JIMMIE JOHNSON, DRIVER OF THE NO. 48 LOWE’S IMPALA SS, met with media members at Las Vegas Motor Speedway today and talked about track conditions, qualifying, Hendrick Motorsports’ start to the season and much more.

ON HIS THOUGHTS ABOUT QUALIFYING BASED ON THE TEST SESSION IN JANUARY AND THE PRACTICE SESSION TODAY: "The conditions out there today are much different than what we had in the test session and I think a lot of guys are struggling with grip, so the test session wasn’t totally useless but the heat of the day today compared to the cool temperatures it is much, much different. It’s been a good challenge for us. The car had been really loose, we had a bunch of cautions off of turn four. The sun is sitting on that side of the speedway and getting those two corners really hot and that is going to make it really exciting. I go out early so I’m really not expecting a great qualifying effort today. We are going to try like hell but I just think with the sun being as hot as it is and as early as we go that the guys later in the session are certainly going to have an advantage. We will get all we can and I think we are off to a good start. California went well for us. The practice we’ve had so far has been very good for us and I’m looking forward to a good race.”

ON WHY SO MANY CARS ARE LOOSING GRIP AND SPINNING IN PRACTICE: “The grip level is much different today than what we had in the test. At the test session we could drive really, really hard around this track and I think guys came out, including myself I had a couple of big moments fortunately didn’t hit anything, I just had an idea of what I could run and how hard I could run, braking points, and where I should be back in the gas and the pace is much, much different than what I first expected. I think guys, not only in their driving styles but also the setups and what we got away with in the test session just isn’t working right now. It’s too warm. It’s probably 30 to 40 degrees warmer in the air temperature today than what we had in the test session which means even higher yet on the black top.”

ON HOW HE FEELS HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS AS A TEAM HAS STARTED THE SEASON: “Man it’s only two races in. From our standpoint, we finished second and third last week and unfortunately two cars were wrecked early. Daytona is Daytona; we’ve thrown that out the window. We feel like we’re doing just fine. We have nothing to fear, nothing to worry about. We have a lot to learn about the car. There’s really no concern or issues on our behalf. At least three of the cars have been in the top 10 on speed. Jeff and I sat at top of the board throughout most of the day, so business as usual. Everything’s great.”

ON HIS ABILITY TO ADAPT TO CHANGES AT RACE TRACKS HE HAS HAD A LOT OF SUCCESS AT AND GOING FOR FOUR-IN-A-ROW THIS WEEKEND AT VEGAS: “I really don’t know why that continues for us. I hope that we can keep it rolling and continue to do well here. I think we are off to a good start. I said something earlier this week in a teleconference that we did and it’s more of us really hitting our stride at this track compared to other points in the season, really compared to California. So I just think we get here and we got a good sense of the car and really just get things right for this weekend and carry it on. Hopefully we can do that again. I’m kind of in a weird spot because I don’t have anything telling me I can’t win four in a row and nothing telling me I can. We ran well last week, Carl (Edwards) was much stronger at the end of the race so we know we have some work to do there. The car didn’t drive perfect today so we still have a little bit of work to go, but this early in the season I think everybody shows up saying hey we’ve got a shot. We don’t have good or bad really in our minds right now we’re just rolling with it.”

ON RYAN NEWMAN’S COMMENT THAT HE IS THE DRIVER TO BEAT THIS YEAR AND COMING INTO VEGAS WITH THE NEW CAR AND THE FIRST TIME ON A 1.5-MILE TRACK. “I appreciate Ryan saying that one, and two there’s a lot of things that have changed from last year to this year as we all know with the cars. Even from the test session to now the cars are driving much different and the weather conditions are really playing into that. California was a really good indication for the teams, the direction, the set ups what to mess with and where to go and I would expect a better race this weekend than we had last. As we build on through this season all the teams get stronger and better driving race cars as we go. It is early; it’s sort of a crapshoot. We are smarter now than we were at California, so directionally we are moving in the right way. But it’s early and we are still kind of guessing right now.”

ON THE PREDICITON OF HIGH WINDS FOR SUNDAY AND HOW HE FEELS THEY WILL AFFECT THE NEW CAR. “When we were out here for the test session it was really cool but we had high winds. The high winds really caused some problems. It was blowing into our back going into turn three and a couple of guys had some troubles with that and got into the wall. If the winds are blowing in that same direction, I think it’s going to be a difficult race. And if the temperature stays up with those windy conditions, it will be really difficult out there."

ON GETTING KICKED OUT OF THE INSPECTION LINE AND LOOSING SOME TIME IN PRACTICE: “We could’ve used the extra time. It was probably 15 to 20 minutes we missed of practice. I guess one of the hard points, which I assume was on the nose, was off by 1/16 of an inch. NASCAR is really cracking down on everything going through the tech line. 1/16th is hard to believe that would keep you from getting on track, but it’s the way it is and we had to go back through. Unfortunately there were some other drivers and teams that had to go back through and it just got us behind and we couldn’t get the car out on time for the start of practice.”

