CLINT BOWYER, NO. 07 JACK DANIELS IMPALA SS met with the media and talked about his finish in the Daytona 500 last year, emotions the Daytona 500 brings, his success from last season, the pressure of following up a successful season and more.

ON HIS SPECTACULAR FINISH IN THE DAYTONA 500 LAST YEAR AND ON FINISHING THIS YEAR UP-RIGHT GOING THE CORRECT DIRECTION: “Man, I hope so. That’s the name of the game but I’m looking forward to this race. I always love coming here and this is our biggest race of the year. This is the biggie that you want to win. I’m looking forward to it.”

ON AGREEING WITH THE CALL NASCAR MADE WITH LETTING THE RACE FINISH UNDER GREEN: “I do. I mean coming off of turn four, it was shaped up to be the biggest race ever in the history of the Daytona 500 and so absolutely. Could it have been a bad situation, yes, but the wreck was all behind the race and it was fine.

“Heck no I wasn't upset with Mark Martin, my teammate won.”

ON LOOKING BACK ON THE WAY YOU FINISHED THE DAYTONA 500 LAST YEAR: “Not really. I mean that was a year ago and I can hardly tell you what we did last week. But I look forward to it, I love this race track. I love the way this race plays out. I love the feeling of not knowing what’s going to happen next and you certainly never know what’s going to happen.”

ON HIS NAME AND MARTIN TRUEX, JR. BEING MENTIONED, AS THE YOUNG EDGY DRIVERS THAT COULD FILL A DALE EARNHARDT, SR.TYPE OF ROLE IN THE SPORT: “I would definitely say that both of us are too young in our careers and ourselves to be in any way shape or form like Dale Earnhardt. That’s who everyone wants to mold themselves by. He had everything. He had the respect of his peers, the attention, the fans, everything. And he had the iron on his mantle at home to prove it – the championship trophies. So he definitely was the guy you wanted to build your mold off of but everybody is their own person.”

ON FEELING LIKE AFTER A YEAR LIKE LAST YEAR, BEING ONE ON THOSE GUYS TO WATCH: “I hope so. I think that we certainly had a really good year last year. Does that mean anything this year, no? We have to go back out and regroup ourselves and be the ones to beat again.”

ON REFLECTION OF LAST YEAR AND EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED: “I don’t really ever reflect on things much. I really don’t ever take enough time to think about that. I know we had a good year last year, we had fun and we learned a lot in the car. I think that’s a big part of our success. The thing that makes me most excited about last year is how far we were able to come in a short amount of time and how much we built. I still think we have a lot of room to improve and I’m looking forward to working on it.”

ON WHAT AS A DRIVER THAT HE CAN DO SOME THINGS DIFFERENT: “Everywhere. I mean communication is probably the biggest thing. You always hear us talking about chemistry and communication between the driver and crew chief. I think that is where we came the farthest last year and that’s what’s going to propel us into that next group of lead drivers.”

ON FAVORITE MOMENT EVER FROM THE DAYTONA 500: “Probably when Dale won it in ’98. My parents were here and I had just kind of begun to race cars and the only reason I was watching that race was because my parents were here. You know we were all home as kids watching our parents and doing what they were doing. Just to see the emotion and the effect of him winning that race, it wasn’t just him and his team everybody was a winner that day. You know there are not too many sports that have that kind of effect.”

ON EMOTIONS WHILE GETTING READY TO START THE DAYTONA 500: “I grew up dirt racing with a 25-lap feature and you have to be ready to go on the first lap. As soon as the rag falls you have to go for broke. That’s one thing that I never really got amped up or excited about. Of course you might get goose bumps or something during driver intros when something neat happens. That’s definitely one of those odd moments, but it’s not something that really makes me nervous because it’s 500 miles. If it was 25 laps that separated the winner of the Daytona 500 from the rest then I would be nervous. There’s no sense in getting nervous the first lap.”

ON NOT SEEMING TO FEEL THE PRESSURE: “The pressure wasn’t really on us, but I felt it a little bit. I mean the pressure is there to back up. At first it was well they shouldn’t have made the Chase, then it was they’ll never be able to run with the Hendrick cars, and then it was well, well, well, well. Now, it’s all started over again. Can they prove themselves? That’s where the pressure comes from because I want to take my team and go back out and be consistent and do the things it takes to be inside that Chase and hopefully race for a championship.

