FANS CAN’T FEEL THE EMOTIONS YOU’VE HAD IN MAKING THE CHASE. CAN YOU SHARE WITH THEM WHAT’S MOST IMPORTANT ABOUT BEING IN THE CHASE AND THE EMOTIONS THAT YOU HAD?
“It’s no different than any other pro sports when you’re going through the playoffs. You know that everything you’ve worked for during the first 26 weeks of the season all comes down to these last 10 weeks. So you know if you have one bad race, that’s one-tenth of your opportunity to win a championship. As we’ve seen over the last two or three years, you can’t make that mistake and still have an opportunity to win the championship. So you place your whole season in those 10 weeks when you make the Chase, and if you have a bad week it’s hard on you.”
WITH THE SUCCESS OF THE NO. 14 AND THE NO. 39 TEAMS THIS YEAR, DO YOU ANTICIPATE ANY PERSONNEL CHANGES WITHIN THE GROUPS ON EITHER TEAM GOING INTO NEXT YEAR? HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO KEEP THOSE SAME PEOPLE TOGETHER TO ENSURE SUCCESS?
“I think it’s important, but at the same time if you feel like you have to make changes, you have to do that. You hope that you have the right core group of people in place where you’re not making those changes, but you can’t sacrifice that for not making the changes that are necessary. So you evaluate where you’re at and that’s where the next couple of weeks will be pretty important as far as analyzing. I already know that there are one or two guys that want to come off the road that have just been doing this a long time and they’re ready to be home a little more. So you have to make changes because of that; you have to make changes because you’re trying to improve your program. But you try to keep that core group as intact as you can.”
JIMMIE JOHNSON MENTIONED THAT IT WAS COOL THAT YOU WON A PRE-CHASE CHAMPIONSHIP AND A CHASE CHAMPIONSHIP AND HE KIND OF WISHES THAT HE HAD A PRE-CHASE CHAMPIONSHIP. DOES HE NEED A NON-CHASE CHAMPIONSHIP TO BE CONSIDERED AMONG THE GREATS?
“Oh, gosh no; are you kidding me? What did I get for leading the point standings after 26 weeks? I didn’t get anything.”
NO, ONE CHAMPIONSHIP UNDER THE OLD FORMAT AND ONE UNDER THE CHASE FORMAT
“Oh, okay, I understand what you’re saying. Does he need that? Well, he doesn’t have that and with the format we have now he doesn’t have the opportunity. But no, you don’t need that. I feel like this is a tougher format than the old format was. Obviously, just the sheer math of it; you have one bad day out of 10, that’s one-tenth of your schedule. Whereas before it would be 1/36th of it. So one bad day didn’t affect the outcome as bad as it does now. I feel just the opposite. I feel like the way he’s done it in this format is more impressive than winning it in the old format.”
DO YOU TAKE SPECIAL PRIDE IN THE FACT THAT YOU DID IT BOTH BEFORE AND AFTER?
“I’d rather be in his situation and be running for my fourth in a row (laughs), so, not necessarily. Any time you win a championship it doesn’t matter what format it is whether it’s a single event championship or a season championship, you cherish them. So I can’t say that I value one over the other. They were both special in their own way.”
WITH THE RELEASE OF KRAIG KINSER, WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR IN A REPLACEMENT FOR DONNY SCHATZ IN THE WORLD OF OUTLAWS? AND WHAT’S THE STATUS OF YOUR USAC TEAMS FOR 2010?
“We’re going to scale our USAC program back to two Silver Crown cars and one dirt Sprint Car. We’re not going to compete in the pavement Sprint Car races, but we’ll only have one team there and we won’t have any Midget teams next year. On the Outlaw side, Donny is obviously coming back next year and on Kraig’s side, the hard part was we waited to a part of the season that’s kind of hard for him, helping him get a ride for next year, which we’re doing everything we can to help with that. It was kind of hard for both of us. We saw some improvement early fall that we thought was going to continue and it fell back off at the end of the year. So we’re just trying to find someone that we feel like is a better fit. Kraig and Donny ran two different packages, chassis-wise and engine-wise and we’re trying to figure out how to bring that together where both guys are running the same chassis and same engine package. So we’re trying to find a driver that likes the J&J car like Donny does and somebody that we feel will be an asset to Donny as a teammate and be able to work together with him. So that’s what we’re working toward.”
LOOKING BACK AT YOUR CHASE, AFTER KANSAS IT LOOKED LIKE YOU WERE WELL-POSITIONED TO CHALLENGE JIMMIE JOHNSON FOR THE TITLE. IS THERE ONE RACE OVER THE LAST SIX THAT YOU REALLY FEEL COST YOU, MOMENTUM-WISE? OR WAS IT SIMPLY A CASE OF THE NO. 48 TEAM STEPPING UP THEIR GAME?
“Well they’ve definitely stepped up. You can’t take that away from them at all. Obviously the Talladega wreck didn’t help us any and last week’s wreck didn’t help us any. So that’s two weeks where we finished 20th or worse and that was a huge hit to us.”
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