FEDEX RACING EXPRESS FACTS
SHARPIE 500 - BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY

RACE INFO:
Event: Sharpie 500
Date/Time: August 25, 2007 / 8 p.m. ET
Length: .533 mile
Shape: Oval
Banking: 36 degrees
Distance: 500 laps/266.5 miles
2006 winner: Matt Kenseth
2006 polesitter: Kurt Busch

EXPRESS NOTES:
Hamlin Fifth at Michigan, Locked in to the Chase: After enduring a rainy week in Michigan, Denny Hamlin and the #11 FedEx Racing team turned in their tenth top-five finish of the season. Hamlin fought handling issues late in the afternoon but persevered and had a shot at the lead cars by the end. The result keeps Hamlin in second place in the points standings and locks him into the 2007 Chase for the Nextel Cup.

Hamlin at Bristol: This will be Hamlin’s fourth NNCS start at Bristol Motor Speedway and eighth career start at the famous half mile. In the spring race at Bristol, Hamlin led 177 laps and had the Car of Tomorrow to beat as he looked to set to win his first race at Bristol before a late caution saw him lose the lead to Kyle Busch. On the ensuing restart, the #11 experienced a fuel pick-up problem and Hamlin couldn’t recover. Despite having enough fuel to make it to the end, Hamlin had to coast his way to the line and ultimately settle for disappointing 14th-place finish.

Bristol Chassis COT 154 and 166: The team will unload Chassis 154 this weekend at Bristol and hope it will pick up where it left off. This car led a race-high 177 laps at Bristol in the spring race before mechanical trouble left Hamlin down on fuel and power at the end of 504 laps. Hamlin also drove this car to third place finishes at Phoenix and Richmond. Chassis 166 is another COT car with a history of success on the NNCS short tracks. Hamlin recorded finishes of second and fourth at Darlington and Dover, respectively.

QUOTES
Hamlin on Bristol: “We really felt like one got away from us in the spring. We had a really good car but lost a spot on a caution and then had some mechanical trouble that did us in. It was disappointing to not come out of there with a better finish but it kicked off a run of races for us where I think we showed our Car of Tomorrow program was as good as any team in the garage even though we just didn’t have any wins to show for it. This should be a big weekend in Bristol. With the way the standings and the win bonus are playing out in the Chase I think you’ll see a lot of guys maybe take that extra risk to get a win this weekend. It seemed like the fall race here last year was maybe a little more tame than usual. There wasn’t as much passing and that is not what you expect here at Bristol. It probably came down to the fact that most of us felt pretty good about where we were in the Chase and, knowing that you can get into a lot of trouble here.”

Hamlin on the New Surface at BMS: “I haven’t had a chance to run on the new surface but everything I have heard is that it’s really good. In generally, I don’t like seeing the tracks make big changes to the surface because it takes so long for the tracks to come good again, but I expect the new surface at Bristol to be a big improvement. We’ll find out in practice on Friday how much it changes out setup.”

Hamlin on Being Two-for-Two on Chase Qualification: “To make the Chase in our first two seasons together as a team says a lot about this team. It’s a good accomplishment but we know the hard work is still ahead of us because we want to improve on our Chase performance from 2006. I can’t say enough about this FedEx team and the work they put into building great cars. Pretty much every week I know I have a car that is capable of running with the leaders and winning races. That mentality has allowed us to be really competitive and really set the bar for a new team.”

Hamlin on the 2007 Chase: “Outside of collecting some more wins along the way, we are feeling good about everything we have done to make it into the Chase. We’ve shown we can run well in the Car of Tomorrow and that will obviously be really important once the Chase starts. We look at the tracks that will make up the Chase and we think they line up pretty good for us. It’s a combination of short tracks that we performed well at and some intermediate tracks that we like and think we can be really competitive at. With two races to go before they reset the points, we can head into these final races knowing that we have cars in good shape because we haven’t torn up a lot of race cars this season. We are caught up and can spend time making them better instead of patching them up.”