ON HOW THE UPCOMING RACES AT ATLANTA AND BRISTOL CAN AFFECT THE POINT STANDINGS AND WHAT TO EXPECT. “I definitely feel that same way, that a lot can change. I’m trying to be smart on track and make sure we get off to a good start with the points. It’s something we have always been able to do and it’s helpful. It lets us focus on the right things and really start pushing hard after you get past that five race mark. It may sound crazy, but we set goals and the first goal is to make sure we are in the top 35. That sounds remedial, but it’s a tough business out there. If you look where the 88 and the 5 are right now, they’ve been running great just have had some bad luck go their way and we don’t want to find ourselves in that situation either. I think a lot can change and with all the new things we have this year, it’s really tough on everybody. It has a potential in race six of this season to have some guys get caught out. It really does have that potential. It’s a handful right now and I think Atlanta is going to be really difficult to get these cars around and we get to Bristol and who knows with Bristol. That place is always crazy and stuff going on. That’s a place I haven’t had a lot of success at so I need to make sure I’m high in the points if I go to Bristol and have a bad week I’m not in trouble.”

JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DUPONT / NICORETTE IMPALA SS met with media to discuss the engine problems at the California race, the Las Vegas track, his expectations of the new race car in general, the expectations of Hendrick Motorsports teams to win, the Texas race, and more.

ON HIS ENGINE FAILING AT LAST WEEK’S FONTANA RACE: “We don’t have all the engines back at the shop to be able to dissect it all out and figure out what caused that problem. That one was a big surprise to us. And so I don’t really have any answers for you right now because I haven’t gotten all the answers myself.”

DID YOU FEEL ANYTHING UNUSUAL WITH THE CAR RIGHT BEFORE THE ENGINE TROUBLE? “No, I never felt anything. There were no signs. I was just fortunate that the caution came out when it did because the engine blew up right as the caution was coming out. The fact that it was also the white flag was pretty fortunate for us. I never really get too concerned when it comes to engines. Hendrick Motorsports is so good and so thorough and we have problems, like anybody else, but nobody analyzes them and fixes them faster and better and gives us more confidence every week than what they do. So we certainly hope we don’t have that issue again. None of our other cars had the issue and it might have just been an isolated problem. It was a broken crankshaft; we did find that out. That hasn’t happened to us for about three years.”

HOW IS THE NEW CAR RESPONDING IN LAS VEGAS? “My car was great. We took off there and very first lap was our fastest lap. We were having a little bit of trouble backing that up. And there are just new things that we’re learning with this car all the time, trying to figure out what it needs and what it takes and what we can do to make it get through the bumps or get more grip. And so we fought a few things there, halfway through practice where we think we’ve got it figured out and we should be in good shape. I know some guys were having trouble and I’m not exactly sure why.

“I feel like my car was in pretty good control and had pretty decent grip. You can’t drive this car the same way you could drive the old car. I don’t know. I think that when you look at what it takes for the bump stops and the engineering that goes into that, it’s very scientific. It’s very difficult to get it just right. And if we didn’t have our seven post tester at the shop and so many people working on it day and night, I don’t know if we would have hit it as fast as we did right off the truck.”

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET AROUND HERE? ”Well, you’ve got a lot more vertical load here than we do any other place and that’s what’s going to make it unique with this car.

“Plus, there are a lot of bumps getting into Turn 1. So you want a car that has good balance and good grip and gets off the bumps well. That’s not really different than what we’ve had here in the past. It’s just with this new car, those things are easier said than done.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK HAS CAUSED ALL THESE GUYS TO SLIP ON THE TRACK DURING PRACTICE? “I think we just have less grip with this car. We put up a pretty fast number. I think guys are trying to push the limits to get faster and try to put down that fast lap. I’m not really sure. My car felt pretty good.”

IS THAT FINE AREA OF ‘LOOSE’ SMALLER HERE THAN JUST ABOUT ANYWHERE ELSE? “I was free off of Turn 4, which is where a lot of guys were braking loose. But I can’t say that I felt like it was out of the ordinary or really crazy. I think that what we’re seeing, especially at a track like here in Las Vegas, the vertical loads are a lot greater because of the banking. And so I think we’re seeing some teams that have got it and some teams are way off. It’s just how this car works in the beginning stages of going to some of these different tracks that you’re going to have some guys that have engineered all the right components and figured it out, and some that haven’t.”

DURING PRACTICE, THERE WERE SIX GUYS GOING SIDEWAYS. DO YOU THINK THAT’S WHAT WE’LL SEE IN SUNDAY’S RACE? ”It’s different when you’re trying to make qualifying runs. You know you’re really committed and you’re blasting the car down in there and trying to get back in the gas hard. In the race, you get a few laps to fill. I’m not saying it’s not going to happen, but I think it would happen more on qualifying day than any other day.”

