Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion is in third place in the standings heading into this weekend’s race.

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – ON TESTING AT BRISTOL – AND ITS NEW SURFACE – EARLIER THIS WEEK. “It was different, quite a bit different. It was okay. Obviously, I liked it the way it was because we were running well there and was kind of used to it. It’s a lot different than what it was. A lot of things you used to be able to do you can’t really do there anymore.

WITH A DIFFERENT CAR AND A DIFFERENT SURFACE – YOU’VE DOMINATED THE NIGHT RACE THERE RECENTLY. WHAT CHALLENGES DO YOU NOW FACE? “I think the car is the biggest challenge, and now we’ve got a new car and a basically new surface, so it’s kind of like starting over for everybody. So, any kind of advantage or set-up – you know, we had that one car we used to use all the time – all of that stuff has gone out of the equation, so we’re kind of starting over. It kind of feels like you’re going to a new track for the first time.”

CAN YOU RUN TWO-WIDE THERE? “I don’t know. The Busch test that we did, we’d run for an hour and it would rain for an hour, and we’d run for an hour and it would rain for an hour, so I never ventured up there at all, so I don’t know. I didn’t run very good in the Busch test. We didn’t handle very good, and we didn’t really have it figured out. So it’s hard for me to say. There’s probably more potential to do it than there was before.”

WHAT’S THE KEY TO GETTING AROUND THIS TRACK? “You really need it all, like any track. You need the downforce and the horsepower and have your car handling right, but the big thing is to have your car loose enough where you don’t get tight behind people and then get a run underneath people off the corners. I think the best place to pass always is getting off the corner better than them guys and getting up next to them on the straightaway and finishing the pass. So, you don’t really run side-by-side, but you do run underneath and have to be loose enough to run underneath somebody but not so loose that you have to be out of the gas a lot.”

WHERE DO YOU RANK THIS TRACK IN TERMS OF PRESITIGE IN THIS SERIES? “I’d say it’s in the top two. I’d say the Daytona 500 and then the Brickyard, I think, is how they rank – and the 600, to me, is always a big race, certainly one we’d like to be able to win.”

HOW DID YOU SPEND THE OFF-WEEKEND? DID YOU REST OR HAVE SOME FUN? “Well, both. I raced a race up in Wisconsin on Tuesday and then went to Alaska for a few days and hung out there, and then came back and did the Bristol test on Tuesday, so, actually, it was kind of a busy week. I had a few days off, though, and had some fun.”

WHY DO DRIVERS CONSIDER THIS RACE SO PRESTIGIOUS AND APPRECIATE ITS HISTORY SO MUCH? “I think that’s it, because of the history here. I think it’s kind of like going to Daytona. I think Daytona’s the biggest race, probably, for stock cars, and this has obviously been here for a little over 100 years or whatever it’s been. So, there’s a lot of history here. The Indy 500 is one of the biggest races in the world and everybody knows about that. It’s kind of a privilege to run stock cars here, so being here, it’s one of the bigger races that we run.”

SIX OF THE LAST NINE BRICKYARD WINNERS HAVE GONE ON TO WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP, INCLUDING THE PAST TWO. IS THAT A FLUKE, OR IS THERE SOMETHING TO THAT? “Probably a little bit of both. I think you have to be running good and be a contender to win races to have a chance at winning championships, so, obviously, guys who are winning races have a better chance at winning a championship than guys who aren’t, and it’s another race. So that part probably isn’t coincidence, but the rest probably is. One race isn’t make or break you for the championship, especially when it’s not in the chase. Obviously, Jeff Gordon or someone like that could have a problem here, finish last and still have a shot at the championship.”

DOES THE WINNER OF THIS RACE LEAVE HERE AS THE FAVORITE TO WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP? “In the garage, I’d say no, not necessarily; maybe in the media it does because you guys look at the numbers and say, ‘Six out of nine have won a championship, that bodes well for the guy who wins this race.’ But, I don’t think in the garage we really look at it like that. I think we get in the chase, see who’s going to be in it, and then get a few weeks into that and I think we have an idea who’s going to be a favorite, but I think you can also look over what’s been going on all year and probably pick out a few favorites pretty easy, too.”

ARE YOU ONE OF THEM? “In my own mind, I’m not, but I think the 24 and 48, obviously, have been really strong all year, and the 20, you can never count him out, so those are the three that come to mind. And the 11, the 11’s been strong all year, too.”

THE SEASON IS JUST PAST HALF OVER. AS YOU AND CREW CHIEF ROBBIE REISER ASSESS WHERE THE TEAM IS, YOU MUST BE PRETTY HAPPY AND ARE CONSIDERING JUST MINOR ADJUSTMENTS. “I’m really happy with the team and where they’re at and how they’ve been performing. They’ve been doing really well. So we need to be running just a little bit better, I think the COT stuff has probably been our biggest struggle this year, but the team’s been doing a great job. Car prep’s been great, the engine program has been great, pit stops have been really good on pit road, so can’t complain about any of that stuff. If anything, we just need a little more speed, everything else has been just great.’