ON HIM BEING REALLY LIKE HE IS NOW AND THAT BEING THE REAL CLINT BOWYER: “I’m already fun. This is fun. I don’t know why but I’ve always been able to work harder and be more focused when the pressure is on than not. It forces you to be 100% and dialed into what you are doing when that pressure is on. Not that you get lax or your are not concentrating otherwise. It was fun to be in that situation, the Chase, because you don’t have time to think about anything else. You go home on Monday and you’re headed to the shop and you want to be involved and knowing what’s going on and you’re intense and it’s harder for me to be that way all season. I know that sounds disrespectful or whatever, but it is. It’s hard to have that same intensity week in and week out when you do it so much. But it was a lot of fun to be inside that Chase. I was racing Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. I mean come on you know, that’s pretty big.”

ON REPEATING LAST YEARS SUCCESS: “I hope so. I’m afraid foreigners might be the ones to beat this year.”

ON HOW MUCH SUCCESS FROM LAST YEAR WAS A RESULT OF HIM AND GIL MARTIN BEING ON THE SAME PAGE AND TALKING THE SAME LANGUAGE: “I think that was a big part of it. I think our communication and working together was the biggest part of our success. It was the biggest thing that propelled us into that next level and that is what is again going to get us inside that elite group of teams that we all know runs up front week in and week out. That’s what they had. They had that chemistry, trust in one another and they have that bond where they understand what’s going on to become a force that’s unstoppable.”

ON WHAT HE WANTS TO SEE AT THE GATORADE DUELS: “The No. 07 Jack Daniels Chevrolet in Victory Lane with a big old smile on my face. That’s what I want to see.

"I want to see my car handling better than anybody else’s. That’s just the way it is. But it’s a neat thing that you get so much seat time and so much experience before you go into the 500. By the time you are in the 500 you have been out there, you’ve drafted, you’ve seen what people are going to do, and you know who you can draft with, who you can trust, and who you can’t. Hopefully you’ve put yourself in about every situation you are going to see in the 500 and you hope you still have your same hot rod. We have all seen that before. That’s a big part of those races – you want to be able to put yourself into situations you can learn from, but is the risk worth the gain.”

ON WHAT IS MOST UNCERTAIN ABOUT THIS SEASON: “Just what everybody else is doing. In the off season I feel like we made gains. We stepped in the right direction and we went down the right path but what has everybody else done? I feel like we have tested a lot and we’ve worked our butts off to make sure we are prepared, but you know everybody else is going to do the same thing. Are they better or worse, only time will tell.

“We have to improve everywhere. Everybody has to improve. Last season when Jimmie Johnson won the championship that would have beat all other seasons and it will probably take something better than that in the future. That’s just the way things are in any sport. You’ve got to be bigger and better and that’s why we have been testing and working hard in our off season.

“Communication, I think that is where I have to be better. I have to be a better leader. It’s hard for me to take on that quarterback responsibility. When I was racing back home in dirt cars, it was me, the old man and my little brother. It was easy because you were the driver and if you wanted to change something you were going to get out and change it and if they didn’t like it, too bad. But now, there are a lot of people, there’s a lot of responsibility, and there’s a lot of people that their lives are at stake as much as yours.

"I definitely feel more pressure this year than I did last year. I mean last year even through the Chase no one expected us to do those things. This year if we make the Chase everybody is going to hopefully be seeing it different, but only time will tell. That’s the hardest thing about the off season, having all those media roundups and things and everybody wants to know. They want you to say you are going to go out there and beat everybody, right? I don’t know. I feel like we have done the things it takes to make our program better. Is that going to be enough, I don’t know. Until we see that, not at Daytona, you know Daytona is so much different than any place we go. When we go to California and Vegas, a short track and we get on all three different types of race tracks, I’ll be able to tell you real quick how our season is going to go.”

ON REACHING A POINT LAST YEAR WHEN HE ACTUALLY THOUGHT, OKAY I BELONG HERE: “You know, maybe at the end of the year. The one thing that always stood out was that moment when you were able to sit back and realize what you had accomplished. It was in New York when we were driving around Times Square and I was behind Jeff Gordon and there were a lot of drivers that I have looked up to for a long time driving behind me. That was probably the most gratifying thing that I was able to see throughout the season.”

