Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion, is coming off a win in last week’s Sharpie 500 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway. Edwards, who is locked into the Chase for the Nextel Cup, spoke to the media after Friday’s practice session for Sunday’s Sharp AQUOS 500 at California Speedway.

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion – WHAT’S IT LIKE IN THE CAR WHEN IT’S THIS HOT? “When it’s this hot, it’s just about right. This is what I train for and I enjoy these hot races. I think it’s a fun challenge and that’s what I look forward to and why I train every week.”

WINS ARE WHAT COUNTS THE NEXT TWO RACES FOR MOMENTUM. “I’m not too much of a believer in momentum. Sometimes you have to race for points and, sometimes, very infrequently, you get to race the way in which we’re gonna race this weekend and that’s to go out for a win and have a good time. I can tell you for me in the Cup Series right now with this Office Depot team, the next two weeks are really just like a vacation. We just get to go have a good time, run as hard as we can, and there’s really nothing on the line except for trying to get those wins.”

HOW CHALLENGING HAS IT BEEN TO GET BACK TO THIS POINT WHERE YOU’RE WINNING ON A REGULAR BASIS? “I think winning races in the Nextel Cup Series is one of the most challenging things you can do. Last year, we didn’t end up in the chase and we didn’t win any races, but we were so close. The difference between finishing the season with a couple of wins and running really well in the chase versus not winning and not being in the chase is a huge difference. The perception is huge and it definitely feels a lot better to be like this. It has been tough, but everybody has worked really hard and I feel really good about it.”

IT’S GOING TO BE TRIPLE DIGITS SUNDAY. HOW WILL THAT BE? “Like I just said, I enjoy the heat. I don’t like cold weather. When it’s really hot out, I love being outside. I love being in the heat and I feel like my trainer and I work hard on that, so this is when I feel like that work pays off.” DO YOU LOSE A FEW POUNDS? “Oh yeah. We ran at Bristol and that was a pretty hot race and took a lot of fluids to try to get back from that. I could definitely tell on Sunday and Monday how much I lost, so these are tough races and back to back like this, I think you’ll see a lot of guys having trouble. I hope I’m not one of them.”

WHAT BOTHERS YOU MORE, THE DRY HEAT OR HUMID HEAT? “It depends. With humidity, your sweat doesn’t evaporate as much, you don’t lose as much heat, so your temperature may be higher but when it’s dry there’s less moisture in the air so more sweat evaporates. I think you lose a lot more water when it’s less humid. You might feel better but you’re losing a lot more fluids, so this is definitely tougher.”

ON RICHMOND NEXT WEEK. “The fall Richmond race for me in my Cup career the last two years has been extremely stressful. In 2005 after the race I told them that I didn’t know if I could do that again right now because of the anxiety. If anything would have happened, we weren’t gonna make it in the chase. So now to go back there and just have a good time and race, that’s gonna be pretty cool. You don’t get that opportunity very often.”

WILL BEING LOCKED IN THE CHASE EFFECT HOW YOU RACE IN BUSCH? “Really, the Cup side and the Busch side, there’s not much that overlaps. As great as it is to be locked into the chase and have everything running well, the only thing that I have that nags me at night is that owner’s championship in the Busch Series. As much as it bothers me that we don’t have a bigger lead, it motivates me. I think our team has responded pretty well. We’re doing everything we can and that’s the one thing we’re really working hard on is that owner’s championship.”

DO YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR CAR NUMBER VERY MUCH? “To me, personally, I’ve driven a lot of race cars and have had a lot of special races – a dirt race here or there or my first Silver Crown car and stuff like that. The numbers are special, but, at the same time, it’s winning races and stuff that’s really important. For the fans at this level, that’s where the number would bother me the most is to lose my number or have to change it because all of my fans stood behind that number and the brand that’s been built around it, but, for me, I’m at the point in my career where the 99 means a lot because of what Jeff Burton was able to do with it. The 60 is important because of Mark Martin and the guys who have driven that, so I still feel like I’m a ways from defining myself as a partner with those numbers.”

