STEVE LETARTE, CREW CHIEF, NO. 24 DUPONT/NATIONAL GUARD “YEAR OF THE NCO” CHEVROLET (ON MICHIGAN INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY AND HAVING THE NATIONAL GUARD ON BOARD.): “Michigan is always a really exciting place to go. It’s big, it’s wide-open, and it’s fast. We’re going to bring the same car we won with in Texas, and the paint scheme is going to be similar (to the Texas car). It’s going to be painted up with the National Guard’s “Year of the NCO” on it. We’re excited to have them on board. I’m a real big fan of the paint scheme. I think the silver and black is just a cool look. The number really stands out, and hopefully it will look as good at it did in Texas when it was in Victory Lane. So, that’s our goal at Michigan.
“It’s a great track to work on new setups and new theories. It’s the biggest short track we run—that’s the big joke in the garage. Actually, it’s nothing like a short track, except for you race during the middle of the summer and it’s very, very slick. It doesn’t look that slick when you’re watching from home, but TV doesn’t do that place justice. It looks like they’re just kind of cruising around. You don’t understand why one guy is much slower than the other, but if you could see inside the car, he’s swatting flies and pedaling it real hard. It’s a really slick track in the middle of the summer. There’s multiple grooves, and that’s what helps us. Jeff can move around in the corners and help our speed. I’m excited to get that car back on track. It’s been fast all year long.”
LETARTE (ON WHAT IT TAKES TO BE GREAT AT MICHIGAN.): “It really takes speed, which is hopefully what we’ve found this year. The thing we have going for us is the cars don’t drive a whole lot different than they did last year. Dover was a perfect example. We started in the back, we got caught on pit road, we lost a lap and lost another lap with a poor adjustment, but once we got the car good, we drove right up to second. And last year, we didn’t have cars that could do that all year long, so we’re just faster (this year). We’re just plain faster. And speed is what you’re going to need to have at Michigan. We are going to go there and try to be great, and sometimes you miss it, and you’ll get lapped, but we’re not going to go ride around eighth or ninth, because that’s not going to help us in the Chase. Eighth or ninth isn’t going to win the championship. You’re going to have to run in the top three or four week in and week out for 10 races to win a championship.”
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LETARTE (ON WHY THE NO. 24 TEAM QUALIFIES WELL AT MICHIGAN.): “We qualify so well there for one reason: we have a driver that is great at qualifying. I think we do a very good job preparing our cars at the shop. You only get three or four qualifying runs in practice, so it makes all the difference in the world having a veteran driver. He (Jeff Gordon) can go out and he can tell you in one corner whether the car has got what it needs. It doesn’t take very many runs to get him up to speed, especially there (Michigan). He is very good at attacking the track right off the truck, and we take a lot of pride in qualifying. We spend a lot of time on our brakes and our drive line and getting the car as light as we can for qualifying. Jeff maybe doesn’t sit on as many poles as other people in the sport, but he usually has the best qualifying average. He has such a good feel with the car that he doesn’t overdrive it, so if he drives it off into the corner and he thinks we should be o n the pole but it slips just a little, he can back down 2 percent and go run seventh. Where some of these other drivers, they drive in there committed and when it wiggles and makes a mistake, they qualify 35th. So he’s very, very good at getting consistently good top-10 laps at all these tracks.”
LETARTE (ON PREPARING FOR A POSSIBLE FUEL-MILEAGE RACE.): “We go to race, and we go to have the most power we can. The motor we run does a very good job working on fuel mileage. I think we are as competitive as anyone in the garage, and, as a crew chief, you have to pay attention, make sure you have the theory, and the driver has to be a part of that. We had some good finishes last year on fuel mileage. We finished second in Texas, top four at Homestead, top five in the 600—all on fuel mileage. So I think if it comes down to a fuel-mileage race, we are going to have a great shot at it. But you can’t really plan on it going in; you just make sure you have your details. We’re not going to hurt performance; we are going to get all we can, but keep the performance where it is.”
EIGHTH COMMAND SGT. MAJ. JOHN D. GIPE, ARMY RESERVE NATIONAL GUARD: “As Command Sergeant Major of the Army National Guard, I am proud to be a member of the Corps of Non-Commissioned Officers, known as the ‘Backbone of the Army.’ The NCO Corps provides the ‘Strength from Within’ the ranks. Thanks to each and every one of our Citizen-Soldiers for what they do on a daily basis in their communities and for their service to our nation. We are thrilled to have Jeff Gordon drive the ‘Year of the NCO’ car this weekend. Having Jeff and Hendrick Motorsports support the program will help bring more awareness and public understanding of the roles and responsibilities of today’s NCO.”
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