JEFF BURTON, DRIVER OF THE NO. 31 AT&T IMPALA SS, met with media members at Talladega Superspeedway and talked about racing in Talladega, Danica Patrick’s win, the All-Star race and more.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN IN DAYTONA WITH THIS CAR THAT MIGHT CARRY OVER HERE? “I think the biggest thing when we talk about learning with the restrictor plate for this race track is what we did here last year. Daytona is so much more about handling. The packs get spread out a little bit more than they do here. There’s no question about that. You’re gonna see huge packs, you’re gonna see a lot of three-wide, 40 cars deep and I think that’s a different type of race than what we had at Daytona. Plus we got a different plate here, so we’re gonna have to figure out what that means. What we take from Talladega last year is more important than what we took from Daytona.”

IS THIS YOUR YEAR? “Ask me that in late November and I’ll tell you. I don’t know, I feel good about who we are. I feel good about the work we’re putting in. I feel good that we’re working hard to answer the challenge of being better as the year gets on. I can’t ask for a whole lot more from my group and I can’t ask for a whole lot more from myself. We have to make sure we’re efficient; we have to make sure we continue to improve. If we do those things and we have some fortune then it can be our year. We can’t control what our competition is doing. Maybe they learn more than we do, I don’t know. We can control us and the things that we’re doing to respond to the areas that we need to be stronger in I think are good.”

WHEN YOU’RE LEADING THE POINTS AND YOU COME TO A PLACE LIKE THIS, DO YOU HAVE TO AVOID WHAT COULD GO WRONG? “We’re paying attention to points and anybody that says we’re not is lying. Anybody that says they weren’t paying attention to points when we went to Daytona is lying. The harsh reality of it is, there’s not a whole lot we can do about it other than race the race we know how to race. I don’t go into this race thinking, oh my God I’m the point leader I gotta not get in a wreck, any more than if I was 25th in points. What I think about is what do we need to do so we’re in the right position at the end of the race to get the best possible finish we can get. If we do that, then the points will take care of themselves. It’s a long year, there’s a lot of racing, a whole, whole lot of racing left to go and I’m not all wound up about the points. I’m glad that we are where we are, I’m not excited about it, I’m glad about it and I feel like we have a lot of work to do. I’m not thinking about points in the sense of a panic mode or a worrying mode. I’m thinking about points because it’s what we do. We’re racing for a championship and we’re gonna do what we need to do to try to win a championship. Whatever that is, whatever presents itself hopefully we do the right thing.”

ON THE STRATEGY CALL IN THE ALL-STAR RACE WHEN HE WAS WITH FRANKIE STODDARD. “What we did, we had the rule book and on the Winston Open race it said you had to take, I don’t remember exactly how it was read but essentially you couldn’t pit late in the race. With two to go, three to go, four to go you couldn’t pit. So we looked at that and said why is that rule like that and we started thinking about it and we figured what it was. I went and sat down and got the rules from NASCAR and looked at them with them and read them, I didn’t tell them what we were thinking about, and then went back and Frankie and I sat down and talked about it and our engineer too. I said to Frank, look I think it’s a good idea but this is your call. If you want to do it, if it works you’re gonna be a hero if it fails you’re gonna be the goat and you’re the one that’s got to make the call and he had the guts to make the call to do it. The engineer figured out the time what we needed to do to be ahead of them, how far ahead we had to be. We had it all figured out, we picked our pit stall based on the strategy. It was a well thought out plan and we executed it well. Unfortunately we had a clutch slipping so it didn’t work as well as it could have worked. We had a mechanical problem during that race but it was gonna work out really well.”

DO YOU KNOW THIS YEAR’S FORMAT? “I don’t know the format, what is it.”

25 LAPS, OPTION PIT STOP, 25 LAPS, 10 MINUTE BREAK, 25 LAPS, MANDATORY STOP, 25 LAPS, FOUR SEGMENTS. “Four segments, 25 laps. I think the race needs to be long enough to be a race and short enough to be exciting. Whether 25 laps is the right number or not, I don’t know. I’m not a big fan of a 50 lap race and then a 10 lap or whatever the heck. I think if it’s a 20 lap race it ought to be three 20 laps, four 20 laps, I think it all ought to be the same. I think they ought to invert them but not tell us if they are going to invert them or not and I think they ought to do that twice. If there’s four races, they ought to do that twice. They ought to pay a lot of money to win the first one, the second one and the third one and they ought to draw a pill if they are gonna invert and they ought to draw a pill about how many they are gonna invert. Do that in the first two races and shake it up and make the fast guys have to come back through there again. I think that would make it exciting but when it gets to the last race, I think that race, you need to earn your way in to where you’re gonna start.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK DALE EARNHARDT’S LEGACY IS HERE? “Obviously he is arguably the best driver in our sports history. Statistically it would be a debate between he and Richard Petty. I know David Pearson wants to get in that debate, but he doesn’t have the record that those guys have, so it’s one of those two. He did it in a way that was controversial and he didn’t seem to care about that. He was gonna do what it took to win. He was gonna do what it took to win championships and more times than not he found a way to do it even if it was at your cost.

“That’s how he raced. When you had him and you were racing with him you knew what you were racing with. He didn’t hide it, he didn’t cover it up. That was cool. A lot of people were really fascinated by that. I don’t think people give him enough credit for his impact on what happened around him off the track. If you look at souvenir sales, if you look at marketing campaigns, if you look at his ability to speak to a CEO of a company but still sit down with the guy that’s buying the product from that CEO, he could do all that. He was a really engaging guy. When you had him one on one or when he was in a group, he had the attention. He demanded it and he had it. I think that had an incredible influence on our sport in a lot of ways that people don’t realize that helped bring companies into the sport. That helped attract companies, that helped attract fans. I think that was a huge benefit.”

ON KEEPING PATIENCE WHILE RACING AT TALLADEGA. “There’s one thing that I care about and that’s where I am when the race is over. That’s all I care about. When it’s 200 to go as long as I’m not out of the draft and I’m not in a position where I can’t have a chance to win the race, I just don’t get worked up about it. I figure if I made a move that got us to the back I just need to file that away. That’s a learning experience. Next time don’t let that happen. I view the first 400 miles of this race as a learning experience. Learning so you can apply what you’ve learned late in the race. This coming from a guy that’s never won here but that’s the way I play the game.”

ON DANICA PATRICK’S WIN. “I was really impressed. I don’t want to hear, you can’t say she won on fuel mileage and then not say well Jimmie Johnson won on fuel mileage. Give her a break. Every week when you watch the race she runs in the top 10. She consistently runs from fourth to eighth, that’s what it looks like to me. That’s consistently where she runs. If you run there consistently, you’re gonna win every now and then. She’s still young, she has a lot to learn. She can still improve, there’s no question. But to discount her win, I think is completely unfair. I think she put herself in position and they took advantage of it and everybody saying well she only won because of fuel mileage they need to shut up. She had a chance to win the Indy 500, she put herself in position to win several races. Has she led as many laps as some other people, no. Has she won as many as some other people, no but neither have I. I won three races in the last two years and led about eight laps in those races. Does that mean I wasn’t good enough to win them? I don’t think it does. She had some things going her way to win but people need to give her credit for being in that position, to put herself in that position so she could win that race.”

