POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE

HAMLIN: “I knew right from the get-go that we had a very, very strong car, even in practice we were a top two or three car. We just needed to fine tune it and do something really small to make it a race-winning car. I knew when we took off and started pulling away that we had a really strong car. We were just going to have to keep up with the racetrack. We took tires and no adjustments on that first stop to just try to see where the racetrack was going to go. It pretty much stayed consistent and just tightened up just a little bit so that kind of played into our favor. Of course then we had our tire issue and I thought our hopes had pretty much gone down the drain because after we got back on the racetrack and it went green after we had that damage it just felt aero unstable. It disrupted the car quite a bit and just didn’t seem as fast as what it was. The whole crew just kept adding pieces to the car it seemed like on every single stop. They just added a couple more pieces because it knocked all the crush panels out to try to make it better. Each piece they added made the car a little bit faster and we finally got it back to where it belonged there at the end of the race.”

MIKE FORD, CREW CHIEF, No. 11 FEDEX GROUND CHEVROLET: YOU HAD SOME MAJOR REPAIRS TO MAKE AND STILL CAME OUT ON TOP. “That wasn’t an easy race by any means. That was a group effort. Obviously we had a fast car and we had our tire issue. We just had to pace ourselves and evaluate the damage and knew that there was a lot of time left in the race. We did what we could with the time that we had. Every caution, every time we would come back down pit road, we would have a little bit more to do and really we still had more to do that what we had the opportunity to get to. But once it went back green for a while, we saw that we could run back towards the front and didn’t think that there was anyone that could outrun us. We opted to leave the car alone from that point and try to get track position and that worked out. We had a really good car. It was a group effort. The guys on pit road did an excellent job and Denny did what the car would give him and we ended up winning the race.”

J.D. GIBBS, PRESIDENT, JOE GIBBS RACING: YOUR THOUGHTS ON WHAT DENNY HAS ACCOMPLISHED. “For me, it’s really been just a blessing. When you look back a year ago, man, we were struggling. All three of our teams were kind of hurting, but mainly this FedEx group. What’s special is to watch not only the way Mike and Denny kind of teamed up towards the end of the year, but just to watch all those guys that were part of that struggle last year, kind of this year come to where they are and everyone at FedEx really support us when they could have easily turned their backs and kind of tried to shun us to the side. What’s most special for me is all the people that went through at our race shop all the hard times and now be able to share it and watch Denny. We’ve known that Denny has been good. Obviously he makes it a little bit hard to be impressed every time he does something, but this was fairly impressive, I’d say.”

HAMLIN: WHAT WENT THROUGH YOUR MIND DURING THOSE 13 MINUTES THAT YOU WERE WAITING? “Actually I was thinking about what I was going to eat for dinner and how soon I was going to get home [laughter]. I did not think about the race whatsoever. I knew that our car was that good. I started to get a little worried when they gave us one to go as soon as we crossed the line. I was like ‘That’s six laps. That means those guys only got to pass like one and a quarter cars a lap. That kind of worried me a little bit but our car, it didn’t fall off much so even with the old tires, I think we ran one of our fastest laps there at the end of the race. I didn’t know that we were that good but I knew our car, as long as we got a jump on Kurt and those guys, that it was going to be our race to lose.”

FORD: HOW MANY TIMES DID YOU GUYS PIT? HAVE YOU EVER WON A RACE LIKE THIS BEFORE? “I really didn’t count the pit stops. I know that just guessing, probably in the neighborhood of seven or eight just to repair the car. That’s on top of our normal tire stops. I lost count. I didn’t even write them down [smiles] they were happening so fast. We were just thinking about what we had to do to the car and keeping an eye on the pace car and trying to decide when to pit and when not to. It was a good effort and we’re very fortunate that we could get it repaired.” LAST YEAR AT THE START OF THE SEASON, YOU WERE WITH A TEAM THAT WAS STRUGGLING AND THE FEDEX TEAM WAS STRUGGLING. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HOW YOU CAN COME FROM ONE STRUGGLING TEAM TO ANOTHER ONE AND GET THE CHEMISTRY TO PUT TOGETHER AND WINNING PROGRAM IS JUST A YEAR? “You hit on it. It is chemistry and a lot of people have asked that question. What you have to do is look at what I saw when I talked to J.D. and Joe was the potential of the race team. I know there was trouble in the 11 car with driver situations and things like that, but knew that the team was very strong and the team had a lot of potential. My whole career I had worked with older guys and you were trying to work those guys into retirement and I really wanted to get somewhere you’re working to win races and win championships. I gambled a little bit but I was really hoping that the way it would pan out is Denny would end up in that car and that’s the way it ended up. Our chemistry has been excellent from the first time that we went to test.”

