WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION ON JULY 2ND WHEN IT WAS ANNOUNCED THAT YOU WERE ONE OF THE 25 MEMBERS OF THE INAUGURAL NOMINATED CLASS OF THE NASCAR HALL OF FAME? WERE YOU SURPRISED AT THAT?
“Yeah, I really was because there are so many great pioneers in the sport and so many people who have accomplished so much, for me to be picked to be in that first class of 25 was quite humbling and quite an honor.”
TALK ABOUT YOUR REACTION THIS WEEK WHEN YOU SAW THE FIVE WHO WERE SELECTED AND IN PARTICULAR, DALE EARNHARDT SR. WHO YOU HAD SO MUCH SUCCESS WITH
“I think the choices were out of those 25 were phenomenal. I think it was a great choice. We wouldn’t be here today if it hadn’t been for the things that Bill France Sr. accomplished; and then for his son to come along and to be able to move the sport in a total different direction and carry us to a whole other level with his vision. And then you go to Junior Johnson who goes back and there is so much history for what he’s done for the sport; and then you go to Richard Petty with his wins and his seven-time championships, I thought that was a good one. And Dale Earnhardt, I thought there was no way you could have not picked him with his accomplishments. Not only was Dale a great race driver and a great champion for the sport, but he was an ambassador and he carried the sport to a complete different level from Wall Street to the guy in the factory and the lady in the meals. He could touch everyone and I think that was one of the greatest things about his career and he never forgot where he came from at all.”
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE TO PEOPLE WHO DIDN’T KNOW DALE EARNHARDT, WHAT HE WAS LIKE?
“Wow, that’s a tough one. I know our relationship and that’s all I could really say. He really, really took his fans very passionately. Every time he went on that race track he wanted to perform for the fans and do his best job. He was great to work with. I’ll bet you I can count on one hand any disagreements that he and I ever had, and we worked them right out. But we knew each other good enough that I could walk in the truck and go over and sit down or something, and he’d say, ‘All right, what’s on your mind?’ And I could do the same to him. We had that kind of relationship and it was very unique. Dale did a lot for people that people never knew about. He tried to help people out once he reached the point that he could and he never forgot the people that got him where he was at (like) the guys that way back when he was running dirt tracks and short tracks; he never forgot where he came from. But he had that drive about him that he wanted to win. And I never will forget him saying, ‘Man, I have to drive so hard I don’t know if I have a job in the future’. And I thought, you’ll have plenty of jobs (laughs).”
HAVE YOU STARTED TO SEE ANYTHING FROM THE CHANGES YOU MADE IN YOUR COMPETITION DEPARTMENT A MONTH OR SO AGO? AND CAN YOU ADDRESS KEVIN HARVICK’S COMMENTS ON ESPN LAST WEEK SAYING THAT HE’S NOT SURE IF HIS BOOK WITH YOU WILL CONTINUE BEYOND NEXT YEAR?
“I didn’t see that or hear it. I’ve heard some comments about it. You know, all I’ve got to say is we’re making a lot of changes. We’ll probably be announcing more changes next week. We’re using these last races to get prepared for 2010. We know we have to be better. We’ve seen some improvements. I think if you look we’ve been up front with the different cars in the last few weeks. This car is very touchy and right now Hendrick is right up on top of it. They’ve got it figured out for the most part. We’re working hard. We’re doing a lot of capital investments moving into next year on some new stuff. We’re making changes in our personnel. We’re going to be making more changes in the next weeks to come. And hopefully by the end of the year, before the end of the year, we can see even more improvements. We’re seeing improvement if you look back to Atlanta. And then we hit a bad race here a couple of weeks ago. We didn’t qualify good here but the cars are real good in race trim. It’s such a fine line with this car. If you look, other than three or four of five cars, people can be off and on. And when you get off sometimes it’s hard to get back on.
“The Kevin Harvick thing, Kevin is going to be with us next year and Shell is going to be with us. We’ll just see how everything plays out in the future. I didn’t see his interview. I’ve heard some comments on it. But whatever happens, happens. We’ll just move forward.”
IS THIS ANYTHING LIKE IN 1992 WHEN YOU DIDN’T WIN ANY RACES, BUT THEN YOU WENT ON TO WIN TWO CHAMPIONSHIPS THE NEXT YEAR. IS THERE ANY SIMILARITY? ARE THERE GOING TO BE PEAKS AND VALLEYS IN THE SPORT?
“Yeah, it definitely has. This is our 40th Anniversary. We’re having a big fan appreciation day this coming Thursday, Oct. 22nd for all of our fans and that night we’re having a big dinner to take that money and donate it to the Children’s Institute for Pediatric Trauma. But throughout those forty years, we’ve had several valleys. But then we’ve had the great peaks that winning championship and winning 11 or 12 races a year. I look back to 1988; 1985 was horrible. Dale and I sat right outside my house in Winston and I told him, ‘Dale, you’re a better driver than this. You need to go somewhere else and drive,’ because we’d blown 12 engines or something. He said we started this together and we’re going to finish it together. And the next year, in ‘86, we came back and won a championship and in ‘87 we won a championship and I can’t tell you the rest of the story in ‘88, but anyway in ‘88 we had a real bad year. We came back and won in ‘90 and ‘91 I think it was and ‘92 was a tough year. It was really a tough year. Then we came back and won a couple more. That’s your peaks and valleys and you have it in life as well. And we can see the crest up there. We’ve just got to be ready for it. It’s like the book Peaks and Valleys, it’ll kind of tell the story as to where we’re at.”
SPEAKING OF PEAKS AND VALLEYS, YESTERDAY DALE EARNHARDT JR. CAME IN AND HAD A LOT OF COMMENTS AND SEEMED DOWN AND DISCOURAGED. WHAT WOULD YOU TELL HIM? HAVE YOU SPOKEN WITH HIM?
“I spoke to him earlier in the year. It’s a tough situation. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the song that Hank Williams Jr. sings, it’s tough living (in the shadow) of a very famous man.
That’s what Junior is doing and everybody’s got their expectations so high. And when you don’t fulfill those expectations, people think you’re not there. But Junior can still drive a race car. He can compete. He can win. And he will win a championship some day; it’s just a matter of going through a few of these peaks and valleys and I’ve spoke to him a couple of times trying to give him the encouragement to keep digging because we’ve been there. We’re almost there right now. We’re seeing a little daylight.”
DO YOU THINK IF DALE, SR,. WAS STILL AROUND, WOULD HE STILL BE DRIVING?
“He would have retired for sure by now. We had talked about it that winter, knowing kind of what his plans were and what he wanted to do. Where he wanted to see his career go. He sort of had his plan. I’ll tell it someday, but not today.”
COULD YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR DRIVER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM FOR 2010?
“We are still working on that right now, but we are getting close on a couple of new guys that we are looking at. Naturally, my Grandson Austin (Dillon), hopefully we’re going to put him in a truck next year. We are getting close to a few things. Ty (Dillon), his brother, we’re going to run him in the NASCAR Camping World East. Ryan Gilford, he’s going to be working with the diversity program. Ryan has got a very good future in front of him. I think of the diversity kids I’ve seen come along, he has as much talent and desire as anyone and we still have him under contract. We are still working with Stephen Leicht some. There’s a couple of other drivers that we’re talking to and looking at that we think we can prepare ourselves to….what we’re going to do is get another driver in a position to where if we do had a driver get sick or have to get out of the car like Kyle (Busch) did last week, we have someone out of our own stables we can put in. We’ll be working work on a lot of the development. We have to invest in that.”
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