This is one of those days, I don't want it to end, ... I don't want to see the sun set. It's definitely the greatest day of my life, professionally and personally up to this point. |
This is one of those places where it's much harder than it looks. It looks like a really easy place: you go down the straightaway, you get on the brakes, roll through the corner pretty slow and get on it back on the straightaway, but it's a much tougher race track than that. |
This is one of those situations where I felt like I needed to at least say something. If I didn't say something and something else happened, I felt like I didn't do my part as a driver. |
This is step one of accomplishing our goals. |
This is the same car we won the 400 with, ... So it drove real good. It's the same package and everything, so I think it's going to be alright. |
This is their big push, safety. [His idea] is not a performance issue. This is not trying to do anything to help one manufacturer versus another. This is, hey, we've got to do this before we hurt the guys that are going out there and trying to put on a good show for the race fans out there. |
This makes sleeping tonight a little bit easier. I don't ever remember being part of something like that. I'm not real excited about having to be in that situation (today). But if that's what it comes down to with five to go, trust me, I'm not backing out. |
This past weekend, I went and raced the late dirt model two nights, and I didn't fly to the tracks and get out - I rode in the truck with the team. We rode in a motor home together. The whole entire race team was - we were all sitting there working together, riding together. We were telling stories about races five or six years ago. It makes you appreciate those times. |
This town and people have backed me for so many years, ... This parade is for you. |
This year, we're in pretty good shape, |
To be able to fight back from a tire and a pit stop that lost us (14) spots and to be able to do what we did today, I was really impressed. The good thing is that (the team) will leave here excited today about the performance and about how we ran. They're not going to be excited by how we finished, obviously, but we'll look past that and see the big picture. |
To be honest, I still don't feel like I'm a representative or an ambassador for the sport, |
To have guys that don't whine, carry on and complain and go on and on definitely makes racing here more fun. But trust me, there aren't a lot of guys like Jimmie. Jimmie is a class act and that's why I like racing with him so much. |
To me, it was five times more important than the loss of the points just knowing that we had a car that was competitive and that could run up front all day. That and this place are going to be a good judge of where your program is at early in the season. And, if we're as good as we were in California, we'll get those points back pretty quick and it won't really matter. |
Trust me, I did my share of bump drafting, too. But we're going to hurt somebody really bad on Sunday if we don't find some way of calming this down soon. |