DAYTONA BEACH, FLA. — It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Matt Kenseth, winless a year ago, added the biggest jewel in NASCAR to his trophy collection Sunday, winning a dramatic, rain-shortened Daytona 500 before a capacity crowd of some 200,000 at Daytona International Speedway, plus a Fox national television audience.

Kenseth somehow dodged a huge pileup shortly after lap 125 that easily could have sent him to the scrap-pile like it did young sensation Kyle Busch.

Busch, who had led 88 laps to clearly establish himself as the race favorite, was a victim in a 10-car wreck that had cars sliding through the backstretch infield apron and down the end of the backstretch straightaway in a huge cloud of smoke and debris.

The accident was triggered when Brian Vickers moved over to block Dale Earnhardt, Jr. near the end of the backstretch. Earnhardt was forced off the track onto the apron and into the grass. When Earnhardt tried to steer his sliding car back on the track, he clipped the rear end of Vickers’ Toyota, sending Vickers shooting across the track directly in front of the oncoming field of 200-mph stock cars. At that point, it was pure havoc. No one was injured, but the accident sent a number of cars to the junk heap.

Besides Busch, who finished 41st, others involved included Carl Edwards (18th), Kurt Busch (10th), Vickers (39th), Earnhardt (27th), Jamie McMurray (37th), Jimmie Johnson (31st), Robby Gordon (34th), and Denny Hamlin (26th).

Kenseth started the race from 39th position after his crew had to change an engine in his Jack Roush Ford sponsored by DeWalt.

Ironically, the runner-up in the abbreviated race — 152 out of a scheduled 200 laps were completed — and winner of the Daytona 500 two years ago, Kevin Harvick, also started in the rear of the field due to engine problems.

Third-place finisher AJ Allmindinger had a storybook finish since he just hooked up with the Valvoline Dodge team several weeks ago. His performance Sunday should help him find additional sponsorship.

Clint Bowyer finished fourth, Elliott Sadler fifth, David Ragan sixth, former Daytona 500 winner Michael Waltrip seventh, Tony Stewart eighth, and Reed Sorensen ninth. Truex was 11th.

It was a cool, overcast afternoon when the 51st running of this classic got underway. Drivers mashed the gas to the floor right from the git-go and three different drivers led the first three laps, Truex, Martin and “wild thing” Busch, who took over on the third lap and was leading when Almirola spun by himself on the eighth circuit.

When racing resumed, Busch remained out front with Martin, Labonte, Earnhardt and Edwards right behind.

A mandatory caution at lap 26 allowed the teams to check their tire wear after rain washed the rubber off the track Saturday night and Sunday morning. NASCAR officials informed the teams at the start of the race of the mandatory caution.

Once all the teams had pitted, Busch resumed his lead with Earnhardt on his bumper. Gordon was third, Hamlin fourth and Martin fifth.

Jeremy Mayfield, who started his own team about a month ago and was one of the feelgood stories in making the race, had his luck change at lap 33 when a problem cropped up with his motor.

At 40 laps, Busch had Kenseth on his bumper, who had started from the rear after changing motors. Ragan had moved to third, Earnhardt was fourth, Hamlin fifth and Ragan sixth.

Robbie Gordon dropped from the middle of the pack to 42nd when a punctured tire prompted an unscheduled pit stop.

At 50 laps, Busch still led and looked as though he clearly had the fastest car in the field but Earnhardt and Stewart were just a car length behind. Earnhardt and Stewart, however, blew past Busch on lap 53. One lap later, Busch pushed Stewart past Earnhardt. On the next lap, Travis Kvapil smacked the wall, bringing out the afternoon’s second caution.

When the green flag fell again, it was Stewart out front with Gordon second. Busch was third. Also running in the front pack was McMurray, Hamlin, Edwards, Martin, Kenseth, Vickers, Ragan and Kurt Busch, who finished second in this race last year.

Earnhardt, who completely missed his pit stall and had to go around the track again, was way back in 35th on the restart.

By lap 70, Gordon led, followed by Busch, Hamlin, McMurray, Kenseth, Edwards, Vickers, Stewart, who was shuffled backwards by one of the famous Daytona drafts, Martin and Allmindinger.

Stewart’s teammate and defending champion of the Daytona 500, spent considerable time in the pits and lost several laps, which pretty much ended his chance for winning “The Great American Race” again.

On lap 81, rookie Joey Logano, running back in the field to gain some experience, was in the wrong place at the right time. Another rookie, former Formula One driver Scott Speed, got loose coming out of four and had to ease off the throttle. Logano, right behind him, had to make a jerky turn left to stay off Speed and spun across the track. He smashed into the inside retaining wall almost head-on, tearing his Home Depot machine to smithereens. Logano was not injured.

On the restart at lap 85, it was Busch again and Hamlin moved into second. Allmindinger was third with Truex fourth. Gordon held on in fifth, followed by Edwards, Kenseth, Stewart, Ragan, McMurray and Burton.

The best race drivers in the world were mixing it up as though it was the last lap, rather than halfway. Gordon went from fifth to second with a nifty slingshot move down the backstretch, which resulted in Truex getting shoved back to 20th spot. Once Gordon made his move, others tucked in on his bumper and formed a freight train back to where Truex wound up.

The competition in the first half of this event was similar to what fans had seen in the Twin Gatorade 150 Qualifying Races last Thursday.

Anyone who has ever been an attendant in someone else’s wedding probably has a pretty good idea of how California’s Auto Club Speedway and plenty of other race tracks across the country feel right about now.

The movie “27 Dresses” featured a character, played by Katherine Heigl, who had served as a bridesmaid in the same number of weddings featured in the title. Despite the fact that she owned a closetful of fancy gowns as a result, the film’s premise was that she had somehow fallen short of the mark because none of them were bridal white.

It brought to mind the old joke that the sole purpose of a bridesmaid’s dress is to make the bride look good. Some things can simply seem too daunting to overcome.

Somehow over the years, NASCAR has acquired the habit of running its most famous and glamorous event to begin the Sprint Cup Series season rather than conclude it. This reasoning is brilliant in a lot of ways. Drivers, fans, the media, advertisers, sponsors, take your pick; they all get excited about each new year of racing thanks to the dazzling Daytona 500. You could actually describe it as frenzy.

But then comes that feeling of letdown. When you begin an adventure at the very top, isn’t there only one direction left for you to go?

That is a fair and logical question, which fortunately has a satisfactory answer. That answer is no. Any true and even slightly knowledgeable race fan will tell you that each individual track is the center of its own celebration, sometimes two, and they use every weapon in their arsenals to make sure their event is a big one.

Atlanta has its high speeds, for example, while Darlington promotes racing history and tradition. Talladega always offers nail-chewing drama. Bristol sells itself on … well, just being Bristol. That seems to be enough.

Every race track gets its moment of glory, the chance to be the beautiful, if not always elegant, center of attention, to roar down the aisle trailing smoke and sheet metal, with superstars as attendants and tens of thousands of excited guests cheering her on.

Still, it is never easy being second. Traditionally, race number two on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule has been a bit of a tough sell. Fans don’t just travel to Florida when the Daytona 500 rolls around for a day or two. They set up camp, fire up the grill and stay up late for more like a week or two, and when it’s over, they’re exhilarated, but worn out at the same time.

The idea of turning around and doing it all over again the very next week is exhausting. These days, it’s probably cost-prohibitive, too. Vacations tend to do that to a person.

NASCAR understands this, and in an attempt to compensate, they move their show all the way across the country for the season’s second event. Race fans are everywhere, but it’s a safe bet there aren’t a vast number of them driving across the country to attend the Daytona 500. Ask.com says the trip is 2,475 miles and would take more than 36 hours to complete. One way.

So, since Mohammed can’t come to the mountain, the mountain comes to him.

California ranks high among places in the country that are difficult, if not impossible, to intimidate. It is a place that has literally built its reputation and its fortune on creating tough acts, and then finding a way to follow them.

Other places might have rolled over, changed their nickname to “The Track With the Race After the Daytona 500,” but not Auto Club Speedway. The track has embraced the date, and the challenge it represents. They do their best to take away any reason for any fan to stay at home. They bring movie stars, big-name entertainers and temperate California weather to the table. They take their star and make it shine as brightly as they possibly can. They work hard; they do a good job.

The same can be said for each and every race track on the NASCAR circuit.

So don’t be tempted to feel a bit blue just because you’ve seen the checkered flag wave over the Daytona 500 on February 15. It’s okay to take a nap – you probably need one – but plan to wake up excited.

Here come the brides … and they’re ready to rumble.

HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. – Feb. 11, 2009 – Like many racetracks that are discounting tickets this season, Sprint (NYSE:S) is doing its part to ensure NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race fans are able to enjoy their favorite at-track amenities at a reasonable cost.

The cost to rent NASCAR Sprint FanView, named one of TIME Magazine’s best inventions of 2006, will drop to $29.99 a weekend for Sprint customers. Non-Sprint customers will receive a discounted rental price of $49.99 a weekend. In past years, fans were offered the choice of a daily rate ($50) or weekend rate ($70). The new all-weekend pricing is consistent with Sprint’s commitment to a simplified pricing structure, such as the Simply EverythingSM rate plan and other rate plans that let customers do more than just talk.

“NASCAR Sprint FanView was an instant hit with race fans when we launched it in 2006,” said Steve Gaffney, director of sports and entertainment marketing for Sprint. “Our rental numbers have increased every year and continue to exceed our goals. But discretionary income is diminishing, and we want to make sure race fans aren’t forced to sacrifice the things that enhance their visit to the racetrack.”

Making the offer even more of a value, NASCAR Sprint FanView delivers audio, video and stats for all on-track activities during a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race weekend. This includes NASCAR Nationwide Series and NASCAR Camping World Truck Series action. The device is available for rent at branded NASCAR Sprint FanView and Racing Electronics vending locations at the track. The purchase price remains $369.95 online at www.sprint.com/fanview.

“I don’t attend a race without NASCAR Sprint FanView,” said longtime race fan Lance Ramsay of Snohomish, Wash. “It is my best friend when I’m in the stands, and I’m really happy to see a lower price. Things are tough right now, and it is nice to see someone helping us (the race fans).”

In addition to a price cut on this revolutionary technology, Sprint will offer the following:
-NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile (included at no extra charge for Sprint data subscribers) – an exclusive cell phone application providing instant access to NASCAR-related information. Features include NASCAR Sprint Cup Series news, stats, in-car audio, radio broadcasts, and post-race press conferences.
-Sprint Experience – a 10,000-square-foot interactive display in the racetrack’s midway at all NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races. Admission is free, and activities include simulators, driver appearances, Internet access, and photos with the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Trophy.
-Premiums for Sprint customers – Sprint customers receive free items when showing their Sprint or Nextel phone at the Sprint Experience at any NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event. Also, customers should frequently check the My Account section of Sprint.com for notification of free race tickets or prize packages.

About NASCAR Sprint FanView
The first product of its kind in any major sport, the NASCAR Sprint FanView is a next-generation race scanner that integrates the audio of today’s race-day scanners with up to seven live, in-car camera angles or the live in-house race broadcast from the Sprint Vision screen. Color graphics make it easier for fans to keep up with race standings and real-time information about drivers, lap times and who’s hot, and season standings provide unprecedented access to race action for fans at the track. An exclusive audio replay feature ensures that fans never miss out on team communications during crucial race moments. Each NASCAR Sprint FanView is equipped with standard scanner features – including a headset jack (which can be used by multiple listeners with a splitter), scanning and priority scanning capability – along with a five-hour rechargeable battery, headphones, neck lanyard and a quick-start guide. For more information, visit www.sprint.com/fanview.

About Sprint Nextel
Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including two wireless networks serving nearly 51 million customers at the end of the third quarter 2008; industry-leading mobile data services; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. For more information, visit www.sprint.com.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Feb. 10, 2009) — Mark Martin is on the front row and Bill Elliott is in the field, giving Sunday’s Daytona 500 an almost surreal quality.

Thing is, it’s all quite real.

Martin (No. 5 Kellogg’s/CARQUEST Chevrolet) is experiencing a late-career rebirth as part of the Hendrick Motorsports stable; Elliott (No. 21 Motorcraft Ford) is part of a renewed, admirable effort by Wood Brothers Racing that’s designed to run part-time in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series but make the most of the races they choose.

Martin, 50, qualified second this past Sunday at the annual “pole day” at Daytona International Speedway. He and top qualifier Martin Truex Jr. (No. 1 Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet) are “locked” into the front row for the 500. Elliott qualified fourth-fastest to guarantee a spot in the 500. Exactly where he’ll start will shake out Thursday, after the two 150-mile qualifying races — the Gatorade Duel at Daytona — are held.

“This whole Motorcraft team – [crew chief] David Hyder, [owners] Len and Eddie Wood – they really put a good plan together to come down here for the 500 this year and I’m so proud of what they’ve done,” said the 53-year-old Elliott.

Actually, Elliott expressed some disappointment after qualifying. After setting the fast times during the 500’s initial practice sessions, he considered the No. 21 front-row material. Such is the rapidly-restored confidence level of the two-time (1985 and ‘87) Daytona 500 champion.

The old-school look of this year’s race continues with Terry Labonte (No. 66 Window World Toyota), the series champion in 1984 and ’96. Labonte is assured of making the race via the past champion provisional, which goes to the most recent champion needing it to make the field. Labonte got some help when a more recent titlist, Tony Stewart (No. 14 Office Depot/Old Spice Chevrolet), qualified fast enough to assure himself a 500 spot based on speed.

Qualifying Primer: Making the Daytona 500 Field

Qualifying for the Daytona 500 is unique. After all, it involves two days, two races and a previous season’s final points.

Here’s how it works.

Coming into Daytona, one thing is known. The top 35 teams in the final 2008 car owners standings have already earned guaranteed berths in the Daytona 500.

Coming out of “pole day” this past Sunday, the top two qualifiers, Truex and Martin, were guaranteed front-row starts.

Thursday’s Gatorade Duel at Daytona, consisting of two 150-mile races, will advance the top two finishers from each race who are not in the top 35 category.

That brings the field total to 39.

The rest of the field is based on qualifying speeds from pole day by “non-35s.” That amounts to the four fastest non-35s — or three, if the past champion provisional gets used., which it will be this year by Labonte. Which means that Elliott, Stewart and Travis Kvapil (No. 28 Golden Corral Ford) have ensured themselves berths because of their qualifying speeds. (Note: If any of those three or Labonte are one of the top-two non-35 finishers in a Duel race, it will open up spots based on qualifying speeds.)

