[NASCAR, 7:30 p.m. Saturday on TNT: The final race to determine Nextel Cup's Chase for the Championship participants should be one of the biggest of the season, with Jeff Gordon's status the main story line. Will he or won't he? Analyst Bill Weber says watch out if he does:] He's played mediocre ball at best all season, but he's still got a chance to make the playoffs. And if he gets in the question is: ... No, I do not.' |
[Saturday night] is one of those nights we wanted and needed to happen. |
[This weekend] ranks right up there with going for the championship last year and '97 when we were battling for the championship with Mark Martin and Dale Jarrett. It's intense pressure going into one single race. |
A lot of other martial arts are sports-oriented, not real-life oriented. |
A year like that makes you hungrier. It's not that we should win a championship every year, but we certainly should be in contention to win races on a fairly consistent basis. |
And you can't control what they do out there. |
As bad as that was, we had to move forward in a positive way. If you look at James Dean or Elvis Presley after his death, it's the same thing with Earnhardt. That's the type of persona Dale Earnhardt had in our sport and the publicity of his death took it to another level. |
As far as Katrina goes, I haven't seen the impact (on coffee prices yet), |
As fast as we're going these days, especially because of the aerodynamics, we're all concerned about abusing tires. It's so fast that you're afraid of what you're going to do to the tires. |
At Talladega, you worry about the big one that takes out 17 cars. Here, you worry about the 17 little ones that take out several cars. You're always racing with people around you so you don't have anywhere to go when things go wrong. And believe me, a lot of things go wrong. |
At the end of the race, you are very aware of the position of the guys you are battling with in the points. You know that passing one more car may cut the points a driver gains on you, or even add a few more points separation to those behind you. |
By having those no-bump zones or whatever we want to call them, I think we saw a heck of a lot less crashes, big crashes, than what we could have seen. I think the racing was still good out there, but it was so much calmer. |
Chase for the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup |
Dale was the master at these types of races. I'd love to get the win, but not because of any statistic or record. Statistics are great when it's all said and done, but during the season you really don't care about them or where you might rank on a list. |
Even though we had a great car and great results here in the spring, this team has been working hard to build a new car. We believe it's even better than the car we used here earlier this year, we just hope the results are the same. |