COULD SHE RACE IN NASCAR? “I don’t know. I think it’s a harder transition to go from an open wheel type car to this than people think. I don’t know if she could do it or not. Ask (Juan) Montoya how hard this is. I’m not saying that we’re the best drivers, I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is it takes different stuff, a different driving style to run well in these cars than it does in a high down-force, high-grip type of race car. I don’t know if she could do it. I don’t have a clue. I do believe that it would be a hard transition and I say that because I’ve watched people do it. It’s a very hard transition. These cars don’t make grip and when you watch those guys race, they’re great drivers but it’s a different type of racing than what we have here. I’m not saying it’s worse, I’m not saying its better. It is different and I don’t know that the same style works from that car to this car. I just don’t know. I think they painted themselves a little bit in a box because they run so many high-grip, wide-open races that I just think that’s a completely different driving style than what we do here. I’m not saying it’s worse or better. I’m not saying that. But it is different.

“However you get hired in this sport no matter what your talent level is, all that stuff obviously matters. What really matters is how long have you been doing it and what level of success have you had. If you look in this garage today, who in here didn’t start at five, six, seven, eight and nine years old. When we talk about our diversity program, when we talk about women drivers, what we gotta do to be able to succeed doing that is we’ve got to find a way to attract kids. We’ve got to find a way to get children instead of playing baseball, instead of playing soccer, instead of playing basketball to race. The problem with that is it’s expensive. My son played basketball this year at the Y and I think it cost me 29 bucks. You can’t think about some kind of race car for a kid for 29 dollars. So we gotta find a way, somehow, some way to get children, minorities, women so that they can do it at a young age so when they are 18 they have the background and the experience to do it. That’s the hardest part of our sport.

“There’s no reason in the world that a woman driver cannot be successful in all forms of motorsports. There’s not one reason. A woman can be successful; I believe that in my heart. There’s no reason a woman cannot be successful but it’s gonna take a high talent level. Listen, when you race against Tony Stewart you gotta be good. When you race against Jeff Gordon you’ve gotta be good. When you race against (Juan) Montoya, you’ve gotta be good. You can’t be average. You gotta be really good. So we gotta find the right person that has that talent and put them in the right position but there’s no reason that a woman cannot be successful.”

ON IF HE WOULD LIKE TO SEE TONY STEWART AT RCR. “Tony’s ability speaks for itself. He’s a great race car driver. It’s a long 18 months between now and then. It’s pretty interesting to me, he would be an awesome teammate. He would be an incredible teammate. He would bring talent. He would bring enthusiasm. He would bring all those things, but chances are of that working out are probably pretty slim when you look at how it would all lay out.

“I think any team in here would love to have Tony Stewart. When you have a driver of that caliber raise his hand and say I’m willing to look at other opportunities, he’s gonna get a lot of phone calls because people like him with that talent, they don’t grow on trees. He would be an extremely hot commodity in this garage, there’s no question.”

WHAT DID YOU THINK WHEN ALL THIS SORT OF CAME TO LIGHT WHEN HE WAS GETTING READY TO MOVE ON? “The way I understand it that’s not what he said. What he said was he’s gonna look at all his options which is his right to do. He has a contract, he has a right to look and see what else is out there and he did that once before the way I remember it, he did that once before and stayed where he is. He’s raised the stakes at Gibbs for sure. Again that kind of talent is hard to come by. When a guy like that raises his hand and says I’m willing to look over the fence and take a peak it makes you clean your yard up pretty quick. Not that they have a whole lot of cleaning to do, but I mean he’s raising stakes.”

DO YOU FIND IT IRONIC THAT A GUY WHOSE THIRD IN POINTS (DALE EARNHARDT JR) HASN’T WON A RACE YET THIS SEASON? “I think the expectation level that swirls around that thing is unrealistic. (Dale Earnhardt) Junior is exceptionally talented, he can win races, he can win them consistently, he can win championships but you know it doesn’t always go right for anybody. I read somewhere, and I read a whole lot of stuff because of this, I read something about Tony Eury, Jr. wasn’t doing him a good job. People are just not very smart. They hadn’t got a win, but they’ve done everything else. They’ve put themselves in position to win races, they won two at Daytona, they won the 150 and they won the Shootout. What have we run, eight races? I mean you know Jeff Gordon hadn’t won either. It’s just hard. This is very competitive. They’ve run well, they’re third in points. Tony Eury, Jr. is one of the most gifted crew chiefs in the garage. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. is a really, really good race car driver that’s gonna have a lot of success. You just don’t just wave a magic wand and all of a sudden win the first seven or eight races. That’s what happens with Junior if he doesn’t win every race, it’s a disappointment. That’s unrealistic.”

DALE EARNHARDT JR., NO. 88 AMP ENERGY / NATIONAL GUARD IMPALA SS met with media and discussed Tony Stewart’s contract and possible changes, his experience as both a team owner and driver, Dale Earnhardt Day, what it would mean to win Sunday’s race, and more.

REGARDING THE NAVY PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT OF A CELEBRITY RECRUITING PROGRAM CALLED THE “DALE JR DIVISION” DESIGNED TO BRING 88 YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN INTO THE SERVICE. THE PROGRAM KICKS OFF MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND: “You took all the great points (laughs). We’ll be driving a car at Charlotte in May all painted up with the Dale Jr. logo to sort of kick this off and we’re just trying to hopefully get 88 men and women excited about the opportunity to join the Navy and this special opportunity to be in this division. And hopefully this is just a sign of things to come. This is a unique program that the Navy has never done before on a national scale. I’m very proud of that. Hopefully it gives several guys and gals the opportunity to have a great career, travel the world and see and learn about a lot of new and exciting things; all under our banner. That’ll be pretty awesome.”

WITH YOUR SPONSORSHIPS WITH THE NAVY AND THE COAST GUARD, CAN YOU ADDRESS YOUR PATRIOTISM AND IS IT THINGS AROUND THE WATER, MILITARILY, THAT INTEREST YOU? “It’s the National Guard, actually. I’m definitely in a unique position to have the support in our racing programs by two separate divisions of the military. They are one team when they have a job to do. They all work together in several different ways. They show a lot of appreciation and respect in how they work together and how they try to finish their jobs. Again, it’s a unique position for me and for any team really, to have two separate organizations (as sponsors). They are all competing for the same recruits and they all try to do the same job there from the same pool. But I enjoy it; I really do.

“My relationship with the Navy has been very interesting and very eye-opening to be able to go to all the appearances and see the things that I’ve seen and see the lifestyle that these kids lead and the type of situations that they’re placed in and the type of opportunities that they are given through their involvement in the Navy. It’s the same way with the Guard. But we’ve had the relationship with the Navy for a bit longer. My knowledge of that side of the sponsorship goes a little bit further. But they’ve both been very enjoyable.”

TONY STEWART IS GOING THROUGH A SITUATION A LITTLE BIT LIKE YOUR’S LAST YEAR IN THAT HE IS LOOKING AT OPTIONS. DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR HIM? WOULD YOU LIKE HIM AS A TEAMMATE IF HE DECIDES TO LEAVE GIBBS? “Well, like when Martin’s (Truex, Jr.) situation surfaced in the media about his contract, I feel I have the same opinions. I like the teammates I’ve got now. I’ve got a good relationship with Tony. I think that Tony is always been really good at making smart business decisions and he’s sort of always on the front lines of what’s going on and what he needs to do and what’s good for him. He’s always really pro-active in that sense. A lot of guys sort of just take their position and just sit on it for years. And he’s always trying to put himself in a better position constantly, in the business sense of the job and the sport. It’s pretty admirable I guess, how involved in it he is and how he’s constantly trying to discover a better position for himself and a better way for him to succeed in his future. He’s just trying to get to where we’re all trying to get as far as once you reach retirement age and whatnot. He wants to put himself in the best position he can possibly be in. He’s really proactive more so than a lot of guys about that.”

