KASEY KAHNE, Driver of the No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger

Have you made major changes on the car? “Yeah, that’s what we’ve done, but they told me that’s what we’ve done all year. We’ve made a ton of changes. We never know how far, how close, what’s the same, what’s different. There are so many different pieces to mess with on a car. Supposedly we’re back to how we were last year and we’ve got a lot more power, so that’ll be good.”

How special is this place to you and how challenging is it to you? “It’s really special. This is my favorite track to come to each year. It’s the track I want to win the most at. This place is difficult to drive, there’s a lot to it and each corner is different. It’s just trying to get your car to handle at each end and making the adjustments. To do that is the difficult part. It’s tough. It’s a tough place. I really enjoy it.”

Do a lot of your childhood memories have to do with this place? “A lot of them, yeah. It wasn’t stock cars as much as it was Indy cars. Just watching this place. The month of May – when it was a month of May – I’d get off school at 3:30 because you had final hour on ‘RPM Today’ until 6 p.m. so I had to get home as fast as I could. It was hard to make but I did the best I could. I remember little stuff like that and this was the track I paid more attention to than any other track that stock cars or Indy cars went to.”

Ray Evernham says he will be more focused on competition once the Gillett deal is done. Are you ready for that? “I think he’ll be able to help a lot, but at the same time we have of great people. Obviously some things this year got mixed up or screwed up at times, hopefully Ray will step in and make sure that stuff doesn’t happen. But when it comes down to it, Kenny Francis and the guys who gave me the opportunity to win six races last year are still the guys who are going to give me win hopefully this year and in the future. Ray will be a big part of making sure things go smoothly and we don’t hopefully lose how good our cars handled. But Kenny is our main guy for the No. 9.”

Why have you been so loyal to Ray Evernham? “I like Ray, I like driving for Ray. I like how bad he wants it. He told me from the start that, if I stick with him he’ll give me the equipment and the people to win a championship. I believe him. I think he will. I’m going to stick with him for a while and try to get that done.”

How long is a while? “At least through 2010.”

Is there a trend where teams come here and do well then go on to do well the rest of the season? “I think definitely this is a track where the good teams running for a championship run good at. Hopefully this year that trend changes, because we’re out of the championship. Hopefully that will change and we’ll have a good run and get to mix it up with the teams that have been so strong this year – the Hendricks and everybody else. It’s a great place and all the good teams step up for this track.”

Did you consider the 2006 nose you ran at Michigan a success and is that why all three teams are running it this weekend? “I consider that a three-day change, a two-day change, throw it on as quickly as possible and we got to Michigan. The car turned way better, there were a lot of good things about it but it threw off the whole balance of the race car. We had a lot of more downforce and it turned better, so things were better on that side of it. Over the last two weeks we put that back on and hopefully put the rest of the package together to where we have overall balance and not just a positive front end. Balance, a good balance, is what you look for and hopefully that’s what we’ll have. That’s tough to say until we get on the track but we’ll see. We’re definitely a lot closer than what were at Michigan.”

Will you run that old nose later on? “We’re going to run that nose for the rest of the year. We’ve struggled with the other one and haven’t been able to figure it out. Ray said we’re going with the ’06, it’s something we know, it’s something we ran well with, and we’re going to make it work as good as possible to the end of the year.”

What are the challenges now without a weekend off for the rest of the season? “It’s no big deal. We just race through the end of the year. To take a week off was good. I had some fun. I took some time to myself just doing whatever I wanted. I’ve been trying to get caught up the last day-and-a-half. I got home Thursday morning and it’s been non-stop trying to figure out what’s going on with the teams, the cars, the sponsors and everything else. It’s been a lot of catching up. I feel pretty good about it. Those guys have done a real good job and I haven’t been a part of it at all. So it’s pretty cool they stepped up.”

So you have no idea what is wrong with the cars? “That’s what it seemed like this year. Ray’s been a big part of it the last couple of weeks. For me, from talking to people, it sounds like we’ve figured some things out that it’s definitely different than what we had last year – and a pretty big difference. Hopefully they figured out what’s wrong. The early part of this year, it’s been like ‘Hey, we don’t know what’s wrong.’ Nobody did and now I think they’ve really gotten down to the detail and figured out some pretty big things.

How can a team that has 20 engineers go the wrong direction for the whole year? “You tell me. I have no idea. I have no idea how that happens but it does. They’re all human and we don’t know if even that’s problem. We won’t know until we run good and say ‘Okay, that was wrong and this is right and that’s why we’re running good’. Hopefully this will be the weekend and we’ll say we just lost it in going the wrong direction. If you look at it, when you go in a wrong direction and keep trying to make that better and better, you’re getting further and further away from where you were. You go back to where you were and go a different direction and you can get lost. It’s a tough thing. If it was easy there’d be a lot more teams winning races.