WITHOUT LOOKING TOO FAR AHEAD, WHEN DO YOU START THINKING ABOUT YOUR APPROACH TO THE CHASE AND HOW YOU’RE GOING TO APPROACH THOSE RACES? “You start thinking about it, really, honestly, preparing for the Daytona 500. Every race is important in trying to get to the chase, and you’re trying to learn something each and every week. And, I think momentum is important. No matter where you are in points, you want to keep that momentum up, you want to be competitive and you want to finish the best you can every week.”

Chase Elliott, son of Ford driver Bill Elliott, won the first race of his career Thursday night at Atlanta Motor Speedway when he captured the Bandolero feature. Both father and son spoke about the race Friday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

BILL ELLIOTT – No. 21 U.S. Air Force Ford Fusion – “I was very proud. The last three races down there he had run really well. Everytime we either drew in the back or he ended up in the back. He was always able to drive well through the pack and pass a lot of cars, but he just hadn’t been able to get all the way to the front at the finish. But last night he started 10th and drove up through there and won the race. He drove a really good race. He’s been running real well in that Bandolero car, but at Charlotte it’s a little different because we run a restrictor plate there and we’ve haven’t run there much. Whereas, he’s raced at Atlanta (Motor Speedway) about 10 or 11 times, so he’s more familiar with that.”

CAN YOU COMPARE WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO SEE YOUR SON WIN HIS FIRST RACE VERSUS YOURS? “I’m just happy for him because he’s done well in a lot of the other stuff. That’s a very competitive side of the sport and anytime you can do well it just makes you feel good. It’s good for him because now he knows he can do it and he can keep working at it and thinking about what he needs to do. The main thing is to just let him have a good time. We’re not pushing him because the pressure is gonna come quick enough with any of this stuff, so that’s what you try to avoid. We want to let him still be a kid because he’s only 11 years old and we want him to experience that side of it, but he still wants to go out and do this stuff as well, so we’ll see what happens.”

CHASE ELLIOTT – “We weren’t very good in the heat race, so we changed some tires and the setup and came from 10th place and won. It felt really good. My dad was pretty excited because it was nice to finally figure out how to run on that stuff.”

Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion, is fifth in the standings heading into this weekend’s race. He suffered a thumb injury during a dirt track race last Sunday.

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion – “On Sunday I dislocated my thumb in a dirt car, so it’s just been a long week of trying to make sure that was all going to be good, but it looks like everything is going to be fine. They built me a nice little brace, and I sat in a car – I don’t think there’s going to be any trouble there. Definitely excited about the race. We’ve got a new body on the car, some new stuff we haven’t run before and I’m pretty excited. Hopefully, it works. You never know, it could be bad but I think it’s going to be pretty good.”

HOW PAINFUL IS IT? AND, YOU CAN’T TAKE ANYTHING FOR THE PAIN. “It’s really not that painful. The worst part about what happened there was just looking down and seeing my thumb in kind of a different position than I’d ever seen it before. So, that was a little bit nerve-wracking, but once we got to the hospital, they told me it was no big deal, it wasn’t broken. As long as I keep it in place, it’ll be fine. Definitely not taking anything for the pain, but it really doesn’t hurt that bad. It could’ve been a lot worse. It’s really pretty straight forward, small injury. No big deal.”

DOES THE INJURY MAKE YOU RE-THINK RUNNING SOME OF THESE OTHER EVENTS DURING THE SEASON? “Yeah, I did think about it quite a bit, especially that night. It made for an awfully long night Sunday, and if that would’ve been a Saturday night race somewhere after a Busch race, that would’ve made for a really tough Sunday. But as it worked out, I had a whole week to make sure I went and saw a specialist and got the MRIs done and stuff. I’m definitely not going to stop dirt racing or doing stuff like that, but I might kind of hedge them toward the beginning of the week a little bit, just in case something like this happens again.”

IS THE BRACE A PRECAUTIONARY THING, OR IS IT NEEDED TO KEEP THE THUMB IN PLACE? ALSO, HOW DOES IT AFFECT YOUR GRIP ON THE STEERING WHEEL? “I’ll tell you everything I know about what they told me. The way they explained it to me was that for my thumb to be in the position that it was in, the bone to come off the joint and everything like it did, it tears some medial ligament between the base of your thumb and your index finger. And, with that being torn, you don’t have the support to hold your thumb in place. So, if I were to hold something real hard or bang thumb against something, it’ll pop out real easy, they said. So the brace is to keep it in that position so that it’ll heal. And if I do that, they said it would only be a few weeks and be pretty good. The way we did it is I went in to the hand specialist’s and – it was awesome, I brought a steering wheel into there and I sat in the chair just like I sat in the race car and they put it in a position that I could drive. I sat in the car, it’s exactly where I would put my thumb anyway. The only thing will be shifting for the road courses and stuff might be a little bit painful, but they said as long as I keep it in position, there won’t be any problem.”