Which brings us to a field of 43.

Some further notes about the Gatorade Duel races:

They establish the starting order for the 500. The front-row qualifiers are locked in based on pole day. Based on their finish in the first Duel race, top-35 drivers plus the two highest non-35s will be lined up in odd-number starting positions for the 500. Based on their finish in the second Duel, the top-35 drivers plus the two highest finishing non-35s will get even-number starting positions.

Duel Double: Daytona 500 Qualifying Races Make Or Break For Many Teams

Thursday’s Gatorade Duel at Daytona continues a long-standing tradition of holding qualifying races for the Daytona 500. The tradition started in the 500’s first year, 1959, although back then there was only one qualifier, a 100-miler won by Bob Welborn.

Starting in 1960, there were two events.

In 1969, the races were expanded to 125 miles, creating the “Twins 125s” label.

In 2005, the Gatorade Duel name was affixed as the races were expanded again, to 150 miles.

A footnote to this progression: From 1959-71, the qualifying races counted in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series points.

Throughout the races’ history, they have served as classic Speedweeks appetizers for NASCAR’s biggest show. The Duel events represent the ultimate “last chance” races, affording drivers who haven’t already made the Daytona 500 field the chance to do so by literally racing their way into the field.

At its core, the Gatorade Duel at Daytona combines one of the basic qualifying approaches of down-home short-track racing with the biggest spectacle in NASCAR.

In recent years, good finishes in the Duel events have become even more essential. With the institution of guaranteed starting berths to the top 35 teams in final owner points from the previous year, all “non-35” drivers vie for only four spots — two from each Duel race.

Which means some very capable teams are going to leave Daytona International Speedway on Thursday very disappointed.

Thursday, a total of 17 drivers will be trying to race their way into the Daytona 500. Some have excellent chances to do so. Some are long shots. Here’s a quick look at each, divided by their Duel race assignment, in each case, listed in order of their qualifying speed on pole day :

Gatorade Duel Race No. 1

Joe Nemechek (No. 87 Toyota): 186.807 mph, 19th-fastest. He starts ninth in the first Duel race. He has twice finished in the top 10 in the 500.

Scott Riggs (No. 36 Toyota): 185.893, 32nd-fastest. Starts 15th in the first Duel race. Riggs finished fourth in the 2005 Daytona 500.

Brad Keselowski (No. 09 Miccosukee Resorts Chevrolet): 37th-fastest at 185.571. Starts 18th in first Duel race.

Kirk Shelmerdine (No. 27 Toyota): 45th-fastest at 184.854. Starts 24th in first Duel event. Once the crew chief for Dale Earnhardt, Shelmerdine has been in one Daytona 500 as a driver, starting 42nd and finishing 20th in 2006.

Tony Raines (No. 37 Long John Silver’s Dodge): 47th-fastest at 184.106. Starts 25th in first Duel race.

Mike Skinner (No. 23 Mahindra Tractors Chevrolet): 52nd-fastest at 181.928. Starts 27th in the first Duel race. Skinner has two top-10 500 finishes and he won one of the qualifying races in 2001.

Carl Long (No. 46 Romeo Guest Construction Dodge): 54th-fastest at 181.032. Starts 28th — last — in first Duel event.

Gatorade Duel Race No. 2

Regan Smith (No. 78 Furniture Row Chevrolet): 186.924, 14th-fastest. He starts seventh in the second Duel race. Smith was last season’s Raybestos Rookie of the Year.

Boris Said (No. 08 Scotts/U.S. Chrome Ford): 20th-fastest at 186.780. Starts 11th in the second Duel race. Said can’t be discounted. Remember his dream Daytona week in July 2006? He captured the pole and finished fourth.

AJ Allmendinger (No. 44 Valvoline Dodge): 35th-fastest at 185.770. Starts 19th in second Duel event. Looked solid on Saturday night in the Budweiser Shootout, finishing fifth.

Jeremy Mayfield (No. 41 All Sport Toyota): 43rd-fastest at 185.082. Starts 21st in second Duel race. The latest guy to jump into the driver/owner category, Mayfield has four top-10 finishes in the 500, including a third in 1998.

Mike Wallace (No. 71 TRG Motorsports Chevrolet): 46th-fastest at 184.847. Starts 22nd in second Duel race. Wallace has three top-10 500 finishes and he won the summer NASCAR Nationwide Series race at DIS in 2004.

Mike Garvey (No. 73 Jani-King Dodge): 48th-fastest at 184.004. Starts 22nd in second Duel. Garvey has 13 starts in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, his last coming in 2006, with none at Daytona.

Derrike Cope (No. 75 Blu Frog Energy Drink Dodge): 51st-fastest at 182.020. Starts 25th in second Duel race. He won the 1990 Daytona 500, arguably the biggest upset in the race’s history, when race leader Dale Earnhardt encountered tire problems on the final lap.

Kelly Bires (No. 51 Dodge): 53rd-fastest at 181.701. Starts 26th in second Duel race. Bires is seeking to make his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series start. He finished 13th in the 2008 NASCAR Nationwide Series; en route to that, he finished 12th and 16th in the series’ two races at Daytona International Speedway.

Geoff Bodine (No. 64 Toyota): 55th-fastest at 180.810. Starts 27th in second Duel race. Bodine, the 1986 Daytona 500 champion, is trying a 500 comeback at the age of 59. He last made a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series start in 2004. His last start in the Daytona 500: 2002, when another long-shot effort resulted in an outstanding third-place finish.

Norm Benning (No. 57 Chevrolet): 56th — and slowest qualifier — at 177.396. Starts 28th — last — in second Duel event. Benning has never started the Daytona 500 but has competed three times in the qualifying races, finishing 20th in the second race, in 2002.

Loop Data Points To Stewart And Newman As Favorite, New-Team Uncertainty Aside

Tony Stewart is the “great unknown”, for the second consecutive year.

Stewart entered last season amidst a flock of “Toyota” questions, after the Joe Gibbs Racing organization swapped manufacturers after five successful years with Chevrolet. The transition was a smooth one, as Stewart won a race and made the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

This year, Stewart’s back with Chevrolet but with a new team – his own. Stewart begins year No. 1 as driver-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing and questions abound whether his equipment can match his talent.

If it can, pencil Stewart in as a favorite to win his first Daytona 500.

His statistics are tremendous at the historic track, many of them tops in the series.

Since the inception of Loop Data in 2005, Stewart has a series-high Driver Rating of 105.4, an Average Running Position of 12.9 (fifth-best), 41 Fastest Laps Run (third) and a Laps in the Top 15 percentage of 68.7% (seventh).

Thus far, there’s a small, but promising, statistical sample size for Stewart in the No. 14 Office Depot/Old Spice Chevrolet.

Stewart finished third in last Saturday night’s Budweiser Shootout. He had four laps led, a Driver Rating of 92.3, an Average Running Position of 10.3, 150 Green Flag Passes, and a Laps in the Top 15 percentage of 84.6%.

Defending 500 champion Ryan Newman faces the same questions since he’s now Stewart’s teammate/employee at Stewart-Haas Racing, driving the No. 39 U.S. Army Chevrolet.

Newman may also have some answers, as he enjoyed much success driving the No. 12 Dodge for Penske Racing at Daytona International Speedway.

In his eight Daytona races since 2005, Newman has a Driver Rating of 94.9 (third-best), an Average Running Position of 12.8 (fourth), 33 Fastest Laps Run (tied for eighth), 1, 540 Green Flag Passes (sixth), an average Green Flag Speed of 185.081 mph (second) and a Laps in the Top 15 percentage 70.8% (third).

The only question surrounding four-time series champion Jeff Gordon: Can he get back to Victory Lane? Gordon (No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet) is mired in a 41-race winless drought dating back to 2007. It could end this weekend. Gordon already has three Daytona 500 wins, and a Daytona Driver Rating of 93.7 (sixth-best).

2009 Rookie Competition Looks Like 2-Man Showdown

The 2009 Raybestos Rookie of Year field is short on numbers but long on talent, with heralded Joey Logano (No. 20 Home Depot Toyota) joined by two drivers more known for open-wheel racing — former Formula One driver Scott Speed (No. 82 Red Bull Toyota) of Team Red Bull Racing and long-time Indy-car competitor Max Papis (No. 13 GEICO Toyota) of Germain Racing.

Of the three, only Logano and Speed are entered in the Daytona 500 and both are locked into the event via their team’s standing in the final 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup car owner points.

When the green flag drops Logano will become the youngest driver to start the Daytona 500 — at 18 years, eight months and 22 days.

Both Speed and Logano posted their first competitive NASCAR laps at Daytona this past Saturday night in the Budweiser Shootout. Unfortunately their nights were cut short when they both were caught in an accident on Lap 5, relegating them to 25th and 28th-place finishes, respectively.

Though Papis will not participate in the Daytona 500, he still is expecting an exciting event in his personal life this weekend with the birth of his second child.

Papis will make his first 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series start at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Off The Track …

Community Support of Races Evident

A variety of activities are being held this week in the Daytona Beach area, in an effort to raise awareness about Speedweeks among casual fans. A listing follows.

Wednesday, Feb. 11
What: 3rd Annual Ford Race & Rock Fest on Beach Street, across from Bruce Rossmeyer’s Harley-Davidson store in downtown Daytona Beach. … Exhibits and interactive displays from NASA, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona State College and the Children’s Museum of Arts and Sciences. … Vendor giveaways and performances by Real Radio 104.1’s “Monsters of the Morning” and the legendary rock band Boston.
When: 3-11 p.m.
Where: Beach Street
For further information on this event, please visit www.racerockfest.com.

Wednesday, Feb. 11
What: An inaugural art exhibition for students in grades K-12. … This event is hosted by the City of Daytona Beach, the Daytona Beach Chamber of Commerce and ArtHaus Foundation.
When: 4-8 p.m. both dates
Where: The News-Journal Center, corner of Beach Street and Bay Street.

Thursday, Feb. 12
What: Entertainment, living legends, show cars
When: 7-11 p.m.
Where: Main Street in Daytona Beach

Urban, Crist Part Of Off-Track 500 Lineup

Country music star Keith Urban will provide pre-race entertainment Sunday. Urban’s wife, actress Nicole Kidman, also plans to attend. … The race’s Grand Marshal will be Florida Governor Charlie Crist.

Fans’ Forum: Voting For Chex Most Popular Driver Award Now Under Way

Voting for the 2009 NASCAR National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) Chex Most Popular Driver Award has begun. For the first time, the award will have a format change, with the top 10 drivers battling for fans’ votes at season’s end.

As in years past, voters can visit http://www.chexmostpopulardriver.com/ to vote once a day for their favorite NASCAR Sprint Cup driver. On Sept. 13, voting for the full field of 44 drivers will end at 11:59 a.m. CT. At that point, the 10 drivers with the most votes will be announced as finalists and the vote count will reset to zero. Fans will then have 10 race weeks to cast their vote once a day to determine the 2009 NASCAR NMPA Chex Most Popular Driver winner from the final field of 10 drivers. Voting will conclude Nov. 23 at 11:59 p.m. CT and the winner will be announced at the NASCAR NMPA Myers Brothers Luncheon in New York City in December.

Last season, Dale Earnhardt Jr. earned his sixth consecutive Chex Most Popular Driver Award, which is administered by the NMPA. Only Earnhardt and Bill Elliott have won the award six consecutive times since the inception of the award in 1953.

“The NMPA is proud to be a part of announcing this new format,” said Dustin Long, longtime motorsports reporter and the current president of the NMPA. “It stays consistent with the other changes in our sport and we hope the fans will take advantage and vote for their favorite driver in the top 10.”

For more information and to vote on the NASCAR NMPA Chex Most Popular Driver Award, fans should log on to http://www.chexmostpopulardriver.com/.

Up Next: Auto Club Speedway

The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series heads West in Week 2 to Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., for the Auto Club 500.

The Sunday, Feb. 22 event will be televised by FOX, The pre-race show starts at 5 p.m. ET with the race starting at approximately 6:20.

Carl Edwards is the defending champion of the Auto Club 500, while Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson are tied for the career victory lead at ACS, with three apiece. Rick Hendrick leads in car owners wins with seven.

There have been 17 NASCAR Sprint Cup races at Auto Club Speedway, dating to the debut event in 1997, which Gordon won.

Fast Facts

The Race: 51st Annual Daytona 500
The Date: Sunday, Feb. 15
The Track: Daytona International Speedway; 2.5-mile tri-oval
The Time: 3:20 p.m. ET
The Distance: 500 miles/200 laps
TV: FOX , 2 p.m. ET
Radio: MRN and Sirius Satellite; (Local MRN affiliates WNDB-AM 1150, WKRO-FM 93.1)
The Polesitter: Martin Truex Jr.
2008 Champion: Ryan Newman
Schedule: Wednesday—Practice, 11-11:55 a.m. and 2-2:50 p.m. Thursday—Gatorade Duel at Daytona races, 2 p.m. Friday—Practice, 1:40-2:40 p.m. Saturday—Practice, 10:30-11:55 a.m.
Track Contact: Andrew Booth (386) 947-6749; abooth@daytonainternationalspeedway.com

Final 2008 Top 12 Drivers
Driver Points
1 Jimmie Johnson 6,684
2 Carl Edwards 6,615
3 Greg Biffle 6,467
4 Kevin Harvick 6,408
5 Clint Bowyer 6,381
6 Jeff Burton 6,335
7 Jeff Gordon 6,316
8 Denny Hamlin 6,214
9 Tony Stewart 6,202
10 Kyle Busch 6,186
11 Matt Kenseth 6,184
12 Dale Earnhardt Jr. 6,127

Kernersville, North Carolina (February 10, 2009) – Kevin Harvick Inc. has launched “Kevin Harvick Fan Central,” an online community and social networking site for fans of Kevin Harvick, driver of the Richard Childress Racing No. 29 Shell-Pennzoil Chevrolet in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, and the co-owner of Kevin Harvick Inc.

Kevin Harvick Fan Central is an online community allowing Harvick fans across the globe to interact in a wide variety of ways. Fans can create a personalized page, post and contribute to forums and blogs, participate in online chats, share and comment on pictures and videos, create groups and add events. Members of Fan Central can also add more than 142 additional applications, including feeds from other Web sites (like Twitter), streaming music and more. The fully interactive Fan Central has replaced the message board system formerly located on KevinHarvick.com.