Have you been involved in any kind of sponsor talks for next year? “I really haven’t. I’ve been gone for two weeks. It’s been nice to be gone. At the same time, I think we’re definitely looking for maybe a sponsor at some point. The Dodge Dealers have done a great job and we like that. But, there’s an opportunity to maybe have a different sponsor, too, at some point, and be in a Dodge Avenger in the future. I don’t what sponsor that might be?

You haven’t gotten a new wardrobe or anything? “I haven’t gotten anything new. I still have all of my same old clothes. I did get this new vitaminwater t-shirt, it’s my new favorite t-shirt, but that’s it.”

Is it good to give the guys a new avenue to work in? “I don’t think that putting the nose on is going to do it. We found out at Michigan that that wasn’t the secret. It’s more of a balance issue, it’s more about setups and simulations, things like that. I think the nose, and putting everything together will be better at some point – and the engine package. We’ve gained a lot, a lot of places this week and it gives myself a lot of hope. I think we’ve made the right changes.”

What can you do as a driver to get your team out of a slump? “The only thing I think a driver can do is give the information they can give. It’s the only link from the crew to what the car is doing. During a race or a practice session during a race weekend you’ve got to give them the right information and then just try to be happy about things and have a good attitude. And realize that just because I’m upset because I’m running bad, the team’s upset, too. They don’t want to look bad and run bad. They’re working as hard as any team out here if not harder than most teams out here to run good. It’s just trying to keep a good attitude and tell the guys you appreciate them.”

Last year you guys were happy when you won. Are you guys happy this year when you get a top 15 or something? “I’m happy when I don’t hit something. This year, a top 15 would be great. That would be an awesome weekend for us. Last year if we didn’t win the race we were upset. It kind of gets you back to reality thinking we need to have different expectations. We still try to win every race but a top 10 is really good. There are so many good teams that a top 10 is really good."

How did this happen and what impact does it have on your team? “I don’t know. I feel like you win races in ’06 and you don’t in ’07, and you have a lot of hope. The team realizes we can if we keep working and the driver realizes we can if we keep working together. Hopefully we do. I’ve been pretty close to my guys for the last three years, I don’t feel like I’m any closer to them now than I was last year. I just feel like we’re struggling more and as long as we keep working hard together we’ll come out of it and have some good times.”

For you personally is your and Ray’s relationship the same that it’s always been? “It’s always been good. We have to talk a lot more now about the situation. Both of us have had a really good attitude about it. He’s been cool to work with. It hasn’t been a problem for me.”

How much does your previous experience help you here? “It’s a good track for us. It’s a good track for Evernham Motorsports. I’ve always run good here since ’04, ’05, ’06. I just come into this place happy and wanting to run well, wanting to figure out what’s going on and that’s all you can do.”

Do you know how they figure out these driver ratings points? “I don’t know what it’s based on at all. I haven’t seen them so don’t know where I am.”

Who were the drivers you followed when you watched the Indy 500? “There were a lot of different ones depending on how old I was and what year it was. I just remember watching it mostly, watching the times, the track speeds, the lines on the racetrack. It was so cool to me. That’s what I looked forward to. I wanted to get out of school as quick as possible to get home to watch that. That’s probably not what most kids do, but maybe some kids.”

ELLIOTT SADLER, Driver of the No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger

What happens if it rains and nobody gets to practice? “Everybody wants to practice but everybody has been to Indy so many times and everybody has tested here so many times that everybody has a lot notes so it won’t be the end of the world if we don’t get to practice today. They’ll change the schedule around a little bit for tomorrow. I think it’s very important to qualify. There are so many cars here and it’s such a prestigious race that NASCAR will do what it can with the schedule tomorrow to get qualifying in.”

Speed is important here, handling is important here, what’s the key? “It’s a fun racetrack. It’s cool for us NASCAR drivers to be able to come here and race at Indy once a year. I wish we came here twice a year. I’d like to come here once with the road course and once with the oval. It’d be neat. It’s a fun racetrack. You know that everyone brings the best of everything they’ve got – their best car, their best motor, everything but the kitchen sink they throw at it. We feel like we’ve done that for this weekend. I had so much fun here a couple of years ago sitting on the pole and leading a bunch of laps, things like that, and racing with Jeff Gordon and Jarrett for the win. It was cool. Every time you come through the tunnel here at Indy you start getting chills and that adrenaline starts flowing. I’m looking really forward to it. We all showed up with the 2006 noses – Kasey, Scott and myself. We’re just going to go back to basics of what worked for Evernham Macrospores last year and see if we can’t get back on a roll like we had. We’re going to take a step back and try again and we decided to do that here at Indy.

