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Hendrick Motorsports
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT COMING BACK TO AUTO CLUB SPEEDWAY?:
“I’m really excited. It’s a big weekend for us because our sponsor, Pepsi, is sponsoring this race—the Pepsi 500. We’ve got a special DuPont/Pepsi paint scheme this weekend so it’s definitely a big weekend. Had the big premiere Wednesday and the Speedway-Pepsi party on Wednesday so it’s been a great week and it’s a big weekend for us. We ran so well here earlier in the year that certainly it has us excited about coming back and hoping that we can duplicate that performance and maybe pick up the results by one.”
WHAT COULD A BIGGER TIRE FROM GOODYEAR DO FOR THE SPORT AND FOR THE DRIVERS?:
“I’ve got to get up on the latest scoop. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to anybody about the test. I don’t even know what their goal is other than I would think that they’re just trying to figure out a way of getting the compounds to such where we have a little more grip in the car mechanically and it doesn’t abuse the shoulder of the tire as much is my guess. I really haven’t had a chance to talk to them about what they’re trying to accomplish there, sorry. I’ll find out though and get back to you on it.”
WHAT MAKES HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS SO SUCCESSFUL OVER THE LAST DECADE?:
“I think the attention to detail and your people are the most important part of it. Obviously, we have a great owner in Rick (Hendrick), he’s our leader and he sets a great example as to how to be successful. He just recognizes how to put the right people together. Success sort of breeds more success and we’ve been able to go on a path through the multi-car team process—started at two, went to three and now four.
“We’ve just found a way to really capitalize on that and make it work well by sharing information seamlessly and really having people that communicate well with one another to not only make their own individual team better, but make the whole organization better and it’s worked very well.”
CAN A DRIVER FEEL MOMENTUM AND DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE GOOD THINGS COMING IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS?:
“You sense, not necessarily prior to, but I think you have certain tracks that you feel confident about as a driver and a team and then if you back up those results then you start to feel a little of that momentum. By feeling momentum, you just feel a positive ness within the team. In how everybody is getting along when you’re working through all the changes through the weekend in practice and qualifying and preparing for the race. It just seems like there’s nothing you can do that’s going to rock the boat or shake things up. That certainly is something great to build on because half of this sport is about people having confidence in one another.
“We don’t have computer data on the cars so the information the driver gives to the crew chief and the team and the information that the crew chief gets from the engineers—if you have confidence in what one another is saying and ideas then that allows you to make better choices and decisions and that’s what makes a strong effort and strong team. A strong team and good results are what build momentum. We had a good result last week, it was a pretty tough path to get to that result so I can’t say that we’ve really got momentum on our side right now. I think we had a great result from a tough day and that this is a good track for us. What last week showed me was what fighters we are as a team and that we never give up and we just continue to push no matter what’s happening out there on the track. To me, that definitely is a positive going into each and every weekend.”
WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES YOU ENCOUNTER ON PIT ROAD?:
“The biggest challenge is at the early stages of a race when there are a lot of cars on the lead lap and the caution comes out and you come down pit road. I have a little diagram that the team draws for me that we put on my dash that gives me the cars that are pitting in front of me and behind me. I had a slight issue in New Hampshire several years ago where I turned into my pit stall and didn’t realize that Michael Waltrip was actually in the stall before me and I drove over a lot of pit crew members. Ever since that incident, to try to avoid that from happening, we put that diagram up there to help me get in and out of the pits. Steve (Letarte, crew chief) counts me down, ‘Five, four, three, two, one,’ into the stall and he’ll usually clear me out. Under green flag situations, that’s the toughest thing about this track is attacking the pit road entry. Once you get on pit road, it’s pretty simple, it’s a big, wide with big stalls pit road.”
DO YOU HAVE ANY THOUGHTS ON WHO THE FIRST FIVE INDUCTEES SHOULD BE INTO THE NASCAR HALL OF FAME?:
“I’ve got a couple ideas, but I’m excited to see it. I’ve seen it in downtown Charlotte where they’re building the facility and it’s something to be really proud of. I think it’s a great way to really start off this Hall of Fame and its history and those people that have built the sport to what it is today. I think it’s a hard choice to narrow it down—what it is five? I think it’s a tough choice, but I think there are a couple that are clear like Bill France and those. I think I’m as anxious as everybody else to see who those five are and who the next five are and the next five. It’s something that’s very excited for the sport.”
HOW DO YOU DO YOUR PREPARATION BEFORE AND AFTER A RACE WEEKEND AND IS IT SIMILAR TO HOW JIMMIE JOHNSON DOES HIS LIKE WATCHING THE RACE VIDEOS?:
“I don’t do it that way. I think sometimes you can spend too much time analyzing too many details. To me, what I do is I analyze what the car is doing every time I’m on the track and try to give the most valuable information back to the team that I possibly can. That’s what I do throughout the whole weekend. When I’m driving the car, I try to drive it the best that I possibly can and make the car go as fast as I can. While you’re trying to make it go as fast as you can, you’re also trying to take in that information that you can give back to the team to make it go faster.
“The other time that I spend is just really keeping my mind clear and relaxing, eating well, fluids—all the things that I feel like I need to get through Sunday’s race. I don’t know, I kind of keep it simple because there’s never been a race I’ve seen where another race went exactly like it. So I try to keep an open mind as to I don’t have any idea when that green flag drops as to whether that car is going to be awesome or it’s going to be terrible. And I don’t go either way with it, I do everything I can to play my part in how the car is going to be and then you have the leave the job up to the rest of the team to prepare it and we work together, but when it all comes down to it, Steve (Letarte, crew chief) make the calls and the engineers and they spend so much time going over the data and the details based on everything that I give them. Then you have to have faith in them and when the green flag drops, if it’s great, you drive the wheels off of it and don’t say a whole lot and hope that you can keep up with the track.
“If you’re not, like we were last week, you scream and yell and then you finally calm down and you give good information to try to make the car better. Last week I didn’t think we could ever start any worse than we did and we finished second. That’s why I go into it without putting a whole lot of effort into paying too much attention to the details because too many things can change.”
DO YOU THINK YOUR ROUTINE IS BETTER THAN JIMMIE JOHNSON’S ROUTINE?:
“Everybody I’m sure has a different way of doing it and when you’re having success out there then it’s easy to say, ‘Well, that’s the right way to do it.’ But that’s the way I’ve always done it and that’s the way I continue to do it and I try not to change that up. When everything is going right and the car is right and the pit stops are there and I’m driving well—we’re capable of winning any race. What makes all those things come together and happen, if I thought that watching video and doing other things would make that happen then I would do it. I’ve done it all over the years, but I’ve found a routine that works best for me.”