ONE OF THE HOT TOPICS OVER THE PAST FEW WEEKS HAS BEEN DRUG TESTING AMONG DRIVERS. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THAT? “I feel like they should test us whenever they want and however they want. Anything they can do to make sure that it’s kept out of the sport would be great. I have no problem with it. They can test me anytime. I think for the kids that look up to us and the people that look up to us and all of our sponsors, it would probably be best of they were a little more active in that and made sure that there was 100 percent, no doubt, that everyone was clean all the time. So, I definitely think everyone will agree, drugs and alcohol involved with racing are bad, so anything they can do to make sure that that’s not going on is good.”

WILL YOU HAVE SOME TYPE OF BRACE THAT YOU ARE GOING TO WEAR DURING THE RACE? “Yes. This is the brace that I’m going to wear during the race. It’s just a simple little splint. It goes down and it’s got some Velcro to make sure I keep my thumb in the right spot. It should be fine. I’ve got a whole other hand, it’s like [Ken] Schrader said, ‘You might’ve dislocated it, I mislocated my thumb.’ It’s not going to be too bad.”

WHAT ABOUT YOUR TRAINING PROGRAM NOW? “I think I can still do most things. The biggest thing I did this week was I did ride my bicycle after I injured my hand – rode it on Sunday morning. But, I can still run and do all of that stuff. I think in a week or two it’ll be a lot better, so this is just a little break from weight lifting.”

WHAT ABOUT THE INJURY NEXT WEEK AT A ROAD COURSE, WHERE YOU HAVE TO TURN LEFT AND RIGHT? “Yeah, I think the true test will be the road courses, and it’s just because the shifting. Turning – I mean, I drive with my left hand anyway, I have ever since I started. My right hand I really don’t use that much to steer the car, so just shifting. It’ll be interesting to see how that works. I don’t see any reason why we just can’t tape this thing up and make sure that it doesn’t push on the thumb too hard. It should be fine.”

DID JACK ROUSH SAY ANYTHING TO YOU ABOUT YOUR HAND? “Yeah. I called Jack to tell him what happened and he told me he had done the same thing, but broken his thumb, in a go-kart race when he was about 45 years old. I called him back after I went to get the MRIs looked at and they said that it was going to be fine, and I think his quote was: ‘It’s good to see that it’s only going to cause you pain and suffering, and no permanent damage.’ He thought it was kind of humorous. He said, ‘If you’re going to play, you’ve got to be tough.’ That’s the kind of guy Jack is. He’s been through more physical trauma than most people who are alive. So, he looks at all this stuff as minor.”

WILL THERE BE SOMETHING ADDED TO THE SHIFT KNOB AT MONTREAL NEXT WEEK? “I don’t know. I think after this weekend I’ll know more about how it’s going to be. Like I said earlier, the worst part about this was when I first saw my hand I was a little bit nervous about how things were going to go. But then after finding out that nothing was broken and finding out the extent of the damage – as long as we can keep it in place and I can come up with a way to make everything work, it’ll be fine. But I really don’t know. I might feel like million bucks, it might feel great in a week. It might not be that big of an issue. So, I’ll know after some re-starts this week. I think that’s going to be a good way to kind of figure it out.”

ON WALKING THROUGH GASOLINE ALLEY FOR THE FIRST TIME. “This place – to stand out there during driver introductions and to ride around the race track and to know you get to race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway is unbelievable. I worked for Kenny Schrader for a summer, just hanging out at the shop, riding in the semi and stuff, and they came to test here, it was when he was driving the number 25 car for Rick Hendrick. I stayed at the hotel over there in turn [two], Brickyard Crossing, and I came over here and just hung out. I polished the semi wheels. They had everything parked in the garage and I’m like polishing the wheels on the semi, and they let me put fuel in the car when they came in after runs. Like, Jeff Gordon’s driving by, Terry Labonte, Ken Schrader and all these people, and it was just like, ‘Man, this is awesome. I mean, just to be here.’ That was really cool. One of the track workers, in the morning, let me walk out on the front straightaway. We walked out there and we talked about it, and was a real cool guy. I just couldn’t believe I was standing on the front straightaway at Indy. So then, eight, nine years later, I get to drive a Nextel Cup Series car around here. It’s really cool. It’s neat, to say the least.”

WHAT YEAR WAS THAT? “I guess it was ’95 of ’96. That summer. I don’t know; I was hanging out with Schrader, I don’t remember most of it. We had a good time. It was real cool. It was fun.”

Robert Yates Racing officially announced a partnership with Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing this afternoon at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Following is a transcript of the press conference:

ROBERT YATES – “I’m happy to be here. It’s an exciting day for me. It’s wonderful. We’ve got a group of people that are going to complement us and grow our business to make this what we want to be and what they want to be. I think we’ve picked out the right partner and we’re happy that they came to us. I did have a little disappointing thing happen to me just a couple minutes ago that I didn’t know was on the deal, but I had worked on Paul Newman’s car 40 years ago at Daytona and made his car run better. Of course, we’ve spent different times with the Texaco sponsorship through the years and it was always fun to be around him. I really thought he knew what my value is to this sport, but today I found out that he thought it was mostly about being a good cheater (laughter). He was all excited about me cheating and I said, ‘Well, I actually went to the university of, I can’t tell you where, but I learned a lot about that and I’ve been trying to clean my act up ever since.’ I think we’re gonna try to the new approach, which is engineering, design and make good race cars with that.”