Compare Daytona to the prestige of Indy? “Both of these races are very, very big but it’s like comparing apples to oranges. Daytona is so big because that’s where the France family is from and it’s the Super Bowl of our sport and start of our season. Where Indy there is so much here from the 19-teens when they had the first Indy 500 here. Tony George and his people have really treated the fans so nice over the years. The first time I showed up I couldn’t’ believe how many Indy 500 fans were here supporting NASCAR. It just shows that this is the racing capital of the world as far as I’m concerned. They treat us very well here and I love racing here, but I think it’s apples and oranges. They’re both big in their own way and they both have their own identity as far as their history and the track and the way we race on it. You can’t take anything away from either one of them. They are two really big races in our sport and they make our sport a lot of fun.”

Would you like to see Indy fill an opening for a road course on the schedule? “I think it’d be cool. I’d love to come here twice a year to run the road course one time and the oval one time. This is a big market for all of our sponsors and we love coming here. We love to run road courses anyway so why not throw another one out and come to this place twice. You could pack some fans in and I think it would be cool.”

Is that the first time you’ve run the 2006 nose? “Kasey brought one to Michigan but when we get on the track this afternoon it will be first time I’ve run one all season long. We had to do something. My poor guys have been burning the midnight oil working all day and all night trying to figure out something about these new noses. A lot of it has to do with our driving styles. Kasey and I both like a lot of front downforce on the front our cars and we want to have the cars loose so we can be successful. The new nose – not that there’s anything wrong with it – just doesn’t fit our driving style like we wanted. We all sat down – us two and Scott – and decided we wanted to try something different. It’s a big race for us. Allstate is a big sponsor for Evernham Motorsports. We decided to come here and try something different.”

Is it wait-and-see for the mile-and-a-half tracks or is that change for now? “It’s for this weekend. We’re going to run the 2006 nose for the rest of the year. We want to be competitive. We want to win races. We want to run up front. We ran so very well last year, and not saying that this is going to fix it overnight, but we just need to get back to the basics and start over. We said ‘This is what we had last year and this is what worked’. We have to keep a checklist so we can figure out if this is affecting us good or is this affecting us bad.”

Ray Evernham believes this will give you more speed right away. Do you agree? “I hope so. We’re definitely not going to come here to one of the biggest races of the year with something that we think is going to be less speed. We’re all pretty optimistic that we’re going to be a little bit better in traffic, so we’re hoping it’s going to pay off for us. We’re the same team and the same organization that won the most races last year and the most poles last year. We’ve got guys that know how to get it done. We didn’t really lose anybody over the winter. So we know how to get it done. We just got caught off guard a little bit with the COT, the new nose and the new Goodyear tires we’re running. Three brand new things all at once and we just kind of missed it a little bit. Sometimes that happens. We’ve had to re-evaluate where we’re putting most of our help at. There’s only so many hours in the day so where do you spend your time at. We’re thinking that going back to the basics and doing what worked last year will eliminate some of the problems we’re having this year.”

What do you think of the people who run in other series? “I think that’s between the driver, the owner and the sponsor. Nobody else has nothing in the world to do with that. The sponsor invests all the money and so does the owner and puts the time and effort. If your owner or sponsor says it’s okay to go and do other things, okay. NASCAR racing is hard enough. We race 38 times a year and it’s very serious. If we have a chance to go play a little bit and have fun and mingle with the fans on a different plateau, then why shouldn’t we do that? But that should be up to us three, nobody else."

Would it hurt the sport someday if drivers have contracts where they can’t go somewhere else? “I think so. If you’re having fun doing it, then why not? Why do people go Busch racing? You can race, you can have fun, wherever the points end, the points end. Cup racing is so stressful and so cut-throat. There’s so much money involved and there’s so much competition that if you’ve had a rough weekend, you’ve had a rough weekend and you want to go bury your head in the sand. So if I have a chance to go race on a local track or a Busch race or go to the dirt track, it’s so much fun. It brings the fun back into the sport. You’ve got to imagine how we used to race when everybody first got started. Again, I think that’s got to go back to each particular owner and driver. I think you’ve got owners now that don’t like their drivers going to do other things and owners who really don’t care. If you’re going to help promote the sport and help with sponsors, then go do it.”