“I feel like we always try to be cutting edge with everything we do at KHI,” Kevin Harvick said. “While the old fan area, message board and sites served an important purpose for the last nine years, we knew it was time to step it up.”

The site launched on January 26, 2009, and more than 1900 fans have already signed-up. An average of 170 new fans join every day. Members have joined from nearly every state and across Canada.

“The Kevin Harvick Fan Central has definitely exceeded my expectations,” Harvick continued. “I have always said that I have the greatest fans and now I believe they have the greatest place to come together. I’m really proud that KHI has once again taken a huge step outside the box with our online community and social networking site.”

Fan Central was created from the Ning Platform by TrendyMinds, an Indianapolis-based, full service advertising and public relations agency. The agency is also in the process of redesigning KevinHarvick.com and KevinHarvickInc.com. KevinHarvick.com will focus on the No. 29 Sprint Cup car that Harvick drives and feature media, statistics and facts about the 2007 Daytona 500 champion. KevinHarvickInc.com will feature media, sponsor, statistics and racing information as it relates to the Kevin Harvick Inc. teams. Both sites will launch in the first quarter of 2009.

For more information on Fan Central or to become a member, visit fancentral.kevinharvick.com.

Kevin Harvick Inc. (KHI), established in 2001, is a 70,000 sq. ft. facility located in Kernersville, N.C. KHI houses two full-time Truck Series teams, including the 2007 series champions, the No. 33 Chevrolet Silverado driven by three-time Truck Series champion Ron Hornaday and the No. 4 KHI All-Stars Chevrolet Silverado driven by Ricky Carmichael and a variety of NASCAR Sprint Cup stars. KHI is also home to the No. 33 Chevrolet Impala competing full-time in the Nationwide Series, with drivers Kevin Harvick (a two-time Nationwide Series champion), Hornaday and Cale Gale. The 2009 season marks KHI’s sixth year of full-time competition in NASCAR’s elite divisions. Visit http://www.kevinharvickinc.com for more information.

TrendyMinds is a highly creative, full-service boutique agency. Our services include media solutions, branding, public relations, interactive services and promotions. With a “lean and mean” passionate and experienced staff, TrendyMinds doesn’t just create ad campaigns, press releases or Web sites — TrendyMinds creates identity. Founded in 1995, TrendyMinds prides itself on exceeding expectations, creating lasting and meaningful relationships with clients and hiring only the best and brightest in the industry. TrendyMinds is located in the Douglass Pointe Lofts of Fall Creek Place in downtown Indianapolis. For more information on our work, staff or services, please visit http://www.trendyminds.com or call 317.926.1727

It sounds like a line from a science fiction movie, but I am not alone. We’re everywhere. From drivers to fans to the press corps that covers the sport, I’m seeing and hearing grown men and women practically jumping out of their skin with anticipation. They’re almost vibrating they’re so excited, like an emergency generator that never shuts down. It’s as if everyone I know has imbibed a cocktail whose ingredients are a triple espresso latte, a couple cans of Full Throttle and a two-pound bag of M&M’s.

In other words, they’re showing telltale signs of over-caffeination. But it isn’t a few too many trips to Starbucks that has us all so jittery. It’s the 51st running of the Daytona 500, on February 15.

Is this year’s “Great American Race” really so different from any other year? The answer is yes. And no.

There is an impressive set of undeniable facts about the Daytona 500. It is the biggest, most prestigious race of the year. The phrase “Daytona 500 champion” carries a certain cachet that other events, however popular, just don’t have; think in terms of Wimbledon or The Masters.

Plus, the paycheck isn’t too shabby, either. The Daytona 500 winner will collect the biggest purse of the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season.

I don’t expect to see any of these things change in my lifetime, and I plan to stick around for a very long time. But let’s be honest. NASCAR, along with every other big business in America, has been affected by the current economic downturn.

Racing’s off-season, despite the fact that it falls during the traditional holiday season, was far from festive. We’ve been hearing less about cars getting together on the track and more about teams merging off of it. Even the seasoned pros among us might need a scorecard for the first two or three weeks of this new season, just to keep track of who is driving what car bearing the logo of which sponsor.

You know how time seems to travel at a different, slower pace when you’re at your job, but seems to fly when you take that rare week off? The off-season has seemed an awful lot like work. But buckle up, friends. It’s time for our vacation to begin.

This year’s jaunt — and it is an ambitious one, spanning 10 months, 36 point races and two coastlines — has all us jumping up and down in our seats.

Even our beloved NASCAR superstars are getting into the act. As I was listening to Daytona 500 Media Day coverage on my radio, and the drivers were being systematically interviewed, one parroted the next almost word for word. “I can’t wait. We need something positive to talk about, like actual racecars and what’s happening on the track. I’m really excited.”

They sound like kids in the back seat, putting a new slant on the old phrases we have heard, and used, so many times during our travels.

“He’s looking at me.”

Well, of course he’s looking at you, son. Actually, he’s focused on you like a laser beam, trying to ascertain whether or not you and your crew chief have managed to find that elusive hundredth of a second that can mean the difference between the winner’s circle and a very bad day. Get used to it.

“Let’s play the alphabet game!”

Excellent suggestion. This is a staple of highway travel, uniquely suited to NASCAR, which when you think about it, is the supreme car trip. A: I see an Allmendinger! B: I see Kyle Busch! C: I see Carl Edwards, (and he’d better back off). D: I see a drafting partner … Oh, wait, maybe not. E: I see an Earnhardt. You get the drift.

Of course, the most popular letters of the day pop up toward the end of the alphabet. Everyone wants to be the driver who says, “V: I see Victory Lane”.

Of course, the most frequently asked questions center not around the journey, but the destination. “How much longer? Are we there yet?” And finally, we are able give the answer that is music to everyone’s ears.

Yes, we are.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Nov. 11, 2008) — After a season’s worth of laps, it all comes down to a November afternoon at Homestead-Miami Speedway and this question: Can reigning and two-time defending NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson (No. 48 Lowe’s/Kobalt Chevrolet) make history?

He heads into Sunday’s season-finale Ford 400 as the leader in the 2008 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. Second-place Carl Edwards (No. 99 Office Depot Ford), the only driver who can catch Johnson, trails by 141 points.

If Johnson does win the 2008 title, he’ll join one of the sport’s greats — Cale Yarborough — as the only drivers to win three consecutive series championships. He also can accomplish the feat on the 30th anniversary of Yarborough’s last title (1976-78).

Also notable: If Johnson does take the title, it will be Hendrick Motorsports’ eighth driver championship and 11th owner championship across NASCAR’s three national series. The latter would tie Richard Childress Racing for the most national series titles.

“I really think where we are in points is going to allow me to go to Homestead and take a little pressure off my brain this week,” Johnson said. “We can just go down and relax and get in the car and set it up, just do what we know how to do.”

Here’s what he must do to clinch his third consecutive series title — finish 36th or better on Sunday.

Over the past nine Chase races, Johnson has three wins, six top fives, eight top 10s, an average finish of 4.7 and a Chase-high Driver Rating of 118.7.

Edwards has had an excellent Chase as well, winning two races and racking up seven top fives, an average finish of 8.8 and a Driver Rating of 113.2.

He’ll need a lot of help to catch Johnson, but there is some precedence at Homestead-Miami. Edwards gained 127 points on Johnson during the 2005 season finale there. He finished fourth while Johnson finished 40th. If Edwards had won that race, he would have gained 147 points — six more than his current deficit to Johnson heading into Ford Championship Weekend.

“It’s possible, not real probable,” Edwards said, “but I guarantee that’s not going to change the way we do business. We’re going to go to Homestead with everything we’ve got. We’ll be aggressive and try to win the race.”

On The Line: NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France On NASCAR Teleconference

Brian France was this week’s guest on the NASCAR Teleconference, held Tuesday afternoon. Excerpts follow:

On the importance of manufacturers remaining active in the sport: “They have been a very important part of the sport in historical purposes. And we have every intention of them being a big part of the sport in the future. That’s why we’re going to do everything we can to help them get through a difficult business cycle because of what the ramifications could be — forgetting NASCAR for a moment, because that would pale in comparison to one of those companies if they have any additional challenges. We want to be successful, and that’s what we’re going to be working on with all of our manufacturers who help us in the sport. …

On the possibility of Jimmie Johnson joining Cale Yarborough as the only drivers to win three consecutive titles: “It’s certainly not out of the realm of reality that (second-place) Carl (Edwards) could make a run or Jimmie could have some trouble. But assuming that would happen, it would put in our view, Jimmie in an elite group, maybe in an elite group by himself. So we’ll see how that shakes out.. ..

On the first full year of competition for NASCAR’s new car: “We’ve watched the competition get better week after week as the teams have figured out this car. Then all of the safety benefits that we’ve got, those are now well-documented, well recorded that we’ve approved. It’s never good enough, but we’ve improved on that promise. Finally, is the car side, which, of course, ties directly to the economy and all the things that are going on today.

“We believe very strongly that this car will deliver cost savings in the long run for sure. In some cases, the short run. We’re very comfortable with that, and it will allow us in the future to continue to take cost out of the system, which is what everyone in our industry is trying to do. …

On the Chase format: “We’re in our fifth year. As history will unfold, we’ll have a period of years where someone will be as dominant as Jimmie and it will go down in the history books. Then there will be other years where that won’t happen, and we’ll have a number of years of historically tight championship battles. That will be terrific, too. So all we want is the right playoff format, and then if somebody’s dominant, they’re dominant. If they’re not, well, that will be terrific. …

On the continuing commitment to the sport’s growth: “When this economic turn turns around, we’re going to be very aggressive continuing to go after a bigger fan base. Get more people interested in NASCAR. That’s why we’re not going to discontinue a lot of the things that are long-term benefits to the sport. Everyone can win when we get more on solid ground.”

Note to media: For a transcript and full audio teleconference recording, go to NASCARMedia.com, NASCAR’s media-only Web site.

Roush Fenway Racing Leads The Way At Homestead-Miami Speedway

Roush Fenway Racing usually excels at 1.5-mile tracks on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule, and Homestead-Miami Speedway is no exception.

In fact, Roush Fenway drivers have won five of the six previous series events there.

And Carl Edwards, the closest challenger to Chase leader and defending two-time champion Jimmie Johnson, is among those Roush Fenway drivers who sport good statistics at the South Florida track.

He and three teammates — Greg Biffle (No. 16 3M Ford), Matt Kenseth (No. 17 DEWALT Ford) and second-year driver David Ragan (No. 6 AAA Ford) — all rank within the top 10 of pre-race Driver Rating for Homestead-Miami.

Kenseth, the defending champion of Sunday’s Ford 400, is second with a Driver Rating of 115.6 behind leader Martin Truex Jr.’s (No. 1 Bass Pro Shops/Tracker Boats Chevrolet) 116.1.

He has one win, two top fives and three top 10s in eight career starts there, and heads to South Florida as the eighth-place driver in the Chase.

“I think the racing there is as good as anywhere now,” Kenseth said of Homestead-Miami. “I think all the drivers and teams and the fans, everybody loves going down there and it’s a great event to have at the end of the year and to crown all the champions, so it’s really unique.”

Biffle, the third-place driver in the Chase, also ranks third in pre-race Driver Rating (111.0). He leads all drivers with three wins at Homestead-Miami in six career starts there.

He trails Johnson by 203 points and Edwards by 62, but hopes to end the season on a high note. Biffle returned to the Chase this season after a two-year absence. He also won the first two Chase races — at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Dover International Speedway — to re-establish himself as a title contender.

“We’re going to Homestead this weekend to try to end the season with a win,” Biffle said. “That’s really all we can do. It’s unfortunate that we’re not a factor in the championship anymore but we can still try to win one more. I’ve obviously had success at Homestead in the past and when you win there, you’re the most recent race winner until you get to Daytona. “

Edwards ranks fourth in pre-race Driver Rating (107.2). He has one pole, two top fives and three top 10s in four career starts there.

Lastly, Ragan — the 13th-place driver in the series standings — ranks 10th in pre-race Driver Rating (88.3) there.

“David doesn’t have a lot of experience at Homestead, but he’s done well this year on similar tracks,” said crew chief Jimmy Fennig. “I’m proud of what he’s accomplished this season and how far along this team has come.”

Be There: Championship Contenders Press Conference On Thursday, Nov. 13

Reigning and two-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson and his closest pursuer, Carl Edwards, will be available to the media at Thursday’s Championship Contenders Press Conference in Miami.

Held at the Hyatt Regency Coral Gables, the event begins with a luncheon from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. The press conference portion runs from 1-2 p.m. Breakout interview sessions follow from 2-2:45 p.m.

Current contenders Johnson and Edwards will be joined by some special guests Thursday — nine past NASCAR Sprint Cup champions.

All former champions are being honored during the 2008 Ford Championship weekend — helping commemorate NASCAR’s 60th season.

Thursday’s past champion guests are South Florida native Bobby Allison (1983), seven-time series champion Richard Petty, three-time series champion Darrell Waltrip, two-time series champion Ned Jarrett, his son, Dale Jarrett (1989), Rex White (1960), Rusty Wallace (1989), Bobby Labonte (No. 43 Cheerios/Betty Crocker Dodge) the 2000 series champion, and Kurt Busch (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge) the 2004 series champion.

All past champions will be available during breakout interview sessions.

Audio and video clips, plus photos and a transcript of the press-conference portion of Thursday’s event, will be available at NASCAR’s media-only web site, www.nascarmedia.com.

Down To One: Hornish Leads Smith In Tight Raybestos Rookie Of The Year Battle

Along with a series championship, another important title will be decided following Sunday’s Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Only three points separate the top two contenders for the 2008 Raybestos Rookie of the Year title — Sam Hornish Jr. (No. 77 Mobil 1 Dodge) and Regan Smith (No. 01 DEI/The Principal Financial Group Chevrolet).

Hornish leads Smith by a 199-196 point margin. He has 34 starts this season; Smith has 33.

Entering Homestead-Miami, Smith may have a slight momentum edge: He grabbed the top finish of the two last week at Phoenix, earning Raybestos Rookie of The Race honors with a 23rd-place effort. Hornish finished 33rd.

Smith has finished as the top rookie 10 times this season. Hornish has claimed top rookie honors 11 times in 2008.

Hornish, an Indianapolis 500 champion, is in his first full season of NASCAR competition. He says he’s committed to a stock-car career.

I just feel like we’ve got a lot of things as far as what I can do better, but we’ve got a lot of things as far as building the 77 car as well,” Hornish said.

