HOW HAVE TO SEEN DALE EARNHARDT, JR PROGRESS FROM A KID TO A MAN AT AGE 35 TOMORROW?:
“I’m really proud of him. He takes a lot of heat as well as gets a lot of praise from his support group and fans. It’s tough to be Dale Earnhardt, Jr. A lot of people look from the outside and go, ‘Ah, man I would like to be him, he’s got it so good,’ but it’s not necessarily the case. I think he puts a lot of pressure on himself to be a great driver, but he also does a great job not trying to live within his Dad’s shadow and he wants to be his own person and driver.
“He is at one of the best organizations and he feels that pressure being at the organization like the rest of us do and when the results aren’t there he beats himself up like the rest of us do. He’s a normal guy, he just has different situations that he has to deal with that are sometimes pretty extreme and I give him a lot of credit for handling it the way that he does.”
HOW MUCH IS THE OUTCOME OF THE CHASE GOING TO BE ABOUT THE CREW CHIEFS MAKING THE RIGHT CALL?:
“The crew chief is as much a part of the team as a member of the pit crew, as the driver, as the engineer—it’s the total team effort that really makes it happen. There’s days when the driver makes a great move and he gets the praise and, ‘He won the race.’ But he couldn’t have done it without a car capable of doing it, he couldn’t have done it without the pit crew putting him in position. It’s the same thing with the crew chief. If the crew chief is getting good information from the driver then it helps his decision making. If you’re in seventh or eighth place coming in the pits, sometimes that makes your decision easier. If you’re coming in first, that is probably the hardest position to be in and sometimes that’s just a roll of the dice as to which one you should do—two tires, gas and go or four tires or stay out.
“To me, what makes a great crew chief is a guy that uses all the information and the people around him the best that he possibly can and he makes the call and he lives with that choice. He says that he made the best call that he could at that time. Sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t, but you have to stand by it and learn from it and go to the next one. I feel like that’s where Steve (Letarte, crew chief) is so good. I really like the calls that he makes, just like last week. He made a four tire call and it was the right call and we hadn’t been second really all day and it gives us not only a shot at second, but it gave us a shot to win so it was a great call. So yeah, there’s going to be days it’s going to come down to pit crew, there’s going to be days it comes down to the crew chief and some days it comes down to the driver, but it’s still the best team that’s going to win the Chase and the championship.”
HOW MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE IS THERE FROM THIS RACE IN LABOR DAY TO NOW AND WHAT ARE YOU ABLE TO DO IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WHEN YOU’RE HERE?:
“You asked about three questions there so I am going to try to get to all of them. The time difference and the date difference in the race, I mean certainly this used to be a night race and now it’s a day race and certainly this time of year is the perfect time of year for us to be here weather-wise. You just can’t beat this weather. Track temperature and everything is just perfect for the race cars. Anytime that we come out on the west coast, the teams are happy to have a day race because that means we get back home at a fairly decent hour instead of a day later and doesn’t shorten our week up.
“Other than that, it doesn’t matter when we race here and what the conditions are as long as it’s the same for everybody. It was pretty extreme last year and I think that would have made a difference from the fans standpoint and choosing to come out here. I don’t know why the sales are sometimes flat here. Its southern California, I think I made more of a comment about NFL franchises can’t seem to make it work in this area so that tells me that it’s a tough market. We have a great fan base out here, but is it big enough to handle two races at a facility like this? I don’t know, only time will tell. I love coming out here. I love all the things there are to do, not just in L.A. and near the beach, but just in this surrounding area there’s a lot of cool things to do.
“I enjoy this track very much and plus we’ve had good success on the track. If I said anything, I would totally be speculating, I don’t have all the poles and the stats and the data that NASCAR and ISC has as to why fans come, why they don’t and whose coming and whose not and whose interested in NASCAR and whose not or what other things are going on. That’s their profession, mine is to drive the car the best I can.”
IS THERE A CHANGE IN YOUR STRATEGY IN THE CHASE WITH TALLADEGA LATER IN THE SCHEDULE?:
“The bottom line is that it still comes in the 10. You still have to deal with the same situation. The crash is going to happen it’s just whether or not you are going to get caught up in it or not. Whether it comes early in the race or late in the race. I don’t know, I think what’s going to happen is there’s going to be a little more pressure on the guys that are really in the heat of the battle for the championship and whoever they are, I hope I’m one of them, that’s what’s going to make you decide how you approach that race. You can go into Talladega being aggressive or you can go into Talladega being extremely conservative and both ways can be good and both ways can be bad. I’ve never found any real set way of making it work.
“Things are changing at Talladega, we saw that this last race with the bump drafting and these guys pushing one another around, being able to take two cars and drive to the front and be able to settle it between themselves. That’s only going to grow this next time and possibly change the outcome of the race and how it’s run this time. The fact that Talladega is in the final 10 is the biggest unknown factor there is so it’s not necessarily when it comes in the Chase.”
HOW WILL THE DOUBLE-FILE RESTARTS AFFECT THE RACING AT AUTO CLUB SPEEDWAY?:
“I think that’s going to be a huge plus for this race track and this race. We’ve definitely seen the cars get spread out here pretty quick. It’s a big, fast race track and I think a double-file restart is going to keep us bunched up together, it’s going to raise the intensity level and it’s going to cause a little bit more excitement. I think it’s been a positive everywhere we’ve gone and I think this is a track where it will continue to be a big positive for.”
DO YOU HAVE A FITNESS PROGRAM AND HAVE YOU ACCELERATED IT DURING THE CHASE?:
“I can’t say it’s accelerated for the Chase. I think that most of when it gets accelerated is during the off-season when you have more time to spend at the gym or I like to get out riding my bike. I think that I’ve just been trying to maintain as much fitness as I can during the season. It’s tough, that’s the biggest challenge I’ve always had with it is that you get into a regiment and the season starts and all of the sudden you’re having to fly to a city to do an appearance or you’re going somewhere else to do a production day and all of the sudden you worked out one day that week instead of three and now all of the sudden you get off of your routine. For me, the most important thing is just trying to maintain a routine and I thank Blackberry because with Blackberry I have my schedule right in front of me, I can put it on my calendar, I can’t have any excuses that I didn’t see the calendar—it’s right there.”
DO YOU WORK OUT AT THE RACE TRACK?:
“I don’t work out at the race track. Some guys do, I don’t. The only thing I do is continue to do things for my back where I’m stretching. I do work with a chiropractor to do some adjustment and I do what they call Stem. I don’t know how exactly it works, but it send electric current through the muscles to contract and release them that helps loosen everything up. That’s what I do on the weekends.”
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