How much does it affect you not to test here? “Well, now we’re testing for Pocono. A lot of people used to build brand new cars to come here and test then test them again at Pocono under racing conditions. If they passed that test and ran very well then they brought them to Indy. I know we did that with the Wood Brothers and with Yates and with other teams. I know other teams did it to. It just takes out a test session and makes things a little harder when you come in, maybe a little bit more unknown. Even though they’re two totally different tracks Pocono and Indy are very similar in terms of the banking and speeds and things like that.”

Are the races on Watkins Glen, Pocono and Indy similar? “I can’t buy into that. To me Pocono is not an oval. I’ve never had an oval I’ve been running 200 miles-an-hour going into turn one. It might be cool to write about for you guys but I can’t buy into. I can’t see Indy as a road course. Maybe if you opened up the inside it would be a road course, but I just can’t buy into that. To me, maybe my driving talent doesn’t stretch that far to think that when I’m practicing at Indy to think I’m practicing for Watkins Glen, it’s just not the same thing for me.”

Do NASCAR and Dodge have any problem with the nose? “Dodge has been 100 percent supportive of us. They just want us to run well. We’re pretty much carrying the flag for them and they know where we’re struggling right now. We need to try some things, so Mike Accavitti and those guys have been behind us. They said ‘Look, we’re behind you 100 percent. If you need to try this to make your team and your company better, then you need to try this.’ We appreciate them working with us on that.”

You really like this track, right? “I love this track. I’ve always run well here. I really like this track a lot. It really fits my driving style.”

Kyle Petty (No. 45 Marathon Dodge Charger)

On 800 career starts? “Eight hundred. Hard to believe isn’t it. Hard to believe I have been around that long. I told someone the other day, I was over at Adam’s old late model shop, and there is a picture in there on the wall. I had my 500th career start when I was driving for Hot Wheels at Phoenix. I thought man 500, my Father drove in like 1,200 or 1,300 and I am like - you’ll never get to that point. And then I never really thought about it. All of the sudden the other day I didn’t really realize it until I was doing the Turner stuff, that one of the TNT guys said statistically your 800th start will be at Indy. I said you are kidding right and he said, “no.” I don’t know what it says. I think it says that I’m old and I’ve been here for a long time. I think that’s about all it really says. But it’s been cool, because as I have thought about it a little bit, it’s funny because I look back and I was very fortunate and very blessed to race on the same race track with a David Pearson, a Richard Petty, a Cale Yarborough, a Buddy Baker, a Bobby Allison. Guys like that in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when they were still winning races and still in their prime. Then I was able to race through the ‘80 and the ‘90s and you race with Jeff Gordon come on the scene. You’ve seen Dale Sr., evolve into what he was. You have been around for Bobby Labonte and Jeff Burton and that age group that has come along. Now you are sitting here on the back side and you are able to see a Kyle Busch come along. Or a Kasey Kahne. Or a Casey Mears. And these young guys, you know like , Denny Hamlin who has come along and are coming into the sport. It’s kind of funny you can reach back and have memories of a bygone era that everybody says that they are still madly in love with, but at the same time you see how the sport has evolved and how healthy the sport is and where it is heading.”

Does it mean anything more to have it here at The Brickyard? You know for me it would probably mean more to have it at Rockingham where I won some races just to be totally honest with you. But it’s cool to have it at a place like this. This here is an event. This is a huge event. I think Indy on our schedule, and I have compared it to like I told someone when we were talking the other day, in a sport if you compare it to golf or something this has become a major for us. If you look at our 36- or 38-week schedule and you have three or four majors obviously this is one of the majors in our sport. To have an event like that take place at an event like this is pretty special.

On the mergers: “I think what it says about the sport is, you’re missing the point, it’s not a sport any more it’s a business. It’s moving closer and closer and closer to becoming a total business. It’s only a sport on Sunday. It’s business six days a week. We go out there and we race on Sunday and all the political issues that go along with the business side of it, all the points, all the mergers, anything that goes on is on the back burner for those glorious four or five hours that you can go out there and truly do what you want to do. Then you get out of the car and the first question they ask you in victory lane after you win is, “How are you going to like your new teammates?” So now it is back to the business side again. I think when you look at it, the face of the sport, it constantly changes. It’s changed with closing down Rockingham, closing down North Wilkesboro, going to Charlotte, going to Kansas, going to Dallas, going to L.A. Obviously the face of the sport has changed to what the public saw out there, but what I think you are seeing is now it is changing internally. A lot more internally than what it has changed in recent years.”