DESCRIBE SOME OF THE CORE VALUES THAT THE NAVY HAS THAT CORRELATE WITH NASCAR DRIVERS? “It’s a tough job, either one. You travel a whole lot. You get to see a lot of things. You get to learn and witness a lot of stuff and see different parts of the country. In the Navy you see a lot of different parts of the world. You’re challenged all the time and you’re constantly improving as a person and as a competitor and I think that there are a lot of similarities between the two.”

IF YOU COULD GIVE TONY STEWART A PAGE OR TWO OUT OF THE PLAYBOOK THAT YOU DEVELOPED LAST YEAR GOING THROUGH SOME OF THE SAME THINGS, WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE HIM? ARE THERE ANY WARNINGS YOU WOULD GIVE HIM? “Tony is in a different deal to where his contract isn’t up. So he’s in a different situation entirely than I was. Tony has several different options. Staying where he is is a great one. Joe (Gibbs) is going to be around for a long time. Joe’s going to be competitive and have a great program for a long time. Or, he could become his own Joe Gibbs if he wants to. And Tony has networked his entire career. He has a lot of relationships with a lot of people that would suit him well should he ever decide to become an owner in this sport. So really, it’s up to Tony and what he wants to do because I think he could accomplish his goals however he wants to stack it up.”

TONY HAS EXPRESSED INTEREST IN POSSIBLY BECOMING AN OWNER. YOU ARE AN OWNER. FROM THAT PERSPECTIVE, WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE HIM BEFORE HE JUMPED INTO THAT? “Well he’s wanting to be an owner in the Cup Series, I presume, where your chance at having a profit is a little bit better. In the corporate world, it’s a well-known fact what the dollar is for a sponsorship versus the Nationwide Series. In truth, what you spend and the sponsorship dollars are two different things. In the Nationwide Series and the Cup Series, it costs about the same to race. But the sponsorship dollars are quite a bit more.

“That’s smart to be in the Cup Series. It’s a whole lot more feasible financially. I asked Kevin Harvick a lot of questions when I got in the Nationwide Series and he gave me some advice in a couple of areas on what I could do to watch costs and where costs were going to come from where I would least expect it and where I wouldn’t really expect it to happen. That helped me a lot to get advice from Kevin. But I’m sure the same things apply in the Cup Series. The parts department could get out of control if you’re allowing just any of your employees to run up to any of the parts trailers here at the race track or the radio trailer or whatever, at free will. That can get out of control. You need one guy for covering all those different things in the parts department. The parts department is kind of like once the guy who works in there goes in and locks the door behind him, nobody goes in. Everybody has to come over to the counter to get what they need. Everybody has to write in and sign off to get what they need. If you’ve got people walking in and out of your parts department, the parts are walking in and out too. There are just a lot of different things like that I would tell him.”

IT SOUNDS LIKE A LOT OF THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT. WOULD YOU RECOMMEND IT TO HIM OR NOT? “I would recommend it to Tony. Like I said, I feel like he would be successful if he chose to go that way. I think he would be a fun owner. I’m sure he’s going to continue to race, but at one point he won’t and having been a driver will (help). You really like to work with the guys who understand where you’re coming from, like Richard Childress and Rick (Hendrick) has even drove a lot and so you feel like you have a little better understanding with the guys that have been behind the wheel. So, Tony would fit right in there. He would be a fun owner. He would be a great guy to work for, I’m sure.”

ON MOVING OUT OF A CONTRACT POSITION MORE THAN A YEAR AHEAD OF THE EXPIRATION, WHAT IS YOUR VIEW FROM THE DRIVER’S SIDE AND FROM THE OWNER’S SIDE? “I don’t disagree with it happening this soon? I feel like too much press is being made of it at this point. I want to sit down at this table and eat, but I don’t want to eat at it for year and a half. I want to read what you’ve (the media) got to say and I want to know what happens, but is it necessary for us to really begin the coverage at this point even though it’s going on and we want to know and if everybody in this room agreed to just let it ride and get after it six months down the road, one guy is not going to agree with that and he’s going to get a story and then so does the next guy and the next guy and we just go back to where we are now.

"More than anything, you just get tired of hearing about it. But I don’t disagree that it’s going on this early. I think it’s fair for either side, the owner and the driver. Contracts are written in certain ways to prevent certain things from happening and certain people from talking to certain people. As long as everybody is going by those guidelines and being honest and truthful, I feel like all is fair. The media would do it justice by bringing a point to it, but yet when there is nothing else until the next true grit and true substance comes to the surface in the story itself, just really kind of letting it ride and letting it go. But some interesting points will be made throughout, what happens with Tony, whatever it is.

ON OWNERSHIP IN GENERAL “Yeah, it’s tough. We built a Busch team in six months and we were on the race track. We didn’t have nothing. We didn’t have trailer. We didn’t have employees. We had me and Steve Crisp and Kelley (Earnhardt) and in six months we had an entire team with cars. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. If you want to get it done, you’ll get it done. But the sooner you can begin, the better. Now we’re not talking about Tony moving to another team and just getting his seats and changing his address on his paycheck. We’re talking about him creating his own Hendrick Motorsports or Joe Gibbs Racing and that in itself might take that long. I assume that his mind isn’t even made up there. That could take six months. I’m sure he has such a vision that it might take that long to get it the way he wants it.”

REGARDING DALE EARNHARDT DAY ON THE 29TH, WHAT IS YOU PERSPECTIVE ON THAT AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOUR FAMILY AND TO DEI? “I like the fact that they are making a point to have the celebration every year at DEI. It goes along to further how we think of my father and how we remember my father long after his death. I’m very proud of that. I’m very happy for Teresa and Dale Earnhardt Inc. and all the drivers that participate. It is a great sense of pride to have Aric and Mark and Truex and them guys showing up and putting in the time for the fans that will show up there. It’s a little bit of work for those guys, and it’s not necessarily in their contract, so I appreciate that they try to make that deal as big as they can for the fans that show up. When you start something, every day you’ve kind of got to outdo yourself a little bit and it’s kind of tough. I think Taylor is going to be doing a little barrel racing and stuff like that so that’ll be kind of fun. But Kerry will be there and all kinds of other cool stuff, I’m sure.”

WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE IF HE WON SUNDAY’S RACE WITH HIS NEW TEAM? “We’re looking forward to getting that (first) win (with HMS). You think about it. You dream about it. You want that feeling. You want to be able to celebrate like that. And so we’re working really hard. We’ve got a great opportunity this weekend to win here at Talladega. We’ve had a lot of success here. We’re going to have a lot of strong competition, I’m sure. But we’ve got a good shot. We’ve got a good race car and great crew chief. I feel like I can do a good job here. We’ve got a great opportunity, no doubt. We always come into this race as a favorite and I’d like to keep it that way for a long time.”