LOOKING AHEAD, WHAT WILL YOU LEARN AT ATLANTA AND LAS VEGAS THAT YOU CAN APPLY AT TEXAS? HOW IMPORTANT WILL THAT FIRST PRACTICE BE THERE BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T TEST THERE? “It’s already a tough race track. And when you look at the transitions, the vertical loads, the bumps, and the speeds, it’s probably going to be closer to this track than to any other track we go to. And we’ll try to go with all that we know. We’ll try to engineer and do the science and the math and everything and try to figure out how much travel we’re going to get and the loads that we’re going to get based on past experience and being there. I think that’s what’s going to make a team like ours really shine is that you have the resources to be able to figure those things out without going there. And hopefully we can get a little bit closer. Some of it is just a guessing game. The biggest challenge we’re going to have with the Impala and going forward this year is going to tracks that we haven’t tested at and been to and gotten the data and the laps with the telemetry.”

YOU GUYS (HENDRICK TEAMS) WON NINE OF 16 COT RACES LAST YEAR. JIMMIE JOHNSON SAID YOU’RE JUST SORT OF CHASING IT RIGHT NOW. IS THAT WHY, BECAUSE OF NEW TRACKS? “Yeah, you know what? We had something pop up there and we took off the first lap. It was unbelievable. I was like wow, you guys have really done your homework. And the car was great. As the practice went on, we lot it. And we weren’t really sure why. We went back and looked at some things and we feel like we’ve got a pretty good idea of what happened. And again, it’s just something you can’t predict. You can’t plan for. It’s just things about this car that are going to change that you don’t know how to respond to or sometimes you don’t catch it soon enough in a short practice like that. We hope we caught it and we’ll find out when we go back out to qualify because we’ve got an awesome race car.”

PEOPLE WERE JUST ASKING JIMMIE JOHNSON WHY HAVEN’T YOU GUYS WON YET? WE’RE TWO RACES IN AND ALREADY PEOPLE ARE ASKING THAT! HAVE YOU GUYS RAISED THE BAR SO HIGH THAT THE EXPECTATIONS ARE ALMOST RIDICULOUS? ”Yeah, I think there’s a lot of hype. There’s a lot of expectations put on Hendrick this year you know (like) bringing (Dale Earnhardt) Junior into the mix. Jimmie had back-to-back championship and we finished second after having the year we had. I felt awesome last week and as good as things went for us, I feel like it’s just a matter of time before we can win. At Daytona we had our problem, but that’s a good problem to have is people asking you how come you haven’t won yet. That means that they expect it and so do we.”

WITH SUCH A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER BETWEEN TODAY AND THE DAY OF THE LAS VEGAS TEST, WAS THE TEST WORTH IT? “Yeah, you’ve got to get telemetry on the bumps and travel and the grip level might be a little bit different. The consistency might be a little bit different. Track temperature is different. But it was still worth coming out here. I would have rather had these conditions. And I heard it might be windy on Sunday, so who knows?”

MORE ON THE VEGAS TEST “Well, data is data. If you got any at all, it’s a good thing. The winds definitely threw some things off here. The temperature threw some things off. But we still got good information that is valuable to us. Would we have been better off going someplace else? Maybe Texas or something? Well, year, maybe. Normally the weather is pretty good and consistent here, like it is right now. It’s beautiful. I like the track. I think the bumps in Turn 1 are a little bit too much. Other than that I love the track. Our car is pretty good right now, so I’m pretty excited about this weekend, especially having our DuPont / Nicorette car. The thing is hot looking an hopefully it goes fast too.”

IS QUALIFYING A LITTLE BIT OF A MYSTERY ON 1.5-MILE TRACK TO THE TEAMS RIGHT NOW? “Yeah, it’s a mystery to me. This car just doesn’t have the grip that the old car did. It’s so easy to blow through the tires and to be too aggressive and ruin you’re whole lap. You can think of it one way where you go, okay, if I just give 90 percent, I might be in the top five or top 10. If I give 100 percent, I might win the pole or I might be 30th or 40th or wrecked. So that’s tough to balance.”

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE FOR TEAMS TO GET COMFORTABLE WITH QUALIFYING THE NEW CAR? SIX MONTHS? ALL YEAR? “I think it’s constantly evolving all the time. For some teams, it might take five races. For some teams it might take 38. I don’t know. I’m not sure. I think this whole year is going to be a process for us. I think next year everybody is going to be much more comfortable. Any time there is change, it takes a long time to adapt. Maybe the second time around to the tracks might be the best test and indication. But usually it’s a whole season is what it takes.”