WHAT KIND OF RACE ARE WE GOING TO SEE SUNDAY? “There’s a lot of different races and a lot of races within the race going on right now. Guys like Dale Jr. and Kurt and Ryan are racing for a different thing than we are. Like I said, I’m just having fun. These next two weeks of no points stress, we’re gonna have a good time but, at the same time, we have to be cognizant of the guys who really have a lot of pressure on them. We can’t mess any of those guys up.”

THERE SEEMS TO BE LESS DRAMA LEADING UP TO THE CHASE. IT COULD BE DECIDED WHEN WE LEAVE HERE. WHY HAS THERE BEEN A DROPOFF IN DRAMA TO MAKE IT? “I don’t know that we’ve done enough of these to see a real trend. I think we need more years to see how it’s gonna go. I mean, four or five years from now if it’s such that every year it gets more and more defined earlier in the season who is gonna be in the chase, but with the way this racing goes, there could just as well be eight guys on the bubble right now. Everybody goes out and tries to get as many points as they can. I don’t know that you can design a situation where it ends up being less boring or more exciting.”

DOES JIMMIE JOHNSON HAVE ANY SPECIAL AURA AS A CHAMPION OR IS HE JUST ANOTHER DRIVER? “I don’t think by any measure that Jimmie Johnson is just another driver. He’s awesome. He’s a great driver and he’s shown that he can win championships, but going into the chase as a competitor, I just look at every one as another competitor. I do everything I can to beat all of them. In this sport, last year was a long, long time ago. It only takes a couple of bad races and a guy can have a lot of trouble. It’s more like, you look at who has been running good the last three weeks and that’s who you really worry about.”

Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion, won the spring race here at California Speedway and has two NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series victories at this track. Kenseth, who is also locked into the Chase for the Nextel Cup, held his weekly Q&A session before qualifying on Friday.

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – DOES JIMMIE JOHNSON HAVE ANY EDGE OF THE OTHER CHASE GUYS OR IS HE LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE? “I think every year is a little bit different. If I had to give odds on anybody, I’d say the 24. They’ve been overall the strongest all year and haven’t really made any mistakes. They’ve collected a ton of points and have a ton of wins, but any of those guys. I think there are maybe four or five – maybe six – that are the favorites right now and any of those guys could get on a tear. Any of the top 12 could, but if you look at the 24, 48, 20, 11 and 99 and even the 2, I think that group probably has the most momentum and right now, as of today, probably the best shop.”

DID YOU HAVE ANY EXTRA CONFIDENCE IN ’04, THE YEAR AFTER YOU WON IT ALL? “Not really. I think you just have to do it every week, you’ve got to do your job every week and have a car that’s competitive and capable of winning pretty much each and every week. You’ve only got 10 weeks to get it done and you can’t really have a little off time of a week or two, you’ve got to have the stuff capable of doing it every week.”

DO YOU FEEL YOU’VE CLOSED THE GAP ON THE CAR OF TOMORROW? “I think as a group we’ve closed the gap a lot. Carl has run really good in the COT races. He won Bristol and ran really good at New Hampshire. I think he ran third or something at Dover, so Carl has been running really good. We need to look more at what he’s doing on the COT stuff. We tried some different stuff and just ran terrible at Bristol, so hopefully, we can implement some of that and when we go to Loudon and Dover be stronger.”

DO YOU AND CARL HAVE SIMILAR DRIVING STYLES TO WHERE THAT STUFF WOULD WORK? “These days I think if the car will work and is capable of winning that anybody can drive it, especially those cars. There aren’t a lot of things on those cars you can tailor to your own driving style. The bodies are all set. They’re all way too tight aero-wise, they all push, so it’s just whoever can get the front end to turn best in the middle and still have traction up off is the guy that’s running good. I don’t think there’s enough things you can build different. On the standard cars, you could build the body aero-wise with quite a bit different balance for somebody’s preferred driving style, but you can’t really do that with the COT.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT GIBBS RACING GOING TO TOYOTA? “I don’t care what kind of cars they race. The rules are all close enough to the same. I just really worry about our own team and what we’re doing. I don’t really care what anybody else runs for cars.”

