On new tire compound:
“Obviously you don’t want to see failures in the tires and problems, so in that sense we are better with this tire. But at the same time, you don’t want to see Goodyear have to build a harder tire like this. You don’t want to see NASCAR make us go to smaller fuel cells. I think we always lean toward the conservative side and again, we have gone way to far. The tire is a little too hard on the left side, I think the fuel cell being smaller isn’t necessary, but I guess, better to be safe than sorry. Once you get a few laps on the tire, its not so bad when you get some heat in them. We should see a pretty decent race. It is really about holding on until you get some heat in the tires. “
On what is the key to getting the right tire at the Bristol race track:
“I agree that what should happen is getting input from Goodyear, NASCAR, competitors and the tracks. Like I said, I trying to fit things in my schedule, if they come and request, hey could you come and spend some time with our engineers and look at some things, then I am going to try and give them my time because I do feel like multiple driver’s input is important because we are the ones running 500 miles out here and we know a lot about these race tracks. But we don’t know everything, we don’t know about paving and drainage and grading and all that stuff. It takes a group of people together. I wish if that request came in, it was a group meeting and we had more time and we had representatives from Goodyear, NASCAR and other teams and drivers. I don’t know their process; you can talk to those guys about it.
“I am pretty excited about some of the things they are going to be doing at Bristol and I hope my input helps. I don’t know if it is going to help Goodyear out any but, one thing for sure they don’t need to have the amount of banking at a lot of these tracks that we do. Short tracks I think are a little bit different and concrete is a little bit different too. Concrete can work on a short track, they can keep it fairly smooth and if it is rough, we can get away with it. Tracks like this it is very, very tough to have a concrete race track. But the nice thing about concrete is you can form it a lot different than you can pavement. With pavement you have a machine that lays it flat and even the variable banking is very difficult to do. Other than the bumps in one, I thought they did a nice job. We are just running so fast, it made the cars grippy, that we are really abusing the tires. ”
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