ON HOW HE FELT ABOUT THE LAS VEGAS TRACK LAST YEAR COMPARED TO NOW “The tire was rock hard and it just didn’t suit the track. The track was fine. The bumps are a little bit of an issue.”

WHAT DID THEY CHANGE ON THE TRACK? THE NEW TIRE? THE NEW CAR? EVERYTHING? I think it’s just the fact that the track is worn a little bit. It’s aged, which is typical. All new race tracks rarely the first two races are we really happy about it because Goodyear can’t build a tire to properly run the race. And it’s not their fault and it’s not the track’s fault. It’s just kind of the box that you’re put in to. You know over time it’s going to get better. If there are any complaints about this track I think it’s just the bumps going into Turn 1. And this year I think we’ve got our hands full with the new car. We’re a lot less focused on the race track than we are the car.”

KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 SHELL-PENNZOIL IMPALA SS, met with members of the media at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on racing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway; last week's race at California Speedway; differences in Nationwide Series versus Sprint Cup Series cars and other topics:

ON LOOKING FORWARD TO A "NORMAL" RACE WEEKEND": "I am looking forward to the weather being nice. Last week was hard on the teams, finding hotels rooms, to keep the people around and logistically home and back. You end up being home for a couple of days. Really, the cars weren't that big of a deal; they were already on their way out there. It didn't matter on that part of it. Still, everybody wants to get home, just get a sense of what is going on normally and go from there."

ON WHAT HE IS EXPECTING THIS WEEKEND BASED ON TEST: "We had very little tire issues on the Cup side. On the Nationwide (NNS) side, we had a lot of issues. It was 30 degrees cooler; I don't think speeds are going to be what they were at test. Hopefully that will all go away and we will have a good race weekend."

ON HOW MUCH FINANCIAL IMPACT ON HIS NATIONWIDE DID RAIN DELAY CAUSE: "Just in hotel rooms, it was probably about $15,000 a day. Every day that you stay, you have to pay that for rooms. The flight stuff was already all together. They waited on all the teams with the flight system we use. But with the hotel rooms and the rental cars, it was about $15,000 a day impact.

"You really try hard to control the things that you can control. There are just some things you can't control and you try budget accordingly knowing that a few times a year, you are going to have some things pop up that are out of the ordinary, that is just part of our game and how it all goes around.

"I'd say you learn this over time. When you have things like that happen for the first time, you want to force things to happen but there is really nothing you can do about it to force something. You try to plan accordingly and try to work yourself ahead on the schedule to make things better so when those things pop up, that is when the good teams start to shine.

"My first shock as a team owner with a financial impact I didn't expect was when they came up with these new tests and you have to pay several thousands of dollars per car to show up and test at a NASCAR test. There are just a lot of little things that don't publicly come out that surprise you as an owner"

ON HOW MANY GROOVES THERE WILL BE ON LVMS DURING THE RACE: "I think you can run several different lines, I think the race track was pretty neat at the test with the Cup cars. These cars (Monte Carlo SS run in the NNS) are so fast through the corners. They are about 14 or 15 miles an hour faster through the corners than the Cup cars. These cars have a pretty high sensation of speed. I think the groove is definitely going to move up as the race goes on. I don't think you are going to be able to hold the car on the bottom all day. As fast as we are going, in order to maintain that speed, the momentum is the biggest thing. With the NNS car you have to have it to keep them going. I think the groove will definitely move up."

ON RETURNING TO ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY, THE SITE OF HIS FIRST NSCS WIN: "I will be honest with you, that whole first win and that first year was really just kind of a blur. We go back and it just seems like so much has happened since then, you almost forget about it, but every time you go back, you get that reminder of how things went and what went on. It is obviously something you can't do again, win your first race, so just pretty cool and go back and watch the race and see how it all finished and how it all shook out. It is a special place for us to go back every time just because of the fact that was the place of our first Cup win.

"When I watch the race, the only thing I think about is I drove in high and I probably should have went low. I almost threw the thing away in a half of a race track there. That is what I think about every time I watch it is why did I go high and not go low.

"It worked, barely, but it worked. I had gotten to that point by racing on the bottom and for some reason on the last lap, I thought he (Jeff Gordon) was going to go high because I had been going on the bottom but, he wound up going to the bottom and I went to the top. "

ON INCREASED PREMIUM OF QUALIFYING AND PIT STALL SELECTION: "I thing qualifying is important but you know, we went to the back of the pack last week at California and we ran right up through the pack. I felt like we got back to where we were running in two runs, so I didn't feel like it was a very big problem to pass at particular track last week for us. I think the handling on the cars goes a lot of different directions for different people and that is going to make more passes because it is easier to make mistakes. I didn't think it was harder to pass for us last week than it has been in the past, I thought it was actually easier.