Do you think everyone is going to have to do the same thing? “Oh, I think everyone is going to have to do the same thing. I think you are going to end up seeing it where in the past we have had 43 teams and 43 owners. Let’s just use the number 43 because that is how many cars there are in the field. There may be more. We could use 50. We could use whatever you want to use. We’ve had 43 teams, 43 owners and 43 drivers. Then all of the sudden we had owners who owned two cars. Then owners that owned four cars. Now we had drivers who were not only drivers, but they are teammates. Then we had alliances where, you know one of the first alliances we had was Childress/DEI/Andy Petry, when they did their RAD system and sharing wind tunnel time and all of that stuff. And that was an alliance. That was not a team. That was an alliance. More and more you have Roush and Yates building all of the Ford engines, you have Toyota building all of their own engines. You have a consolidation of Childress and DEI building engines. We’re seeing the engine package consolidate. There are fewer and fewer engine builders out there. If you go through the garage area here you will see that there are six or seven engine builders for 43 cars. So why shouldn’t the rest of us follow suit? Then you are going to have six or seven or 10 owners for 43 cars. That is about what you are going to get down to at one point in time. If you get down to 10 or 12 owners that own three or four cars apiece now you are looking at 40 or 45 cars. And when I say that, the same 43 owners may still be here, but now it is going to be a Ginn/DEI team. It’s going to be a Yates and whoever he announces he is going to partner with today. It’s going to be that type of deal where there is a lot more consolidation in the sport, but you see it in every industry. You know Ford went out and bought Jaguar, Volvo and everybody else so multiple car brands owned by one separate company. I think you are going to see the same thing here where you are going to have multiple race teams owned by one parent company if that is the way that it flushes out.”

On four car teams? “This is what amazes me about things anyhow. Nobody really started talking about four car teams until NASCAR said that you couldn’t have any more than four cars. Then everybody said, ‘Oh my God – we’ve got to have a four car team.’ Everybody was already on that multiple track – the twos, the threes – and everybody was already looking that way, but I think that when NASCAR made the rule and said four-car teams only then I think it accelerated the curve. Then everybody said, ‘Oh my God – that’s all we are ever going to be able to have. We have to get there quick.’ I think you see something with the DEI and the Ginn thing, where DEI has three and Ginn technically had three, and now they go together and there are only four left. Do we look at that as expansion or do we look at that as contraction? From the sports stand point do we look at that as a positive move or do we look at that as a negative move for the sport because we are losing a car? At some point in time we are losing a car here. That is why I say when it all shuffles out you are going to have to look at how the sport expands, how the sport contracts and how the sport ends up before you can say, do we need to move fast or do we need to move slow. I don’t know. I think you still have time to figure things out before you see the lay of the land.”

On driver development: “Sometimes when I look at the Busch Series, and even when I look at the Car of Tomorrow right now, then the last two or three years of the Busch Series, unless you have brought a driver to the Cup series by now, has been a waste of a series for you. The Car of Tomorrow is so radically different from the Car of Today that if you have a Busch Series driver today that you were hoping to bring up with driver development it’s not really working out for you.

“Why is it from a business model or from a NASCAR stand point, why is it my job as a Cup owner to keep the Busch Series alive? It’s not my job to keep the truck series alive. Let them find their own owners and their own people and stand on their own. If they can’t stand on their own then it’s a bad business model and they need to go out of business. I know other teams do it, but when I look back at it and see they guys that are doing it, like Hendrick, who drives his cars? Casey Mears and Jimmie Johnson. They just take their Busch stuff and have turned it into an income-producing item for them now because they put sponsors on them because they put Cup drivers in the car. I see the Busch Series as an income generator, but not as a driver development. Should we have a Busch Series or a Truck Series from an income stand point? Maybe so. I am not going to argue that point. From a driver development standpoint I will argue that point with you all day long. I have not seen a lot of that pan out here.

“Even the guy that started it when he first started the program was Jack Roush when he got it going, then he had to go back and beg Mark Martin to come back for one more year, because he didn’t have a driver developed to go in the seat. So I don’t think that was a good plan when it was all said and done. I think it was a lot of hype but not a good plan. It depends on, I think from any business if you are going to take on a partner or take on an investor, you could walk in today and offer me $20 million, but if I don’t have a plan for it or spend it in the right place it doesn’t make a difference.

