RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER CREW CHIEF FEATURE FOR THE UAW-DAIMLERCHRYSLER 400 NASCAR NEXTEL CUP SERIES RACE AT LAS VEGAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY, MARCH 9, 2007.

DONNIE WINGO, CREW CHIEF, No. 42 TEXACO/HAVOLINE DODGE: HOW DIFFERENT IS THIS RACE GOING TO BE FOR YOU TO CALL? “It’s probably not going to be that big of a difference than what Fontana was a little bit. With the smaller fuel cell it’s one of those deals you get five, six, seven laps out there and then you look and a quarter of your capacity is gone. You’ll see a lot of cars, like Charlotte, to where you might come in and get gas, you might come in and get two tires, you might come in and get four tires. It just depends on your situation. But I think every time the caution comes out, like every four or five laps you’ve got to come in and get gas.” ARE TIRES THE BIG TOPIC HERE THIS WEEKEND? “It’s going to be that way. I think you’re going to see most people scuff all their tires, try to keep some heat out of them in the race in the longer runs but we’ll have to see how the tires cool down and how they come back. Out here in the test they seemed to come back pretty good. Our faster laps would always be 20-30 laps into a run.” DO YOU HAVE A DIFFERENT TIRE COMPOUND HERE FOR THE RACE VERSUS WHAT YOU HAD IN THE TEST? “The left-side compound is a little bit different. We’ll just have to wait and see.” YOU ARE GUARANTEED A STARTING SPOT IN THE RACE. DOES THAT CHANGE YOUR APPROACH TO QUALIFYING? “Not really. We’re going to start out in qualifying trim basically because we want to go out and scuff as many tires as we can scuff and that way it will save us a little bit of time trying to switch it over. We’ll start out in qualifying trim so it’ll probably start out a little too tight but that way we can get our tires scuffed in and hopefully we can get a few bonsai runs in before the end of practice.” WILL THERE BE A LOT OF PASSING IN THE RACE? “It depends on how much the groove widens out. Just watching Busch practice I think some of the guys are trying the top a little bit and I think we’ll know more about it when the Busch race starts. If it widens out a little bit then I think, yeah, you’ll see a lot of passing.” DO YOU THINK THIS TRACK WILL BE LIKE ATLANTA WHERE THE RACING WILL GET BETTER AS THE SURFACE GETS OLDER? “I think you’ll see that here, too, because the track had gotten worn a lot before they paved it this time and any time you get a repave you’ve got to run right on the bottom because that’s where the grip is, that’s where everybody is running. So far, even out here testing, you saw some guys trying to top a little bit and I think that you’re going to see that the Busch cars, they are going to widen the groove out just a little bit more.” DO YOU APPROACH THIS WEEKEND LIKE YOU ARE AT A NEW TRACK? “I think so because, you know, now this track, instead of relating more to a Kansas or somewhere like that, now you’re looking at a Texas or Homestead. The track is definitely different from what we’ve ever seen out here before.” WILL YOU CHANGE FOUR TIRES EVERY STOP DURING THE RACE? “No, you won’t see four tires every stop on Sunday. Like I said, depending on how many laps you run, I think you’ll see a lot of fuel-only and a lot of right sides, because I don’t know, but we’ll have to wait and see that tires are going to make a whole lot of difference.” DOES THE SMALLER FUEL CELL MAKE FUEL MILEAGE A BIGGER FACTOR? “A bigger factor because you’ve got to push the limit. With the 17-gallon cells at California some guys pitted after running five laps and they run five laps longer and the caution came out when a lot of people had pitted. It’s kind of hard. You can’t put yourself in that position but you don’t want to get back in the pack either. You’re going to have to kind of gauge how you’re running and gauge that off of how often you’re going to have to pit.” MORE PIT STOPS MEAN MORE PRESSURE ON THE CREW. “It’s definitely a little bit bigger stress, but it’s just more mistakes that can happen on pit road, not necessarily from a crew standpoint, from getting in the box to hitting another car to speeding on pit road. All of that is going to play a factor into this race because the more times you’re on pit road the more times that can happen.”