"My car was pretty good, we were just a little bit loose. For the most part, the car was very consistent for the whole weekend and was good at the test. It reacted the same way it did at the test. I have been really pleasantly surprised with how well the cars have driven on the bigger race tracks.

"For everything we had going on last week, we went to the back, we went to the back. Got the penalty, went all the way to the back and were overcome that and have a decent day. Statistically that particular race track hasn't been very good for us in the past. We always seem to run well, but I was just glad we were able to overcome some circumstances and rebound with a top-10. That is what you have to do when you are having a bad day is in order to be competitive for the championship, you got to have a bad day and make it in to something. It seems like the guys win the championship always do that year in and year out in the particular year that they win. For us, it was a good weekend. We have had two of those weeks at the beginning of the year where we haven't felt like everything quite went right and we were able to make decent days out of them."

ON WHERE RCR IS WITH INTERMEDIATE TRACK PROGRAM: "I think everybody in the garage is down on horsepower compared to what the Toyotas are. I mean, in the NNS it is almost a joke as to how much more power the make compared to everyone else. I feel good that our team has made gains in the engine department power wise, but it is hard when you are racing almost restrictor plate races every week and you are racing against cars that are making 20-plus horsepower more than you, it is hard to keep up. Hopefully that is the reason that we put these inserts in the motors is so we can keep the fields even and obviously, the whole field is not completely stupid. They have all been here a long time, that particular brand makes substantially more power than anybody else in the garage, so, it has got something to do with the parts and pieces that they have compared to everybody else."

ON IF SITUATION IS THE SAME IN NSCS WITH HORSEPOWER DIFFERENCE: "Absolutely. They have same power advantage they have in the NNS garage; it just doesn't show up as much, because there are more good teams to overcome that. Right now everybody is trying to play a little catch-up on the power side of it to get to where they need to be. Those engine packages are all brand new, so right now it is not good for anybody in the garage unless you have a Toyota."

ON IF NASCAR NEEDS TO LOOK IN TO: "I don't think it is hidden. All the engine dyno numbers are pretty apparent. I think it is all public knowledge if I am not mistake. It is all pretty apparent there is a distinct problem between the both divisions."

ON FINE LINE TO PUSH ENGINES TO FAR TRYING TO CATCH UP: "I feel like we are very good at racing in our parameters and knowing our means and how far we can push things. That has always been something that RCR has been very good at. I don't think we are going to get caught up in trying to win one race here or there. We are going to go out and race and try to put ourself in position to win but we are not going to go and put ourself in jeopardy of throwing away a whole race weekend to try to win one race."

ON PARODY: "Parody is good for the sport. All the other makes seem to be relatively close. You have the other brand really has only two or three good race teams throughout their stuff so I think it really showed how much they were lacking a really experienced race team when they put their stuff in the Gibbs cars."

ON DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NNS CARS AND CUP CARS: "We don't have enough time to talk about all of that. It is from start to finish, top to bottom, everything is totally different from one car to another."

ON ISSUES WITH CALIFORNIA RACE TRACK: "Well, it might have built them in a little excuse for next year. (Chuckles) The races were better there than I thought they had been in the past with the Impala SS. I haven't had a chance to watch the NNS race. It was pretty much the Tony Stewart show. He dominated the whole show. It is not good for it, they are right on the verge of not having enough people, not having enough good things happen to make it positive so, the rain delay didn't do them any favors by any means."

ON DIFFERENCES IN HORSEPOWER FOR OTHER MANUFACTURER BEING MORE EVEN ON SHORT TRACKS: "I don't think any of their race teams are any better than anybody else's. You guys asked what I thought and I just told you based on all the chassis dyno stuff; they have a pretty distinct advantage in that department right now.

"I don't think that advantage will hurt anything anywhere. You want to give me 20-horsepower, I will take it. (Laughs)."

ON RCR SHORT TRACK PROGRAM: "Our short track program has always been good and we like going to get away from the 1.5-mile stigma of the whole sport. It is nice to go to the Martinsvilles and Bristols for a change of pace.

ON LIKING SHORT-TRACK RACING: "Short track racing is short track racing and most of us came from short track racing so everybody likes to go there and get some donuts on their doors."

JEFF BURTON, DRIVER OF THE NO. 31 AT&T IMPALA SS, sat down with media members at Las Vegas Motor Speedway today and talked about concerns about tire wear, racing the new car at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the importance of getting practice time in, his thoughts on last week and the track at California and much more.

ON THE QUICK TURN AROUND WITH LAST WEEKS RACE BEING DELAYED TO MONDAY: “Yeah it has been. Part of me just wants to leave California and come straight here. That doesn’t work very well with our schedules. What are you going to do? It rains on Sunday and you race on Monday. It’s bad for the fans; it’s not that bad for us. It shortens the week up. I had to be in New York on Tuesday morning early to film a commercial and that made Monday night and Tuesday morning a little too close together.”