DO YOU THINK 10 POINTS IS ENOUGH OF A BONUS FOR WINNING RACES? “There’s another I don’t care answer I guess. I don’t really care what they do for the points. You say more people are going for wins, but I don’t think that’s right. Everybody is going for wins every week. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’ve never got in a race car and been out there and said, ‘Man, I could win today, but I think I’ll run fifth.’ That just doesn’t make any sense. We go out and try to win races. We put forth our best effort each and every week. We bring our fastest car. We do the best job we can. We race as hard as we can for 500 miles or 400 miles or however long the race is gonna be that weekend and wherever it ends up, it ends up. I can’t think of a time where I have ever not gone for a win. To me, it seems like the points still have a little bit of a balance between winning and consistency. It still has to reward consistency when you’re racing against 42 other teams. Finishing 40th isn’t the same as finishing 15th. The guy who finished 15th did a better job than the team that finished 40th, so you still have to reward a little bit of consistency in there.”

DO YOU THINK IT PLAYS INTO FUEL STRATEGY? “There are very rare instances where you can take a chance and say, ‘We’re either gonna make it on fuel and we’re gonna have a shot at winning, or I’m gonna run out and we’re gonna finish 30th.’ That comes up and there are those very, very rare instances where that can happen, but the times you have that chance aren’t very much. I can only think of three times in my career where we’ve had that chance, so it doesn’t happen very often like that. Usually, whoever has the best track position and the fastest car at the end of the race is usually gonna be the guy to beat.”

DO YOU BELIEVE YOU HAVE TO RUN WELL IN THE COUPLE OF RACES BEFORE THE CHASE TO GAIN SOME MOMENTUM? “Everybody says, ‘Yes, I’d like to think so,’ but last year we won two races in a row right before the chase – two of the last four races before the chase – and we went into the chase and ran absolutely horrible. We were really consistent, but we ran terrible. I don’t know that I really buy into it. You’ve got to prove yourself every single week. I don’t think it matters what happened last week, you’ve got to be able to do it this week.”

IS IT A CASE OF PUTTING SO MUCH EFFORT INTO MAKING IT THAT YOU’RE SHOT WHEN YOU GET THERE? “No, absolutely not. We put 100 percent effort in every single race. That’s how we’ve always raced and that’s how we always will race. If we didn’t put 100 percent effort into every race, we would move things around and find people that would. If you’re not trying your hardest, then you’re not gonna keep those people around. Everybody tries as hard as they can every week.”

Ricky Rudd, driver of the No. 88 Snickers Ford Fusion, will be making his 900th career NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series start on Sunday. Rudd was this week’s Nextel Wake-Up Call guest in the California Speedway infield media center.

RICKY RUDD – No. 88 Snickers Ford Fusion – WHAT DOES 900 STARTS MEAN TO YOU? “It means I’m old, that’s what it means. Nine hundred starts, it’s a huge number. It’s not one that I set out for when I first started my career and said, ‘Hey, I can’t wait to run my 900th race.’ The early part of my career was sort of a struggle just to find out if you were gonna be in the next race or not, trying to find sponsorship, trying to find a car to drive. So I had no idea that I’d be able to be here talking about my 900th start, but I’m pretty proud about that.”

