Only once in 12 previous races at Texas has a Raybestos Rookie won the race. Dale Earnhardt Jr. scored his first career NEXTEL Cup Series win by 5.920 seconds over Jeff Burton in 2000. Earnhardt Jr. led six times for 106 laps, more than any other driver. His crew chief that day was Tony Eury Sr.

TONY EURY SR., CREW CHIEF, No. 15 MENARDS/ENERGIZER CHEVROLET: “Texas was a place, when we got here, it seemed like he liked it. He was always a fan of Atlanta. We went to Atlanta and ran good so we came here with pretty much the same stuff that we ran at Atlanta and he liked this place and he liked to go fast. I don’t know, it just happened. We were all proud of him. We won the Busch race here and then to come back and win that Cup race here. We were always looking forward to coming here because you knew you were going to run good when we got here. It was a good feeling to get that first one out of the way that early. We did a lot of crazy stuff in the Busch Series setup-wise. We did a lot of stuff his Daddy didn’t agree with and we ran good with it. He [Dale Earnhardt] was a kind of person that didn’t like a lot of changes. He had what he wanted to run and we run a lot different stuff. He just kept telling us ‘You can’t do that stuff over here in these Cup cars. You’ve gotta do this or you’ve gotta do that. That stuff ya’ll been doing over there don’t work over here.’ We kept getting that lecture but we started easing that way with the Cup car and it was working, not exactly like it did in the Busch car but we were heading in that same direction. It was pretty cool to come here and have that kind of a setup in the car and then win the race too and him being here after he’d been telling us all the time that you can’t do that kind of stuff. It was real exciting.”

ONCE AGAIN YOU ARE WORKING WITH A RAYBESTOS ROOKIE DRIVER AND TEAM. HOW MUCH MORE DIFFICULT IS IT NOW? “I don’t think it’s any more difficult. We had a lot of stuff here for this team. It’s been operating for years and we just kind of broke it up and made a part time team out of it there for a while. Some of the key people had down there left. They didn’t want to do that. I think our main core of that team stayed. Most of the core of the shop guys stayed. The only problem that we’ve had is hiring experienced help to come in to put with that core since we’re having to build COT cars and these current cars. That kind of got us behind but I don’t really think it’s any different from 2000 to now.”

ARE YOU HAPPY WITH PRACTICE TODAY? “We were pretty happy. I don’t think that time is fast enough but the car drove good. It seemed like qualifying in the Busch cars yesterday picked up like a second from practice time. We were pretty happy with what we ran a while ago. I don’t think the Cup cars are going to pick up a second. If we pick up three tenths or so I think we’ll be good.”