“In the last bit of the races, we’ve run top-15 times but end up finishing 22nd, 23rd and 24th,” Smith said. “I’m just looking at trying to capitalize on the momentum we have going as far as the setups of the car and get the finishes out of the car that the team deserves.”

In The Loop: Gordon, Kenseth And Harvick Hoping To End Winless Streaks At Homestead-Miami

Three marquee drivers remain winless in 2008, and are in jeopardy of ending lengthy season win streaks: Jeff Gordon (No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet), Matt Kenseth and Kevin Harvick (No. 29 Shell/Pennzoil Chevrolet).

Gordon has a win in 14 consecutive seasons; Kenseth has won in six straight and Harvick in three straight.

There’s good news for all three. They are all strong at Homestead-Miami Speedway, though only Kenseth has a win there.

Since the inception of Loop Data in 2005, Kenseth – with his win in last season’s finale – is the strongest of the three.

Over the last three Homestead races, he has a Driver Rating of 115.6 (second-best), an Average Running Position of 8.4 (second), 44 Fastest Laps Run (seventh) and a Laps in the Top 15 percentage of 80.8% (fourth).

Homestead is one of two tracks at which Gordon has yet to win (Texas is the other). Still, his statistics are strong there. He has seven top 10s in nine races, and finished four there last season. Over the past three races at Homestead, Gordon has a Driver Rating of 92.8 (sixth), an Average Running Position of 13.0 (eighth), 43 Fastest Laps Run (tied for eighth) and a Laps in the Top 15 percentage of 65.0% (ninth).

Harvick’s win drought reached 70 races at Phoenix. His last win was the 2007 Daytona 500.

But the “slump” could end Sunday. He’s finished in the top 10 in three of the last four races, so momentum is on his side. At Homestead, he has top-10 finishes in five of his seven starts.

In his last three races there, Harvick has a Driver Rating of 88.4 (ninth), an Average Running Position of 13.3 (ninth) and a Laps in the Top 15 percentage of 63.9% (11th).

One other winless driver to watch is Martin Truex Jr. Truex won his first career race last season, and has been strong in his last two Homestead races.

Truex finished second at Homestead in 2006 and sixth last year. In those two races, he has a series-high in Driver Rating (116.1) and Average Running Position (6.7).

On The Bubble: Marcos Ambrose And No. 47 Toyota In 35th

With one race remaining in the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, plenty of drama remains for those teams involved in the top-35 “bubble” battle.

Each week, the top 35 in the owner standings are guaranteed starting positions, while those outside the cutoff must qualify on speed.

Following Sunday’s season-ending Ford 400, the top 35 teams in the 2008 owner standings will be guaranteed starting berths through the first five races of 2009.

As teams prepare for the season’s final week, all those on the “bubble” are eying the No. 47 Little Debbie’s Ford driven by Marcos Ambrose and owned by Rob Kauffman.

The No. 47 is 35th, gaining one spot in the owner standings after an 18th-place finish last week at Phoenix.

The No. 84 Team Red Bull Toyota, driven this week by Scott Speed and owned by Dietrich Mateschitz, is 36th, slipping one spot after Scott Speed’s 40th-place finish at Phoenix.

The No. 84 trails the No. 47 by 17 points.

The No. 7 Jim Beam Dodge owned and driven by Robby Gordon, remains 34th in the owner standings, 30 points ahead of the No. 47.

The No. 66 State Water Heaters Chevrolet, driven by Scott Riggs and owned by Joe Custer, is 33rd, slipping two spots after a 38th-place finish at Phoenix.

The No. 7 trails the No. 66 by 80 points

The No. 77 Mobil 1 Dodge, driven by Raybestos Rookie of the Year candidate Sam Hornish Jr., and owned by Roger Penske, is 37th, 84 points out of 36th and 101 points out of 35th.

The No. 10 Valvoline Dodge, driven by AJ Allmendinger and owned by George Gillett Jr., is 38th, 59 points out of 37th.

Chevrolet Clinches 32nd Manufacturers Championship; Second Place Still At Stake

Thanks to Jimmie Johnson’s victory last Sunday at Phoenix, Chevrolet clinched its 32nd manufacturers’ title in NASCAR Sprint Cup Series competition.

Johnson’s victory secured the maximum amount of points required for Chevrolet to win the title — a competition separated by only a handful of points during the past few weeks.

Heading into Sunday’s Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Chevrolet leads the manufacturers standings with 213 points and 11 wins.

But second place is still undecided.

Currently, Ford holds the spot with 206 points and 10 victories. Toyota is third with 204 points and 10 wins. Dodge is fourth with 147 points and four wins.

Chevrolet, the defending manufacturers champion, has won six of the last seven manufacturers’ titles, including five straight since 2003.

The manufacturer won its first title in 1958 and nine consecutive titles from 1983-91. With one race remaining in 2008, Chevrolet has won 633 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.

Up Next: 2008 Champions’ Week

Following Sunday’s season-finale Ford 400, the NASCAR Sprint Cup champion and his team will be celebrated during Champions Week activities in New York City.

This year, it’s Dec. 2-6. The series champion has been crowned in New York every year since 1981, with the historic Waldorf=Astoria Hotel serving as the home base.

National media obligations and appearances are an important part of the week’s schedule, along with fan interaction and events throughout New York City.

The week culminates Friday, Dec. 5 with the annual NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Awards Ceremony in the hotel’s Grand Ballroom. The top 10 in the final Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings are recognized during this event, along with the champion.

Also on the 2008 Champions Week schedule:

The annual NASCAR NMPA Myers Brothers Media Luncheon on Thursday, Dec. 4. The top 12 drivers in the Chase are recognized along with the Raybestos Rookie of the Year, the champion crew chief, sponsor and several important annual industry awards.

For more information on 2008 Champions Week activities and schedule, please visit NASCAR’s media-only web site, www.nascarmedia.com.

Ford 400: Race 10 in the Chase
The Place: Homestead-Miami Speedway
The Date: Sunday, Nov. 16
The Time: 3:45 p.m. (ET)
The Track: 1.5-mile oval
The Distance: 267 laps/400.5 miles
TV: ABC, 3 p.m. (ET)
Radio: MRN (Local Affiliate: KISS Country 99.9), SIRIUS Satellite Radio
2007 Winner: Matt Kenseth
2007 Polesitter: Jimmie Johnson

2008 Points
Driver Points
1 Johnson 6,561
2 Edwards 6,420
3 Biffle 6,358
4 Burton 6,292
5 Harvick 6,233
6 Bowyer 6,226
7 Gordon 6,151
8 Kenseth 6,091
9 Hamlin 6,090
10 Earnhardt Jr. 6,087
11 Ky. Busch 6,080
12 Stewart 6,059
Pre-Race Schedule: Friday—Practice, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Qualifying, 3:10 p.m. Saturday—Practice, 1:30-2:15 p.m. and 2:50-3:50 p.m.

Jimmie Johnson is on the verge of history, closing in on his third-consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship. Sunday’s Ford 400 will decide his fate.

In Friday night’s Ford 200, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series title will be decided, as only three points separate leader Johnny Benson from second-place Ron Hornaday Jr.

In Saturday’s Ford 300, the NASCAR Nationwide Series will crown either points leader Clint Bowyer or second-place Carl Edwards as its champion.

Storylines follow, but first here’s a look at Florida natives in the NASCAR garage.

In the Garage

NASCAR Sprint Cup Series

Kenny Francis (Jacksonville) – No. 9 Crew Chief

Alan Gustafson (Ormond Beach) No. 5 Crew Chief

Shane Westerberg (Miami) – No. 07 Mechanic

Allen Mincey (Fort Lauderdale) – No. 19 Mechanic

Dean Mozingo (Tampa) – No. 5 Transport Driver, Pit Support

Adam Cooke (Zephyrhills) – No. 41 Front Tire Carrier

Tony Nicholson (Jupiter) – No. 21 Front Tire Carrier

Ryan Pepe (Orlando) – No. 07 Front Tire Changer

Mark Jacobs (Fort Walton Beach) – No. 42 Jack Man

Ray Gallahan (Lake Helen) – No. 2 Jack Man

Chris Moore (Tampa) – No. 77 Rear Tire Carrier

Tab Boyd (Pensacola) – No. 42 Spotter

Shawn Reutimann (Zephyrhills) – No. 44 Spotter

Bobby Bakeeff (Fort Lauderdale) – No. 16 Pit Support

NASCAR Nationwide Series

Paul Flury (Hollywood) – No. 29 Engineer

Jay Nolan (Jacksonville) – No. 5 Engine Tuner

Shaun Rinaman (Sarasota) – No. 12 Catch Can

Shane Westerberg (Miami) – No. 2 Front Tire Changer

Thomas Costello (St. Petersburg) – No. 2 Gas Man

Jared Branan (Kissimmee) – No. 7 Rear Tire Changer

Kathy Rogers (Pinellas Park) – No. 88 Scorer

NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series

Tim Rice (Lehigh Acres) – No. 7 Truck Chief

Chuck Scott (Tampa) – No. 12 Truck Chief

Jason Overstreet (Clearwater) – No. 9 Crew Chief

Rob Hunley (Ocalla) – No. 30 Engineer

Scott Palmer (Deland) – No. 7 Engine Tuner

Justin Gardner (Zephyrhills) – No. 30 Tire Specialist

Brian McCants (Port St. Lucis) – No. 6 Catch Can

Chris Souza (Land O Lakes) – No. 12 Front Tire Carrier

Kyle Kretchman (Bradenton) – No. 5 Front Tire Changer

Everett Jones (Land O Lakes) – No. 12 Front Tire Changer

Bill Rock (Cape Coral) – No. 28

James Lowe (Land O Lakes) – No. 12 Jack Man

Jeff Wilson (Fort Myers) – No. 7 Rear Tire Carrier

Teddy Steger (Land O Lakes) – No. 12 Rear Tire Carrier

Larry Lajoie (Land O Lakes) – No. 12 Rear Tire Changer

Tim Rice (Lehigh Acres) – No. 7 Windshield/Driver Support

Morgan Holland (Pensacola) – No. 6 Scorer

Mike Swaim (Daytona Beach) – No. 5 Spotter

Michelle Gosselin (Lake Wales) – No. 12 Spotter

NASCAR Sprint Cup Series

Johnson Closing in On Third Straight Title

Jimmie Johnson needs to finish 36th or better in Sunday’s Ford 400 to become only the second driver to win three consecutive championships. Cale Yarborough is the only other driver to do so (1976-78).

Johnson now leads second-place Carl Edwards by 141 points. Even if Edwards were to win and lead the most laps on Sunday – a 195-point day – Johnson would clinch with that 36th-place finish.

A phenomenal Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup has put Johnson in this position. Over the nine races, Johnson has three wins, six top fives, eight top 10s, an average finish of 4.7 and a Driver Rating of 118.7.

Knaus Cementing His Place in History

Behind every great driver is a great crew chief. That is certainly true when discussing Jimmie Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus. If Johnson and the No. 48 team hold on, Knaus will become the first ever crew chief to win three consecutive championships.

Edwards Holds Out Hope

Anything can happen. That’s Edwards’ mantra going into this weekend. His Roush Fenway Racing team has won the last four Homestead races (three by Greg Biffle, one by Matt Kenseth), so that can give Edwards some optimism.

The good news for Edwards lies at Homestead. The most points Edwards has gained on Johnson in one race is 127, at Homestead in 2005. In that race, Johnson finished 40th and Edwards finished fourth. If Edwards had won that race, he would have gained 147 points – six more than the deficit he now faces.

No matter the outcome, Edwards has had an excellent Chase. In the nine races thus far, Edwards two wins, seven top fives, an average finish of 8.8 and a Driver Rating of 113.2.

Hendrick Aims for Eighth Driver Title

If Johnson holds on to win the championship, it will be the eighth driver championship for owner Rick Hendrick. Thus far, he has won four with Jeff Gordon, two with Jimmie Johnson and one with Terry Labonte.

Additionally, if Johnson does win, it will be Hendrick’s 11th car owner championship across NASCAR’s three national series. Richard Childress currently is the leader with 11 owners championships, and is going for No. 12 this weekend with the No. 2 Chevrolet in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. The No. 2 is currently second in the owners points.

Gordon Looks to End 2008, Homestead Droughts

Four-time series champion Jeff Gordon looks to end two “slumps” this weekend. Gordon, winless in 2008, has won a race in 14 consecutive seasons. He has one more race to continue that streak. Unfortunately for him, Gordon has not had much success at Homestead. It is one of two tracks at which Gordon has yet to win a race (Texas is the other). His best Homestead finish is third in 2004, and he has finished in the top 10 in seven of his nine races there.

Additionally, Matt Kenseth and Kevin Harvick – both winless this season – are looking to continue season winning streaks. Kenseth has won at least one race in six consecutive season and Harvick has won in three consecutive seasons.

Top 35 Battle All-Important

A race within a race will undoubtedly play out this weekend, as teams around the all-important top 35 bubble look to lock up guaranteed starting spots for next season. All teams in the top 35 in owners points after Homestead are guaranteed spots in the field for the first five races of 2009. Currently, the No. 47 Toyota driven by Marcos Ambrose holds the 35th position. But it is only 17 points ahead of the No. 84 Toyota in 36th-place.

Stewart Ends Championship Run at Joe Gibbs Racing

Tony Stewart will compete in his last race for Joe Gibbs Racing on Sunday, ending a 10-year run that brought 33 wins and two NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championships to JGR. In 2009, Stewart will drive for his own team – Stewart-Haas Racing.

NASCAR NATIONWIDE SERIES

Homestead-Miami Drips With Championship Drama

Three titles come down to the final race of season with the driver championship to be decided at the last race for the first time since 2005. It will be the 14th time in the 27-year history of the series that the title is decided in the last race. Below are the many championship storylines for the series:

Driver’s Championship

Clint Bowyer, seeking his first NASCAR national series title, leads reigning series champion Carl Edwards by 56 points – the closest one and two have been heading into the final race since 2003 when Brian Vickers led David Green by 22 points. (Vickers won the championship.)

Edwards has made an incredible charge over the last seven races when he was 207 points behind. In that span, he’s won three times, had two runner-up finishes and hasn’t finished out of the top 5.

If Bowyer finishes eighth or better in Saturday’s race, he will clinch the title regardless of how Edwards finishes.

