Jamie McMurray, driver of the No. 26 Crown Royal Cask 16 Ford Fusion, posted a pair of top-10 finishes at Texas Motor Speedway in 2007.

JAMIE McMURRAY – No. 26 Crown Royal Cask 16 Ford Fusion – HOW GOOD DID LAST WEEK’S TOP-10 AT MARTINSVILLE FEEL? “Certainly, we needed that as a race team. Our car – Atlanta, really, is the only track that we’ve struggled at. The bigger race tracks, we really haven’t hit on, what feels good to me. It’s rained so much this year that we’ve really had limited amount of track time, so we’re just trying to run what the 99 car has been running, because he has been our best car. And, we went and did a Nashville test last week and Carl [Edwards] actually went with me – and trying to run the set-ups that he likes, I didn’t like them, and we were able to make the car a lot of faster with a different-type set-up. So, with the car of tomorrow, we felt like the bodies are enough alike and the cars are enough a like that if one guy liked it then everyone should like it. And the more we learn about the car, that’s not the case. It tends to take a different set-up for a different driving style.”

WHAT IS YOUR MINDSET HEADING INTO THIS WEEK AFTER HAVING TO QUALIFY ON TIME LAST WEEK AT MARTINSVILLE? “Last week, if I had to pick a place to go to qualify and race, that’s probably one of my best tracks. But, it’s hard because you don’t know if something is going to happen in qualifying. You just don’t know. You’ve seen good cars go home because they just missed a set-up – you never know the circumstances that you’re going to be faced with. So, it’s very nerve-wracking. That’s a hard position to be put in. I’m glad that we ran well enough that we’ve got a bit of a cushion, and this is also a very good track for me. It’s a different mindset on Fridays. I feel for those guys that have to make it in on time this weekend, because we’ll go out and work on race trim and not really pay attention to qualifying today.”

YOU HAVE SOMETHING LIKE A 59-POINT CUSHION OF 36TH PLACE. DO YOU FEEL PRETTY CONFIDENT MOVING FORWARD NOW THAT YOU WON’T HAVE TO FACE THAT AGAIN? “Well, it’s different when you’re racing for 36th than when you’re racing for the top 12, because you can finish 15th when you’re racing to make the chase and lose ground, where the guys that you’re racing for 36th, they wouldn’t be in 36th if they ran in the top 10 every week. So, it’s a little bit easier, but with some of the luck that we’ve had at Bristol, you can’t make those mistakes or you’ll be put back in that position. But you learn from that and we’ll move on.”

IS THERE A SENSE THAT YOUR TEAM HAS TURNED A CORNER, AND NOW THE BAD TIMES ARE BEHIND YOU AFTER LAST WEEK? “Honestly, since winning Daytona last year, some really odd things have happened to us. At Charlotte I ran third almost all night, and with 50 laps to go we pitted and the caution came out, and then at Atlanta I was running fourth on the last lap and Dale Jr.’s tire fell off, and I got caught up in a wreck. So, I mean, we’ve had good cars, and just had some really odd things happen to us. I don’t want to say bad luck because you tend to make your own luck, but it seems that we’ve been in good position and had some things happen. You always hope that once you have a good run that momentum will carry over and the luck will turn around. And for us, we’re with an organization that certainly can contend to win races every weekend. So, we have all the tools, we just have to use them.”

YOU MENTIONED HOW YOU LIKE MARTINSVILLE AND YOU’VE DONE WELL HERE. WHEN A DRIVER HAS SUCCESS AT A CERTAIN TRACK, IS THAT BECAUSE THE DRIVER ADJUSTS WELL TO THE TRACK? THAT THE TRACK PLAYS WELL TO A DRIVER’S ABILITIES? A COMBINATION? “Ever since I went there the first time, I liked Martinsville. And, Texas is a mile and a half, it’s similar to Atlanta and Charlotte and all the other ones, and I don’t know, this place has always been really, really good to me. I ran well in a truck here back in ’99, and that kind of got me the opportunity to move on and do a Busch deal and then, eventually, a Cup deal. This has always been a good track. And I think some of it, you just kind of feel at home here. My home is only five hours from here.”

YOU HAVE A SPECIAL PAINT SCHEME THIS WEEKEND. “It’s Autism Awareness Month, and certainly that’s the charity that my foundation supports, and so this is an important month for us to try and create as mush awareness as we can. A few years ago I ran a black car with puzzle pieces on it and it looked really good, and we had mentioned that to Crown Royal and we have the Cask 16 paint scheme this weekend, which is a black car, and the puzzle pieces really stick out on it. It’s cool that the sponsors are willing to let us promote something that’s so important, not only to my family, but to the world right now. It’s unreal how big autism is and how many people it affects. It’s cool that they’re helping us create awareness.”

Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 Dish Network Ford Fusion, is in third place in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series points standings heading into this weekend’s Samsung 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. Biffle won the spring race at Texas in 2005.

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 Dish Network Ford Fusion – TEXAS IS A VERY FAST RACE TRACK. IS THE SENSATION OF SPEED AT THIS TRACK GREATER THAN DAYTONA OR TALLADEGA? “It is a little bit because things are closer to you – walls – and you’re just going down into corners so fast, there’s just so much more G-force on your body, on your cars, so you do feel like you’re going faster here. You think about it, it’s a smaller race track and faster than a two-and-a-half-mile track on a one-and-a-half-mile track, so certainly things are going by a lot quicker.”