“When I hear some of these mergers and I look around and see some of the things that have gone on I am not really sure I see things changing drastically. They are just refining themselves. As I look at some of the things that have been announced over the last year, year and a half total, I am not just saying the DEI/Ginn thing. The way things have been announced, the way things are going together and the way teams are working together I am not sure how that model is going to play out. I have not seen a lot of pluses. Is that the right way? What I am saying is if we put Gibbs and Hendrick together, the two hot teams, how much hotter can they get? They are already the hottest teams. If I put a hot team and a cold team together do I just get a warm team? Do I bring them down and bring this up? My point is when I put the DEI and the Ginn stuff together what am I really going to get? I don’t think any of us know that, but you have to withhold judgment and see how that plans out. For us as a company do we take on an investor and try to start two teams? Or do we partner with another team to get to a four car team? I think you have got to see a couple models to see how they play out before jumping and biting off too much to begin with. You have to look at it more from a business standpoint, and not from a sports standpoint, because I am not sure what you are going to get. I am not sure how it is going to play out.“

Juan Pablo Montoya (No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger)

How much for this oval can you use from IndyCar experience? “It’s pretty hard to compare. The last time I was here was seven years ago, and we were running wide open all the way around (the track). It is a little bit different with Cup cars. It is pretty hard. There are a lot of things I remember from winning the Indianapolis 500 that I want to see what works and what doesn’t. For me, it is exciting to be here and being able to compete in all three races. At the end of the day, we need to focus on what we need to do. We need to come here, work on the car and get the job done.”

About coming to the 2000 Indy 500 with confidence - “I don’t think we were that confident. I thought we would have a chance. I don’t think we were like, ‘We are going to kick everybody’s ass.’ We did and it was great. That was the plan, and I think it is always the plan. I’m hoping for a good result. With the F1 program, we came here and had two or three chance to win the race and always broke down.”

What did the Indy 500 victory do for your career? - “I think winning the Indy 500 was a huge deal for me. I think until race day I didn’t realize how big it was. You spend about three or four weeks going around with nobody. It’s like this, maybe 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 people, but in a place that seats 400,000 it’s like empty. Then all of the sudden you come out on race day and it is completely packed and you go, ‘Wow, what happened here.’ It’s funny because I think people that have done it for a long time they get a lot of myths in their heads of like, ‘Oh you know a track with all the people narrows down.’ It’s still the same race track when there are people there. It’s funny. It was exciting. Looking back it is good to say that I won it. It’s one of those things that is like been there and done that kind of deal. It’s great for my career.”

Chip Ganassi (Owner, Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates)

What did the Indy 500 victory do for your organization? “I think at that time in our team’s history we were very, very strong as a team. We had just come off of winning four championships. We came here the following year and we had a great driver and we knew that, but we also had a great backup staff of mechanics, engineers and management that really, really pulled this off. I think the interesting thing that I remember from winning the Indy 500 was that a lot of people forget that the day before was the rain out date or there was a race in Nazareth because the Kart race got snowed out in the spring. The day before we raced in Nazareth. We were in Nazareth, Pennsylvania racing a Kart car on Saturday and the team came here and won the Indy 500 on Sunday. It was a pretty big feat and not a lot of teams could have done that. The thing that I remember about it you know is we should have actually won two races that weekend. That was certainly a high point in our team’s career and Juan and my self’s relationship. It was something obviously that we will never forget.”

Juan Pablo Montoya (No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger)

What are the differences between open-wheel and stock car racing? “It’s been a big transition. There have been weeks when you get in the car and you’ve been competitive , everything goes smooth, you’re quick all week and you think man this is good. Then there are weeks where you are like whoa what happened. With so many races even when you run good and you know the cars and everything you are going to have that, and that is very new to me. There are so many races that it becomes a lot of point racing and sometimes you forget that you have to bring the car home. You forget and get in little battles that you shouldn’t and things like that. It’s all about learning how far to go and learning the limits of everything. That has been a big challenge for me.”

Chip Ganassi (Owner, Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates)

What’s it like having him back on your team? “Juan and I have a relationship that I like to think it transcends racing. We don’t talk about racing that much quite honestly. We never have and I don’t know that we ever will. We just seem to work well together and it’s great to have him back. There is no one else I would rather have I can tell you that.”