Owner’s Championship

The No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota has a 28-point lead over the No. 2 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet. Joey Logano will drive the No. 20 at Homestead and attempt to bring JGR its first NASCAR Nationwide Series title. Clint Bowyer will try to wrestle the title back for defending owner champion RCR, which is tied with DEI for the all-time lead with four series owner titles.

If the No. 20 finishes second, it would clinch regardless of what the No. 2 does. The No. 2 needs to finish 33rd or better in order to stay in contention until the end of the race.

Rookies

At Phoenix, Landon Cassill took the lead in the rookie race by six points over second-place Bryan Clauson, who gets one more shot as he’s entered at Homestead. Cassill will have to watch – Dale Earnhardt Jr. is entered in the No. 5 Chevrolet. Seven former series Rookies of the Year are entered in the race

Wallace Among Series Elite

Kenny Wallace is set to reach a series milestone at Homestead. A start for the NASCAR veteran will be the 418th of his series career, second only to Jason Keller’s 456. Wallace will surpass Tommy Houston, who held the mark at 417 before Keller surpassed it last October. Wallace started his 400th series race at Milwaukee in July and has 772 combined starts in NASCAR’s three national series.

NNS Etc.

Kyle Busch has one more chance to break the season record for wins he holds with two-time champion Sam Ard. Busch won his 10th race at Texas. … Four former series champions are entered at Homestead, including 1994 champion David Green. He’s vying to make his first start in series since 2007 at Kentucky. …Michael Annett will attempt to make his series debut for Germain Racing. Annett has eight starts in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series with one top five and two top 10s. … Patrick Sheltra, a native of Indiantown, Fla., made his series debut at Phoenix and is also entered at Homestead.

NASCAR CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES

Trucks Set for Closest Finale in Series History

The closest championship battle in series history – and second closest in a NASCAR national series since the current point system was implemented in 1975 – heads for resolution in this week’s Ford 200 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Johnny Benson leads Ron Hornaday Jr. by just three points entering the 2008 finale. The closest points battle going into the final race in national series history was 1979, when Darrell Waltrip led Richard Petty by two going into the finale (Petty won the championship).

Benson Looking for First Series Title, Hornaday Aims for Fourth

What’s at stake: Benson’s first NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series title. He is the 1995 NASCAR Nationwide Series champion. Hornaday would claim an unprecedented fourth championship; become the series’ first back-to-back champion and be the oldest NASCAR national series champion at age 50 years four months 25 days.

Contenders Each Have Homestead Win

The race: Benson is the defending winner of the Ford 200. Hornaday won the race in 2000. There have been 12 consecutive different winners at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The 1.5-mile facility was the first track of more than a mile in length to host a series race (in 1996).

Braun Leads Twenty-Something Rookie Class
A pair of 20 year olds top Raybestos Rookie of the Year standings entering the season’s final race. Colin Braun holds a 26-point lead over late-charging Brian Scott, whose fourth-place finish at Phoenix International Raceway was his first top-five performance in the series. Braun could become Roush Fenway Racing’s sixth rookie-of-the-year and youngest in series history (50 days younger than 2000 Raybestos rookie Kurt Busch).

Scramble for Top 10 Spot

Erik Darnell in fourth and Rick Crawford in seventh are separated by just 31 points. The two, along with Mike Skinner in fifth and Matt Crafton in sixth will jockey for position this weekend. Also watch for the top 10 battle. Terry Cook holds a 59-point lead over Chad McCumbee for the 10th position.

Owners’ Championship Also on the Line

The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series owner championship remains a three-way race. Gail Davis (Benson) holds a three-point lead over DeLana Harvick (Hornaday). Billy Ballew, however, remains mathematically in contention. His Kyle Busch-driven Toyota is 98 points off the lead.

KERRY THARP: Carl Edwards wins the 2008 Pep Boys Auto 500 here at Atlanta Motor Speedway, driver of the No. 99 Office Depot Ford, with crew chief Bob Osborne and team owner Jack Roush.
Carl, your thoughts about the race out there today. Obviously you knew you had a good car coming in. You really handled that racetrack extremely well.

CARL EDWARDS: Man, it was a lot of fun. This racetrack is a blast. I hope they never repave it, mess with it. It’s really fun to drive on. You can spin the tires halfway down each straightaway. Made it driving like on a dry slick dirt track. It was a lot of fun. Bob did a great job.

Middle of the race we weren’t as fast as we were at the beginning and the end, which I guess if you got to pick a spot in the race not to be fast, that would be it. Bob did a great job at the end. It all worked out. Just awesome. It’s been a great couple days for me. I can’t thank Jack enough for the opportunity. This is amazing.

KERRY THARP: Bob, your thoughts about some of the calls you had to make out on the pit box tonight.

BOB OSBORNE: We got behind relative to the racetrack and relative to some of the competitors. I think some of that had to do with some of the calls I made went a little bit too far on some of my adjustments, had to back pedal a little bit, go in a different direction late in the race to try to get caught back up.

KERRY THARP: Jack, your thoughts about the performance of the 99 team here today.

JACK ROUSH: They did really, really, really well obviously. To watch Bob and Carl work the car, work the racetrack, work the race, and a 500 mile race is an amazing thing to watch unfold. They’ve got the chemistry you need to have between a driver and a crew chief to be able to sort all those things out. They worked their way through it.

I knew that Bob was good, that the car was good early on. I knew they had lost their way or the competitors had gotten better in the middle. I was really, really relieved at the end when they made their last adjustment or Bob made his last adjustment and he got it where it needed to be.

The one thing I wanted to say is that days like this, for teams like ours that have the success we’ve had, we want to go back and think about 2008, think about our championship run, what it meant. Unfortunately I’m afraid it will come down to thinking about the broken engine parts, the ignition and the other frustrations we’ve had.

But it would be my suggestion as NASCAR looks at how to make this thing more exciting, if we had an opportunity, every team had an opportunity, to throw out one race and be able to just count nine of the 10, that means you could have a Mulligan and you could be able to come back from it.

Anyway, we’re going to remember this night. It was a wonderful evening to be in Atlanta here. We had soldiers from the 75th regiment, third brigade, Army Rangers, that came back from Iraq. One of their soldiers Patrick Rudd died over there. He was a friend of a friend. The racetrack extended an invitation to 200 of the soldiers to come out and join us today. It was a wonderful thing the racetrack did.

Anyway, I’m dedicating my part of the victory to Sergeant Patrick Rudd that lost his life in Iraq. He and his regiment of Rangers are one of the reasons we can have events like this with relative safety with all of the other things going on in the world.

KERRY THARP: We’ll take questions for the winning team.

Q. Carl, you began the race with Jimmie Johnson. Apparently much to your surprise you ended it with him behind you. Did you lose track of him in between? Did you have any idea where he was?

CARL EDWARDS: Yeah, I looked up there on the scoreboard, saw he was running seventh, eighth, ninth, somewhere in there most of the second half of the race. When Dave said, What do you think about Jimmie finishing second, I thought he was joking. I truly didn’t know until I looked at the scoreboard that Jimmie had made that back up. I got to see some video. They put on some tires and went for it. That’s pretty amazing.

He’s a heck of a competitor, just like I’ve said before. He’s the first guy to come and congratulate when you win, in a way that just makes him harder to beat. He’s just one of those guys that does it right.

We’ve got to hope that he has something happen like the things that we’ve had happen, lose a couple hundred points, and we just have to be able to capitalize because I believe that the way they’re running, it’s going to be really tough to beat them.

We can do it. I mean, we just have to go win. If we do everything we can, that’s all we can do.

Q. Carl, you took the lead 10 laps or so before the final. How difficult was it for you to stay patient? You said in the middle of the race you didn’t have the speed like in the beginning. Was there maybe a moment when you were under panic?

CARL EDWARDS: No, I didn’t panic or anything. Definitely got a little frustrated there in the middle of the race.

Like Bob said, we kind of adjusted ourselves away from being as fast as we were at the beginning. But, you know, you just got to keep working, you know, keep digging, never give up. That applies to every part of our race team. We try to always focus on what we have to do no matter what the circumstance. It worked out today. But definitely in the middle of the race

I didn’t believe we were going to win the thing.

The pass for the lead there, that was on the restart. All day everybody had been having trouble spinning the tires. Denny spun his tires a little bit. I spun mine. Then he spun them some more. I got to his bumper. All I could think about was the guys passing all of us. I pushed on his rear bumper a little bit. Then he went to block the inside and spun the tires again, I guess, or something. I think that was a smart move on his part to go to the inside. That’s where I was planning on going. That opened the door to the top. I thought, Well, I’ll try it. But I was really nervous the guys behind me were going to get to the bottom and get by us. But it worked out. The last adjustment Bob made made the car real fast on the top.

Q. Carl, when you got the lead and pulled away, obviously the clean air was the deal all day.

CARL EDWARDS: Yeah.

Q. But you managed to get the lead. When you got up there, did you think, Now it’s up to me not to make the same kind of mistake Denny made?

CARL EDWARDS: Oh, yeah. Bob came on the radio, on that last restart, he said, I think I saw what just happened with you and Denny. He said something like, Be careful, it’s your turn now (laughter). I thought, Man, you know, it’s so hard on those restarts. It’s really difficult. You get put in the lead there, and a lot of times you’re a sitting duck because all the hair on the back of your neck’s standing up and everything in your brain is screaming stand on the gas, stand on the gas. It’s really difficult not to spin the tires. Early in the race I did it a couple times real bad.

So, yeah, that was interesting. But once we got the lead, yeah, it was just don’t mess up, you know, focus, hit your marks. The car was really fast.

Q. What was going through your mind on that pit stop when you collided with the 88?

CARL EDWARDS: First of all, I didn’t know until somebody told me. I thought I hit the 2 car. There’s so much going on there. I didn’t know exactly what happened. Bob cleared me one out. I was stuck behind Jimmie a little bit. I got around Jimmie and the rear end slid out an extra foot or whatever. I hit somebody’s car there. I guess it was Dale.

I don’t know if they were two or three wide or what was going on there, but there just wasn’t a lot of room. I tried to keep it as tight as I could. You know, I’ve seen a lot of good races go bad on pit road, and that made me a little bit nervous when we got into them, those guys there. It just looked like a mess. I haven’t seen a replay yet. Felt like a mess.

Q. Carl, can you tell us about the good luck necklace that you got from the kid at the Children’s Hospital.

CARL EDWARDS: Yeah, it was really cool. I still got it on, this necklace here. Dalton, really cool kid. We went to the Aflac Cancer Center at the Children’s Hospital in downtown Atlanta. I mean, I’m sure, as everybody knows, there’s a lot of people that give a lot in this sport. I didn’t realize how much Aflac does for all these kids. They don’t turn one kid away. They treat everyone regardless of whether they can pay or not. They treat a lot of children. And they cure 70% of the kids that come in there with cancer so they can go on and live regular lives and succeed at whatever they want to do.

Dalton was really cool. We went to the hospital, David Gilliland and myself. We had a really good time. At the end, Dalton said, Hey, I got this courage necklace. I get beads every time I come to the hospital and visit or do something or surgery or something like that. He said, I want you to wear it. I think it will be good luck on Sunday. He definitely said he wants it back after this race, which is too bad, because I think it worked.

Q. Bob, I don’t want to put you on the spot. Did you not have it in your heart to tell Carl that Jimmie was second?

BOB OSBORNE: Honestly I didn’t realize he was second either until I got to Victory Circle. I figured the 11 had finished second. I did see he got to third, but I didn’t realize he made it to second till I was walking back there.

Q. Bob, is it an easy for Chad and Jimmie to take four tires there when they’re running eighth with 10, 11 laps to go? Does that decision change or is it made easier knowing they had a 150 point cushion on you guys and can take a chance for a few spots?

BOB OSBORNE: For sure, the point cushion allows them to do some things that ordinarily we wouldn’t do as crew chiefs. But they really didn’t have anything to lose. If no one came in front of ‘em, they were the first ones to come, they had a pretty good feeling that some of the cars behind ‘em would come, too. But with a single file restart, four tires go a long way obviously.

Q. Carl, you have seven wins. Obviously a great season. If you don’t win the championship, will you still be pleased with this season or will you be really disappointed that you didn’t get everything you wanted?

CARL EDWARDS: I mean, here’s the deal. We go out and do the best we can. If we win 10 races and the championship, that’s going to be a spectacular season. That’s what we’re focusing on doing right now.

I don’t know. We’ll just have to see what happens. But one thing I’ve learned in this sport, it’s really hard to come to grips with, you don’t always get the result you want. You just have to perform the best you can. If you do that, the result doesn’t matter. You can lay your head down at night and feel okay. I guess we’ll see after Homestead. I hope that’s not what happens.

Q. Could you talk about when you were coming off pit road with the 48, just what happened in that incident? Did you think it was dirty pool or fair game or circumstances on pit road?

CARL EDWARDS: Bob had a better look at it. A lot of people brought that up. I don’t know if they were making something about that in the coverage of the race. Jimmie’s job is not to make it easy on us. You know what I mean? If he was behind us on pit road, I might leave mine hanging out a little farther than normal. I thought he put it far enough in the box. I didn’t think he was purposely making it hard on us. But they’re not supposed to make it easy on us. I didn’t have any trouble with that. No hard feelings about that from me.

Q. Carl, so far no driver has been able to sweep races at a track this year. You have the chance to do that at Texas next week. I understand you’re doing some flight training tomorrow.

CARL EDWARDS: What am I doing tomorrow?

Q. Flight training.

CARL EDWARDS: Flight training. No, I got this aerobatic plane. I’ve been doing some flight training. I don’t have any scheduled for tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m just going to fly. I don’t know if I’m going to learn much. But we’re going to have a good time with it. Jack has me kind of screwed up with airplanes. It’s fun. Sure as hell is expensive. But it’s fun. We have a good time.

JACK ROUSH: A driver being somewhat in debt for a passion or another, it’s not a bad thing. Racehorses, airplanes…

CARL EDWARDS: I got this airplane. It’s an Extra 300. Something I’m excited about doing this week, going and flying that thing. It’s got the smoke system. It will do loops and barrel rolls. My girlfriend actually went with me the other day. Hung on it for most of the day.

JACK ROUSH: Fiancée.

CARL EDWARDS: She’s my fiancée. That’s crazy. Sorry, Kate. I’m terrible. She’ll forgive me. Texas is going to be fun. I like racing there. It’s a lot like this place. It’s fast. It’s fun. I’m sure Bob will have a great setup. He does a really good job at these tracks. I feel like he can almost read my mind as far as what I want. There wouldn’t be much better place to double up than Texas. That’s a really great race. Very important at this point in the season to run well there.

