn’t a lap down and as we’ve seen, a lot of these races end under green-white-checkered and there is no free pass in the last 10 laps. I’ve got to try to stay in front of the leader to try to make sure I give myself a chance to earn as many points as I possibly can. If the leader of the race, and that was Matt at the time, would have gotten close enough to me that I was holding him up, I know Matt well enough that he would have given me that signal with his front bumper for me to get out of the way and he never got that close. That’s all I’m saying about that.”

WHAT ABOUT YOUR BUMPER FLAPPING IN THE RACE? “They said something was hanging off, but you don’t have time to really look there. I don’t know if I could have seen it anyway, but from what I understand – I haven’t seen that – we were probably very fortunate that NASCAR didn’t black flag us there, so we got a real break in that respect.”

THOUGHTS ON THIS WEEKEND. “The car is good. This is a brand new race car that we put a lot of work and time and effort into building a car just for Martinsville. It’s gotten so competitive here that you can’t just bring a regular short track car. You have to bring something that has everything put in the right places to get around this race track. We haven’t performed as well here over the last couple of years as what we would like to, so we’ve put a lot of effort into that and I think we’ve got a pretty good car.”

WERE YOU SURPRISED TO SEE HOW JEFF REACTED? “No. If that would have happened with 100 laps to go, he would have had time to cool down but to have it happen on the last lap like that. People don’t understand. You haven’t sat in these race cars and tried to do our job, especially at a place as difficult as Bristol, and you get a lot of spots taken away from you at the very end, then you can’t understand the reaction sometimes. That the normal reaction as far as I’m concerned.”

WOULD YOU REACT THAT WAY? “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see. I hope I don’t have that chance to find out. I think we know that I’m fully capable of reacting any way.”

WERE YOU SURPRISED HE GOT FINED? “You never know what to expect when they go in their little meeting. I think they felt enough pressure that they needed to do something. That was probably the least that they could do. I’m not saying that $10,000 isn’t a lot of money, but I think Jeff can probably handle that OK. He probably felt after it was over that it was worth that much anyway.”

WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO WIN HERE AGAIN? “It would mean a lot. That’s what we’ve got to start doing is putting ourselves in a position to run in the top 10 and the top five. This is a place we can do it. Some of the things that we may be struggling with on the bigger tracks don’t really come into play here. This is a short track and it’s just hard-nosed racing, so this is a place we can run in the top five.” A

RE YOU WORRIED ABOUT RETALIATION HERE? “No, not really. You don’t go in thinking about that. Most of the time when you’ve got five or six days to settle down you put those things aside and you don’t worry about it. But if they do, here is a place that you have more time to react to that, but I don’t look for much of that to happen.”

THINGS SEEM MORE AGGRESSIVE WITH THE VETERANS. HAS IT BECOME MORE AGGRESSIVE? “Yeah, there’s no doubt that it’s a totally different type of racing now. It’s a little more in-your-face and stand your ground. You have to do that. That’s just what this has evolved in to and you’re gonna see a lot of people react like that when they feel like they did nothing wrong.”