CARL HAAS – “I think it’s really exciting and I’m honored to have this happen and being together with people that are so knowledgeable, particularly in this type of racing. I don’t know exactly what to tell you, but Robert being in this program, and I’ve known him for a long time – not that close, but I think it’s gonna be a good program that we’re putting together. The people we have, I think, is really the way to go.”

MIKE LANIGAN – First of all, on behalf of Carl and Paul, we’re extremely excited about joining forces with Robert Yates and Doug Yates. Of course, Robert has been around for, he says 40 years now, and Paul and Carl have been racing for 25 years. I think the common denominator you’ll see is that Robert Yates Racing and Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing are racers from the top to the bottom. We’re dedicated to winning. Our history has been winning. We certainly understand in NASCAR today how competitive it is, but we do believe by joining forces we can get to the front and give our drivers an opportunity to win. Newman/Haas/Lanigan has always been known as an engineering driven team. Carl has guided that over the last 25 years. We think we can enhance the Robert Yates organization and being that today you put four tires on it and a wing, we think we know a little bit about it. Although it’s different racing, it’s a lot heavier car in NASCAR, but you need to get the same result and that’s to give our drivers a good car in and out of traffic, figure out how to give them good tire wear, and the journey as an ongoing journey. We believe in engineering and we believe we will be taking small steps, but our ultimate goal is to win. We’re not here to finish second. We understand that we have a big challenge ahead of us and a lot of work, but together we’re gonna be a lot stronger and it’ll enhance our ability to be competitive in this very, very competitive series.”

ROBERT YATES CONTINUED – IS IT FAIR TO SAY THIS IS BEING DONE TO GENERATE THE TOOLS YOU NEED TO WIN RACES AGAIN? “Certainly that’s very fair. Maybe Doug can explain it because he has a vision of understanding resources even more than I do.”

DOUG YATES – “We’ve looked at how do we make our program better? How do we get back to doing what we want to do, and that’s win races and compete at a high level. That’s why we’re here. We looked at a lot of different scenarios, but the guys we’re sitting next to are seven-time Champ Car Series champions. They just won their 101st race last week and they’re winners and class people. That’s who Robert, myself and my mom want to be known as is classy people and we want to do things right. We’ve found some people that are of the same make, we think, and together we think with the Newman/Haas/Lanigan engineering and marketing, and with what we’ve built here in NASCAR, we really believe in our hearts that we can make this work. That’s why we’re here today. We had a lot of options to do different things, but we feel like if we’re gonna be here and be here for a long time, that we couldn’t have found a better group of people to be associated with and we’re gonna give it all we’ve got. This is a partnership. In this day, you need some lawyers and we felt like it sounds like a law firm (the team name). The sport has changed and we feel like we have to change to stay competitive in this sport.”

DAN DAVIS, Director, Ford Racing Technology – “This is a really special day. We’ve had a relationship in open-wheel for a number of years with Carl, Paul and now Mike, and they’ve been a very successful team, very technology oriented. We’ve helped them over the years compete. We have a long-lasting relationship with Robert Yates Racing. They’re all champions. They’ve done an unbelievable job and we have the opportunity to put the two together. In my mind, the complementary approach that’s coming out of this is pretty special. It’s a very, very unique situation. I compliment all of the principals here of seeing that and getting this done. It’s not easy doing this. The goals are clear. They want to win. Both organizations have high integrity and they’ve been with Ford for a long time. We are truly partners individually and now partners together. It’s an exciting day and I think it’s gonna change the sport a little bit – the competitiveness of the sport because we do have strength coming.”

ROBERT YATES CONTINUED – HOW WILL THIS PARTNERSHIP WORK PHYSICALLY? “We’re going to use the facilities where we are. We have a wonderful beginning and good location for what we do. It’s very attractive and very nice, but what we have is a need for a culture change within that facility. We certainly have a campus with plenty of room to grow if the buildings need to get larger and have resources, but our first mission is to look good at the race track. Certainly we’re proud of our shops, but what they bring to us complements us in the fact that they grow an arm of marketing that we do not have any of, an engineering department which we have none of, and they’re gonna teach us from the ground up and we’re excited about it. Their firm is engineered from the guy that runs the business. He’s a great engineer and he not only understands how to engineer a car, he knows how to engineer the business and we’re leaning on them very hard to build our company starting today and we’re excited about it.”

DO YOU NEED FOUR TEAMS? “NASCAR, I used to say there’s only enough room for one car in victory lane and that’s all I wanted to have. Well, NASCAR made victory lane hold four cars and I’d like to get four of them up on the tower here, but one is my goal. Do it right first, don’t multiply until it’s right. If you get going the right way, hopefully that will bring on the multiple numbers that we really have to have. We have to get like them a little bit, but we need to get our performance up first and we think we can do that without being four teams from the get-go.”