TONY EURY SR., CREW CHIEF, No. 15 MENARDS CHEVROLET: HOW DIFFERENT IS YOUR JOB GOING TO BE ON SUNDAY? “It really won’t be that much different. We’ll just have to stop earlier. We only went from a 17-gallon to a 14-gallon so it’s not like Charlotte last year where we went from 22 to 14. We stopped like 17 times with our other cars at Charlotte with the small cell. I don’t know what kind of problems we’re going to have with tires here. It seemed like some people had problems, some didn’t. It may come down to where we have a lot of two-tire stops. We’ll just have to see how it starts out, how it goes.” YOU HAVE TO RUN WELL IN QUALIFYING TO MAKE THE RACE BUT YOU CAN’T BE TOO AGGRESSIVE ON YOUR SETUP. “That’s where we have to depend on our teammates because we’re throwing this whole day away for qualifying. They’ve got nine sets of tires over here and we’ve got six. We’re going to use up all our tires today getting ready to qualify to get in the race because if we don’t get in the race we don’t need tires tomorrow, so what race practice our teammates get today we’re going to live off of them a little bit in the morning. We were pretty good in the test and thought we had a good car in the test and hopefully we’ll be good.” COMMENT ON THE DIFFERENT TIRE YOU HAVE FOR THE RACE VERSUS WHAT YOU RAN HERE IN THE TEST. “They changed the left-sides. Went a little harder on the left sides trying to slow the cars down a little bit. From what we’ve seen with the Busch car a little bit it’s loosened the cars up some. I think it’ll be a little bit different but not a whole lot.” DOES THAT MEAN YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO REMIND YOUR DRIVER IN THE RACE TO TAKE CARE OF THE RIGHT FRONT TIRE? “I think it’s going to be a save the right front deal. It looks like we’ve got a lot of load here on the right front here with the new pavement. The racetrack is real fast and there is probably going to be some problems on people’s right fronts. People that get a little aggressive with camber and stuff are probably going to have right front issues. That’ll be something we have to watch, for sure.” DO YOU THINK THERE WILL BE A LOT OF PASSING IN THE RACE? “Oh yeah. It’ll probably widen out and I think we’ll see a good race.”

RICKY VIERS, CREW CHIEF, No. 84 RED BULL TOYOTA: YOU HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF THE RIGHT FRONT TIRE BUT YOU HAVE TO RUN WELL IN QUALIFYING TO MAKE THE RACE. HOW BRAVE DO YOU GET? “The biggest thing that we’re fighting right now is getting through inspection. At California we missed 40 minutes through no fault of our own, just that many cars there and the way we have to inspect our cars. Right now we’re focused on practice as much as anything and getting him comfortable. We tested here and tested fairly well. We did crash one car here but he’s made laps here so it’s not a brand new place to him. He’s been here, so now we’ll go out and feel like we’ve got a plan to make four, maybe even five mock qualifying runs. That’s all that matters to us, really. Until we get to that point, we don’t even worry about Sunday or Saturday’s practice. Right now we’re all focused on today. I think AJ has got more than enough talent to get the job done and we’re excited about today and see where we end up.” DOES BEING A NEW TEAM WITH NO POINTS JUST PUT YOU BEHIND? “I wouldn’t say it puts us behind. AJ has done a terrific job throughout the winter testing and everything and I can’t say enough about how well he’s adapted. But let’s be honest with ourself. We’re asking this driver to do something that no other driver in this garage has ever done. To go from Champ Cars or open wheel racing straight to a Cup car. He doesn’t have any Busch experience and very little Truck experience. He’s never even run a late model at a short track and we took him to Bristol last week and run over 300 laps. We’re asking him to do more than we’ve asked any other driver in this garage area to do and he’s doing an exceptional job at it right now.” HAS IT BEEN DIFFICULT TO KEEP EVERYONE ON THE TEAM PUMPED UP AFTER THE FIRST TWO RACES OF THE SEASON? “It’s always a tough job but we’ve got good people and we’ve got really good management. It’s just a great organization from the top down. They are really good about coming down and reminding us that this is our plan and this is what we’re planning to do and we’re not going to get off this plan. We’re going to stick with AJ and we’re going to make these races and keep building for the future. It’s what Red Bull wanted, also. It’s really great to have ownership, sponsorship and management that stands behind us as much as they do.” BECAUSE OF THE INSPECTION PROCESS AND THE EXPERIENCE LEVEL OF YOUR DRIVER, IS THERE PRESSURE ON YOU AND THE TEAM TO BE ORGANIZED WHEN YOU ARRIVE AT THE TRACK? “It does put a lot more on us to be organized. We work really hard about being prepared from the shop when we get here so we’re not working on little things when we get here. We’re completely ready to go on the racetrack as soon as we roll through inspection. All we have to do is put AJ in the car, set the air pressure and we can roll right on the racetrack.”