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S IMPALA SS met with media and discussed drivers hand signals with the new race cars, having Dale Earnhardt Jr. as a teammate at a restrictor plate race, Talladega success for HMS, and more.

NASCAR KEEPS TAKING MUSCLE AWAY FROM THESE CARS. WHAT KIND OF RACE ARE WE GOING TO SEE ON SUNDAY? “I think Talladega is going to be a great race. I feel that at the fall race, a lot of the drivers were behaving because of the championship and the number of things that were on the line. I might expect some guys to lay back here, but there is a lot less pressure at this race than what we have in the fall. We have less to really adjust with on the race car than we ever have, but I don’t think any of the problems we’ve seen with the car of tomorrow will show up on this track. I expect a great race and I think it will be exactly what the fans want.”

ON THE DRIVERS SAYING IT IS DIFFICULT TO SEE OTHER DRIVERS HAND SIGNALS AND POSSIBLY MAKING THE WING OR THE WICKER BILL PLEXIGLAS SO IT’S EASIER TO SEE? “I don’t think that wicker bill is going to make any difference at all. There are a couple of things. One, the angle of the back glass is in a way where it reflects a lot of light and you can’t see inside of the car in front of you. It’s almost as if there is a mirror of some sort there. So you can’t see in the cockpit in the car in front of you. The wing does pose a problem, but that quarter-inch or half-inch of wicker isn’t going to make things better. The other part is, waving out of the side of the car. The greenhouse on the vehicle is so large that you can’t see around the seatposts of the car in front of you to see where the window net is because the window net is inboard. And you can’t see a guy’s fingers or his hand or whatever. There is very little room to reach out. It is a problem and it’s the same for all of us. We just have to be very smart with the spotters and how the spotters communicate to each other up there to let them know when somebody is going to pit.”

IN TERMS OF EXPERIENCE, HOW CONFIDENT ARE YOU AND JEFF GORDON AND DALE EARNHARDT JR. BECAUSE OF THE SUCCESS YOU’VE HAD HERE IN THE PAST? “This has been a great track for Hendrick Motorsports. I expect us to be right there in the thick of it. I think Junior is one of the best in the draft and that’s nice having him at Hendrick and we can all work together and hopefully get a one through four finish. We’ve run one through four before and have finished one-two, but it would be nice to really dominate out here. And as I say that, this track is more forgiving to all competitors than anywhere we run. So, even though it’ll be a strong track for us, I think there are a lot of other strong teams in general. And then this is really a crap shoot for some of the lower level teams that wouldn’t typically have a chance to win.”

THE DRIVERS ARE TALKING ABOUT LAYING BACK AND JUST RIDING AROUND FOR THE FIRST HALF OF SUNDAY’S RACE. AS A COMPETITOR, HOW TOUGH IS THAT FOR YOU TO DO? “I’ve done it a few times. And the first few times were hard. There are certainly some ways you can get in trouble. And that’s where it affected me more before. An example of that is we were riding and hanging back and when it comes time to hit pit road, we had a problem with a pit stop. Now that small draft of cars we were in, is all broken up and I lost the draft. And here comes the big pack catching us now and fortunately a caution came out. So there are some other risks that run with that. But in general the way it worked last fall for us, you’ve just got to be patient enough to believe in it and know that with 10 or 15 (laps) to go, it’s going to be a free-for-all and you’re going to find your way back into the race and have a shot at it. So, it’s not that difficult now that I’ve done it a few time to be honest.”

DID THE RACING CHANGE AT ALL LAST YEAR WITH THE NEW SURFACE? “It made it more forgiving. It certainly did. I know there was a lot of criticism with the fall race, but I don’t think it had anything to do with the car or the track. It was really drivers trying to be smart and worrying about a championship and what was on the line than anything.”

SO ARE YOU MORE AGGRESSIVE IN APRIL THAN OCTOBER? “Yeah, I definitely think so. That’s been the trend that I’ve personally seen out on the track. I know coming into this, we’re ready to go racing. We might elect to be smart if things are getting too crazy. But as of now, we haven’t talked about riding in the back or doing any of that stuff. When we come here in the fall, there is so much on the line and so much to lose, that the top 12 teams and then it seems like those teammates of those drivers as well, all know what’s on the line and nobody wants to do anything stupid, so everybody plays it smart. The race may have been a little less than what everybody would want to see.”

COMING OUT OF DAYTONA, HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT THE NEW RACE CAR AND YOUR PROGRAM WITH IT? HOW HAS THAT CHANGED FROM DAYTONA TO NOW FOR PLATE RACES? “Daytona has been a struggle for us the last couple years down there, even with the old car. We seem to get straight-line speed out of it but something has just not been where we needed it for the race. We roll into Talladega, and Talladega has been just what we need. Our package works great. The track works great for me driving it. We’ve had some top two’s and won a couple years back. So the two track, I walk into them with different expectations. Daytona is a tough track for us and I feel like we certainly have a chance to win, but coming to Talladega I know we have a chance to win.”

WHAT SORT OF AFFECT DID DALE EARNHARDT SR. HAVE ON YOU? WHAT IS HIS LEGACY IN THE SPORT? “There is so much that he’s done for our sport in general that all of us drivers are thankful for and recognize that he was one of the guys that helped carry the sport on his back and really helped to bring it to where it is today. The success that he had on track, the character he was, inside of the car and outside of the car, left a lasting impression with anyone associated with sports or motorsprots. He’s done a ton for our sport and I wish that I had a chance to race with him. That was something that I didn’t have the fortune of experiencing and something I really wish I could have done.”

ON JUNIOR HYSTERIA SURROUNDING TALLADEGA, DO YOU FEEL LIKE THERE WILL BE MORE OF THAT BECAUSE HE’S WITH HMS NOW? “I really don’t pay attention to what goes on outside of, and I think every time we come to Talladega and to certain tracks it’s Junior country and the fans are the same. I don’t think it’s impacted my fan base. I think that with Junior joining the team, there are more people looking at Hendrick Motorsports and Jeff Gordon and myself in a respectful way and I’m appreciative of that. But I can’t say that I feel like I’m any more or less under the radar. It’s really the same stuff. I don’t get flipped off as much, which is nice, from his fans, or beer cans thrown at me. So that’s one positive aspect of it. But all in all, he’s been great to work with and really has been a professional and focused on performing and I look forward to watching him get his first win.”

WITH THAT IN MIND, HAS THERE BEEN A CHANGE WHEN YOU’RE OUT THERE RACING WITH JUNIOR ON THE TEAM, OR IS IT THE SAME THAT IT’S ALWAYS BEEN? “There are some small changes. Anytime you’re around a teammate on track, you give them a little more slack and work with them a little more. So being on different teams in the past, we’ve probably raced each other a little harder than what we do now. But it’s so tough to really help a teammate unless you’re at Talladega or Daytona. At Daytona he was up front and running well and we had a problem early and I was fighting track position all day long and really never had a chance to work with him. So I’m excited for this weekend and hopeful that we all get out there and work well together.”

WERE YOU IN AWE LAST NIGHT STANDING IN FRONT OF THAT STAGE WITH ALL THOSE GUYS? “Oh, that was great. It was so cool. And one of the hightlights for me back stage was that I have these shoes that look like they’re size 14. They’re really my size, but they have this really long nose on them and I had Junior Johnson and David Pearson busting my butt over my shoes. And David Pearson was so amused by my shoes that he made me take my shoe off so he could see the actual size of my foot (laughs). So to have that type of banter and to be back there with those guys and see those personalities; I mean I know who they are but I’ve never had a chance to spend any time with them. So to be back stage and have them pick on me a little bit was a lot of fun.”

KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 SHELL-PENNZOIL IMPALA SS met with media and discussed driver’s hand signals, drug testing at KHI, on the possibility of Tony Stewart being a NASCAR car owner, racing at Bakersfield, visiting the Shell Oil rig and more.

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO SEE ON SUNDAY? “That is a good question. I think everyone is a little anxious to see how the car reacts to the restrictor plate change. It might pack ‘em up more. Might make it harder to pass. I don’t really know how these cars are going to react. This is the first restrictor plate change we have had, that I know of.”

ARE YOU CONCERNED ABOUT THE INABILITY TO SEE THE DRIVER IN FRONT OF YOU MAKING A WAVE? SOME DRIVERS HAVE EXPRESS CONCERN: “It is not a concern for me. I stick my hand out the window, the left side window.”

HOW ABOUT OTHER GUYS BEING ABLE TO SEE WHAT THEIR INTENTIONS ARE? “I think that their intentions should be to fix their window net and use the left side of the car. That always works better for me.”

TALK ABOUT HOW KEVIN HARVICK, INC. GOT THEIR NEW DRUG TESTING POLICY PUT IN PLACE: “After the whole drug testing thing in Phoenix, we went home and changed the whole policy that we have at our company. All the drivers and crew chiefs volunteered to take a random drug test. We did that, and then we put an outside company to put a random drug test and policy in place. The whole company will be tested within a week. We have got most of them done and haven’t had any failures yet, so that is a good thing. That is something that we can probably fix here by just putting a policy in place that if you want to get a hard card, you have to get tested by teams - they have an outsource come in and randomly drug test all the teams as they submit their approvals for a hard card you have to send your drug test with it. That would make it a lot easier on NASCAR. If you go to the infield care center, it should be just like the drug policy at a lot of the shops, if you wreck or something and have to go through the infield care center, it should be standard procedure to take a drug test as you go through there,. If you have been through there 10 times in 10 weeks, that should be a standard procedure. I think that would fix a lot of the questions that we have and be a pretty simple solution.

“I am proud that we went home and made ours right. We are considered a drug-free environment at KHI and we have a facility that handles that testing for us, it is a pretty simple procedure. I have learned a lot about drugs over the last week and a half and how you can and can’t handle things legally. Luckily our drivers were nice enough to volunteer their time to go to the drug testing facility so Hornaday, Sprague, Cale Gale and myself and all our crew chiefs, went over there and got that all handled. So hopefully everyone will follow suit. It will be good for our garage. I really think the hard card thing would fix a lot of our problems, because every figure in this garage has a hard card, it would just be a pretty simple process.”

WAS IT DIFFICULT TO GET THE DRUG TESTING POLICY IN PLACE? “I am fortunate to have good people back at the shop that are able to spend the time to put those programs in to place. It was a time consuming process to put the programs in to place, for about a week. But, once we got it going, it wasn’t that big of a deal and I think it is something that will benefit everybody down the road. I think it is something that the whole sport can be proud of if we can get it to that point.”

DID YOU TALK YOUR BUDDY SMOKE (TONY STEWART) IN TO BEING A CAR OWNER? “I don’t know that I talk Tony in to anything, I am not going to get in the middle of all of that. I don’t really know one way or the other. I am here to be Tony’s friend. Whether he would drive at Joe Gibbs Racing or at RCR in the fourth car or own his own team doesn’t really matter to me. Tony is one of my best friends and I want to be a sounding board if he is going to do something and don’t want to be politicking to get him to do one thing or another. I want to be his friend and help him through the process. It is no different than any of the rest of us. I want him to make the right decision for himself. I am all for seeing him in a Chevrolet; Tony is an American guy, so I think that would be good for everybody.”

ARE YOU AND DELANA ANY FURTHER ALONG ON BEING A DRAG RACE TEAM OWNER? “Well, the drag race stuff is something that I am exploring. As the sponsors become harder and harder to find, NHRA goes to a lot of different places that we don’t go to. It opens up a lot of different markets. Whether that would be in top-fuel or funny car, we are definitely interested in exploring that route and seeing where it goes. It would be something we would need to have done by the end of the summer to put everything in place and get the shop where it needed to be and hire the right people. Definitely something we are going to explore over the next couple of months. Don’t know where that ball will land. We went to Vegas last week and checked all that out. There is a lot of exciting things happening over there and going to be some changes that go on. Where we land as far as how we approach it or who we approach it with is yet to be determined.”

HAS THE NEW TALLADEGA SURFACE CHANGED YOUR DRIVING STYLE HERE? “The surface is awesome. It is very smooth. You don’t worry about the handling of your car; you worry about the speed of your car. As a driver from the mental aspect, it helps because you don’t have to worry about the car moving around, anything crazy. You just worry about how it sucks up and how it works in the front of the pack, the back of the pack, the middle of the pack and things like that.”

DO YOU THINK IT WILL BE MORE RACEY OR LESS RACEY THAN LAST FALL? “That all depends on what this restrictor plate does to it. I think everybody was pretty nervous about how everybody was going to act in a pack and how they were going to make things happen as far as the race went and if there was going to be a big wreck. I think the cars didn’t suck up as good as we all expected them to so the race got kind of single file there and as the speeds crept up, they obviously wanted to see that come down but be interesting to see this first practice, this will tell us a lot.”

CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE ALL-STAR RACE? “The All-Star race is a fun event. It isn’t fun if you get your stuff tore up which is nine times out of 10 what happened to us. But, it is a different atmosphere just because you can kind of throw caution to the wind, really make some things happen that you normally wouldn’t do with really no consequences other than tearing your car up, point-wise or anything like that. It is interesting to see the different approach and mindset that everybody comes in with that weekend. It is a fun event. Sometimes it can be a little bit frustrating just for the fact you can tear your stuff up that you might want to race next week, but that is part of it.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE NEW FORMAT? “Ok, so it is four segments. I know I am going to be in the burnout competition that is all I know. That is the only thing I know and I know we are going to be in the All-Star race. The format is a little bit hard, just because you really don’t know what is right and what is wrong. Everybody wants that we4ekend to be exciting so it interesting to see what the format is this year.”

IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT THE ALL STAR RACE, WHAT WOULD IT BE? “I would make it have some point implication, whether it be bonus points or something like that. We spend a lot of time and effort getting ready for that, it could be a small amount of points or a small bonus of some sort, just to make it a little more meaningful.”

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ALL STAR MOMENT? “I think would be going three-wide, being on the top and being able to take the lead. It was kind of one of those All-Star moments I guess you could say to go up and do something you normally wouldn’t do and put yourself in that position. It was a make or break move, I was either going to hit the wall or make it. We made it and wound up having it pay off in a million different ways.”

TALK ABOUT YOUR TRIP FOR SHELL TO THE OFF-SHORE OIL PLATFORM YESTERDAY: “We went out to Brutus, the oil rig about 100 and some miles out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Road in a helicopter an hour each way over the water. That was pretty interesting to see all the guys on the rig there and see how the rig worked and all the amount of effort that Shell puts in to making gas and natural gas, as well of all the different types of energy that they are involved with. There is a lot of effort that goes in to all of it and a lot of time and a lot of money, just to get it to the point of actually pumping oil out of the ground.”