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PARTNERSHIP AND A MERGER? “To me, a merger – and I started looking at this over the past year – a merger of equals is where somebody loses their job. This is not where anybody loses their job, this is a partnership so we grow it and not end up losing that. It’s like if you have a full baseball team and then you bring on nine more guys, you don’t have shortstops in between. In our business, we’re missing some of the shortstops. This is a partnership, not a merger.”

PAUL NEWMAN – WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON GOING NASCAR RACING? “I started in silent films and I had hoped to continue in that tradition (laughter). This is very exciting for me. This is the marvelous part about speaking last because everybody has already said everything, but I really look forward to this partnership and I think we have departments that will complement theirs. We’ve always wanted to expand our activities, so this is a perfect opportunity.”

CARL HAAS CONTINUED – YOU’VE BEEN WITH MICHAEL KRANEFUSS AND TRAVIS CARTER PREVIOUSLY. WHY ARE YOU BACK? “We were just starting to get going pretty good on it and we had some sponsor problems that got dissolved out of Kmart when they went bankrupt. We just didn’t continue at that point. We were losing just too much, but I’ve always felt I’d like to come back to everybody here. I think it’s a great form of racing and it’s growing greater than anything else I’ve seen around the world here – wherever. We’re looking forward to this. We may be repeating what we’re saying, but we’ve got great people starting in. I don’t think we could do what we’re able to do to get into this thing if we were doing it ourselves with our owners. It would take a long time. It’s just a lucky stroke and we’re gonna support it all the way. I’m thrilled about it.”

ROBERT YATES – WHAT ARE THE FINANCIAL CONDITIONS OF THIS DEAL? IS ROBERT STILL THE OWNER OR HAVE FULL CONTROL OF THE TEAM? “I guess you’ll just have to follow Carolyn around and see where she shops at if she changes her shopping style to know about that (laughing). Other than that, I’m not gonna discuss it.”

MIKE LANIGAN CONTINUED – WILL WE SEE MOVEMENT BETWEEN THE TWO SHOPS FROM AN ENGINEERING STANDPOINT? “It’s agreed upon that in order to have a true partnership, we want to share everything that we have to Robert Yates and some of the technologies we’ve developed over the last 25 years. We believe additionally that each series we’re in, whether it be NASCAR or Champ Car, which we’re dedicated to also, we can learn from each series. Yes, everything will be available – both technology and people.”

PAUL NEWMAN CONTINUED – IN THE MOVIE ‘WINNING’ THERE WERE SCENES WHEN YOU DROVE A STOCK CAR. WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THAT? “I was very slow (laughter).”

MIKE LANIGAN CONTINUED – “Paul is being very humble right now. Paul was in a race car three days ago practicing at IROC, so he may look a little seasoned but he’s still quick. Absolutely still quick.”

ROBERT YATES CONTINUED – AT LOUDON YOU SAID YOU BROKE OFF TALKS WITH PARTNERS AND WANTED TO GO IT ALONE. WHAT’S CHANGED IN THE LAST MONTH? “I’ve learned a lot in a month. I made statements about those guys not really contributing to anything, but I was probably wrong about that. I apologize. Actually, somebody put some words in my mouth and I let them roll off and they quoted me. Again, we were looking for people that could help us race better. NASCAR is very attractive, but we wanted somebody that could help us race better and it’s not just cubic dollars that helps us race better. We have more responsibility to these guys because they want trophies and wins than being responsible to somebody that gives us a lot of money. Again, Carolyn is still gonna be shopping, I’m sure, but this is about people that want us for the right reasons. The financial side usually takes care of itself when you run good, so I was almost burned out talking to people about buying something and trying to do all these numbers because everytime I ever sat down in my life and said, ‘I’m gonna win this much money money,’ you’d spend it before you win it and you usually don’t win it, so it’s very distracting. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned a lot about business and I learned that if you’re gonna play this ball, you better keep your eye on it and I was very unfocused. That’s really when I made the statement where I didn’t want anybody to come partner with us just for the money. I think it’s wonderful that these guys tapped us and said, ‘We want to do it with you and it’s all for the right reasons.”

ROBERT YATES CONTINUED – WHO MAKES THE FINAL DECISION ON THINGS? “I always told people that when I worked for myself I’m lazier for myself than I was for John Holman, Junior Johnson or Bill Gardner. If that holds true, I’m gonna work harder than ever because I’ve got a responsibility to this long list of names and these wonderful people. I’m gonna be challenged to be not in the way, but to contribute. Certainly if my contribution is not strong enough, I may not be this or that. The way we’ll engineer it will determine what my role will be and I’m not gonna determine that.”

