TONY EURY SR., CREW CHIEF, No. 15 MENARDS/QUAKER STATE CHEVROLET: “It’s by far the worst situation I’ve ever been in, I think [smiles]. I just told Richie [Gilmore, General Manager at Dale Earnhardt Inc.] that by the time you get in the race on Friday afternoon you’re too wore out to get your car ready to race on Saturday. It’s just so tough. There are so many good teams here. It ain’t like it was last year, year before where there was a lot of guys that you knew you were automatically going to beat. Now, there’s so many of us over here with no points it’s pretty mind boggling on Friday just to get in.”

HAS IT BEEN DIFFICULT TO KEEP EVERYONE ON THE TEAM PUMPED UP AFTER MISSING THE DAYTONA 500? “Naw, we knew when we went to Daytona we didn’t have the best stuff. We tested and we didn’t really test that good. The last day and a half we were there we just worked on drafting, trying to get the car where it drafted as good as we could get it to draft because we knew we weren’t going to get in on time. Our cars, for some reason, just don’t qualify good there but they race good so we worked on ‘em real hard to try to get it where it draft as good as it could. We really had a car that was good enough to get in the race, just got in the wrong line and ended up getting shuffled back.”

YOU TESTED WELL AT LAS VEGAS A FEW WEEKS AGO SO THAT MUST HAVE BEEN ENCOURAGING COMING HERE. “We’re not running that good here. We qualified and made the race but in race runs we’re really not that good here. It’s kind of frustrating not to be good after we were so good at Vegas. Vegas had a lot of grip and I think Paul [Menard] has a lot to get used to in the Cup car with the small spoiler and stuff. The cars don’t really drive like the Busch cars. He likes that good secure feeling that the Busch cars have. Here there is no grip, the corners fall off flat when come up on the straightaway so it makes the car really loose off of 2 and that’s what we’re fighting right now.”

CAN YOU GET BACK IN THE TOP-35 IN OWNER POINTS? “Oh yeah. If we run good here and run up front like we think we’re capable of doing, I think it two or three weeks we could be back up in there. The garage is full of good race teams and a lot of good race teams are going to have problems and run in the back. We’re not looking like it’s going to take 10 weeks to get there. Hopefully we can be there in five or six weeks.”