ON RACING IN THE TOP GROVE OF WHAT IS KNOW AS A BOTTOM-GROVE TRACK: “Last year we had an engine problem late in the race. I’m convinced we were going to win that race. We broke real late running second. Jimmie (Johnson) had gotten by me but we had started to come back on him and we were running the high line. I think the high line is going to be very prevalent this week. I don’t think there is any doubt about it. You are going to see people in the high line. I won the Nationwide race in the high line and I truly believe I was going to win the Cup race in the high line last year. I think this year there will be a lot of people up there.”

ON CONCERNS ABOUT TIRE WEAR THAT CAME UP IN THE TEST SESSION IN JANUARY: “We have to be aware of it. There’s not a whole lot we can do about it to be quite honest as a driver. The only thing you can do is slow down. How are you going to do that? You gotta go; you gotta make the car drive as good as it can drive. I think as the track gets rubbered up it will certainly get better but we certainly saw excessive tire wear here during the test which isn’t completely unusual especially with a high-grove track like this, tire wear is always an issue. I suspect it will get better as the weekend goes on. I hope it will.”

ON RACING THE NEW CAR AT THIS TRACK AND WHAT HE LEARNED FROM CALIFORNIA: “Well I think last week we obviously learned a lot. Even though we didn’t get the result that we wanted, we thought we ran pretty decent. I got in the wall and it didn’t really hurt the car that much once we got it fixed but we lost all our track position. So I want to get back and redeem myself for that. We’re still learning a lot. This car is so new to us; we only have one race on it really in this configuration on this kind of track. There’s a whole lot to learn. I think that everybody’s wanting to get at it. Of course last week we didn’t qualify, so we still haven’t qualified one of these cars at one of these tracks yet and there’s a lot of question about that as well.”

ON QUALIFYING THE NEW CAR WITHOUT HAVING QUALIFIED THE CAR BEFORE: “These cars are obviously completely different than the old cars in a lot of ways. Because of the front end on the cars we can’t travel the cars very much before they hit the race track. Of course, when you go to qualify you’re going faster which makes the car want to travel more. You put tape on the front end, which makes the car want to travel more. There’s a big transition between qualifying trim and race trim. In the old cars we had, all in the garage, found ways to understand how to switch over. What that car did from race trim verses qualifying trim we had a pretty good, you know it varied from teams, but we had a pretty good understanding of what it took. And these cars I think we are still trying to figure it out. On a track like this, that’s really, really fast – I mean you are going to see cars that are way off of the pole. I think you are going to see cars that have real trouble and the guys that qualify well are not going to have trouble. I think you are going to see a bigger disparity than what you normally see just because we don’t know a lot about it. The more we run them, the more we’ll learn. We have teams in the garage that claim that they don’t do anything from race trim to qualifying trim and we have teams in the garage that say they have major, major changes and a lot of that is driver preference. I think what it really boils down to is getting the driver accustomed and comfortable with what it is that particular team has to do to be successful in qualifying. That was a long answer, I’m sorry.”

ON THE STATEMENT THAT THE SPEEDS THROUGH THE MIDDLE WERE OFF BY 12 OR 14 MPH IN THE TEST: “I don’t think that’s correct. Give me a minute and I’ll get you that information. Our race pace lap times in the test were considerably faster than our race pace was here last year. Keep in mind we had that extremely hard tire here last year. I don’t remember the test speeds, but our race speeds were off from what we could run here last month, without a doubt. The center of the corner speed from the race to the test probably wasn’t slower, it was probably faster actually.”

ON HOW MUCH DIFFERENT IS DRIVING THROUGH THE CORNER AND HOW MUCH HIGHER ARE YOUR ENTRY SPEEDS? HOW MUCH OF A DIFFERENT FEEL IS IT FOR YOU AS A DRIVER: “I think one of the interesting things that’s hard to describe is that driver’s drive by feel. You know I leave here and go and get in that car next door and it truly is 14 mile an hour slower on the straightaway and 14 mile an hour faster in the corner than this car. But I drive it the way that car needs to be driven. You don’t really think about it, if that makes any sense. This is what is going to make good race car drivers, is adaptability. You have to be able to adapt to the situation and you have to understand what the situation you are in is which is the hardest part. They do drive different, there’s no question. But we actually probably make more grip here with this tire than we did last year. That’s not going to be everywhere, at California we were slower than we were with the old car but here we were actually faster but that was a tire thing.”

ON THE DIFFICULTY OF SWITCHING BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN A SPRINT CUP SERIES CAR AND A NATIONWIDE SERIES CAR: “It’s more of a challenge. If that car over there drove exactly the same way this car would then you wouldn’t have to think about it. When I sit in each car I have to consciously think hey what are you sitting in, what are you going to do? You have to think about it. Especially in a situation like we’re in today where you practice that car then come practice this car, practice that car then qualify this car. When I get into this car to qualify I gotta be in Cup mode not Nationwide mode.”