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT NASCAR TAKING A CAMPING WORLD EAST WIN AWAY FROM PEYTON SELLARS BECAUSE OF A SHOCK INFRACTION? “It is a pretty harsh penalty. It is not consistent with what they have done in these series. So that makes it tough. I know you can’t pay $100,000 fine or something like that if you are one of those teams. We got in to a similar situation last year with a base-valve shock we accidentally put on the car in one corner. I don’t remember the exact fine, but it wasn’t a win, it was points. That is tough on those guys. They live week to week and to take something away like that is tough. Obviously, they should have been penalized, but it makes it tough to keep going when you race week-to-week like that. Those guys don’t race a lot of races; to take a whole event away from somebody is pretty harsh.

“It is very easy to make mistakes. A lot of those guys buy parts from teams like us and the Cup teams where you can run base-valve shocks. That is what is a little bit confusing about the rules. You can run base-valve shocks in the Truck division, but you can’t run base-valve shocks in the Nationwide division and you can run base-valve shocks in the Cup division. If they would simplify the shock rule across the board, it could probably make things a lot easier because it is very simple to leave those parts in the shocks and you wouldn’t run three shocks legal and one shock illegal. It seems like there needs to be a little more common sense from a race director standpoint. To me that was something, especially with a team that doesn’t have a past history of having a bunch of trouble. I think it could have been handled a little bit better. That is my opinion."

IS JEFF BURTON GOING TO BE PRETTY STEADY AND NOT DISTRACTED LEADING THE POINTS? “I think that might be a better question to ask Jeff. Jeff is a pretty level headed guy, but I really can’t answer that.”

WHAT IS DALE EARNHARDT, SR.’S LEGACY IN THIS SPORT? “I think he has left a tremendous legacy. I didn’t have a lot of personal interaction with Dale one way or another, so there wasn’t a huge personal relationship with him. But obviously he is a huge part of why RCR is where it is at today and where our sport is at today. To me he is a very important figure for a lot of us to look up to as we grew up race fans and a lot of us grew up to looking up to him as to what we wanted to be someday. Like I said, he is very important to not only my car and our team as well as our sport in general.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF DANICA PATRICK GETTING HER FIRST IRL WIN IN JAPAN? “I think it was an odd weekend to get a first win with the two series being split up. I am excited for Indy Car Racing to get back to where they need to be with everyone together. I don’t know, it would be interesting to see how she would do here (Talladega). I think this is a much more competitive garage than what they have over there. It would be a little bit tougher road to hoe than what she has got right now.”

TALK ABOUT GOING TO RACE IN BAKERSFIELD: “We are going back home. We are going to a neat fundraiser at home for my high school that I went to. We are going to build them a new wrestling room. We are going to have a fund raiser the Wednesday before Sonoma. We are having about 2,000 people in attendance. I actually grew up in Oildale, California which is in Bakersfield. The dirt track is right down the street and I have never raced there. We reach out to see if they would be interested in having us there. That is literally four or five minutes from my house. I am looking forward to that. I am not the world’s greatest dirt racer by any means, but it will be great for the fans. Just really trying to help the racing community. Bakersfield has always been a huge racing community and we want to support the dirt tracks and the go-kart tracks and the new asphalt track when they get it done, to keep racing alive and well there and help it move forward. Looking forward to those events and give back to Bakersfield and the community there at home.”

IS IT AN UNFAIR EXPECTATION ON DALE, JUNIOR ABOUT NOT HAVING WON YET? “I don’t know how to answer that. This sport is hard to win in, there is always going to be a lot of pressure on him, just because of the fact he has a huge microscope on top of him. I think it is unfair to say maybe he is in a slump when he has been with the team, what, eight weeks. Sometimes the fans can get a little bit greedy and a little bit ahead of themselves not really knowing what goes in to making a team successful and having a team gel. Being with a new organization would be something that would be hard for anybody. I would say you are right, there are definitely unfair expectations. I guess those are just the standards you have to live up to when you have the responsibility he has to our sport.”

CLINT BOWYER, NO. 07 DIRECTV IMPALA SS met with media and discussed racing at Talladega.

HOW ARE YOU FEELING ABOUT THIS TALLADEGA RACE WEEKEND? DO YOU AND YOUR TEAM HAVE THE RIGHT MOJO GOING? “I think so. You never know what to expect at a place like Talladega. I can’t wait to get out there and see what we have got. Hopefully we will have a fast car. I can’t wait to get to the race. That is the biggest part. I can’t wait to get to about half-way through the race. Once you get to half-way, you start feeling and knowing what you have for a race car. You know the capabilities. You can start working your way to the front avoiding situations. You can start working on getting yourself in the right situation toward the end of the race.”

CAN YOU EVER REALLY FEEL SAFE ABOUT NOT GETTING IN A MESS? “Absolutely. It can always happen. The reason I said half-way, you already have good feeling and sensation of what you have for a race car and you have been in a lot of situations already. And, you have got to half-way! (Laughs) You crash out early at this place, it costs you big points wise, whether other guys wreck or not. If you are the first one to wreck with them, it costs you. I like this place. I like superspeedway racing and like I said I can hardly wait to get out there.”

IS THIS ONE OF THE HARDEST TRANSITIONS AS A SHORT TRACK GUY COMING TO NASCAR? “It all has to do with having a good car. This is a horsepower track, especially since the repaved it. It is smooth and everything else. You have to have the horsepower under the hood and you have to do your job. You can make or break a situation putting yourself in the right or the wrong situation out there. It can cost you bit either way. I like this place. I like the strategy behind it. It is constantly moving. You just have to put yourself in the right situation. “

DO YOU THINK NEAR THE END OF THE RACE, YOU HAVE FIGURED OUT EVERYTHING YOU DON’T WANT TO DO AND HAVE THE ONE OR TWO THINGS YOU THINK YOU NEED TO DO? “By the end of the race, you have found cars you run good with. Hopefully you have positioned yourself to be with those cars at the end of the race when it counts. Hopefully those cars are your teammates. Teammates go a long way here, they can help you but you don’t always work well with your teammates. You have to figure out what is good for you, how things are going to work and hopefully the DIRECTV Chevrolet will be fast this week.”

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE NATIONWIDE POINTS BATTLE? IS IT A THREE WAY BATTLE WITH YOU, CARL EDWARDS AND KYLE BUSCH? “Absolutely. I knew Kyle was going to be a factor before this was all said and done. The No. 20 car is fast, doesn’t seem to really matter who is in it. It is going to lead laps and stuff. I said at the beginning of the year I didn’t think it was necessarily going to be the one who won the most races is going to be the one that has what it takes to win the championship. I still believe that.”

IN DAYTONA, BEFORE YOU GOT RUN OVER, DID YOU LEARN ANYTHING THAT WILL HELP HERE? “It got down to how many to go when Juan (Pablo Montoya) wrecked me. It was a pretty comfortable situation on that restart with two to go. I had my teammate behind me, we were leading the race. I was leading the Daytona 500; life has been a lot worse. That what is great about racing and superspeedway racing. You never know what is going to happen. We went from leading the Daytona 500 to crashed out. You never know.”