HAMLIN: TONY STEWART SAID THAT VIDEO GAME THING IS A MYTH. WHEN THE SPIN HAPPENED, DID YOU THINK YOUR CHANCE TO WIN THE RACE WAS OVER? “As far as the video games, you don’t learn anything setup-wise, obviously, but there is a lot of track awareness. When you go to a racetrack that you’ve never been to before, you’ve got to find let off points and especially on a flat racetrack like this. You don’t know where you’re at on the racetrack because it just like running on the salt flats. You can’t judge where your let off points are. And what that does with the video games, they’ve got every tree that’s on the side. They’ve got everything mapped out perfect so visually I know where my let off points are. I still had to fine-tune that at the racetrack quite a bit but still it helps with track awareness. I feel like it helped me. This is one of the very few weeks that I have actually spent three days or so on the computer before I came to a racetrack. I hadn’t really done that all year long because I had been to these racetracks before. As far as the tire thing, yeah, as bad as it sounded from where I was sitting, with all the mud and everything that was in the car. I looked and I was covered in mud and it was all in the car. I knew that there was substantial damage to the rear of the car and these things are so aero-sensitive that we had to make adjustments to kind of compensate for that. Mike did a good job fixing what was wrong aero-wise with mechanical grip. That’s what got us so good there at the end.” BUT DID YOU THINK YOUR CHANCE TO WIN THE RACE WAS GONE? “Probably two green flag runs after that, I felt like we were still a top-five car but we weren’t that dominant car that we were early. We kept making it better and better, repairing the car a little bit more. I knew with about 100 to go that we did have the dominant car again.” WHAT IN YOUR BACKGROUND BROUGHT YOU TO THIS POINT BEYOND WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW? “I think the biggest thing is that I was able to make the best of every opportunity that was handed to me. It probably all started with Jim Dean and that late model team I was with and had maybe 25 out of 35 victories and that kind of caught the attention of Gibbs racing, not necessarily at me but, hey, our equipment is real good so they were going to buy our equipment. J.D. happened to be at the test that I was at where they were picking out their soon to be drivers, Aric Almirola being one of them. I happened to be there running really fast times and I kind of impressed the right people when they were there, Steve DeSouza, J.D. Gibbs. At that time, driver development was really, really big. I think Ganassi had started a lot of it and then Hendrick had their spell through them. Gibbs started heading that way and they said ‘We’ve really never done this before with young guys. We’ve always looked for the veterans. We’re going to sign you up and see what happens. We really don’t have a place for you right now so hang on and we’ll see what opens up.’ That kind of opened up to the truck ride in the fall of ’04. We qualified and finished in the top-10 in our first truck race. That kind of led to ‘Let’s try him out in his first Busch race’ where we finished in the top-10 at Darlington. We just made the best of every opportunity. And then when I got the opportunity to run this FedEx car at the end of last year, me and Mike clicked instantly and I knew this was something that I could do.”

GIBBS: “To Denny’s point, Steve DeSouza and Curtis Markham, when we had our diversity test picking up our drivers when Reggie White had his program with us, Denny shook the cars down for us. Curtis said ‘Let’s just sign him up for something.’ We didn’t really have anything so we went and got a truck ride and for him to do what he did in the truck, your first race you’re a top-10. In the Busch car, if he had a chance to qualify, he probably would have qualified second or third a couple of years ago. He finished top-10 and he’s not even down with his first Busch season and he’s in a Cup car and he’s on the pole at Phoenix. I think you just come full circle to where you are today. What really makes that special again is the way our guys in the shop went through all the hard times together. You get Mike with the great background working with veterans teamed up Denny is just kind of a little perfect mix there with those guys. It’s really been kind of fun to go through that whole process and watch them.” COMMENT ON THE TEAM HEADING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION. “I’d say first of all, all the decisions I make are questionable in my dad’s eyes [smiles]. You’ve got to remember at the time last year he’d just got done going 6-10 with the Redskins and you don’t do that very many times without being out of a job. We’re down here and we’re struggling here and he can’t help out a whole lot because he’s up there going through his own mess. For us I think it comes back to the character of our guys: Jimmy Makar, Zippy was a big part of it, getting Mike on board, and that whole process is just special, I think, to me and our family. To us it’s just a blessing from the Lord to be able to do this and put it together with the guys we have and then really go through those hard times. What we learned is when things are really tough, all those guys on that team had a chance to bail last year. Mike had a chance to bail. All those guys had the chance to say ‘This just isn’t worth it.’ I didn’t have a chance to bail, however [smiles]. So we stuck it out and for those guys to go through all those hard times and come back to where they are now really just I think solidifies not just what these guys have done with the 11 team but also with Tony becoming a mentor for those guys and also with J.J. Yeley. We’re expecting big things out of him as well.”

