DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FEDEX EXPRESS CHEVROLET: WHAT WERE YOUR EXPERIENCES LIKE IN NEW YORK CITY? “It was definitely a new experience for me. I had never been through anything like that before. As much as we had to do it was planned out pretty good for us. We did have a little bit of time in between and to get to meet the TV show hosts and everything was really a lot of fun. Hopefully I’ll be able to see them every year, that’s what I hope.”

ARE THE VIDEO GAMES SOMETHING YOU DO BEFORE EVERY TRACK? “When I went to a track for the first time I always did and Pocono the first time I did. Was it a coincidence? Maybe, but I felt like it helped me and it definitely didn’t hurt, obviously. I haven’t had a whole lot of time to do it since then. The main reason is that we’ve been to all these racetracks before and I’ve kind of got a more real-life feel for it.”

YOU’VE SAID EARLIER THIS YEAR THAT GETTING INTO THE CHASE WAS LIKE A BONUS AND THE EXPECTATIONS WERE LOW. ARE YOU ADJUSTING YOUR GOALS TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS OPPORTUNITY? “Not really. I actually said I was going to race the exact same way whether I was in the Chase or not and that’s the point, the thing that we’re taking. We’re going to go out there and take the approach that we missed it and let’s just go out there and try to win every single race that we can and that’s what we’re going to do for these next five. Now, we’re going to see where we stack up after that five and if we have a shot at it then we need to probably start looking at points and making sure we don’t get caught on pit road. But these last five, six, seven races we’ve been making sure we always take four tires and just do everything conservatively to make sure we got in the Chase. Now we’re just going to do the gutsy calls to try to win and. Second or tenth is not that much different to me.”

YOU’RE GOING TO PRETEND YOU’RE OUT AND NOT IN? “Exactly, and that’s the approach we decided we’re going to take. If we end up in a spot where we can go for the championship at Homestead then just to have a shot at that is going to be something big.”

YOU ARE THE FIRST RAYBESTOS ROOKIE TO MAKE THE CHASE. HOW MUCH PRESSURE DO YOU FEEL HEADING INTO THIS FIRST RACE? “To me the pressure’s off. The season’s almost over. You might as well not even count points for me anymore. It’s a situation where, like I said, we just pretend that we’re out of it. Usually, leading up to practice and qualifying and all that for all these races leading up to the Chase when we were kind of in, out, wherever we were, it was very nerve-racking. And I just went out there today and I didn’t even think that we were in the top-10 in points. I haven’t even thought about it. I feel like I have less pressure on me than anybody else does.”

IS THE HARDEST PART FOR YOU ALL THE QUESTIONS AND THE EASY PART IS GETTING IN THE CAR AND DOING YOUR JOB? “Yeah, it is. Sometimes you feel like a broken record. You try to give somebody else maybe a different quote or something but you can’t do it. I’m not that innovative. It’s fun to me. It’s better that I’m sitting here talking about am I under pressure and this, that and the other than being 20th in points and riding out the rest of the season waiting on next year. This is what it’s all about.”

JEFF GORDON HAS BEEN VERY IMPRESSED WITH YOU THIS YEAR. DURING YOUR DEVELOPMENT AS A DRIVER, WAS HE ONE OF YOUR BIG INFLUENCES? SINCE YOU’VE COME TO THE CUP LEVEL, HOW MUCH HAS HE INFLUENCED YOU THIS YEAR? “I really don’t understand why Jeff praises me as much as he does. He’s definitely one of the standards for our sport. He set a standard years ago of what the young guys do and ever since then, the bar has been really high. Running against those guys every single week I feel like I’ve kind of grown up in the racing part of it on the racetrack because I’ve gotten to race with these guys a lot on track. A lot of Raybestos Rookies, you get to run in the top-10 maybe a few times and you don’t understand how these guys up front drive. Well, I’ve been lucky enough and run well enough where I race against these guys every single week and it’s taught me the right way to race with these guys. It’s made me a lot more mature over the year and I think it’s definitely taken my learning curve and probably cut it in half.”