ON GOING FOR HIS THIRD WIN INA ROW IN THE NATIONWIDE SERIES AT ATLANTA NEXT WEEK: “We’ve had really good race cars. Our race cars have been really fast and been able to run them anywhere I’ve wanted to run them and be in the throttle a lot. We weren’t able to do that last week, the 20 beat up on us pretty badly. I thought we had a second-place car until I hit the wall in that one too. I thought we had a second-place car. We didn’t have anything for Tony. We’re gonna have to find a way to step it up if we are going to do three in a row because they showed a lot of speed. They go through the corners exceptionally well and they go down the straightaway exceptionally well too. I think they have a little bit of a horsepower advantage over there. When you add that with how well they go through the corners then they’re going to be hard to guard.”

ON RACING AT A TRACK WHERE YOU HAVE WON BEFORE. DO YOU THINK ABOUT IT WHEN YOU GET THERE: “Not really. I kind of dismiss what happened there last year, the good and the bad. I think you’ve learned from it. I think there is a tremendous amount to learn from racing and applying what you’ve learned. Success from last year doesn’t guarantee success this year. Matter of fact it wasn’t even on my mind that we won the last two races there, until you said that. I had no idea. I didn’t know that. That’s how much I look at the past.”

ON HIS FEELINGS OF RACING THE NEW CAR AT TEXAS: “I think there are a lot of challenges at Texas. Maybe more so than here, Texas is a little rougher. With this car the bumps seem to be a pretty major issue, so I think Texas is going to be quite a challenge with this car. Some teams are going to hit and some teams aren’t. The success we were able to do there last year, none of that works. None of that information will be worth a hoot so it’s starting over again.”

ON IS THAT GOING TO MAKE PRACTICE EVEN MORE CRITICAL AT TEXAS: “It makes it exceptionally important. The key to our sport is taking the time that you have to do anything that you are doing and doing it efficiently. If you have an hour practice, you have to use that hour of practice better than your competition. And the teams that can do that are the teams that continually have success. Being efficient with your time is really important. That’s going to be like that all year with this car. Well it’s like that with every car but I think it’s going to be even more important because we’re trying to learn so much in a short time.”

ON ARE THERE THINGS YOU CAN LEARN HERE AND AT ATLANTA THAT TO APPLY TO OTHER RACE TRACKS: “I think so. There are things that we can learn from each race track to apply to other race tracks more so than others. Some tracks have a bigger impact than others but I think a lot.”

ON NOT QUALIFYING WELL AT MARTINSVILLE, BUT BEING IN THE FRONT AT THE END: “We qualify awful there. I don’t know what that’s all about. I don’t know, I’ve been terrible at qualifying there. I like the race. It’s long, it’s hard, it really is one of the hardest races that we do. Physically, emotionally it’s a tough race and that’s a long 500 laps. I think it’s the longest feeling race that we do all year and I like that challenge. I like it when it’s hard. I like it when it’s difficult, I like it when it’s a challenge. Not that it’s not always a challenge, but obviously some challenges are bigger than others. To me that’s what our sport is all about. It’s being difficult and trying to overcome obstacles and Martinsville is pretty big.”

ON WORKING HIS WAY THROUGH THE FIELD TO TOP-FIVE FINISHES AT MARTINSVILLE AFTER QUALIFYING IN THE REAR: “What happens in Martinsville, we always talk about qualifying poorly there hurts you but if you really think about it you always get these different strategies going at Martinsville because you get half the field that is scared to pit and the other half wants to pit. The cautions come out so frequently that you always get in these positions where sometimes running 15th is advantageous and as silly as that sounds, because it’s easy for you to pit then. It’s hard for the leader to pit. If you’re running 15th and the leaders pit then you stay out and everybody behind you stays out then it takes them forever to get to you. You get these odd sequences at Martinsville and sometimes it works out where qualifying poorly hurts you. Sometimes it works out where it doesn’t obviously. You’re not precluded from having success by qualifying poorly and a lot of that is because of pit sequences. It gets real jumbled up.”

ON HAVE MOST PEOPLE LEARNED HOW TO USE THE CAR THERE TO THEIR ADVANTAGE: “Most people haven’t, some people have. I know Jimmie (Johnson) won the first race. I don’t remember who won the second race. So they figured it out.”

HAVE YOU: “We finished both races, so no. Or a top five in both races, not as well as them. I don’t know, I think that one of my biggest concerns going into the year was our short track program with the 31 car. We struggled a little bit on the short tracks last year with the COT more so than our teammates did in my eyes and that’s my biggest concern is the short track program. It’s a huge challenge out there for us I do know that.”

