Chris Carrier took time before today’s practice sessions at Martinsville to comment on a variety of issues. Carrier is the crew chief for Raybestos Rookie Sam Hornish, Jr. who will start 26th on Sunday afternoon.

CHRIS CARRIER, CREW CHIEF, No. 77 MOBIL 1 DODGE: HOW DIFFICULT IS ONE OF THESE RACES HERE AT MARTINSVILLE FOR A CREW CHIEF TO CALL? DO YOU APPROACH IT LIKE A ROAD COURSE? “No, I wouldn’t say it it’s like a road course because road course strategy involves a lot more fuel mileage, fuel consumption type thinking from the word go, which usually fuel mileage here is not much of an issue at all. It’s possible it could play into effect this time, maybe. It just depends on the tire wear issue, the longevity of the tires but I’m going to guess that fuel mileage is not going to be a big priority. Here the track position and trying to predict when the cautions, how many will come out and when you want to pit and not pit, take on tires or not take on tires and a lot of things kind of play into that. The people pitting around you, trying to figure out okay, are they coming this time? Am I going to get jammed up? Am I going to get jammed in the pits or not? Would I be better off waiting until the next caution? To me you’ve got to go kind of by the seat of the pants as things go along. Here you have to be very persistent and very patient with all the stuff on the car. Obviously the brakes are always an issue and tires will be an issue, tire wear and durability. I think here two years ago I believe Jeff Gordon won the race after being two laps down. If your car is not very good to start with and you get a lap down or even if you get two laps down by halfway in the race you’ve still got to keep picking at it. Keep hammering away and you can still end up back on the lead lap and have a good finish. You’ve just got to be persistent. You’ve got to be really persistent, real patient. It’s hard on the crew chief because you’ve got to help do that for the driver, the crew chief and the spotter.”

IS THERE AN ADVANTAGE TO PITTING ON ONE END OF THIS PIT ROAD VERSUS THE OTHER? “I think more times than not it’s all the same. The pit road here at this racetrack, there are certain pit boxes in areas around pit road that simply aren’t as good because of the pavement being rough, being kind of up and down hill a little bit in different areas. You’re going around a curve and that makes it blind for the driver to get in. More time than not, in my opinion, on most racetracks, more times than not how good or bad your pit stall ends up being over the whole day is dictated more by how the people around you are running in relation to you and what they do. A nightmare deal is if your pit stall, the guy that’s pitting in front of you is right behind you on the racetrack and the guy that’s pitting behind you is right in front of you because not only do you have to pull around the guy that’s just pulled in and he’s trying to aim his car out so now you’re kind of jacked out of shape getting in. Now the guy that’s behind you on the racetrack pulls right in front of you. And he’s going to block you in because he can’t get into his pit box and here at Martinsville, like Bristol and some of the other places, Dover, that happens a lot. So it’s more dictated, to me, about what the people around you end up doing, what kind of day they have. Obviously there’s only x-number of openings on every pit road and there’s not that many so the guys that qualify in the top-five, six, seven or eight spots are always going to pick those opening because they want to have a clear spot in or a clear spot out or both. Obviously you’re going to take one of those if it’s available but if you’re not in the top six or seven they’re not going to be there. A long time ago [Andy] Petree told me ‘Always think about it this way. If there’s no opening and you want a clear spot out, a clear drive out of your pit so you won’t get blocked in which is the worst thing that can happen, if you don’t want that to happen always think about trying to pick behind somebody that you have a lot of confidence in that’s going to run up front all day. They’re going to be on the lead lap to start with, they’re going to run up front and when pit road opens and they pit, they’re going to be in their pit and gone before the guys in the middle of the pack even get to their pit so you have a natural opening, at least a one pit box opening.’ That’s always kind of stuck with me and I try to most of the time use that strategy. Sometimes it works out good that way and sometimes it doesn’t. And it’s hard to predict what people around you are going to do in this series every week. If there’s a guy that qualifies up front that doesn’t normally run up front, one of the younger guys or maybe a struggling team or someone who just has a good qualifying effort and qualifies up front and most people think he’s probably not going to race up front all day long you’ll see the other guys that are the normal top-10 guys that as soon as normal pit picking come along they’ll pit right behind him or pick right in front of him. They figure he’s going to fall back and he’s going to be a lap down or drop out and I’ll have a natural opening. That’s the reverse of that same psychology.”