WHAT IS YOUR PLAN FOR SUNDAY? “I’ve always liked this speedway. It reminds me a lot of Michigan and I’ve always liked that track. Either you hit it here on the chassis at California or you miss it and right now we’re missing it. I haven’t hit on a combination. We brought a new, unproven and untested car. The guys worked really hard to get it built and aero-wise, it’s probably a better car but it’s requiring us to set the car up a little differently and so far they haven’t found out what makes it tick. We’ve got all day tomorrow to work on it and we know that the body is more like what we’ve been racing against, but, like I said, it requires a whole different chassis setup. We’re out here trying to make the best of it, but, like I said, it’s a fine line between hitting the combination and missing it. If you miss it, it’s a long day, but if you hit it right, it’s a fun day here.”

HOW MUCH HAS RYR IMPROVED ITS COT PROGRAM THIS YEAR? “If you look at where the team was last year at this time, there’s no question that the Yates organization wasn’t what it was a couple of years ago. When I agreed to come on board, they really started over again. They had a couple of key people leave, but it was kind of a new organization. I knew it was gonna be a lot of hard work and I believe the team is better off now than they were a year ago. I don’t think there’s any question it’s better off. Our car of tomorrow, we qualified eighth with it at Bristol last week and was gonna finish somewhere around 15th or 17th, but somebody got impatient and wrecked us from behind and took us out of the race, but that had really been the weak point for the team is the car of tomorrow. What happened was the speedway program at the Yates organization was exceptionally good when I came on board. It wasn’t broke, so they didn’t work on that and both team cars were one and two on the front row at Daytona. That was sort of the highlight of the year and both of them ran well, but, unfortunately, that’s only three races this year that you’re gonna run those cars. Then you look at what else was going on – you had the car of tomorrow, then you had the intermediate track car program, which was way off and wasn’t where it needed to be. Most teams just really had to deal with one issue, they had to deal with the car of tomorrow. Their intermediate track car was tunable from the previous year, so we were spread kind of thin. Which way do you spread your resources? So they concentrated on our intermediate track car and got it going better. I think our best race of the year, we finished seventh at Charlotte, that has been a better program but the car of tomorrow program definitely suffered and we’re trying to get that going right now. I saw some daylight last week at Bristol. The biggest thing that’s gonna help this team is the merger with Newman/Haas and Lanigan. Once that engineering support merges with the Yates operation – a process that is just starting now – trying to figure out the management structure to implement that with – but when that starts happened the performance of the team isn’t gonna be like going from a 15th-20th place car today to a winning car tomorrow, it’s gonna take some building, but I think once that gets implemented, and I think the plans over the winter will be to work pretty hard on getting technicians and engineers into the North Carolina operation, once that happens I think you’ll start seeing some results. If I was in my thirties or my twenties, I would hang around a few more years. It would be an exciting time to be there, but I’ve decided to call it quits.”

CAN YOU REMEMBER RACES FROM YEARS AGO? “It’s kind of strange, I come here and I’m not sure how many races have been here because it’s a relatively new speedway so there’s not a whole lot of history here as far as remembering this race track, but you remember the highs and the lows. I remember it a lot more from a handling aspect and from a driver’s standpoint. On certain days we’ve had really lousy cars at these tracks and certain days we’ve had really good cars, so you sort of forget the lousy ones and you try to remember what made that car unique. What did it do? Did it exit the corner really well or did it get into the corner really well? Even though time changes things, still, you’d be surprised at how much of a pattern sort of gets developed. If you want to try to have a car that can win a race at this particular track, you sort of reflect back to a day when you ran well. I can recall here, I was really good from the center off. The entry was OK, so you work on the center off and that’s what you need to work on to win races here. So you remember things like that, but as far as details, you can remember some things like spring numbers and stuff, which have absolutely no bearing on today’s cars. So all the stuff that can’t help you, I just kind of let it get gone and try to retain the stuff that does help.”