Q. Carl, Jimmie Johnson talked about how he didn’t think the tires were very much improved from the March race to this race now. You talked about how much you love the track, being like a dirt track. Two different perspectives. Do you think the tires improved at all?

CARL EDWARDS: I was glad they didn’t screw them up. I thought they were perfect in the spring. That’s just the way I feel. I know a lot of people don’t feel that way. But maybe it’s because I got these guys sitting next to me, we’ve got such great racecars.

But I enjoy when you got to push the pedals a lot, move the steering wheel a lot. It puts it back in the driver’s hands. It’s really like a 500 mile Saturday night dirt track race. You’re driving the whole time. That’s fun.

JACK ROUSH: From Bob and I’s point of view, when you have a tire that’s so good for a racetrack that you can run it, you can abuse it and run it for a full fuel run, not have any consequence of not having your setup right, it really doesn’t give you much to work with. The tire they had here, if you get off a little bit, if you overheat one tire, you’re going to have a consequence of really having a car slow down. That really lets the crew chiefs for the setup and the driver that gives their best input have the best chance.

We like to race the tires. We’d like for the tires not to be perfect. They were good tires even though they fell off quite a bit.

Q. Carl, if before the Chase someone told you you’d be 183 points back with three to go, do you think there would be any thought you’d be second in the standings?

CARL EDWARDS: Are we second right now?

KERRY THARP: Yes.

CARL EDWARDS: I didn’t know. No, I mean, listen, guys, anything can happen. If there’s one thing this season has shown me and all of us I guess here is that every time you think you got figured out who is going to be the guy to beat, you know, I think it can turned on its head quickly.

I’m telling you, as long as we’re within 130 points going to Homestead or whatever, we’re still going there to win the championship and it can happen.

It would have been hard for me to believe that there would be one guy that had that big of a lead right now. But if I had to pick a guy, I’d say it’s Jimmie Johnson. Those guys are really consistent. They do their jobs. But they can have the same luck that we’ve had, that’s for sure.

Q. I’ve got to believe Jack was serious when he talked about a Mulligan in the Chase. Taking yourselves away from your team, what you’ve encountered, Bob and Carl, do you believe the Chase should include the ability to throw one race out? Do you seriously believe that would be a good idea?

CARL EDWARDS: You got to be careful because next year we might have a 183 point lead. I think it depends. It would be good right now for sure (smiling). Maybe throw out two, that would be great.

JACK ROUSH: I raced for 20 years, 20 some years, before I started with NASCAR stock car racing back in ’88. I raced in a couple of series and had great championship runs with programs where they did throw out one or two races. They didn’t have a 10 race deal at the end of the season, but throughout the year. What that really meant was that until you’d used up your Mulligan, you raced as hard as you could go every lap. If you didn’t have a Mulligan, then you have to be somewhat more cautious. It’s more exciting if you’re able to go as hard as you can until you realize that it will really hurt you.

CARL EDWARDS: That’s a good point. It might make the racing there will be guys you can take bigger risks if you haven’t used your Mulligan. I think that’s part of what the Chase format has brought about, knowing that you’ve got 26 races. I know for us it was really fun about four to go before the Chase started, we knew we were in. I just drove as hard as I could. We tried a bunch of stuff. It made it a lot of fun.

BOB OSBORNE: I don’t see why not. I don’t think NASCAR wants to see their championship won by this many points, for sure. I don’t want to see it won by this many points. I don’t think anybody wants to see it won by this many points.

If they come up with a format that can adjust and make the Chase even that much more competitive, that would be wonderful.

Q. Carl, all the good things that happened today, is there some discouragement in the fact you came in here 199 points and you only gained 16 points?

CARL EDWARDS: Really there isn’t. We came here and did what we had to do. We won the race. Man, that’s all we can do. I’d be a fool to go home and be discouraged by that. You’ve got to build on that, move on, and hopefully win at the next three of them.

Just amazement at how well Chad, Jimmie and those guys rebounded. I was telling somebody out there, I don’t know how many times I’ve been riding along third or fourth on a restart, there’s the 48 a lap down on the inside line. I think,

Man, their day’s ruined. By the end of the race, somehow they make it back up there. I think we can all learn from that.

Q. You’ve been extremely strong on these intermediate tracks. What do you credit your strong performance at these tracks with?

CARL EDWARDS: That’s a good question. I think it’s a lot of things. These guys sitting next to me. The guys at the shop building the engines. Robbie Reiser. All of my teammates sharing information. I think that these tracks tax every aspect of your team. You have to have good pit stops, good engine, good aero package, good communication with the crew chief. Then for me driving it, they feel a lot like a half mile dirt track or something like that, the way the momentum works, all that. I really just enjoy the feel of these places. Right off the bat we had really good cars in 2004, 2005 at these places. I really like ‘em.

Q. The last three winners here of this race went on to win the next week in Texas. Assess your chances of keeping that streak going.

CARL EDWARDS: Man, I didn’t realize that. I guess we did that in 2005. The tracks are a lot alike. I’m hoping that all the things we’ve been doing with Ford and all their support, the things we’ve been doing behind the scenes to kind of make sure that our data and everything matches up and we can run well at these tracks, I hope that it carries over.

Things change so fast. Really week to week it seems like early in the season Jimmie and those guys weren’t that fast at these places, then they figured something out. I just hope that it does carry over. That would be very cool.

Q. As much as you love this racetrack, would you consider having them widen pit road?

CARL EDWARDS: That’s a good question. I don’t know if it’s because of the size of pit road or just things are coming down to crunch time and people are getting every inch they can.

I think pit road seems to be wide enough. Honestly, they can do whatever they want with pit road; just don’t touch the racetrack, it’s perfect.

Q. Carl, you’re not only chasing the Sprint Cup title but you’re chasing the Nationwide Series title as well. How hard is it to focus on both right now?

CARL EDWARDS: I’m very fortunate to be driving both. We got fast Ford Fusions every week in both of ‘em. In a way I think that it’s a nice little escape from each of them. The run yesterday at Memphis was just a blast. I had a really good time. Kind of allowed me to relax a little bit. I think in a way that feeling of accomplishing something on Saturday can sometimes transfer over, had a little spring in my step today.

I don’t think they take away at all. I think they kind of help one another.

KERRY THARP: Congratulations.

An interview with:
JIMMIE JOHNSON
DENNY HAMLIN

KERRY THARP: We’re pleased to be joined by our race runner up and our points leader this week. He increases that points margin up to 183 points, Jimmie Johnson.

Jimmie, you got that pit road speeding penalty early on. You certainly made up a lot of ground. Boy, you were coming on strong there at the end. Your thoughts.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Man, I felt like I went 12 rounds with Tyson today. That was a long, long race for us. I made that mistake getting onto pit road I guess. I’ve heard it was in and off pit road. I’m not sure where. But somewhere I was speeding, had to do that pass through on green flag stop conditions.

It just killed us. It just killed us. We just fought back from that all day long. We could make up some ground, but we could only get to seventh, sixth, something like that. The cars were all pretty equal in front of us on speed. We just kind of hung there and couldn’t go anywhere.

Chad’s calls for tires at the end really paid off. We were able to make up a lot of ground, get a good finish out of today.

KERRY THARP: Thank you, Jimmie. We have our third place finisher, as well, Denny Hamlin. Denny, you had a strong run out there, led a lot of laps. Your thoughts about how things shook out today?

DENNY HAMLIN: It was good. Our car was good. We worked it into a top seven car early. Worked it into a top five car around halfway. Then after that, just every pit stop we got a little better, a little better, starting making up positions. We knew if we could get past the 17 in the pits that we were going to check out. Once we got around him, our car was just awesome. It was really, really good.

You know, we looked good with 30 to go there. After the last pit stop, that was the best my car had been all day. We had that debris caution. That just completely changed the complexity of the race. It seems like it glazed over my rear tires because after that I had no rear grip whatsoever. That’s part of it.

KERRY THARP: We’ll take questions now.

Q. Denny, can you talk about the restart with Carl, when he maybe made a little contact with you. Also the last lap with Jimmie, when you got loose in four.

DENNY HAMLIN: Yeah, you know, we struggled to get going on the restarts, which is fine. We were still OK. But, you know, the 99 was coming. I was probably I think I was in the middle of the track. Versus going high or low, he hit us. When he did, it knocked us down the racetrack. He chose what lane he wanted to be in when he hit us. Once you get the guy on the outside on the restart, it’s over.

That second groove is really, really good for a few laps. Once he knocked us down to the bottom right there, it was over with. We knew, we conceded that. The only way to do it was to do it back to him. But our car would not take off. It would not take off at all.

The last lap with Jimmie, he just had position on the outside. Our car was really loose to begin with. With him beside us, I mean, we almost took him and myself out.

Q. Jimmie, when you were flying past people after that last restart, did you even have visions of maybe even catching Carl? Was it to the point you almost ran out of laps to win the race or missed a ‘green white checkered’ to win the race?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Well, I think that the circumstances really played into us finishing as good as we could. Carl was gone. I don’t think I could have caught him. I missed the chance to pit with 16 to go or something. A lot of guys pitted.

Then we had a couple more quick cautions. Then it was a single file restart with lead lap cars only. In that situation, that worked out perfectly. We were the first car back out on four after that.

So I don’t think I could have got Carl. Maybe a ‘green white checkered’ would have given us a chance. But he was so far ahead, I couldn’t have got to him.

I have to commend Denny on his slide through turn three and not getting into us. Got real close to him down the backstretch, poked down around the outside to get into three. Got him sideways. I could hear him pedalling the car. Did a great job of saving it.

I made it through all the other guys on the outside, but once I got to Denny, just caught him on the back straightaway at the wrong time and got almost sideways.

Q. Denny, is the one thing about this car that you can get it in a slide and save it like you were able to today? There were cars sliding around out there all day today.

DENNY HAMLIN: Yeah, the pace was slow. I told my crew chief during the course of the day that the pace was so slow, I thought NASCAR was just going to black flag us all for not making minimum speed. We were running 34 something, mid-34s, something. That’s just a horrid pace around this racetrack.

But, yeah, I like it when you got to slide around. I like it when the driver’s got to make up a difference. This is a racetrack where you can do that. But, you know, it’s just a product of we have a hard tire, so you’re gonna have a natural slide anyway. This track is very, very coarse. The whole tire’s not on the racetrack anyway. You’re running on top of the rocks. So this track, it’s very hard. But the car does make it easier. It has so much side force. It’s almost like a truck. If you do get it sideways, you can kind of control it a little bit easier.

Q. Jimmie, on the post race TV interview, Carl was basically in disbelief, he didn’t know you finished behind him. He called you “magic.” What does that mean to you?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: I’m just as shocked as he is. I thought we were finish probably ninth or tenth today. That last caution came out, I have to give Knaus the credit for making the call, playing the strategy right. It worked out well for us.

Like I said, I really thought that I was from a seventh to tenth place car. With the guys behind me, I was in seventh, three or four of them were right behind me on fresh tires. I thought I was in big trouble. That last caution put us back in play.

It just worked out.

Q. Denny, this is easily your best finish here at Atlanta. Obviously you kind of wanted a little bit more.

DENNY HAMLIN: Yeah, it’s frustrating. This has not been my best racetrack by far. We’ve run well here. We’ve run third to fifth here before. Had a car capable of running third to fifth, but had issues. Had a power steering failure in the spring where we had a good car.

You know, by the stats, this is a terrible track for us. So obviously that gets you excited. With 60 to go, I was thinking, Man, this is a track, if we’re going to win, we definitely did not put this on our calendar to go out and feel like we had a really good shot at winning. We knew we could run well. It takes a really, really good car to win here. You really got to have a great car.

We had it today. Just let it slip.

Q. Jimmie, you were talking about thinking you had a seventh to tenth place car and you finished second. You’re 30th after the penalty. At that point what is your goal? You already said you can’t believe you finished where you finished. A seventh place car finishing second seems to be what a champion is.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Yeah, I mean, we did our part today. I had fresh tires. Got to the topside, drove the crap out of the car today. Chad made a good decision to put four tires on it there at the end. We had things working for us there that paid off.

You know, it was so tough at the start of the race when we got that penalty. I did a good job of keeping my cool. Chad did, as well. We just set our sites on the first goal we had to overcome to get back to a good finish, and that was getting in position to be the first car one lap down so we could get the Lucky Dog. So I’m running, running. Come to pit road. I think I was the ninth or 10th car on pit road. My guys killed the stop. I came out in the lead and had that.

Then we caught the caution. From that point on, it was just about staying on the lead lap because we were starting so far in traffic, it was tough to get going, fighting all the lap cars, all that stuff. Then we got about halfway up through the field. It was really trying to get a top five. At that point we kind of stalled out at seventh, just kind of riding there. Then everything went crazy at the end. We had the right strategy at the end.

Q. Jimmie, you get asked after every race what your outlook of the points is, whether you were leading or not. A lot of people speculated that Carl Edwards was going to be good here. You managed to bounce back from being a lap down, potentially losing a good part of your points lead, to hardly losing any ground at all. Do you feel with Texas remaining, a mile and a half, he’s strong, you have a bit more of a sigh of relief with the troubles of Burton and Biffle that you can cruise just a little bit? Slicing and dicing on the last lap, you weren’t playing possum at all.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: No, you got to race. That’s what we’re here for. You have no clue what’s going to take place next week or the final two races. You got to go. You just can’t sit still and be content with sixth, seventh, fifth, wherever you’re at. You’ve got to go. You just don’t know what’s gonna happen, what kind of luck we’re gonna have. You just got to do it.

My outlook is better. There’s three races left. Our points margin is bigger than it’s been yet. So that’s a step in the right direction. But until I have that trophy in my mind, I can’t loosen up on things. I just got to keep my head down and keep working for this.

Q. Jimmie, when you’re in 30th, are you looking at the pylon, looking where the 99 or the 16 is? Are you cognizant at all of the guys you’re racing in the Chase?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: At first I was. I really expected Carl to be gone, his car was so fast at the beginning of the race. 17 led for a while. Denny led a lot late. I was wondering if it was just track position killed the 99 or what had happened.

But then those last couple restarts, he got up there and got going. I had a feeling Carl was controlling the race up there in the top three. Once I got my lap back, I’m running along, there’s the 31 and 16 right in front of me. We ran a full fuel run all with each other. So my mind was thinking, At least we’re all together, if we get lapped again, we’re all in the same boat together. I was able to get by them and get away and stuff. At different points I did pay attention to that. I could say at the end, I was just really worried about getting every single point I could and wasn’t really paying attention to where the 31 and 16 were.