JEFF GORDON, DRIVER OF THE NO. 24 DUPONT IMPALA SS, met with media members at Talladega Superspeedway and talked about racing at Talladega, Tony Stewart becoming a team owner, favorite dirt tracks, the All Star race, Dale Earnhardt, Sr. and other topics.

HAVING NOT WON YET THIS YEAR, HOW CONFIDENT DOES IT MAKE YOU COMING BACK TO A TRACK WHERE YOU HAVE HAD SO MUCH SUCCESS? “We love coming to Talladega, it’s a great track. The fact that we had this car, the new Impala here last year and had success with it, it gives us definitely some confidence. We just came back from a test in Nashville, we test again next week and then Charlotte test coming up so I feel confident those tests are going to help us in areas that we need to work on but it’s kind of refreshing to come here and not have to worry about handling or really a whole lot other than the restrictor plate change and just see how that works in the draft.”

CONSIDERING –DO YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT WHAT CAN GO WRONG? “You have to be smart. You can’t just put yourself in a bad position. You gotta understand your surroundings. You see yourself getting in a bad position and there’s a way to get out of it, then you get out of it. The problem is most of the time you are in the middle of it going I know I shouldn’t be here, but you don’t have any other options. Last year we didn’t qualify well, we were in the back. We rode around the back all day, it’s not something I enjoyed doing or had a lot of fun with but you know it’s kind of the box we were put in and hopefully we qualify better this time around and we’re up front all day. The most important thing, have the same results.”

WITH THE SUCCESS HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS HAS HAD AT THIS TRACK, WITH YOUR CURRENT TEAMMATES, HOW MUCH OF AN OPPORTUNITY DOES THAT WHEN YOU LOOK AT HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS AS A WHOLE AND THEIR RECORD AT THIS RACE TRACK, NO OTHER TEAM REALLY COMPARES. 12 WINS IN THIS CAMP RIGHT NOW HERE. HOW MUCH OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU AND THE REST OF THE HENDRICK CAMP HAS GETTING BACK INTO VICTORY LANE? “I look at these restrictor plate races especially here at Talladega with this car especially, anybody can win here. The fact that we’ve won that many races is pretty phenomenal to me. And then to make the change, the rules have changes the car has changed, it’s not the same ballgame and you know the fact that we were able to win this race last year I thought was really a surprise. The first race with the old car was different, you gotta get out front and stay out front, with this car you want to be second or third or fourth and make that slingshot move at the end. To get yourself in that position with two or three laps to go is very hard to do. It worked out for us then hopefully it will work out for us again this time. I think that any time you come to a track that you’ve had success at as an organization and your team, it gives you confidence and makes you look forward to it and you know what it takes to win. Just gotta make it happen again.”

MAYBE THIS YEAR MORE THAN LAST YEAR, DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOUR UNDER THE RADAR A LITTLE BIT? “Junior’s always been the guy. He’s always gotten the most attention, so to me there’s nothing really different. We’re not having the success at this point in the season we had last year, so we are under the radar just because we haven’t performed. To me it’s always been Junior’s up here in popularity and the rest of us follow and that hasn’t changed to me any more this year than it has in other years. It’s exciting to see him at Hendrick and see him running well and up in the points and I’m proud to be a part of that.”

ARE THERE LESS BOOS NOW? “I have seen it change it some, but I think the diehard Earnhardt fans are not gonna change just because he’s our teammate which is fine by me.”

ON TOYOTA’S CHANCES AT TALLADEGA. “They’ve got good power, we learned that in Daytona (4:19). I expect for them to be strong here again. You say Toyota, I say Gibbs. I don’t think Toyota. To me there’s a big difference. Not trying to beat anybody else down but the Gibbs teams are strong. They have good drivers, good teams and they got great power this year and it’s working well for them so I expect it to work well for them (4:49). With that said, this is a restrictor plate track and anybody can win here so it wouldn’t surprise me to see anybody win. Anybody can win this race.”

SPEAKING OF GIBBS, TONY MADE THE NEW THIS WEEK IN DECLARING FREE AGENCY. WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THAT, HOW VALUABLE WOULD HE BE? “Very valuable. To me that tells me he’s got another year on his contract or two, I don’t know how many and he wants out a bit earlier. The one thing that I’ve learned a long time ago, if a guy doesn’t want to be there, there’s no use in putting up too much of a fight to keep him there. Because even if you do, it’s never going to be the same. The fact that he said that, I’m sure there’s a lot of things that are gonna have to be worked out. I’m pretty confident that Tony is gonna get what he wants. He might pay price at it to do that, to get that. I think that was a huge, huge thing and I’m very surprised. That just opens up a whole book of questions, what are his plans, where’s he going, what’s he gonna do. It’s interesting to see you guys to watch and see what happens.”

HE’S THINKING ABOUT OWNERSHIP, WOULD YOU RECOMMEND IT? “With a good partner yes. Rick Hendrick is a great partner. He’s a great business man and he’s been at this a very long time so with the right organization, with the right partner, absolutely. I wouldn’t recommend for anybody to go at it on their own. I just think there’s a lot at stake. It’s very difficult, it’s very expensive and the business model is not necessarily a very good one, but there are I’d say a handful or maybe 10 teams that do well. But other than that, you got a lot of guys that break even, a lot of guys that lose a lot of money. It could go either way.”

DO YOU SEE TONY STEWART IN A CHEVY SOMETIME SOON? “I know that he’s always been a guy that’s enjoyed driving Chevy’s and that might have had something to do with it. I really don’t know.”

WHEN YOU’VE HAD AN OFF WEEK AND YOU COME BACK, IS THERE REFRESH REVITALIZATION IN YOU AND WANTING TO GET BACK BEHIND THE WHEEL AND WANTING TO GET ON TRACK? “Well we’ve been on the track testing. Yeah, I’m excited to get back to the race track. Because the last couple of weeks haven’t gone well for us, the last couple of races, we’re looking to rebound and get ourselves back up there. Any time you go through a couple races like we’ve gone through, your goal is to get that momentum back and just to build confidence and build teamwork and it builds everything up so you can go in the right direction.”

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF DANICA’S WIN? “I was watching it. I felt like it was a matter of time before she won one. I’m happy for her, and I think she’s proven that’s she a very good driver and I think she’s with a good team so I’m sure there’s a lot of pressure and a lot of pressure taken off. Certainly got a lot of buzz to what’s already been an interesting season to Indy Car racing/CART season. I think it’s good momentum for them for sure.”

SUCCESS HERE, WHERE YOU’RE AT IN THE POINTS, WEEKEND DOESN’T GO TO WELL WHERE DOES THAT PUT YOU IN THE MIND SET? “I can think of a lot of things there. If I had to go through and think that every week, I couldn’t last very long in this series or in this sport. You can’t do it like that. You just got to go out there and work hard and get the best finish you can. It doesn’t matter whether you win or whether you finish 43rd, you go on to the next one, you go on to the next one and the next one and all you can do is you best. The only thing that we’re focusing on right now is those two bad races, especially Texas.

“How do we make sure or do our best trying to prevent that from happening again? We know we’re a competitive team and we want to be competitive. We’re pretty embarrassed about what happened in Texas and we’re working very, very, very hard to prevent that from happening.”