HOW HAS YOUR WEEKLY SCHEDULE CHANGED FROM WHEN YOU FIRST STARTED? “It’s a little different. When I first started, I worked on the cars. I built cars – didn’t do any motor work, but did everything but that. We loaded them on the truck and two of us would usually drive the truck and we’d rotate drivers down the highway and we’d get to the race track. That was a different era than when I just became a driver. In my early years, I started running limited races in ’75 and it wasn’t until ’79 when I actually went and drove for another team, where then it took about a year to learn how to not be under the hood of a car and not be working on one, and sit back and sort of let the guys do their job. Once you became just the driver and didn’t have the responsibility of maintaining the car, we might be racing here today and then probably be in a car driving to the next week’s race on a Thursday afternoon, instead of being in an airplane, you’re gonna be driving. But the whole week was pretty much yours to deal with. There was no testing to speak of, only just going to Daytona there was usually a test for that, but as far as testing at different race tracks, it didn’t exist – nobody did it. You pretty much had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and some of the day Thursday just to do whatever. I remember my wife and I, when we first got married, we’d sit around and watch soap operas some during the week. That just seems like it was another era – almost like a dream. So that gives you an idea because today you have very little free time. You’re required to do testing and the media things that you’ve got going that your PR company is lining up things for you to do during the week. There’s very little time that you can call your own, and that’s just the way it is now. It’s just a different time, but it wasn’t always like that. But the sport wasn’t to the level that it is today and people weren’t making money like they’re making today, and it wasn’t on television every week either. So there are some good things that come with that and some bad things that come with that.”

WHAT’S THE STATE OF RACING ON TRACK AS YOU SEE IT NOW? “If you go through this garage area and you look at the worst operation out there – go to qualifying and pick the last four or five cars on the grid – a lot of times they’re not bad teams, they’re good teams that just missed their setups a little bit. It’s not like they came in here and they drove the truck here themselves, they worked on it – it’s usually a funded team that has the resources to do what they need to do to get the job done. The difference is that there’s such a fine line with the cars of today, the way technology is in these cars, the guys that are excelling is like the Hendrick group – all your teams that are heavily engineer based. It’s no different than it was years ago, your car is either a winning car off the trailer or it was a 20th-place car off the trailer. A lot of that hasn’t changed. The work is really done back at the shop, but now the difference is a lot of it is done with computer simulation, a lot of it is done with a seven post shake rig. The teams are kind of the haves and have nots today. The haves are getting stronger and more powerful and they’re starting to break away. You’re starting to see a gap between the really well engineered teams with money behind them, versus the teams that were considered not small teams in anybody’s mind, but race teams without the technology. All of them have technology, but to different levels. So, to me, you hate to get beat because one team has better engineers than the other. For many years, you go back in the Cale Yarborough days, and I saw the point where technology started to come in on a limited way, and all of a sudden a guy like Cale Yarborough couldn’t take a car that was probably a 20th-place car, manhandle it, get to the front and win a race. That era sort of started going out when Cale retired. He was just one of the guys who was at his best at taking something and making something happen with it. Now it’s technology. Alan Kulwicki comes in and all of a sudden he’s an engineer-based guy, so, slowly engineering has become more of a presence in racing today. I hate to say it, but it’s really what teams have the best experienced engineers and best sim programs are the guys that win races and that’s the way it is today. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad thing or a good thing, that’s just the way it is.”

WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN RIVERSIDE AND THIS PLACE AND HOW THE SPORT HAS CHANGED? “That was just sort of a different era then. It was more or less, back then everyone sort of had cars that were really nothing special. Most of them back then were like oval track cars that I think they had to move your dry brake system. I don’t think you even had to move it at Riverside. No, you didn’t. It wasn’t much difference. Your Martinsville car was basically your Riverside car, so everybody was sort of dealing with the same thing. The better drivers that had road race skills – and at that time there weren’t a whole lot of them, there were a handful of them – and usually it didn’t matter what cars those guys were in, they would generally excel. Now not only do you have a lot of guys that run good on the road course, but you’ve got your road course specialists that come in. The cars are specially built just to run road courses all the way through, so a lot more time and dedication is put towards it than it was back in the Riverside days.” HOW IS DAVID GILLILAND DOING FROM A MORALE AND TEAM STANDPOINT? “David is a very talented driver. He’s got all the skills that it takes and he’s getting the necessary experience. It’s got to be frustrating, I know. It’s frustrating for me. It’s a time right now where the Yates operation is rebuilding and trying to become an engineer-based team. The performance hasn’t been all gloom, there has been some nice things along the way, but I think right now David is being judged too much by finishing results. If he’s guilty of anything, he drives too hard. He’s so committed to wanting to do well that sometimes maybe the equipment at best is a 15th-place car and David is trying to make something happen to get it to be a 12th-place car. He drives awful hard and has a lot of talent. When the operation gets turned around with all the engineers coming in, you’ll see David all of a sudden – some of the questions people ask him won’t be asking those questions. I know he’s very capable of running up front. You can’t miss anything today. Your crew has to be on top of it. Your car has got to be good right off the truck. He’s gonna get the results, you’ve just got to make sure that the team comes along with him.”

ARE TENSIONS BETWEEN DRIVERS HANDLED DIFFERENTLY TODAY? “I don’t really believe it’s a lot different than it used to be in a lot of ways. We went through an era where there was a lot of bumping and shoving, and then we went through an era where NASCAR started enforcing their penalty box and that doesn’t seem to exist today. It’s sort of made a full swing, it’s back to where guys I guess have to figure a way to settle their own issues. As a competitor you’re kind of like, ‘Do they want us to settle our own issues,’ or step back and let NASCAR try to handle it. So I think there’s a little bit of confusion on what we are supposed to be doing. I guess Harvick and Montoya wrestled around a little bit. I guess it was more shoving than it was anything. Is that OK? Or does that mean it’s a $25,000 fine. I don’t know. It seems like NASCAR sort of changes. I think maybe they’re finding it’s not too bad for these guys to wrestle around a little bit. As a driver and competitor, when you feel like you’re wronged, your emotions are in that race car and you can’t shut it off automatically. I know over the years I’ve had more than my share of fines that would show up on the Monday morning fax machine. I sort of got to where I couldn’t fight city hall, so I had to conform. I just don’t know the guys today what they’re supposed to conform to. Are they supposed to get out and settle it? Or are they supposed to let NASCAR handle it?”

HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THE HEAT? “I’m not really anxious to get out of this media room. Normally I’d be probably excited to hit that door and get out, but hanging around here in this air conditioning is probably not a bad thing. You learn how to tolerate it and deal with the heat all the time. There’s really not much you can do. You mentally, to me, I’ve always tried to somewhat ignore it. It’s kind of hard, but you just make sure you’ve got your car insulated good and make sure you’ve got a lot of fluids in you and drink a lot of fluids during the day. You get this kind of heat and this is when drivers can get their feet burned or their seats will burn them. You just have to make sure you pay attention in practice. If you’ve got any hot spots in your car, work on them. We were talking about it today and it’s kind of odd, but the last time I remember a lot of heat like this we were at Talladega probably in the late eighties and I think five guys had their fire bottles go off in their cars that day. At that time they used to have a built-in thermostat and I think it was set at 150 degrees and I think four or five of them went off in the race that day and about scared the drivers to death. They didn’t know what happened. They thought a bomb went off in their car. I was asking my crew chief today, I said, ‘I know this is a stupid question, but do these bottles have thermostats in them now, or have they simply been raised five or 10 degrees,’ because you can have an issue here with the fire bottle going off, but I don’t think the new bottles do that anymore. You tolerate the heat and that’s pretty much it and just drink a lot of fluids.”