Q. Jimmie, you’ve said in the past in so many words that you like to stay confident but worried. Are you going to carry that mindset all the way through the last lap in Homestead?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: I’m gonna try. We’re just going to show up each week and do what we can. We got a good race team. Everybody’s doing their part. We have a lot of reasons to be confident. I think we’d be foolish to be cocky. But we’re definitely confident in what we are, who we are as a team. Show up next week and try again.

Q. Unless my math is wrong, Jimmie, you can clinch next week. It would be a longshot, but you could do it. More than likely if you do, did it will probably be Phoenix. Your thoughts about that?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Man, sure would make the week of Homestead a lot easier for me.

You know, it would be great if it happened. That’s certainly a goal. If it’s in our realm of accomplishing, that is something we want to do. But truthfully it’s about beating now I guess the 99. He’s second in points. I have to worry about still the 99, 16, 31. Those are the guys I’m racing at this point. The problem with that is one of those three guys is going to be leading the race. It means I’ve got to race for the win. Head down, keep diggin’.

Q. You said this place has become a lot like a bigger oversized Darlington. Knowing that, were you surprised more guys didn’t come for tires that last pit call? Talk about the tactic by Chad, how it worked out.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: The guys behind me came. We really had the perfect storm come together. You had the leaders, there’s no way they’re going to pit. A group of three or four guys that just got tires a couple laps to go. They don’t want to give up any track position. They feel pretty good about the tires they have on their car. And then myself. Tires make such a difference here that I was able just to get smoking around the outside and go.

But this track is Darlington, it is what Darlington used to be. Only problem is we’re going about twice the speed and it’s even more hairy than what we had at Darlington. This track has aged a lot in my seven or eight years of driving in the Cup Series. It’s lost a ton of grip. It’s really rough. It is a tough, tough track. They need to come up with a nickname or something for this place, like Darlington has had. This baby’s tough.

Q. How challenging were those last few laps? Obviously the tires helped. Was it as easy as it looked, difficult? How does it compare to anything you’ve done in races where you made runs at the end? Was it that big of a deal?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: No, I mean, I had a lot of speed. That’s the hardest I’ve been able to drive my car throughout the race. We had tire pressures up, made some adjustments to kind of treat it like eight laps of qualifying. That’s really what I did.

The first few laps the tire was so good that I was pretty confident in what I could do, how far I could go. Each lap went by, it started losing a little grip, slipping and sliding. The last two laps, I had my hands full. I couldn’t just mat the gas when I got back on the throttle, hold on to it. I was fighting it up off the turn pretty bad. I got to fourth and took a deep breath, said, Okay, this is good. Then something in the back of my mind said, Wait a second, there’s still two more up there you can easily get. I again put my head down, got going. Real close with Denny.

I’m glad that worked out like it did. Glad he hung onto it, stayed off me. (Indiscernible) to go. I wanted to get every one I could.

Q. There’s been times in the past where people have said you don’t have a fiery personality. But watching out there on the track today, obviously you must show that fire from your driving ability. Talk about that. Are you getting tired of people saying your personality isn’t one that a lot of people tend to invoke passion one way or the other?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: There’s a couple times I climbed out of the car and been a smart ass about things. It just doesn’t work for me. I can’t get out like Stewart and create a hurricane and be okay with that. I just don’t do good at that stuff. Certain guys do.

Carl will probably admit, if you ask him when he comes in, he started a hurricane with Harvick, that crash, all the stuff that went on, and he didn’t like it. It wasn’t what works for him.

I’ve known that my entire career. I’ve always raced people with respect. I’ve always tried to settle it on the track, settle it in a way that it’s racing, but I’m pushover by any means out there. That’s just my style, the way I’ve always raced. I think it’s why guys work with me so well on track over the years. There’s just a lot that spins off of it.

If you get out there and race hard but you don’t screw with people, things work out a lot better.

Q. Talk about the tire a little bit. How did it feel today, especially compared to the spring race? Looked like a lot of guys used up the right side of their car.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: It’s really tough for me to say that I could feel a difference with the tire. It’s so long ago, I can’t remember if we had blown tires or not. I thought we had a couple. I think the tires lasted longer. To me, I’m not sure what the change was, I should, but it felt like maybe a little softer compound.

KERRY THARP: Softer right sides.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: But the construction is still not matched up for what the car needs and wants here. This track is so different than any other mile and a half that we run on. I can’t explain to you how rough it is in this car. I think the old car with the more travel that we had, a little more forgiving. In this car, with the splitter hitting the ground,

it being solid like it is, the bump stops, this place is a monster, man. It’s got its own characteristics.

You know, I commend Goodyear for taking a shot at making the fire better. I think we saw some improvements. But from a driver standpoint, I can’t say that I felt a lot different this time versus last time. I had my hands full both races.

Q. Since you’re talking about just the characteristics in the car, since I’m not in the car, what did it feel like? How tough is it? What is your body feeling like at this point? Any different from any other places?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Yeah, I mean, I could tell you mentally I’m wore out. I think tomorrow morning I’ll wake up and certainly have some sore spots. Shoulders will be sore from trying to saw on the wheel all day long. If you think about it, when you’re comfortable in the car, you can relax into the seat and restraint systems. When you’re uncomfortable, you’re just like in a clenched position the whole time and you’ve got to be really delicate with the gas pedal. For whatever reason, I push real hard on the steering wheel, you’re fighting the resistance of the wheel, wrestling the car around.

There was a lot of that today out on the track. I don’t think anybody was ever comfortable where they could just relax into the seat and do their jobs.

Does that help? Need more? Something else (smiling)?

Q. Put me in the seat.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: (Laughter).

KERRY THARP: Jimmie, great job out there today. Good luck next week.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Thank you.

FastScripts by ASAP Sports

Edwards drove his Roush Ford to victory in unbelievable fashion, slipping and sliding around the paved track like he owned it at speeds reaching 190 miles an hour.

Edwards ran in front or near the front all day in spectacular style, doing everything he could to make up some points on championship leader Jimmie Johnson.

“Jimmie’s magic,” said Edwards afterwards, when informed Johnson had raced his way back from oblivion to a runner-up finish.

“I can’t believe Jimmie finished second,” said Johnson. “We did everything we could today. We won the race. But Jimmie’s unbelievable.”

Both drivers were unbelievable in the Pep Boys Auto 500 that had 11 caution periods in 325 laps and provided a crowd a dramatic windup to the seventh of 10 races in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

Johnson raced his way back into contention after a pit road speeding penalty put him a lap down. With just 16 laps to go after the final caution, Johnson’s pit crew gambled by stopping for new tires, dropping back to 10th position for the restart.

The two-time champion passed everyone but Edwards in the final 16 laps, scooting around Denny Hamlin on the final turn of the final lap. Hamlin almost lost control of his Toyota, which would have taken him and Johnson out in a wreck but managed to maintain control. It was a hair-raising finish.

Matt Kenseth was fourth, Kyle Busch fifth and Kurt Busch sixth. Jamie McMurray was seventh, David Ragan eighth, Jeff Gordon ninth and Greg Biffle 10th.

One of the most disappointed drivers after the race was former Formula One star Juan Pablo Montoya, who raced his way into the top five and was apparently headed for a great finish before a couple of unavoidable accidents put his totally-wrecked car in the garage with less than 20 laps to go.

Another driver who had a bad day was Michael Waltrip, who, unfortunately, was involved in a handful of mishaps after running very competitively early on.

Dale Earnhardt, Jr., ran well in spurts but wound up 11th.

Johnson, with his second-place finish, has a healthy lead in his bid to become NASCAR’s first three-peat champion since Cale Yarborough did it with Junior Johnson as his owner 30 years ago.

It was a picture perfect day for racing at Atlanta Motor Speedway when the green flag waved just after 2 p. m.

Points leader Jimmie Johnson, going for a three-peat after winning the Sprint Cup the past two years, got off to a quick start, leading the first three laps before Bill Elliott and Sam Hornish, Jr., spun on the backstretch for the afternoon’s first caution period on lap four.

The race restarted on lap seven with Johnson in front, Biffle second and Edwards third. Edwards moved past Biffle on lap 13, and Gordon moved to fourth.

Bowyer was next, trailed by teammate Burton, Hamlin, Kyle Busch, Earnhardt and Kenseth. Edwards zoomed around Johnson on the 23rd lap and other challengers were on the move as well. Earnhardt was in fourth by the 30th lap.

Scott Riggs had a flat right front tire on lap 31, prompting the second caution of the day.

On the restart at lap 39, johnson was out front again, thanks to the quick work of his crew, but Edwards came out right behind him. Gordon was third and Kenseth fourth. Biffle held the fifth spot and Earnhardt was sixth.

Edwards went ahead again on the 45th lap. Edwards held the lead until pit stops at 90 laps under green flag conditions. Once the cycle of stops was complete, Edwards was back out front. Johnson fell back to 30th position after speeding on pit road. It was Edwards, Kenseth, Kurt Busch, Gordon, Earnhardt, Truex, Jr., Hamlin, Kyle Busch, Stewart and Montoya in the top 10. A caution for debris on lap 109 slowed the field.

Kenseth had the lead on the restart with Edwards on his bumper while Johnson ran wide open trying to unlap himself. The two Fords held off Johnson’s Chevy and he settled in behind them.

Kasey Kahne brought out another caution when he lost control of his Dodge on lap 130.

On the restart at lap 136, Kenseth led Edwards after a great pit stop. Gordon was third, followed by Kurt Busch and Earnhardt, who had a brief scare when a plastic windshield tearoff crumpled up on his windshield before blowing away. Hamlin, Kyle Busch, Harvick and Montoya rounded out the top 10.

At the halfway point, Kenseth was still setting the pace with Edwards in hot pursuit. Kurt Busch was third, followed Gordon, Hamlin, Montoya, Earnhardt, McMurray, Harvick and Truex.

Johnson had moved back into 16th position 25 seconds behind the leader.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Reigning and two-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson (No. 48 Lowe’s/Kobalt Tools Chevrolet) sits in a good place as the series heads to Atlanta Motor Speedway for Sunday’s Pep Boys Auto 500.

As in, the top of the standings.

Race No. 7 in the 2008 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup awaits, and Johnson will approach it as an opportunity to gain more ground. He did so last Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, en route to his 13th career Chase victory and sixth overall this season.

And his view from here is pretty good — it’s 149 points to second-place Greg Biffle (No. 16 DISH TurboHD Ford), 152 points to third-place Jeff Burton (No. 31 AT&T Mobility Chevrolet) and 198 points to fourth-place Carl Edwards (No. 99 Aflac Ford).

As for Johnson’s Atlanta statistics, he has three wins and a series-high Driver Rating of 113.4 there.

But Biffle, Burton and Edwards are equally accomplished at the 1.5-mile venue. Edwards is fourth in pre-race Driver Rating (102.8). Biffle is fifth (102.3) and Burton is eighth (92.8).

Edwards and Biffle — Roush Fenway Racing teammates — excel at 1.5-mile tracks, a team staple. Edwards has two Atlanta victories while Biffle finished fourth in the March event. Burton has seven top fives and 13 top 10s in 28 career starts there.

Johnson is chasing history as well as another title. Only one driver has recorded three consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup titles — the legendary Cale Yarborough, who did it in 1976-78. If successful, Johnson would equal Yarborough’s feat on its 30th anniversary.

The Man To Catch: Three-Time NASCAR Champion Yarborough

Cale Yarborough, whose feat of three consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup titles is being challenged by two-time and reigning series champion Jimmie Johnson, visited with media via a special teleconference this week. Excerpts follow:

Comparing his Junior Johnson-owned team to Johnson’s Hendrick Motorsports team: “There’s no doubt about what kind of team Junior put together during those years. It was an excellent team. Of course, Rick Hendrick has put together an excellent team for Jimmie Johnson. That’s what you’ve got to have to be able to win a championship, much less three championships in a row: an excellent race team…

His successful 1974 pairing with team owner Junior Johnson: “Bobby Allison was driving for Junior. He and Junior were going to separate, and Junior was looking for a driver, I was looking for a ride. We got together. We made a good combination. The championships that I won with Junior were his first championships and, of course, mine. We just hit it off at the right time, the right place, did the right things…”

What it takes to win consecutive titles: “It’s hard to explain really. When you get on a roll like Junior and I were back in the earlier days when we won three in a row, Jimmie and his team all are on a roll now, it’s just hard to break that momentum when they get going.”

Note to media: For a transcript, photos and full audio teleconference recording, go to NASCARMedia.com, NASCAR’s media-only Web site.

On The CAM: Kevin Harvick on NASCAR CAM Video Teleconference

Kevin Harvick (No. 29 Shell/Pennzoil Chevrolet) was this week’s guest on the NASCAR CAM Video Teleconference, held Tuesday afternoon, from Richard Childress Racing headquarters in Welcome, N.C.

Some excerpts follow:

On returning to Atlanta, the site of his first career series win in March 2001: “It’s definitely a cool place to go back to just for the fact that your first win is something that you only do one time. Obviously every time we go back there, that’s what a lot of people want to talk about, and we are excited that we ran good in the first race there this year, so we are looking forward to going back this week…

His perspective of the current Chase schedule: “You know right now, I think our Chase format is really good for our sport and leads up to the 26th race and has a lot of excitement over the 13th, 14th, 12th, 11th place guys that sometimes don’t get the exposure if we’re not racing for a championship and we’re not up in the points. I think it’s created a lot of excitement in races in the past that have not had that …

On fellow driver Kyle Busch’s tough luck since beginning the Chase as its top seed: “I think obviously he’s had a really good year. The way that our sport works is if you’re not hot at the right time, you don’t come out on top and win the championship. It’s all about being consistent through the whole year, no matter whether it’s the old-style points or the new-style points, with the year he had, he would not be on top. …

On Tuesday’s announcement of Shane Wilson as crew chief of RCR’s fourth series team in 2009: “Obviously Shane has earned that right to get that opportunity with the 33 car and I’m excited for him as a person, and he’s a good friend of mine and I think obviously with Clint’s situation, I think Shane will be a good fit. It’s great to see (him) get promoted within the company and get the opportunity to do that …

On Ryan Newman driving a Kevin Harvick Inc.-owned entry in Saturday’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Atlanta: “Ryan and myself and our wives are really good friends and we are really excited to have Ryan in there. We’re just excited as an organization to kind of have fun with the two trucks as we head towards the end of the year here.