DAN DAVIS CONTINUED – HOW WILL THIS CHANGE THE SPORT? “You’ve got two teams here that are winners. Here’s a situation where we have an open-wheel team where aerodynamics and race craft, and some of the things that they have to do in order to compete are totally different to how NASCAR has operated in the past. The NASCAR vehicles, you’re starting to see the mechanical and the aerodynamic interaction start to happen. You’re starting to see laboratory testing taking the place of on-track testing. You’re seeing cars show up at the track ready to go and be competitive right away. That’s what this activity has had to do for the last umpteen years. They don’t test. They have engineering resources in place to simulate their vehicles. They have to understand the interactions between the aerodynamics and the mechanical and the grip and the tire and it’s a very complicated world that they have lived in, but they’ve got engineers that are trained and do this for a living everyday. On the NASCAR side of it, there is a lot more testing and a lot more empirical trial-and-error sort of things in the past. You can’t compete like that any longer, in my opinion. So the reason this is gonna change is that you have an activity that’s done this for a living for a long time, merging with an activity that knows the vehicle, knows tracks, knows a lot of things. We’ve got something coming together here that’s very unique and I’m excited about it. It’s gonna be exciting to see how well we can merge this because it isn’t gonna be easy. There are going to be conflicts and differences of opinion on how to proceed, but we’ve got the fundamental things in place here to try it and that’s why I think it’s gonna change the game a bit.”

THE CARS ARE SO DIFFERENT FROM STOCK CARS TO OPEN WHEEL. THAT STUFF DOESN’T TRANSLATE VERY WELL DOES IT? “I’m not sure who told you that, but they all have engines, they have four tires, they have aerodynamics, they fight grip. Really, in my mind, the issues are the same it’s just that they’re two different kinds of vehicles. In one case you’ve got wheels that aren’t covered, and in another case wheels are covered, and one vehicle is bigger than the other, but they’ve got four tires, engines – all of the elements are the same between the two. Our challenge is, how do you take the elements of open-wheel and all the things that come with that, and translate that into the stock car world. But, in my mind, all the engineering principals are identical.”

MIKE LANIGAN CONTINUED – “There’s no question that if you take a 3400 or 3500-pound car with fenders on it and a 1500-pound car, certainly there are a lot of differences, but I think the journey starts at the same point and that is you start out with standard parameters. Like Dan said, there’s grip, there’s balance, there’s dampers, there’s aerodynamics. It’s a different path, but it’s the same destination.”

WILL THESE OPERATIONS BE MOVED UNDER ONE ROOF LIKE PENSKE JUST DID? “In our conversations, we’re definitely gonna be involved heading up the technical side of it, whether it be chassis, aerodynamics, whatever it may be.”

PAUL NEWMAN CONTINUED – “A Champ car will stick to the ceiling at 150 miles an hour. We hope to do that with a stock car (laughter).”

ROBERT YATES CONTINUED – “I’m not gonna cheat that much.” (more laughter) “Let me see if I can put it in my words. The reason you can’t go off in an engineering room and put the engineers together on a stock car of yesterday is that if you take the geometry NASCAR gives you and you build a car, and they’ve worked on it, and Todd Parrott dropped it two inches further than there’s anyway humanly possible that you could make it travel two inches more, he’ll slide the hood over four inches more than your rules would allow and the car goes around the corner 10 times faster. An engineer can’t keep up with it. You almost have to know what you can get by everyday with. NASCAR has hired more policeman and more policeman, but they never stopped the other side. They pushed it up, they pushed it down, they never captured you. They realize now they’ve captured the deal. It can travel two-and-a-half inches or the white smoke comes off the splitter. You can move the back until it comes off the back of the splitter, but you’re living in a world that you can engineer now. You can put an aero map to it. We would change the car, or other teams would, so much that you could never use an aero map. Heck, we changed it so fast. So that’s why the new world can be engineer driven because the guy that used to sit in Detroit and fuss at me, ‘Guys, you can’t do all this crazy stuff.’ Well, if I had a stopwatch and if it worked, we just did it. It’s hard to explain. I tried to understand it, but now with the new car, the car of tomorrow can be engineer driven.”

DOUG YATES CONTINUED – “What he’s trying to say is that the car of tomorrow coming into NASCAR is really perfect timing for our partnership with Newman/Haas/Lanigan because they come from a world of splitters and wings. We feel like NASCAR has put a closer tolerance on the bodies, so now you can engineer the car and get some results that may make some sense. As far as your question, we haven’t discussed that. I don’t think they’re gonna move their shops to Mooresville. Our focus right now is getting our Cup program working right. They’re gonna head up our engineering department. They have a very brilliant engineer that has been down. We’re starting discussions on how we move forward from here, but that’s what they do. They come from that world. Their world is engineering, our world has been NASCAR and together we hope that we can take this company blending the old and the new to a new level.”

MIKE LANIGAN CONTINUED – THERE HAVE BEEN A LOT OF TEAMS THAT HAVE COME TO NASCAR FROM OPEN WHEEL RACING – RED BULL, CHIP GANASSI, TOYOTA – AND THE RESULTS HAVE NOT WORKED VERY WELL. WHY WILL THIS BE DIFFERENT? “First of all, I don’t think Red Bull has won anything yet in all honesty. I understand what your question is and we’re not necessarily saying we’re better or smarter than a Ganassi or a Red Bull, but I think you’ll find we’re much more dedicated to it. We truly do believe we can get there piece by piece. It’s not gonna happen tomorrow morning, but if there’s a will and a want, we’re gonna get there. If we take it in small steps, that’s how we were successful in Champ car, and we’re dedicated to doing it.”