HAMLIN: HOW GOOD ARE YOU AT THE VIDEO GAME? HOW COMPETITIVE ARE YOU WITH IT? HOW MUCH COULD IT PREPARE YOU FOR THE SPIN YOU WENT THROUGH TODAY? “I like to think I’m pretty good. I race with probably the best in the world. There’s people across seas that are racing with us. Brad Davies, Kevin King and probably myself on the pecking list of who’s good and who’s not. I race with those guys all the time and honestly, they teach me a whole lot. I’m pretty competitive as long as I’ve got a good setup and usually I’ve got to beg for one from one of those guys. I just don’t have time to make one. It’s cool to be competitive. At Dover last week was probably the most interesting thing. Everybody made a big deal out of Jimmie and we pretty much did the same thing only we were a little bit closer to the wall than what he was. When your tire cuts, I thought it was a blown motor to begin with. The car started shaking and then all of a sudden it jerked the wheel out of my hand, pretty much. After that, you just try to lock ‘em down and hope you don’t end up back in traffic. I was kind of at the mercy of the gods after that.” DO YOU PLAY AGAINST ANYBODY ELSE IN THIS GARAGE? “Of course Dale Earnhardt Jr. Me and him kind of started the DMP Racing League a couple of years ago. Me, Martin, and him run quite a bit. We definitely have a lot of fun and that’s how, pretty much, Dale and I have gotten so close over the years. It’s cool that we got to race it out there at Richmond and we’ve been in that situation many, many times at that racetrack and I heard him say that he beat me most all the time. He is a liar [laughter]. Never, ever, ever. You can write that down.” IS IT TOO OUTLANDISH TO TALK ABOUT CONTENDING FOR CHAMPIONSHIP AS A RAYBESTOS ROOKIE TEAM? DO YOU THINK YOU CAN REALLY DO THAT? “I see a lot of the same things with this team, the kind of similarities with what that 20 car did starting next week at this time last year. It’s all going to be based on eliminating your mistakes and bad problems. I think for the first six or eight races, every other finish was outside the top-30 so we had ourselves a hole. But we were a top-10 car contending every single week. We just had bad luck, blown motors, tires, just things gone wrong and it seemed like these five or six weeks that we’ve been running top-10 just about every week. We’ve just eliminated our problems and we’re just showing the potential of the race team.”

GIBBS: YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE CHAMPIONSHIP AND THE CHASE PROSPECTS. “Is it possible? Yeah, it’s definitely possible. I think we kind of learned last year going through with Tony is just be real careful and it’s the next race, worry about the next race. If you worry about each race and take care of yourself, you can speculate all you want, but I really think we’ve got the people and the driver and team to do it but it’s just a matter of taking care of each race, not looking too ahead and getting yourself in trouble. The guys do a good job of really just focusing on the next week. Next week is Michigan and you do a good job there and you work down the line and you’ve got a pretty good shot. I think we learned that with Tony last year.”

FORD: WHAT WAS THE MAIN THING DAMAGED ON DENNY’S CAR? “In regards to the damage I would say that we fixed 50 percent of the damage. The key thing that we had to fix was when the tire came apart it destroyed both of the batteries that we had in the car so we had to replace those. It also took the door that holds the batteries in pulled it off so there was nowhere to hold the batteries in so we had to replace the batteries and figure out a way to hold those secure in the car and that was the first caution that we went through. We stopped several times there simply getting the batteries in the car. The next round we started sealing up the crush panels. It had knocked all the crush panels away from the left rear and we started sealing those up one at a time and that’s where we ended. It went green for a while after that and we saw that we had a competitive car and we were starting to gain track position. Our quarter panel was still folded up and I know that we hurting our car a little bit and there was still a couple panels that had not been sealed. I would say that we fixed 50 percent of it, but the more important 50 percent first.”