JEFF, HOW MUCH BETTER OF RACE WOULD IT BE HERE IF IT WERE 300 MILES INSTEAD OF 500 MILES? “I don’t think it matters, unless you made it a 50 lap race. I think anything over that, so I guess we need a 150-mile you know. To me, I think that this race track is so big and so wide, it doesn’t matter if we run 1,000 miles here, there’s always going to be good action, there’s always going to be three wide and passes for the lead especially with this car, but to me it seems that the real race for the win is not going to happen until you get inside that last pit stop. Once you get inside that last pit stop it’s all about positioning yourself, it’s all about getting the five, 10 to go and hoping you’re in a place to make that move to win.”

WHAT’S DALE’S LEGACY HERE? “Obviously seven championships. Being the Intimidator, a guy that’s just relentless. To me I think he was the greatest restrictor plate driver of all time. I don’t think there is even a question about that, but he has so many things that can contribute to his legacy it’s hard to pick one.”

WHAT WAS IT LIKE RACING AGAINST HIM? “It was incredible. I miss Dale a lot. I miss racing Dale, a great deal, he brought a lot to this sport. Something I don’t think anybody can bring to a sport, just everything sort of matched up from his personality to driving style, his black 3 Chevrolet, his nickname to what he did in the race car on track and the fan following that he had. It’s all those things that make him the legend that he’ll always be.”

WHAT ABOUT THE ENGINE ISSUES YOU HAD EARLY AT DAYTONA? “Yeah, that won’t be an issue here.”

SAME CAR, DIFFERENT CAR? “Don’t know, couldn’t tell you. They all the same. I think we had our short track car at the shootout there in Daytona. All at issue was the stress we were putting on the upper control arms and it just broke the bracket, I think it was the left upper control arm bracket. We’ve addressed that. We feel confident we’ve fixed it and we didn’t have an issue here. This place is not near as hard on the suspension components as Daytona is.”

HOW MANY MORE YEARS, HOW MANY MORE WINS AND CHAMPIONSHIPS DO YOU HAVE LEFT IN YOU? “You always love getting asked that question. Makes you feel old. I don’t feel pressure. I feel I’m in a great place in my life and my career. No matter what this season offers me I have a lot to be excited and proud of and happy about. I’m a competitor, I like to be competitive and I think what’s helped me contribute to team’s I’ve driven for throughout my career and be successful. I hope it always continues until the day that I can walk away from it. Hopefully I can walk away from it on my own terms. I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you. When you have tough years you want to walk away sooner when you have good years you feel like it extends your career longer. After last year I was excited to get back in this year and obviously a tough year ahead of us and we’ll see where it all ends up being at the end of the year I can’t give you a number, I don’t know. But if I never get the fifth championship, I will always be proud of my career, what I have a accomplished. My four championships and my wins. The competitor in me wants to keep going, I have a great race team, great people around me, so that is what I am looking at.”

WHAT’S THE BEST DIRT TRACK? “Man, there’s a question. I hate to say it but Kokomo (Speedway) would be on my top 15 or 20. Maybe because I wasn’t very good at Kokomo. I used to love Bloomington, Indiana, Lawrenceburg, Indiana, Haubstadt, Indiana and I loved a lot of short tracks, Chillicothe, Ohio is one of my favorites. I mean I always loved Eldora. I think Eldora is probably the ultimate dirt track that there is. All kinds of race cars put on great races there. A guy that personally grew up on little short tracks, I’d probably have to say Lawrenceburg or Chillicothe or something like that.”

WHEN YOU GET GEARED UP TO COME BACK TO TALLADEGA, YOUR NOT SUCH A BAD GUY? “I don’t look at it that way. I look at it as the more things they throw at me, it seems like the better things are going for me. I think that our fans our passionate and I like to see their passion. Obviously you don’t want them throwing things. It’s always been a love/hate relationship for me ever since I came to NASCAR. Prior to NASCAR everywhere I went the fans were all for me and having an incredible fan following, but when you get in NASCAR you start battling Dale Earnhardt, you’re second, third year into the series created quite a rivalry among the fans and that’s just the way I’ve always looked at it.”

THEY AREN’T THROWING STUFF AS HARD NOW, MAYBE? “Sometimes they do, it depends on how good we are doing. You know. It doesn’t seem like it ever changes here at Talladega. There are a lot of Earnhardt fans here. But there are also a lot of Gordon fans. I think that is one of the coolest things I love about Talladega is the on going rivalry. When you are in the car and you are making a pass for the lead and you pass Dale Earnhardt, Jr., even if he is your teammate, you know the fans are going nuts. That is a cool feeling.”

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE UPCOMING RACES BEING GOOD TRACKS FOR YOU? “Richmond, we improved on last year and were top-five both races. I think that is our biggest challenge. I am very excited about all the tracks from here to Charlotte. That is kind of what we were just in. With this new car and us not quite figuring out the 1.5-miles, we were on a streak of tracks that are not our best tracks. Now we are coming to our best tracks. All that really matters to me is that, I am not saying we have to go out there and win, but need to put solid finishes together at them.

“We need to capitalize at the tracks that are good tracks for us. It doesn’t matter if it is Martinsville or it is a road course. There have not been many tracks out there that have been bad tracks for me. But of all the tracks that are probably my worst tracks, Texas and Phoenix are two of them. We had those back-to-back and had bad results. So hopefully, now we can come to some tracks, Talladega, Darlington, Charlotte, we have a road course that is coming up in early June. We have some good tracks that we can definitely put some good finishes together.”

DO YOU THINK YOU SHOULD BE THE FAVORITE HERE BASED ON LAST YEAR? “Maybe, I mean, if I was doing odds, I would definitely put us as one of the favorites. I don’t know how really separate them by much here. Anybody can win at this race track. The only reason you might put me is because we won the last restrictor plate here with this car and won the last couple of races. But Jimmie has been good here. Junior has been good here. I am very interested to see how Junior does here with Hendrick equipment, I think he is going to be really strong cause because he is a very good drafting.”

WHAT DID DALE SR.’S HAVING THE FIRST SPECIAL PAINT SCHEME AT THE ALL STAR DO TO THE MARKET FOR SPECIAL PAINT SCHEME: “I think Dale and the group that he was doing his licensing and merchandising with really took it to the next level. They were thinking so much farther ahead and thinking about things that most of us weren’t thinking about, souvenir sales and capitalize on it. He had a lot of sales, so he could think about that. He had such an amazing fan following and plus he saw what diecast and memorabilia was becoming. I think that a lot of that you can give credit to Fred Wagonenas from Action Performance. Between him, Dale, Richard Childress and Hank Jones, they all took it to another level.” “I can’t say I remember my first one. In the late 90s, diecast collectable were just booming. It was huge, you would come out with a new paint scheme and you would sell it out every single time. I think we flooded the market a bit. It isn’t as special as it used to be. We used to do Star Wars, movie premiers, Superman and some really cool big promotions. I think when those come along and it makes sense for the sponsors and it is appealing to the fans, I think it makes sense to do it. Just to change a paint scheme, to change a paint scheme, we have to think about the value to our sponsors along the way as well. Yes, we have had some cool ones. Jurassic Park, there have been a punch of cool ones.”

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ALL STAR MOMENT? “Probably the year we crashed in the first segment and came back and won. Or, maybe the year with the Jurassic Park car when we won all three segments. Those are pretty awesome memories for me.”