ROBERT YATES – WHAT WAS THE TIMING OF THIS? “They arranged a meeting with us and Carl and MIKE LANIGAN sat down and this is what they wanted to do, so they tapped us on the shoulder and said, ‘Let’s go do this.’ We’re excited about it. We’re glad they called.”

DAN DAVIS – “I think it might have been a suggestion that they ought to get together and that Carl and Mike said you ought to just meet face to face, so they called Robert and said, ‘Let’s meet.’ That had to be something like three, four, five months ago – something like that. So they sat down by themselves and chatted. I think they quickly both found out that they want to be winners.”

HOW MUCH PRODDING DID YOU GIVE? “This was not a prodding exercise, this was an introduction.”

ROBERT YATES CONTINUED – WHEN WAS THIS DECIDED? “We started discussing this over the last couple of weeks. It’s something where we’ve known each other for a number of years. I didn’t know the Lanigans and got to know the Lanigans. Actually, Friday night at Chicago was the first time we actually sat down and talked about the operating agreement and about doing something. We dated a little bit for a couple of weeks and got to know each other well and here we are. We got married.”

IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN BRING TO THE OPEN-WHEEL SIDE? “The last time I checked they have been winning everything, so I don’t know if we can help them, but racing still has relativity. Dan answered it pretty well that it’s a business science class and there are things that are relative to each other.”

DAN DAVIS CONTINUED – “I would say you never know when you put two classy organizations together what you can learn from each other. When you put them together, you can’t always predict how they’re gonna help each other, but when it’s done and you look back, you find all these instances where they helped that group and that group helped that. So I don’t think you can predict it up front, but it’s gonna happen.”

ROBERT YATES CONTINUED – “I think it’s almost refreshing that they come in without all this understanding our mile-and-a-half cars and before that. The only time it slows down is when I talk about what we did in the seventies, but staying out of that, it’s a very refreshing engineering group. When you listen to them talk, everybody is excited because it’s a chance for everybody to contribute from both sides and we’re excited about that.”

YOU SEEM RE-ENERGIZED. “I’ve had some little bit foggy eyes and some of it has been of my own doing. I didn’t really have a clear vision. I thought maybe I was over the hill and should get out of it, yet I have a young son in it. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do and then I started getting these offers and large bucks, and then I started looking around the world like, ‘What would I do?’ I don’t want to miss this sport. I love this sport. I don’t think you can get anywhere in the world away from this sport, but I want to get to the top of this sport. So what I’ve got renewed in me is not a bunch of money to go off and spend doing something else, but I’ve got a job and a responsibility and I want to do this, but I have a very clear vision in how we want to do it.”

DAN DAVIS CONTINUED – “Robert did talk to some investors and investors bring dollar signs and a lot of financial controls, but they don’t make your car go faster. Here’s a situation where you have a group that is not only financially sound, and this isn’t about money, this is about the cars going faster. They’re about winning and going faster, that’s what Robert’s about, so I think all of a sudden now this presented itself as win-win – two groups with a common goal, win-win, they’re both better off. They’re all smiling.”

ROBERT YATES CONTINUED – “We don’t have race fans with us. We don’t have to carry them around and tell them, ‘This is how racing works.’ We don’t have to spend that time. These guys know how racing works, so we can focus on our cars immediately.”

DAN DAVIS CONTINUED – IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU MADE THE INTRODUCTION. “In talking with Robert, you get a sense of the kind of partner that would make sense for him and it seemed like a group like Newman/Haas/Lanigan would be a good partner, but you don’t really know. We all want him to run better. I want more than anyone for Robert Yates Racing to be in the winner’s circle, more than anyone. It seemed like that would be the right introduction to make. Then in talking to Mike Lanigan more than the other two, ‘Would you like to get in this sort of thing,’ and then Carl said, ‘I was in NASCAR before and I’d like to get back. The Kmart thing didn’t work out because of sponsorship.’ He wanted to get back. So I felt like, ‘OK, here’s an opportunity for a couple of groups that we ought to just introduce. Seriously, we introduced the two and then they went and did their thing. We were not involved. It wasn’t prodding from Ford. It wasn’t a, ‘you need to do this.’ It was like, ‘Would you two guys please just talk to each other and see if there’s something there,’ and in a manner of a few weeks, here we go.”