AS YOU SIZE UP YOUR COMPETITION IN THE CHASE, DO YOU THINK YOU CAN HAVE A BAD FINISH AND STILL WIN THIS THING? DO YOU THINK THE CHAMPION WILL WIN A RACE DURING THE CHASE? “You always hear that you’re going to have to win a race or two to be a champion but I guarantee you that if you finish second in these next 10 weeks you’d be the champion. You don’t necessarily have to win a race. It’s all about consistency. Our points system pays consistency and that’s what it’s all about. We don’t have stellar stats as far as top-fives compared to these other guys but we’ve finished sixth a ton of times, seventh. It’s all about consistency. I feel like the top-10 in points run top-10 almost every single week. At the end of the race, every time I come off pit road after the last pit stop and I’m eighth or ninth or 10th or wherever I might be, I look in front of me and it’s all the guys that I’m sitting there racing for the points and it just shows how it’s taken so much to make the Chase this year and I think it’s not going to be any different the last 10. I think it’s going to boil down to who doesn’t have a bad race. And when I say a bad race, I mean the 20s and not the 30s or 40s.”

HOW WILL TONY STEWART BE ABLE TO HELP YOU AND HOW MUCH OF THIS WILL BE LUCK OR FATE? “I’d say luck, as far as the champion is concerned, is probably going to be about 25-30 percent of what happens. Especially some of these short tracks we’re going to go to, you can get caught off sequence and get a lap down, two laps down, just not ever make it back up. You’re going to have to run well. That’s the number one key is running well and I think all the top-10 teams run well every week, it’s a given. It’s just who doesn’t have that mistake and that’s going to be a big, big role. You’re not going to be able to just turn a 20th-place car into a winning car by any means. I think the competition has just stepped up and it’s time to turn the wick up just a little bit more.”

WILL HE BE ABLE TO TALK YOU THROUGH THIS? “I’ve talked to Tony briefly but Tony always seems to talk to me at the best times and that’s right before I get in the race car and it’s the last thing that I hear is his voice telling me whatever he tells me. He always makes sure that it sticks in my mind and that’s been a big help because a lot of these races we’ve gone into I’ve not realized at the end of the race how tiring it was going to be or what my car was going to do. But he’s always seemed to help me by saying, ‘Listen, you better save up because at the end of this race you’re going to really be tired’ and this, that and the other. And had I not done that, had he not said anything, I would have been wide-open right from the get-go and I would have had nothing left at the end. He’s helped at the right time and he’s made sure that he’s done it at the right time and place.”

WHAT HAS BEEN THE IMPACT OF YOUR MOM ON YOUR RACING CAREER? “She’s a Racing Mom. You hear about Soccer Moms, well she’s a Racing Mom. She has it in the worst way. She’s a person whose TIVO is slammed full of anything that says NASCAR hoping that she hears my name once or twice. She’s just a nut. She wakes up in the morning and she crosses her fingers and she’s learned to eat that way and everything throughout the entire race day. And it’s Busch and Cup; she’s not prejudiced. She’s got it real bad and I guess she loves her boy [laughter].”

AS A RAYBESTOS ROOKIE, IS IT HARD NOT TO BE OVERWHELMED BY THE TALENT AROUND YOU? “It is. When you’ve got people pulling on you one way or another, it’s hard to not get frustrated or anything. I’m not going to get gray hairs over this. Hopefully years down the road, if I’m still in this sport, God willing and I’m starting to work my way out of this sport, if it’s one of my last chances to win a championship, I’m probably going to stress myself incredibly. Hopefully I’m going to make Chases upon Chases and have many chances to be a champion and I’m not going to pressure myself to do it in the first year.”

COMMENT ON THE DOWNTIME AT THE LETTERMAN SHOW AND HOW THE TOP-10 DRIVERS EXCHANGED STORIES ABOUT THEIR RACING PAST. WHAT WERE SOME OF THE STORIES AND WHAT WAS THAT LIKE FOR YOU? “It was good. It was a good opportunity for all of us to talk to each other and kind of build a relationship and to me I felt like, of course, the odd man out. Everyone is talking about these old stories from racing and that and I’m think ‘Gosh, I was still in Kindergarten when they were doing that [laughter].’ I felt like the odd man out. And then Jeff takes us out on the town afterwards. We got the velvet rope and I’m waiting on them to close the rope right before I get in [laughter]. It’s weird hanging out with those people that for years and years I just watched them on TV and idolized. You don’t have to necessarily be a fan of theirs to respect how good they are and what they do for the sport. It’s just kind of an awkward situation, like being the new kid in school and hopefully the bully don’t come and beat you up.”