COMMENT ON YOUR STRATEGY FOR THE RACE. “We’re going to keep on our same kind of mindset tomorrow as we’ve been on really the whole year but especially the last three or four weeks. Our goal is going to be to have a solid day, to stay out of trouble, to try to run all the laps that we can to try to adjust on our car as the race goes on in a way that’s going to get us the best we can be at the end of the race or at least by the middle part of the race and try to run all the laps and try to shoot ourselves in the foot. Hopefully in the next two to three weeks, two to three races, hopefully we’re going to be one of the ones that give a little bit of separation from ourselves to the guys that are out of the top-35 or right on that borderline of being 35th in points. That way we can become a little bit more aggressive about our thinking and about thinking how can we finish in the top-20? How can we finish in the top-15? How can we finish in the top-12? How can we be a little bit more aggressive on all our stuff and not worry about one bad pit stop or one bad pit call or one bad decision shooting us in the foot. We had to be very patient at Bristol. We had to be very patient at Atlanta. If we had been more aggressive we might could have finished three or four spots ahead but we might could have finished dead last. This is a 500-lap test of patience and endurance and to me I love it. I love watching it because I know there is a very small percentage of people who are racers of any type that can do this and that’s what this series is about. The guy that goes home with the trophy from here, that Grandfather clock, to me that team has earned it because this is a tough place. Things can go really wrong really quick. You’ve got to be tougher than the challenge. That’s what we’re trying to do. I think we’re doing a good job at it. I think Sam is doing a great job at it. There’s a lot of new stuff every week for him. Tomorrow will be the first time he’s ever made a pit stop on this pit road and it’s not a no-brainer because the boxes are small. There’s a lot going on around you. A lot of times the brakes won’t be real good when you come in because they’ll be hot and you’re have to pump ‘em. They’ll be cars out there finishing the race that look like they’re ready to go to the salvage yard. He’s done fine with all that stuff so far this year and I think he’ll do fine with that.”

THE NEXT FEW RACES SEEM CRITICAL FOR THOSE AROUND 35TH-PLACE IN POINTS. “It’s kind of like you start the start the first five races every year, the first five races the top-35 is dictated by last year’s points. Now you get to race number six and you draw a line and say ‘Okay, now we’re on this year’s points.’ Well probably the next five races again is 99.9 percent going to dictate at least how difficult or less difficult your season is going to be basically the whole season. Because once you get out it’s tough to get in. Once you get up to say about 30th then it becomes a whole lot easier to stay in there because if you have one bad race it’s usually not a killer. If you wreck, crash, blow a motor, whatever and have one really bad finish then it’s like okay, we need to regroup here a couple of weeks. Turn the wick down just a little bit and make sure that we finish in the top-30 and well still be okay. We’ll climb right back up there and we’ll be safe and we can go back to thinking about how to be more aggressive. If you’re 35th, you’re on that hair pulling medicine every week and if you’re below the top-35 it’s really tough. I did it for three years as a crew chief and you go to the racetrack and Friday all you think about is how in the world can I just make that one lap? How can I make that one lap and beat enough people to get in this race? And then you’ve got to completely reprogram yourself in a few hours to come back in the next morning and say okay, how are we going to get this car to race good with people that have been working on race trim a lot longer than you have. It’s a tough deal. Our day at Bristol, everything we did was dictated solely on making sure that we finish in a spot to where we knew we were going to come here in the top-35. The good thing about is, the reverse side of it is, if you look at our season had we not been in the top-35 to start with, gone in blind, no points, whatever, we still would have made every race so far this year. So for us that’s a confidence builder for knowing, okay, we can do this and then on down the road when we were thinking okay, I’m not satisfied with qualifying 26th, I want to be top-15. I think there’s good evidence that this team can step up to the plate on that and that we can do that. We’ve got two good teammates to feed off of and I think it’s working very well so far. I see good solid consistent improvement week to week and day to day. It’s not going to be a linear line as far as the growth. It’s going to be a little bit bumpy. There’s so much in this sport, in this business, day to day that you can’t control and you’ve got to be able to rebound with it. You’ve got to be resilient. That’s what we have to learn to do. This is a new team, not only a new driver, it’s a new team. Ninety percent of our guys we don’t really know one another and we’re kind of learning each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We’re kind of learning each other’s attitudes and learning each other’s habits and that’s part of building a team, anything: racing, football, volleyball or building a team of people that work at Wal-Mart. It’s the same and the more we get together and iron out whatever kind of little difficulties we have day to day the stronger we’re going to be and the better we’re going to be and the better our team is going to perform.”