DALE, JR. – DOES IT MAKE IT THAT MUCH FOR DIFFICULT FOR YOU TO MAKE THINGS BETTER WITH EVERYTHING YOU DO IN SUCH A FISHBOWL?
“Part of me is kind of nervous and would rather do these things without press conferences and all those things. But, when you get down to it, it gives you the opportunity to tell your side of the story. That fishbowl that you live in gives you the opportunity to voice your side of it. So, we can get up here, it gives me an opportunity how I feel about the change or how I feel about the future so there is less speculation and less guess work on everyone else’s part about where we stand. It also gives us an opportunity to thank our sponsors and all other kind of things.
“It is a good sounding board and if you take advantage of that and use it positively, you guys can write your story and you will be able to use some of my quotes so I am at least in there with a place to give my opinion on it. I’ve gotten used to the attention of our position. Our team gets a lot of attention and there is a lot of criticism, especially when we are under performing. All the guys that wear that AMP Energy/National Guard uniform out there know that very well. But when things are working for you, it is equally as rewarding. We just have to go out there and run well and run like we want then being in that fishbowl is pretty fun.”
MCGREW - WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED ABOUT DALE EARNHARDT JUNIOR BY WORKING WITH HIM DURING THIS TIME?
“I can’t narrow that down to just one thing. I’ve had a relationship with Dale for a long time; all the way back to Ricky and his friendship with Dale in that circle. I was really surprised when I first started working with Dale and his confidence was beat down as much as it was; I expected him to be a lot more positive and a lot more understanding of the situation I guess you’d say. But since then I’ve definitely seen a light in his eye and a strut in his step as he comes to the car. Like I said, we don’t have the bottom-line finishes to back up what I feel like we’ve started to achieve on that team but the steps are in place to get there. So I’m excited about that.”
JUNIOR – KNOWING NEXT YEAR IS SO IMPORTANT, WHAT DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU NEED TO DO THIS YEAR IN PREPARATION FOR NEXT YEAR?
“It’s hard to really put into words what I think we need to accomplish to get from where we are now to running up front. Obviously if you’ve watched our team closely you’ll see that we’ve been more competitive on the race track and in practices; more competitive at particular points in the race where we’ve struggled in the past.
“And like Lance says, I see the individual pieces of the puzzle that we’re missing kind of coming together and starting to work, but we aren’t finishing the races and we’re having problems or issues. We just have to figure out, and I think it’s more of a mentality or a confidence thing than anything you could put your hands on. So it’s not like we’re failing in the basic mechanics of building the cars and whatever, or setting them up for that matter. I think it comes down to the right attitude and showing up feeling like you’re the team to beat or there’s no reason to feel like you’re a longshot. I can’t speak for everybody on the team, but my confidence was pretty down earlier. It’s gotten better. It’s still nowhere near where I want it to be, but every week we seem to improve on that. I’m really impatient about it but it’s just a matter of time. If we can string one or two solid serious runs together before the end of the season, I think it would do a world of good for us.”
JUNIOR - IT SEEMS THAT YOU BOTH GET ALONG, BUT A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO YOU SAID YOU WOULD PREFER A DICTATOR-TYPE CREW CHIEF. CAN LANCE FILL THAT ROLE?
“Yeah, he can. He’s very serious about his job and very demanding of the individuals that make up the team. And I think especially now that we all know it’s his job, he’ll demand a lot more out of every one of us. So I think everybody on the team wants carry their end of the load, and then some. There’s a really good group of guys. They have a lot of ‘want to’ and we’ve just got to figure out how to make that into results. I think Lance can be the tough leader. He’s not going to be very hard on the guys. That’s just not his personality. But I think that he means business and especially now that we have everything lined up as far as everybody knows that it’s his job. I think we’ll all take a little more care in what our particular responsibilities are throughout the week with him leading the team.”
LANCE – WILL THERE BE ANY OTHER CHANGES TO THE TEAM FROM AN ENGINEERING STANDPOINT? HOW DO YOU STRATEGIZE TO GET TOP 15’s, TOP 10’s AND TOP 5’s?
“That’s something we’ve strived to accomplish. I don’t have all the answers just yet. As far as the personnel, that’s something that we analyze. We grade our guys weekly. It’s just seasonally, it’s weekly. Until you feel completely confident that you have the best car chief, that you can have the best shock guy, that you can have the best engineering staff and on down the line, you’re constantly wanting to improve that because that’s what makes it all tick. I’m not 100% sure what’s going to change or who is going to change or how it’s going to change, but I know that Alan (Gustafson) being my counterpart on the No. 5 car, we’re going to do some restructuring In the shop and we’re going to change the dynamic of that shop. And that’s something I’m looking forward to and he’s looking forward to and something we feel like the both of us are going to benefit from 100 percent. As we go along, if we see a weak link, if we see we could be better in this particular area, obviously we’re going to have to address that on a case by case basis.”
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