MARTIN TRUEX JR., NO. 1 BASS PRO SHOPS / TRACKER BOATS IMPALA SS met with media to discuss how his new Chevy race car is handling, drafting, track conditions, being wronged by other drivers, and more. Full transcript:

ARE THE CARS TOO FAST? “I don’t necessarily think they are too fast. I don’t think they handle as good as everyone thought they would. I think that’s only going to get worse as the week goes on. But I was pretty happy with my car, so I wasn’t doing too much complaining.”

IF NASCAR MADE A CHANGE TO THE RESTRICTOR PLATE, WOULD YOU BE AGAINST IT? “I don’t think the restrictor plate is the problem. I think that they way the cars are set up with the bump stops is the big issue. So maybe if we could do something to allow a little bit more travel in the front, that would be the biggest help for everybody.”

WHAT WOULD THAT ALLOW YOU TO DO? “Well, the problem is we only get two and a half, or two inches of shock travel right now and the car wants to hit the bump stops so hard. It needs to be able to travel a little bit more so that when it goes through those giant bumps down in the corners, it doesn’t slam on those bump stops so hard. So if we could do something to allow the car a little bit more travel so that it isn’t so rigid all the time, I think it would help. A lot of guys are running really soft springs and it’s just making them hit the bump stops real hard with a lot of force and it’s making the cars bounce off the ground. It’s kind of hard to get around doing that. To be able to go fast you need to have these cars low and on the ground, but then they’re slamming on the bump stops. So it’s a touchy situation and it’s real hard to get them just right.”

IS THERE ANY PARTICULAR TROUBLE AREA? “Both corners. All the way through both of them. It’s real bumpy here. Its old and worn out and the bumps here are big and we’re going real fast. Both corners are a pretty big problem for everybody, it seems like.”

DRIVERS USUALLY REMEMBER WHEN THEY’VE BEEN DONE WRONG. HOW LONG OF A GAP DID IT EVER GO FOR YOU WHEN YOU FELT LIKE YOU WERE WRONGED BY SOMEBODY BEFORE YOU GOT EVEN? WEEKS, MONTHS, OR A YEAR? “I’ve never gotten myself into a situation like that before. I’ve never had trouble with certain people over and over like some of these guys have.”

NOT JUST AT THE SPRINT CUP LEVEL, BUT ANY LEVEL IN YOUR CAREER “I’ve never gotten even, I don’t think. I may have done things differently or raced guys differently because they did to me, but a guy hasn’t ever rubbed me wrong and I went out and wrecked him six months later. I don’t really think it works that way. I know you don’t forget the guys or how they race you; I know you don’t forget that. You might not cut them as much slack, but you’re surely not going to go out there and just potentially wreck somebody because they did it to you a year ago.”

IF NASCAR DOESN’T PENALIZE (KURT BUSCH / TONY STEWART INCIDENT DURING BUDWEISER SHOOTOUT PRACTICE), WILL YOU BE SURPRISED? “Not really. It was a practice incident. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did. It’s water under the bridge. Maybe they’ll just tell the guys they’d better not do it again. I just hope that they don’t do it in the race or on the track in real situations.”

WERE YOU SURPRISED AT HOW INTENSE THAT SECOND PRACTICE SESSION WAS? “I was real surprised. Everybody was out there trying to figure out what their cars were going to do in situations that are going to happen during the race. The old car you could put in a lot of different situations. You could get away with a lot because it handled so good. I think a lot of guys think they can do the same thing with these cars and so far, you can’t do that. Getting in the middle with three wide is a bad situation and I know it’s going to happen in the race. A lot of people are going to try it. And you’re going to get put in that position when you don’t want to be and it’s going to be hard to get out of. It’s going to make for a very exciting race, that’s for sure, and one that it’s going to be important to be around at the end. And it’s probably going to be hard to be around at the end with the way the practice looked last night.”

ON THE DIFFERENT LEVEL OF RESPECT HE’S RECEIVED ON THE TRACK “Just little things. As far as people giving you slack. People making decisions that aren’t going to mess you up. If you’re racing hard and a guy sees that you’re faster, they’ll let you go. A lot of times, with a newer guy they’ll say, ah, in two or three laps he’s going to mess up or he’s going to do something stupid so I’ll just drive away from him. I’m not going to let him go. Little things like that. Little things like just walking around the garage and having a conversation with one of the veterans about your car or about how he thinks things are going or what you think about the track and the car and the tires and stuff and them actually having a genuine conversation with you, I think.”