ANY REGRETS IN YOUR CAREER AND WOULD YOU DO ANYTHING DIFFERENTLY STARTING OUT TODAY? “It’s a different time today. It’s kind of hard to say. I get asked this question a lot from young drivers, ‘How do you get a break? How do you get to be a Cup driver?’ And still I don’t think today there’s a right or wrong answer for that. As far as regrets, I did things sometimes that probably wasn’t always the smartest thing to do. I came up in an era where drivers didn’t stay put with teams that long. They would be with a team for maybe one year. When I first came in a driver would do a stint with a team for about one year, and then if it was really good they might hang around two years. I probably moved from team to team probably more than I should have, but wherever I went I felt like we could maybe better my career. In looking back when I was moving around, it was pretty common in that day, but now you sort of envy the situation where guys get with a really good team and they stay put. They don’t go anywhere. The car owner and the driver have a real good understanding with each other and now you’re seeing guys like a Jeff Gordon, he’s probably gonna start and end his career with one operation and that seems like it’s becoming more normal now. When I came along, it didn’t work that way. I don’t regret it, but I kind of like the era you’re in now where there’s more respect and more support for each other than it was say back 20 years ago.”

HAS THIS MERGER CHANGED ROBERT’S MOOD OR OUTLOOK? “I think Robert sees the future. Robert has run his operation hands-on for many, many, many years. His son has done a great job in the motor shop, coming in and now with the Roush Yates engine situation, that program is second to none. It’s very engineer based. I see Robert’s ownership days – active, hand-on, trying to do it by himself – those days are winding down and he didn’t probably know which way to turn for quite a while. He tried some plans and it didn’t work. He tried to bring in some crew chiefs and it just never did really click. It wasn’t like he just sat there scratching his head. He made some changes and from the outside looking in, it looked like it should have been an improvement in the program. I know he brought Tommy Baldwin and some of those guys in – Slugger Labbe – and from the outside looking in those are good talented guys and they still are talented, but it didn’t click for whatever reason. Robert needed an influx of money. Sponsors are great, but it now takes some wealthy business guys with you in addition to your sponsor money. He spent a lot of energy trying to make that happen and it probably took its toll on him, but when all the smoke cleared I was never asked advice. That’s neither here nor there, but the press conference, when they announced it at Indy, I knew about it that day – the new merger. I knew there were business people looking at buying into the team, but they were mainly people that were gonna bring money. I’m thinking, ‘OK, you’ve got the money. What good is that gonna do you?’ If you’ve got money and engineering, I think it’s a really smart move if the engineering part of the Haas/Newman/Lanigan is offered to the team, which I understand it is. So it’s really smart. I think it’s smart on Robert’s part is that he should be able to step away more. Teams are becoming engineer based and it’s got all the likings of a really successful operation. It’s a really smart move in the end, but I know what you’re saying. I guess he didn’t know which direction to turn. He went out and hired some guys and it didn’t work, well, where does he turn now, he can’t do it himself anymore. He runs it, but it’s become such a big business now. He’s been structuring the team to get it set up in that manner. I haven’t seen him in about a week, but I think he’s a lot more at ease with himself. He’s got a plan for the future. He didn’t just bail out. He’s got a smart plan.”

WAS THERE ANY NUMBER THAT STANDS OUT FOR YOU IN YOUR CAREER AND WERE YOU THE LAST ONE TO HAVE 3 BEFORE EARNHARDT? “As far as numbers, I’ve never been real partial to a number, I guess because I drove so many different cars. Of the cars I drove, the ones to me that were famous numbers that I had a chance to drive were, obviously, the 28 car. I drove that. I drove the 21 Wood Brothers car. There are only a few numbers to me that really have that lasting impression, like the 43 with the Petty operation. I always think of that number, but I never really got hooked to a number. It was explained to me when I was a car owner that the number doesn’t belong to the owner, it belongs to NASCAR. They let us use their number. They’re very clear about that. As far as the 3 number, a lot of people don’t realize the history on that number. I guess evidently Junior Johnson had it for many, many years. We bought our first race car back in ’76 or ’77 and bought it from Robert Gee, who is Dale Earnhardt Jr’s. grandfather. Robert Gee had built the car. He was a premier car builder in their day, so we bought the car from him and it had been run in one or two races. Charlie Glotzbach had come out of retirement and drove that car, it had the number 3 on it. When we bought the car from Robert Gee, it came with the 3 number and that was gonna be our assigned number with NASCAR. Richard Childress called up and Richard was still driving at the time. He was driving the No. 96 car and called up and wanted to know if we would release the 3 to him. He wanted to know if we had any particular reason to hold on to it, so my dad said, ‘No, that’s fine. We’re gonna run a different number anyway. You’re welcome to have it,’ so they had to do the transfer with NASCAR years ago, so that’s where the 3 came from at that time. The first car I drove was a number 10 and then the car that had the 3 on it, we bought that when I was driving for somebody else. Then my father bought my first car and that was 1976. That was when Childress gave up the 96. I’m not sure exactly. Richard had it. He had it tied up some kind of way, but I don’t know if it went on Richard’s car that year or the next year, but eventually Richard switched off of the 96 and put the 3 on.”