Assess Juan Pablo’s performance this year? “People have a lot of expectations about someone with obviously the background that he has in racing with different vehicles and coming into NASCAR now. I would say that it is right on if not a little bit ahead of plan. People look and say, well gee – why did you qualify in the 20s or why did you finish 18th or something. They don’t think that’s maybe that good relative to other series or relative to what other people are used to. I mean, I will point out that Juan finished 17th or 16th or something on the lead lap at Martinsville. I will tell you right now that if you go into that garage area and ask in that garage area they think that is a super-human feat for the first time there. To be able to take that and go from his performance at the super speedways at Daytona and Talladega that is a completely different study than how you do at Martinsville. He’s done a great job there in the draft and learning how to draft in that type of environment. You take that and you, you know we thought we would do well in a place like Sear’s point or I guess it is Infineon. I’m sorry about that I guess I am an old-timer when it comes to stuff like that. Overlay that with a mile and a half track. I mean you have a lot of these guys that have tendencies and have run 10,000 laps around these places you know. And how many races do we go to? Our team, I don’t know the statistic, but I can tell you that I think there is barely a hundred cup starts between all three of my drivers combined. So to go there and have that kind of performance is a great feat I think. That is how I would assess his first year. Now, is there a long way to go? Absolutely. Are we going to cover that ground? Yes. Are we happy where we are at? Yes, but we have a long way to go too.”

Juan Pablo Montoya (No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger)

When you swapped cars with Jeff Gordon did you run the oval or the road course? “Road course. They actually wanted me to run the oval and I hadn’t run the oval in three years. I was like – no, this place is fast enough. I would rather do the road course. I know the road course well. I go there a lot and I would be a lot more comfortable driving the cars on the road course instead of the oval. So they brought the road course car and It was a lot of fun. I was pretty comfortable from the word go in the car. I think that is one of the reasons that when we talked to Chip about doing it I thought you know I was pretty comfortable in that car there. You know I need to learn the ovals and learn everything, but it wasn’t like this is out of my league. That was probably a good thing that we did that.”

What has been your biggest challenge between The Car of Tomorrow, The Car of Today and the Busch car? “In the COT we are pretty good. We’re pretty comfortable. When the car works good and stuff it is pretty good. I am pretty comfortable in the small ovals and the faster ones because the car is very hard to read sometimes. Sometimes you get in and it kind of tells you where it is and sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t I think the guys with experience know how far they can push it and I haven’t got there yet. I drive the car a lot tighter than they do like my other two teammates and we run about the same pace. I get in the car and we can’t even get up to speed it’s so loose. It’s very different. I think the team had to learn a lot the way that I drive the cars, and I have to learn a lot about how they balance the cars. There is always a big compromise. Something Chip always tells me, and I forget a lot, is you are not going to be perfect with these cars. Maybe you are going to have five or 10 laps where the car is going to be really good and the rest you are either going to be too loose or too tight, because you have the fuel tank so prepared. It’s always a big compromise as to how loose can you drive the car fast at the beginning. That is one of the things that can work a little bit. You know the track changes a lot during the race and we still haven’t got to the point where we are like, man we had a really good car at the end - maybe one or two races. Everywhere else its like we could have, should have or we went to far, not far enough. We haven’t really found the points where we were like man this is what we need to do.”

Chip Ganassi (Owner, Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates)

Are you more focused on making The Chase or development and improvement moving forward? I think in some sense we are not even close to hitting the panic button or anything like that about where we are at in the points. I don’t think we sit there each week and think how do we get in The Chase and I think everybody understands that. We just need to do well week in and week out. Maybe we need to work a little extra hard on the places that we think we can do well to try and score points. I think that we have had a pretty good year so far with Juan. He has won in every car that we have put him in this year. What better kind of a rookie year can you have? It started off in February with the 24 Hours at Daytona. He won a Busch race after that and he has won a Cup race. Our big push now is to get him to win on these ovals. If the year ended tomorrow I would say it was a great year. We didn’t suck all year.”

“I think it is a huge positive. Let’s face it a lot of open wheel drivers have had the challenge coming into this series. Don’t forget that. There was still a big role of the dice a year ago in Chicago when we announced this deal. That was a big role of the dice. And then to have to wait so long to put him in a car – everybody forgets about all that stuff. I can tell you that I was sweating pretty hard there figuring out when we were going to get him into a car to test and then drive. To put Juan through all of the things that he went through and never flinched him for a moment about going to Iowa and doing the ARCA race and places that no one has ever heard of let along someone from another country. That is a big thing and I don’t want anyone to forget that anytime soon. I was sweating bloody murder the whole time hoping that not only could he do it, but I knew that he could do it. You don’t just want to have somebody have a bad experience early on. That could change his whole perspective. Never once did he with every little ding of a fender and every time he misunderstood a spotter or something. Still some of those things are going to happen from time to time. These are all new experiences. Juan hasn’t been in 50 oval track races yet. Most of these guys have run 50 oval track races before they were 14 years old. We are still in a process here of coming along and by no means are we there yet. I couldn’t be happier with where we are.”