JEFF BURTON TALKED TODAY ABOUT THE GRASS ON THE BACKSTRAIGHTAWAY AT POCONO AND THAT NOW IS THE TIME FOR SOMETHING TO BE DONE. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS? “Absolutely. He’s hit the nail on the head. We haven’t stopped addressing safety issues, but it seems like we have because they haven’t been topics. We had the Jeff Gordon crash at Las Vegas. We had Kentucky crashes just like that a couple of years in a row. Those are issues that we need to address, and the paving at Pocono – we saw Junior and Steve Park, and then Jeff Green, and who’s going to be the next guy? We’ve got to start making an effort to do something about that. There, it’s so simple because it’s just simply paving, hardly any grading, hardly any kind of work involved, it’s not building structure, it’s just simple pavement on the ground.”

IS THAT THE MOST OBVIOUS RACE TRACK THAT NEEDS HELP? “I would say that that’s one of them. There are other race tracks that the SAFER barriers on the inside of the walls and the openings are, I think, our next enemy, if you will. About every race track has an opening; it’s how it’s constructed – it’s not if they have an opening, because you’ve got to get safety vehicles out on to the surface, so it’s how they’re constructed we need to look at, and then the SAFER barriers on the inside of the walls. That’s the key right now.”

RYAN NEWMAN TALKED ABOUT HAVING A WALL ON THE FRONTSTRETCH TO PROTECT THE PIT CREW. DO YOU AGREE WITH THAT IDEA? “There are a lot of things that I agree with safety-wise. What happens – and, like I said, the Jeff Gordon crash, I keep going back to that – people, drivers and crew guys, people get hurt on freak accidents, not the normal blew-the-right-front-tire-and-went-in-the-fence. That stuff happens. Or, spinout. What happens is the guy got hooked wrong, just at the right time, the car got turned, couldn’t steer it, at the exact wrong spot at the wrong angle. Or a guy will have an axel break, or a ball joint or something, going down the frontstretch in qualifying. When you have 30 cars lined up and people standing all around not paying attention – absolutely it can happen. Is it likely? No. It’s not likely, but it can happen. And it’s weird – you go stand out there when they’re qualifying and watch how fast they’re coming by, you’re not going to out-run that stuff. And, NASCAR’s gotten better about Daytona, all crew guys staying on the inside, but, still, you hit something at 180, another car, it’s going to go a long ways. It’s would to be hard – the problem is you’re going to create more of a safety issue by doing that, for the competitor, simply because there’s no way, you’re going to have a butt-end wall down here, getting on to pit road that we’re traveling 200 miles an hour, there’s no way that you’re possibly going to protect that from the driver’s point of view. You think about how many people spin through the grass here, Las Vegas, Atlanta, all those places. Daytona. Daytona, we’re always in that grass. There’s no way that you could put a wall in there to protect the guys down on pit road, and you’re going to hurt drivers, for sure.”

SHOULD THERE BE GRASS AT ANY TRACK? WHY NOT PAVE IT AND PAINT IT GREEN? “Yeah, artificial grass or something with some paving underneath it or whatever the case is, yeah, that would probably be much safer.”

HOW IMPORTANT IS PRACTICE TODAY WITH THE NEW CAR ON THIS TRACK FOR THE FIRST TIME? “It’s really important. We need to get out on this track. A little bit different tire construction here. Same compound, I believe, but a little bit different construction aspect of the tire. So, it’s certainly going to be advantageous, as much track time as we can get.”

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT HERE WITH THIS CAR THIS WEEKEND? “I expect real normal, like Las Vegas or Atlanta was. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Obviously, Atlanta we had the tire issue with the harder tire, but I feel like here it’s going to be pretty straight forward. Really no issues.”

DO YOU EXPECT GOOD RACING? “Oh, yeah. I expect good racing. You’ll race up and down the race track, two- and three-wide. This place widens out. I think we’re going to see good racing.

WHAT DO YOU SAY THE RACE FAN WHO WATCHED THE ATLANTA RACE AND HEARD ABOUT ALL OF THE GRIPING AND COMPLAINING? CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO THE RACE FANS WHY THEY WON’T SEE THAT AGAIN THIS WEEKEND? “Real simple. We’ve got a different tire for here. A softer compound tire. This tire is going to have more grip. I’m speaking a little out of context here, but I was on this tire at Darlington. This tire was great. This tire was too soft for Darlington. I don’t think it’s going to be too hard for here. I just don’t think that. I think this is going to be a good tire.”

YOU HAVE SAID THEY’RE CLOSE TO RE-SIGNING WITH ROUSH FENWAY RACING, BUT CHILDRESS RACING DOES HAVE A FOURTH CAR AVAILABLE. DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF A CANDIDATE FOR THAT CAR? “I don’t really see that being an alternative for me. One thing a guy’s got to look at is you’re third in points and got a chance to make the chase right now, running fairly well, and to go to a team that has no points and then try and qualify for the Daytona 500, go to Las Vegas and California and try to qualify on time, dodge the rainouts like we’ve seen all these teams struggle to get in the top 35, I don’t see that as a smart career move for myself. Now, is Childress a good organization, they’ve got great cars, great people? Sure, they do have that. And you can say the same about Gibbs or any of the other teams. Simply from going to third in the points, or whatever you would be at the end of the season, to not being locked in – if you miss two races, you’re going to have to qualify the whole season. The engine blows up. You didn’t make the Daytona 500 and it rained out in California and you didn’t get in. That happened this year. It happens again, you’re trying to climb out of a hole for the whole season, and you’re a championship- or a chase-caliber driver now you find yourself in a bad situation. So, those are things to consider when you’re in my situation – would that be something that I’d be willing to walk that tightrope on? And, anybody’s got to make that decision.”