Regan Smith has claimed Raybestos Rookie of the Race honors three times in six NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races this season. Smith scored a 14th-place finish last week in the Goody’s Cool Orange 500 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, his best in 13 career Sprint Cup races. Smith and Dario Franchitti are tied for the lead in the Raybestos Rookie standings (60-60) and has a guaranteed starting position for Sunday’s race at Texas Motor Speedway.

REGAN SMITH, No. 01 THE PRINCIPAL FINANCIAL GROUP CHEVROLET: “Last weekend when we talked we didn’t know what the point situation was. I knew it was close but didn’t think we would get locked back in at Martinsville and then we were fortunate enough that we did. It was a perfect storm with certain guys that had to have bad luck had bad luck and we executed in the race and did our jobs in the race. I’m just happy for all the guys on The Principal Financial Group Chevy. I got to sleep good this week and now our goal is to make sure we keep it locked-in the rest of this year and we don’t get ourselves in that situation again. This week I’ve been able to sleep fine. You know you’re locked-in and you don’t have pressure coming in on Friday to make sure. It’s not even the pressure as much as it is what if something goes wrong? What if I get a flat tire getting out of the pits going up to qualify? What if I miss a shift and break a gear? What if we have a line come loose or something? There’s so many variables that could cause you to miss a race and it’s so close that it’s a ton of pressure and we don’t have that now this week. We still need to perform. We still need to qualify well ‘cause qualifying here equates into racing well and we need to come out of here with points and there’s cars that we’ve got to beat and cars that we’re capable of beating that we need to make sure that we do.” WHEN YOU ARE RUNNING WELL CAN YOU HAVE FUN AT THIS LEVEL? “Oh absolutely. I had a blast at Martinsville. I was passing guys, racing with guys, racing with guys that are front runners and from a driving standpoint that’s a lot of fun. When you’re two laps down, and unfortunately we’ve been in that situation a couple of times this year, you can’t really race ‘em as much as you are just trying to stay out of their way and be smart because if you start racing ‘em and you’re two laps down, they’re going to dump ya and they’re going to remember it for a long time. When we’re in the situation where we can be the aggressor and make moves it’s fun.” YOU STRUGGLED AT ATLANTA A FEW WEEKS AGO. WHY ARE YOU GOING TO RUN BETTER HERE AT TEXAS? “Lot of stuff has been going on since then. We’ve done a lot of work and changed a lot of different things. I feel like our cars and our team has come a long ways since Atlanta and even going back as far as Vegas or California we’ve come ever further since then. I think we’ve worked through a lot of the stuff that we fought at Atlanta. Typically mile-and-a-halfs are my deal. I love mile-and-a-half racetracks. I love the big, fast places and this year it’s been the opposite. The short tracks have been our savior [smiles]. We need to at least get to where we’re back running top-20 on the mile-and-a-halfs and go from there.” DID YOU TEST THIS WEEK AT KENTUCKY? “Tried to. The track was seeping all day but we got some hellacious laps in the rental car so that was cool [laughs]. That’s about all we could accomplish with the water coming up through the track.”

Three Raybestos Rookies in the Sprint Cup Series do not have guaranteed starting positions: Franchitti, Sam Hornish, Jr., and Patrick Carpentier. For Franchitti’s crew chief, Steve Lane, this is familiar territory.

STEVE LANE, CREW CHIEF, No. 40 KENNAMETAL DODGE: HOW MANY RACES HAVE YOU HAD TO QUALIFY ON YOUR SPEED? “With this 40 car I’ve been 21 races in this predicament [smiles]. Knock on wood we have made it in all of them. It’s just a little different mindset. You can’t unload off the truck and start working on race trim like you’d like to and thank goodness you’ve got some teammates to pull from. It’s just a different mindset. You definitely come here in qualifying trim and you think about nothing but qualifying. When you leave the shop the car is basically full-blown qualifying. There’s parts and pieces that you’re going to leave out of it and just things like that and you can breathe a little bit after Friday. You get used to it and I’m sure it takes a couple of years off your life but we’ll get through it. We’ll get in.” DO ALL THE DRIVERS AT GANASSI LIKE THE SAME SETUPS? “We can definitely take both of their setups and look at ‘em and we’re starting to find a point to where maybe we change this spring or that spring or this shock that those two have for Franchitti. There’s some little quirks that he likes changed but we can use their stuff. We just have to tweak on it a little bit. We’ve thrown Dario in a hell of a situation. I mean, that’s the best way to put it. And to be outside of he top-35 really doesn’t surprise me and I don’t think it will be long and we’ll be back in. But these are the best guys in the world racing over here and he knows that and he’s said it a lot, too. I think he knew at some point in time we may be in this situation. The one thing I used to tell [David] Stremme all the time one thing it will do is it’ll make you a better racer. And I think going through this and getting in the races for a little while, I think it helps you in the long run.”