Juan Pablo Montoya (No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger)

On handling stress? “I just get in, driver the car and see what happens. There is not much more that you can do. You prepare with the whole team and you come with the best you can each week. I think sometimes you are disappointed with the results and sometimes you’re good. You need to keep in mind where you come from and where you are going. As long as you keep that in perspective you will be fine. There are weekends where things are horrible and you wish you were in a different place. It’s just part of the job. Chip believes in what I can do and I am a believer as well. I think it is a respect we have for each other and a respect we have as a team. It makes things much easier for me.”

Do you expect from a stock car here? “Probably out of the two it will be the hardest. The Formula One circuit was straightforward and with the IRL cars it was like a fast oval, pretty flat, but that was what I used to drive every week so we knew what we had to do. Coming here, I’ve been asking people where do you brake and that kind of thing and I try to ask a lot before going out so I get a different idea. You just come out and see what you can do. Here, you’ve got so little time by the time you get to qualifying it’s like I’ll get about 15 laps. And people wonder why we suck in qualifying and we go out and we go forward pretty fast.”

Chip Ganassi (Owner, Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates)

“If I can answer that, too, one of the things I’m going to point out now because I’m not sure I’ve pointed out in the press yet but when we go to places that we’ve been before, we were pretty excited about going to Michigan and that was one of our poorest races. And we kind of thought ‘Gee, he’s been there before and actually won a race there.’ It just didn’t pan out for us that weekend. We had a tough weekend there. Going into this weekend, I’m like I hope we don’t have that same thing at Michigan. But there are a lot of other circumstances that come into play there that weekend. Just as a statement, places that we’ve been before that he’s done well at before, no connection.”

Juan Pablo Montoya (No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger)

“There was no connection. He was saying it was exciting going to Michigan. I’m thinking ‘Yeah but the last time I went to Michigan you could like Talladega in the IndyCars, you know, four-wide all the way around. With these things, you get in there and you’ve got to get on the brakes. It’s a completely different thing. For us when you do open wheel you go to a place like Michigan or California that’s high banked. I was like man, that’s really high. You go in stock cars and it’s like where’s the banking? It’s all different. It’s actually easier for me if I want to go to new places because I have no perception whatsoever of anything. I just go there and okay, I’ve got try here, I’ve got to try there, I’ve got to try there and it’s a lot easier, actually. But this place, I’ve been here once before and I should be pretty good.”

Chip Ganassi (Owner, Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates)

You recently changed Juan’s crew chief in the Busch Series and name a new president. Do you expect more changes during the remained or the year? “I want to talk about that a little bit because I think I was kind of taken out of context in the press and I’m glad you asked that question about changing his Busch crew chief. We didn’t really change Juan’s Busch crew chief. We changed Reed Sorenson’s Busch crew chief and the result of that was that Juan was going to get a change also. We basically switched the two crew chiefs on the car and that was really been for Reed’s benefit. I came to Juan and said ‘Hey, these guys are talking about changing the crew chiefs. How do you feel about that?’ He said if it’s better for the team go ahead and do it. I don’t care. I’ll work with anybody. So I think that’s an important thing I want to point out here because that was done as an accommodation for someone else and he just said hey, whatever you’ve got to do, go ahead and do.”

Juan Pablo Montoya (No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger)

Where does winning here rank and does this feel like just another race weekend for you? “Before you come here race weekend, once the race weekend starts you get in, drive the car and see what happens. You cannot come into a place thinking we’re going to win this and this is awesome and I’m the only driver to run three races here. I think when I’m 50 that’s going to be a remarkable thing to remember but today it’s getting the job done.”

You’ve raced at some historic places. Where does Indy rank among them? “I think this place and Daytona are the biggest places for fans. I think Monaco has the yachts, the boats. It’s like look at that boat and that’s bigger and that’s bigger. I think every racetrack has a nice thing about it, I think. I’ve been coming here since 2000 every year.”

What would it mean for you to win at Indy this weekend? “Every win is exciting. When I won my first CART win that was huge. When I won the 500 that was huge. When I won my first Formula One win that was huge. Winning Monaco was awesome. When I won at Sonoma in Cup that was a huge deal and that takes off a lot of pressure and the team. Do we need to win on an oval? Yeah, we do but it kind of puts our job a lot easier. We can just come in, focus on our job. There’s no ‘Do you think you’re going to be able to win?’ Yeah, we can and we did already. Do we want to win more? Yeah, we do want to win more. As Chip said, have we done great things, yeah but we need a lot more. We still have a long way to go.”