DO YOU HAVE A SENSE THAT WHEN YOU UPSET SOMEBODY THEY START DRIVING YOU A LITTLE DIFFERENTLY? ‘Yeah, usually it’s just a little hand gesture out the window or a look they give you in the garage. You can tell. Hand gestures out the window are a lot more common than people think. I’ve been known to give a few, and I’ve taken a few also.”

ARE YOU PUT IN A SITUATION WHERE YOU HAVE TO RACE WITH SOMEBODY THAT YOU JUST DON’T TRUST? “Yeah, at here you never know who you’re going to be around. You can go from first to 25th or 30th in one lap. You know how that racing goes here. You just never know where you’re going to end up. It’s a constant revolving door of cars and people moving throughout the field. There is no telling who you’re going to be around or in front of or next to. You could be put in any situation under the sun, pretty much.”

IS THERE A TIME WHEN YOU HAVE TO DRAFT WITH SOMEBODY THAT YOU’D RATHER AVOID? “Yeah, most likely. Especially here when it’s three-wide and there’s not really anywhere to go a lot of times. And you’ll end up behind somebody you don’t really want to be around and there’s really nothing you can do about it.”

WHAT KIND OF MODE DO YOU CLICK INTO ON THE TRACK? “When the helmet goes on, everything changes. That’s for sure. There is no more Mr. Nice Guy. You do what it takes to win. You do what it takes to be fast. You’re focused 100 percent on that car and communicating with your crew how to make it better. Nothing else goes through your mind.”

DO YOU RECOGNIZE THAT YOU CHANGE WHEN YOU’RE IN THE CAR AND IN THAT SITUATION? “No, but other people do (laughs).”

WHAT, ON THE RADIO? “Just people in general – people on the crew and people on the team. People that are listening or watching.”

SOMETIMES YOU SEE A GUY WHO CHANGES WHEN HE’S DOING HIS JOB “Well it takes a lot to do what we do inside the car. Everybody in this garage area has a different personality. But when we get behind the wheel, we’re all the same. We’re all after one thing. We do whatever we can to win races and run up front and do the best job we can possibly do. And I think that’s the norm across the garage area.”

SCOTT RIGGS, NO. 66 STATE WATER HEATERS IMPALA SS met with members of the media and discussed the 2008 season:

ON UPCOMING SEASON WITH NEW TEAM, SPONSOR AND CHEVROLET: "New team, new season and I feel like I am back home with my manufacturer. I think there is a lot of potential with our team. Being able to work with Bootie Barker, who have I have been sort of racing with him and against him for years now. Being able to work with him hand in hand, work on the way we look at things, I think I have finally met someone that is with me that probably has the most like me. He carries the stress, he is the high-strung and perfectionist I have ever worked with as far as having the same attitude that I do. I am enjoying working with him.

"At the same time, it is good to be back with Chevrolet, just because I have been with several manufacturers in the past, but Chevrolet is the one that always takes care of their people."

ON HIS FEELING OF HAVING A SPOT GUARANTEED IN DAYTONA 500: "It is good, but at the same time, it is short-lived. You only have five races here to make sure you are guaranteed in and we want to make sure the first five we can be successful and have a strong hole in our points. The next five after that are just as crucial as the first five. There is a lot of pressure on not just myself, but the entire organization to make sure both of these teams have the first 10 races out of the box be very strong."

JEREMY MAYFIELD, NO. 70 MIDNIGHT MOON/HAAS AUTOMATION IMPALA SS met with members of the media and discussed the 2008 season:

ON 2008 SEASON WITH NEW TEAM AND CHEVROLET: "I am excited about this season. I have been a huge Chevrolet fan my whole life. When I was little, I used to love the Chevrolet stuff. I am glad to be a part of that. Going in the new season with the Haas/CNC Racing Team all the stuff they have done and have going for us over there, it has been awesome for me. I am just glad to be here and be able to be a part of the 50th running of the Daytona 500 in a Chevrolet."

ON RETURNING AS A TEAMMATE WITH SCOTT RIGGS: "I feel really good about it. Scott and I have worked together before. I think that is going to be one of our strong points. We both have kind of got something to prove and feel like if we can get the job done, we have been teammates before, there are no egos here, we want to help each other. We get along great. As far as that goes, I think that is going to be really good.

"The rest is coming together. Every day it gets better and better and better. I feel like we have everything we need to race with, it is a matter of a little luck and get things rolling in the right direction, we will be in good shape."