HOW DID YOU ADAPT TO THE COT? “The car of tomorrow, it was somewhat frustrating because we couldn’t seem to get it to go good, but we didn’t have a lot of effort in it either. Then we had it at Bristol and we got running with it and qualified eighth and the car ran OK. It’s real temperamental, but if you get it right, it can drive somewhat similar to the cars that we’re running now. I think as time goes on, you won’t even here the issues mentioned with the car of tomorrow once you settle in and run that one chassis all year. I think probably going back and forth and the comparison of the two, all of that will definitely be gone and that’s the car you’ve got, so you’ve got to make it the best. There are guys with some teams that have made it work equally as well as their conventional car. Again, I don’t think it’s gonna be an issue next year. I don’t think there will be much positive or negative one way or the other about that car.”

YOU NEVER SEEM TO BE IMPRESSED WITH YOURSELF. IS THAT A PRODUCT OF YOUR UPBRINGING? “I think it’s a generation thing. I came up in a blue-collar family. My dad had a parts business and I worked with him. I think we came up working. We had to actually work for a paycheck. We didn’t immediately walk into making big bucks driving race cars. Back to upbringing, I was at a national championship go-kart race one time, it was a big event, and I remember the kart broke in the middle of the race. It broke a throttle cable. I can remember making it to the pit road – it was an endurance race – and I can remember getting up off the kart and having a temper tantrum and throwing a fit. My dad reached over and turned the motor off and I think he said, ‘I want you to take 10 minutes to cool off. If you think you can handle that, then we’ll go back and race this thing again. If not, we’ll load it up and go home.’ I think I was probably 12 years old and I think that was a lesson that I never really forgot and that helped put things in perspective a little bit. You get your emotions tied into it, don’t get me wrong, but for much of the early part of my career it was a very fine line whether I was gonna race and be a race driver or work in my dad’s salvage yard. There were a lot of good drivers that came along at that time that had talents, but didn’t get the breaks. I knew there was a fine line, so what I did was I always took pride that I could drive a race car good, but my next door neighbor is an airline pilot and that doesn’t make me any better than him. I think that type of upbringing has helped me keep my feet planted.”

WHAT ONE THING STANDS OUT THAT YOU’LL BE MOST PROUD OF? “I think working with a lot of teams that never had a win before and then I came on board and was part of a team that got them to victory lane. I can think of a lot of teams, as a matter of fact, Richard Childress, Kenny Bernstein and I drove for Bud Moore. Bud had already won races, but there are probably a couple more that hadn’t won races and it was neat to be with an organization that didn’t have the wins and won for the first time. I was pretty proud of that. Other than that, running 900 starts is great, don’t get me wrong, being excited that I ran 900 starts but I look more at the quality. Somebody gave me a stat today that we finished in the top 10 over 350 or 360 races. I’m probably more proud of that. Top fives were a big number, so I’m probably more proud of not the quantity, but the quality over the years.”