ON HIS FEELINGS ABOUT THE EVENTS THAT TOOK PLACE IN CALIFORNIA LAST WEEK: “I think the weather is nothing we can control. But I think the only thing we can do it try to get through it. I gotta tell you, I know there is a reason. I didn’t completely understand why at 10:30 when the track has been weeping all day that we were trying to still run on Sunday night. That didn’t make a lot of sense to me but I know NASCAR had their reasons and I never went to explore why we were doing it because it didn’t matter to me. If they told me to be there I was going to be there. That part of it was a little frustrating. I didn’t think their decision to start the race was incorrect. I think the track got worse as we ran and that created issues. I wish we could have found a way to be on top of the track worsening and try to stop the race before we had incidents. I thought when the race started it was fine. I had no problems with starting the race at all. But it did get worse and we as drivers probably should have been complaining a lot more about it. That’s one thing that’s tough, is when you have an issue like that and you start complaining about it then it’s hard to focus on just dealing with it. We as drivers probably needed to start complaining more about it and maybe NASCAR could have reacted a little bit quicker. That’s always a tough spot because everybody has selfish reasons for complaining about debris, complaining about stuff on the race track, needing a caution, but last week we needed to collectively during the race start complaining so NASCAR could have seen it.”

ON ABOUT CHANGING THE BANKING AND MAKING IT A PLATE TRACK: “We don’t need another restrictor-plate race track. A two-mile race track is a difficult thing. It really is. That was a trend there to build big tracks. A two-mile race track is a difficult thing; it boils down to simple mathematics. The faster you go, the bigger disparity and the field. It’s pretty simple. You go to Martinsville and you run 92 mile an hour and somebody’s off two miles an hour, whatever that percentage is, is different than the percentage at California running 200 mile an hour. Two-mile race tracks are difficult. If they were going to do anything, the thing to do would be progressive banking. Similar to what was done at Homestead. The problem is that it’s so big it would be so freaking fast that you might have to put a restrictor plates on it."

MARTIN TRUEX, JR., DRIVER OF THE NO. 1 BASS PRO SHOPS IMPALA SS, met with media members today at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and talked about handling, trying to gain grip with the tires, racing in Atlanta next week and more.

ON RACING AT LAS VEGAS: “It’s frustrating for me. Like I said, here and Charlotte I’ve never really figured out what it takes to get around them, get the tire to stick to the race track. So I’m a little frustrated today and I kind of was prepared for this coming in. I knew what it was going to be and just trying real hard to figure it out. The guys are doing a good job we just haven’t really hit on much to help it yet.”

WHAT DID YOU DO IN YOUR FEW OFF DAYS? “I went home. I didn’t do much of anything really, just hung around the house. Took care of some business and that’s about it.” WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE CAR? “The same thing that’s wrong with my car every time I come here with these tires on the new asphalt, hard tire. We just can’t figure out how to get any grip. The car is real, real evil to drive. It just snaps loose whenever it feels like it. I think a lot of people fight the same thing, but we’ve never really figured anything out. So the same thing we go to Charlotte with, the same problems.”

SO THE TEST DIDN’T HELP AT ALL? “No, not for us. We tested for two days; we had two different cars. We tried a lot of different stuff. We just ran okay. We never really hit on anything that made us really good or that made me really comfortable. We always fault here, with this combination tires and pavement. So I don’t know if we’re missing something or if I’m missing something or what it is but we’ll just keep working on it. We’re certainly not any threat for the pole today, but we’ll keep working on it throughout the weekend and we’ll hope to have a good race. We went through the same exact thing here last year, qualified bad, ran just okay, we finished like 12th. Kind of our goal for the weekend is do all we can do, get the car the best we can and fight throughout the race and try to get the best finish we can. Hopefully a top 10 will be great.”

ON HOW THE CAR HANDLES IN TRAFFIC. “It definitely seems better in race trim. With the tape on it trying to really bust off a lap it’s really, really edgy for me. Like I said we have a problem going really fast. But I think in race trim, once their pace slows up and we get out there, the track widens out and stuff, I think we’ll be okay. It’s just right now is not working out for us.”

CAN YOU LEARN ANYTHING THIS WEEK FOR ATLANTA NEXT WEEK? “No, absolutely not. Totally different. Here is just complete opposite of anywhere we go, here and Charlotte.”

ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO ATLANTA? “Definitely, yeah. We had a good test there in I guess it was the fall. We had a great race there in the old car, we ran good in the test with the new car and I really like that race track and look forward to going there and having a shot to win.”

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO WIN THERE? “It takes a good car like anywhere we go. A good engine. You know the track is big. Good pit stops, good luck all day. Just the typical you got to put everything together. 500 miles, it’s a tough race. You gotta be up on the wheel all day. It’s really a fun race for all of us. It’s one of my favorites of the year. I’ve been looking forward to it since last spring when we led all those laps and got wrecked at the end or the fall I should say.”