FORD HAS HAD SOME STRUGGLES LATELY. DOES THIS RUN IN CYCLES? “It absolutely runs in cycles. If you go back two years ago with the Roush organization having five cars in the chase, it was like everyone was chasing Fords. We had two championships in a row and everything was looking great, then the sport changes a little bit and you end up being a little bit behind. Now we’re sort of in a catch-up mode with one of the other teams in particular, but I think that we’ve recognized that and we’ve attacked it. Certainly in the last few races we’ve got Fords right up front just pounding on the door for wins, so I think you go along, you’re ahead, you maybe lose some of your edge, someone else gains something and you look and say, ‘Oops, I’m behind.’ You go work on it really hard and then we’re gonna be right back on top. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Ford or Ford teams. It is cyclical. People learn things. They get a little edge and they ride that edge for a little bit and then the next one comes. We’ll be in the hunt. For this team, I really think they needed some technology. They really needed to learn how to engineer the product a little bit better and that’s something I think the Roush organization has quite a bit going for themselves and has that underway. This team needed it, so now we’ve got a partnership here where that is brought to them already done. In the case of the Roush organization, Jack grew that capability from scratch – organically. In this case I think we have another activity coming in that already has it and they’re bringing it to the party pre-mixed so to speak. They’ve gone about it in different ways and both will be effective.”

AND FORD WILL ALWAYS BE IN NASCAR RACING? “Yeah, somebody asked me yesterday, ‘Now that Ford made money in the last quarter your NASCAR program is safe?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m not sure our NASCAR program is ever safe because we need to prove the value of our NASCAR program every year.’ We have for as long as I’ve been here. It’s been nine years now and we prove it every year. You look at it and say, ‘Does it make sense?’ And the answer has always been yes, and I would expect it will always be yes in the future, but it’s never a given.”

MIKE LANIGAN – HOW CAN YOU MAKE SURE THAT THE ACTIVITIES THAT YOU ARE DOING ON THE STOCK-CAR SIDE DON’T AFFECT THE OPEN-WHEEL PROGRAM? “I think on the sponsorship side it’s going to enhance both of our entities, in all frankness. We can offer our sponsors some value added because it’s a different market for Champ Car versus NASCAR. As far as the engineering side, we’ll dedicate some people on a full-time basis to get where we need to go in NASCAR.”

THE ANNOUNCEMENT IS TODAY. WHEN DOES THE PARTNERSHIP TAKE EFFECT? “It starts today.”

WHAT CAN YOUR SIDE DO AT THIS TRACK THIS WEEKEND FOR THE 38 AND THE 88? “I think it would be foolish to say we can do anything this weekend, in all frankness, because we just really got the partnership agreement done this week – actually, it’s been days since we first started talking about it, so it’s been on a fast track. But the beauty about how I feel about it is that we have the same philosophy in this business. Robert and Doug want to win, we want to win. We know it’s not going to be easy. We’re going to dedicate all of our resources on both sides of the fence to get to where we need to be. But, we’re just at the beginning of the journey.”

PAUL NEWMAN – HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE BACK AT INDY? “It’s wonderful. Why shouldn’t it? This doesn’t in any way diminish any feeling I have about open-wheel racing, it’s just that we’ve got the people, we have the departments that are working. We just wanted to stretch our wings a little bit. We’re very fortunate to have found a formidable partner.”

WILL THIS IN ANY WAY IMPACT WHAT YOUR ORGANIZATION’S COMMITMENT IN CHAMP CAR? “No, it’s just broadening our horizons.”

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON NASCAR’S GROWTH? “The ascendancy has been extraordinary. I take my hat off to them. They didn’t do anything wrong.”

When Ginn Motorsports and DEI merged earlier this week, Wood Brothers/JTG Racing went from 36th place to 35th in the owners’ points standings – and a guaranteed starting position for Sunday’s race. Co-owner Len Wood says the team’s preparation for the race changed when the two other teams merged.

LEN WOOD – co-owner, No. 21 Motorcraft Ford Fusion – “This is the second most important week of the year, so it happened at a good time. Obviously, we have to perform better than we have in the past several months, and hopefully stay in the top 35. Being in the top 35, the changes we’re making – we came here from the shop in qualifying trim, but when we got here and found out that, for real, we’re in the top 35, we made changes, so we’re going to race practice. That’s what we’ve been missing. If you’re out, you’ve got to do everything you can to qualify, no matter what sacrifice you have to make. And when you get in, you have to take what’s left, basically – what time is left – and make the best of it. Hopefully, this will allow us to prepare better, run better and stay in the top 35.”

BECAUSE YOU WERE NOT GUARANTEED A SPOT – EVEN WITH THE PAST CHAMPION’S PROVISIONAL – YOUR FOCUS MUST’VE CHANGED 180 DEGREES. “It changed, and it changed again. We knew a couple of weeks ago that Terry Labonte was going to be here, so that didn’t change our strategy any – we knew we had to get in on time. With the timing of the qualifying here, the draw can make you or break you. You can take a car that would get in, qualify last and miss it. Weather is so important here, as it was in Phoenix earlier in the year. The example at Phoenix is we qualified 11th in line and by 20 cars had gone, we’d beaten six of them, and we needed to beat seven. All of a sudden it cooled off and it was 20 degrees cooler at the end of qualifying, and we finally beat two right toward the end by no more than three-hundredths of a second. So, it was really close, and if everybody got to qualify together – I don’t know what’s fair, maybe the middle, that would be fair to everybody – and that would even the playing field. But here, qualifying starts at 10:10, if you draw last, it’s not good.”