“Ryan was able to drive the truck, and so it will be fun to just kind of share that experience with your friends. And he gets his first experience with a truck, and obviously taking him to Atlanta for the first time is probably the best place that we can take him with all of the success that he’s been able to have with the poles, and as well as he runs there.”

Note to media: For a transcript and full audio teleconference recording, go to NASCARMedia.com, NASCAR’s media-only Web site.

History-In-The-Making? Jimmie Johnson Focusing On Winning

Catching two-time and reigning series champion Jimmie Johnson — who leads the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup with four races remaining — won’t be easy for closest pursuers Greg Biffle and Jeff Burton, who swapped second and third place, respectively, based on Martinsville finishes. Nor will it be easy for fourth-place Carl Edwards.

The trio must ponder these points:

Johnson is difficult to catch in the Chase. He won his 2006 and ‘07 titles with impressive surges in the Chase — the season’s final 10 races, over which the top 12 drivers after race No. 26 each season are eligible to compete for the NASCAR Sprint Cup title.

He and crew chief Chad Knaus thrive on playoff pressure. Five of the six Chase events thus far have been the second this season at those tracks — New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Dover International Speedway, Talladega Superspeedway, Lowe’s Motor Speedway and Martinsville.

Johnson averaged 126.8 points after the first ‘08 events at those tracks. After the second ‘08 events, he’s averaged 167.6 points.

Meanwhile, Johnson is beginning to ponder the significance of winning his third consecutive title, which would link him with one of NASCAR’s 50 greatest drivers, Cale Yarborough — the only driver to notch three consecutive titles.

“I think we have more variables in our sport than any other sport,” said Johnson, marveling at the difficulty of Yarborough’s accomplishment. You’ve got this vehicle with all these moving components and four tires that you’re going to worry about and you change those all the time and you don’t know what’s going to happen.

“Thirty-six races and 43 stars on track every weekend. It’s just a tough, tough sport. I think if somebody ran the numbers on odds and all that stuff, the odds to repeat are less in our sport than in any other sport out there.”

Johnson, who hails Yarborough as a childhood hero, remembers his first stop at an Oklahoma outpost of a fast-food restaurant whose name emblazoned Yarborough’s car at the time.

Then a dirt-bike racer, Johnson couldn’t wait to “race” inside the building.

“My dad had every intent to grab a burger,” he said, “(but) I thought I was going in to see Cale Yarborough. When I walked in, I didn’t see a picture of him, I didn’t see a sign, I didn’t see a transporter, and I was wondering where his race car was.

“So I guess at that point I understood the marketing of NASCAR. But I was disappointed that I didn’t see him.”

In The Loop: Statistics Forecast A Battle-Of-The-Best At Atlanta

Atlanta Motor Speedway, with its high speeds and high banks, apparently lends itself to a “cream rising to the top” phenomenon.

Eight of the last nine winners are currently Chase contenders. Additionally, the entire top-10 list in pre-race Driver Rating all earned berths in the 2008 Chase.

Tops among them is points leader Jimmie Johnson, who leads the series in Driver Rating (113.4), Average Running Position (6.6) and Laps in the Top 15 percentage (94%) over the last seven races at Atlanta.

Chasing Johnson in the points standings are Greg Biffle, Jeff Burton and Carl Edwards. The statistics suggest that Atlanta could play a huge role in the final championship outcome, as all three of those drivers excel at Atlanta.

Biffle has a Driver Rating of 102.3 (fifth-best), an Average Running Position of 9.8 (second), a series-high 211 Fastest Laps Run and a Laps in the Top 15 percentage of 83.4% (second).

Edwards has a Driver Rating of 102.8 (fourth), an Average Running Position of 11.5 (sixth), 197 Fastest Laps Run (second) and a Laps in the Top 15 percentage of 82.4% (fourth).

Burton has a Driver Rating of 92.8 (eighth), an Average Running Position of 11.0 (fifth) and a Laps in the Top 15 percentage of 80.9% (fifth).

Beyond the all-important championship battle, an interesting side story to this weekend could be the hunt for the elusive first win of 2008 for past champions Jeff Gordon and Matt Kenseth (No. 17 USG Ford).

Gordon has won at least two races in each of the last 14 seasons. He has four races left to extend that incredible streak. Statistically, Atlanta should pose a solid opportunity.

Gordon has four career Atlanta victories, and has finished in the top 10 in five of the last six Atlanta races. Since the inception of Loop Data in 2005, Gordon has a Driver Rating of 96.6 (sixth), an Average Running Position of 11.9 (seventh), 84 Fastest Laps Run (ninth) and a Laps in the Top 15 percentage of 76.4% (sixth).

Kenseth, who has at least one win in each of the last six seasons, has finished in the top 10 in the last four Atlanta races.

Since 2005, he has a Driver Rating of 94.1 (seventh), an Average Running Position of 14.5 (10th), 85 Fastest Laps Run (eighth) and a Laps in the Top 15 percentage of 66.4% (ninth).

Georgia Natives In The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Garage

A number of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series participants will make their homecoming this weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Georgia natives in the garage include:

Three drivers — David Ragan (No. 6 AAA Insurance Ford) from Unadilla, Reed Sorenson (No. 41 Lysol Target Dodge) from Peachtree City and 1988 series champion Bill Elliott (No. 21 U.S. Air Force Ford) from Dawsonville.

And a number of team members:

Jason Jones (Rhine) – No. 5 mechanic; Jayme Christianson (Marietta) – No. 83 media relations; Chris Golder (Alpharetta) – No. 88 shock specialist and Jacob Norman (Marietta) – No. 45 front-tire changer.

Also Adam North (Sonoraville) – No. 31 jack man; Paul Craven (Summerville) – No. 45 jack man; Kenneth Purcell (Savannah) – No. 48 jack man; Jason Jones (Rhine) – No. 5 rear tire carrier and Sheila Lumpkin (Atlanta) – No. 9 scorer.

And Mike Brown (Statham) – No. 22 spotter and chief financial officer of Bill Davis Racing; Chip Wile (Atlanta) — sponsor services and truck series PR; Shane Bourgeois (Peachtree City) – No. 41 pit support and Byron Goggin (Tifton) – No. 20 pit support

Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing Excel At Atlanta

When the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series returns to Atlanta Motor Speedway next March, it will be to mark a major milestone — the track’s 100th series event.

Two teams, however, have done a good job figuring out the last 10-plus seasons at Atlanta.

Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick Motorsports have won the most races there since the 1.5-mile venue was reconfigured after the spring event of 1997.

That’s a total of 15 wins in 22 races.

JGR own eight of those wins — five by Bobby Labonte (No. 43 Cheerios/Betty Crocker Dodge), the 2000 series champion, a pair by two-time series champion Tony Stewart (No. 20 Home Depot Toyota) and one by Kyle Busch (No. 18 M&Ms Halloween Toyota) this March.

Hendrick has seven of those wins — three by four-time series champion Jeff Gordon (No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet), one by Jerry Nadeau and three by reigning and two-time series champion Jimmie Johnson.

Others with Atlanta wins during that 22-race period are Roush Fenway Racing’s Carl Edwards, who swept both 2005 events, plus Kurt Busch (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge), Kevin Harvick, Dale Earnhardt Jr. (No. 88 AMP Energy/National Guard Chevrolet) and Kasey Kahne (No. 9 Budweiser Dodge) — all with single victories.

On The Bubble: Robby Gordon’s No. 7 Is 35th With Four To Go

For those teams battling to remain in the top 35 of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series’ owner standings, the season’s final four events are every bit as crucial as those teams involved in the 2008 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

Each week, the top 35 in the owner standings are guaranteed starting positions, while those outside the cutoff must qualify on speed.

Ending the season within the top 35 also is very important: The top 35 teams in the owner standings from the previous year are guaranteed starting berths through the first five races of the following season.

Heading into Atlanta’s Pep Boys Auto 500 — the 32nd of 36 series events — the No. 7 Jim Beam Dodge owned and driven by Robby Gordon occupies the 35th spot.

He’s only 15 points behind 34th, and the No. 84 Team Red Bull Toyota owned by Dietrich Mateschitz and driven by Scott Speed.

Speed’s team trails 33rd — and the No. 22 Caterpillar Toyota owned by Bill Davis and driven by Dave Blaney — by 106 points.

Behind Gordon, the No. 47 Little Debbie’s Toyota owned by Rob Kauffman and driven by sits in 36th.

Note: Effective this week, the No. 47 replaces the No. 00 as that team’s number for Michael Waltrip Racing. All owner points accumulated under the No. 00 also transfer to the No. 47.

The No. 47 team trails Gordon and that important 35th spot by 75 points.

Behind the No. 47, in 37th place, is the No. 77 Mobil 1 Dodge owned by Roger Penske and driven by Raybestos Rookie of the Year candidate Sam Hornish Jr.

The No. 77 trails 36th place by 65 points, and 35th by 140 points.

Note No. 2: Hornish also is in the thick of another battle. He and Dale Earnhardt Inc.’s Regan Smith (No. 01 DEI/The Principal Group Chevrolet) are tied for the Raybestos Rookie of the Year standings lead with 192 points each heading to Atlanta.

NSCS Etc.

Shane Wilson Named No. 33 Crew Chief … Richard Childress Racing announced Tuesday that veteran crew chief Shane Wilson will oversee the organization’s fourth team next season.

Wilson will serve as crew chief for driver Clint Bowyer and the new No. 33 Cheerios/Hamburger Helper Chevrolet.

In August, team owner Richard Childress announced the formation of a fourth NASCAR Sprint Cup team for 2009 and the addition of Casey Mears (No. 5 Kelloggs/CARQUEST Chevrolet), who’s completing his second and final season with Hendrick Motorsports.

Mears will succeed Bowyer in the No. 07 Jack Daniels Chevrolet.

A Royalton, Vt., native, Wilson has been with RCR since 2006. He’s guided drivers Kevin Harvick, Jeff Burton and Scott Wimmer to a total of 17 NASCAR Nationwide Series wins in 2006 and 2007.

“Teaming up with Clint is a great situation because he has won Cup races and has made the Chase these past two seasons,” Wilson said. “He and I have worked some in the Nationwide Series and we’ve tested together so there is already a comfort level that has been established. I appreciate the opportunity and look forward to the chance to prove myself.”

NASCAR Foundation Track Walk … Drivers Travis Kvapil (No. 28 Yates Racing Ford), David Gilliland (No. 38 Yates Racing Ford), David Ragan, Aric Almirola and Joe Nemechek (No. 78 Furniture Row Chevrolet) will participate with fans in the final 2008 NASCAR Foundation Track Walk, presented by Aflac, at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

The event begins at 8:30 a.m., and benefits The NASCAR Foundation and Speedway Children’s Charities’ Atlanta Chapter.

Up Next: Race 8 In The Chase: Texas Motor Speedway

Race 8 in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup will be the Dickies 500, Sunday, Nov. 2 at Texas Motor Speedway.

Two-time and defending NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson, also the current standings leader, is the defending race champion. He and another series champion, Matt Kenseth, dueled side-by-side to a thrilling finish last fall.

Martin Truex Jr. (No. 1 Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet) was last year’s pole sitter.

Jeff Burton, currently third in the standings, is the only multiple-race winner at Texas. He won the initial event in 1997 and again last spring.

Race 6 in the Chase: Pep Boys Auto 500
The Place: Atlanta Motor Speedway
The Date: Sunday, October 26
The Time: 2 p.m. (ET)
The Track: 1.5-mile tri-oval
The Distance: 325 laps/500.5 miles
TV: ABC, 1 p.m. (ET)
Radio: PRN (Local Affiliate: WYAY-FM 9106.7), SIRIUS Satellite Radio
2007 Winner: Jimmie Johnson
2007 Polesitter: Greg Biffle
2008 Points
Driver Points
1 Johnson 6,073
2 Biffle 5,924
3 Burton 5,921
4 Edwards 5,875
5 Bowyer 5,831
6 Harvick 5,817
7 Gordon 5,798
8 Stewart 5,735
9 Earnhardt Jr. 5,694
10 Kenseth 5,665
11 Hamlin 5,653
12 Ky. Busch 5,628
Pre-Race Schedule: Friday—Practice, 3-4:30 p.m. Qualifying, 6:45 p.m. Saturday—Practice, 10:30-11:15 a.m. and noon-12:50 p.m.

An Interview With:
MARC DAVIS
KEVIN HARVICK

JOSH HAMILTON: Good afternoon, everybody and we will could come today’s NASCAR CAM VIDEO teleconference in advance of Sunday’s event at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the Pep Boys Auto 500, race No. 7 in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

Today we are joined by two special guests. Only up we’ll have Marc Davis, who finished fifth in the NASCAR Camping World Series East and will be attempting to make his NASCAR Nationwide Series debut on Saturday at Memphis Motorsports Park in the No. 18 DLP HDTV Toyota. After Marc at approximately 2:00 PM we’ll be joined by Kevin Harvick, driver of the No. 29 Shell Pennzoil Chevrolet in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

Marc is joining us from the NASCAR Research and Development Center in Concord, North Carolina, while Kevin will be at Richard Childress Racing headquarters in Welcome, North Carolina.

Marc, you finished 16th in your national series debut in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series earlier this season; how did this race help prepare you for this weekend?

MARC DAVIS: It was definitely a great opportunity for us and a lot better race the way we finished off. We ran around 10, 11, 12 the whole race and it was a pretty good run for us and I’m really excited about the opportunity with DLP and Joe Gibbs Racing for our Memphis Nationwide debut.

Q. You already have a NASCAR start under your belt, is there a sense of confidence since this is not truly a big debut for you, but also with as good as the 18 car is, do you have a lot of confidence going into this race at Memphis?

MARC DAVIS: Yeah definitely, Joe Gibbs Racing organization had an awesome year this year, and especially the 18, as well. So I’m looking forward to being in the DLP car this weekend and go out there and perform my best and go out there and stay out of trouble and get way up front.

Q. Just kind of curious, you’ve actually I think been with Gibbs racing for a while through their development program. Can you talk a little bit about your relationship with Gibbs Racing and what they have meant to your career so far?

MARC DAVIS: Yeah, definitely, just everyone over here at Joe Gibbs Racing is like a huge family. This is my third year under contract with them. I started back in 2006 racing late models and two years in the Camper World Series, and now a good opportunity to make our Nationwide debut. So I’m really excited for these guys and looking forward to it.

Q. Also, I think you’ve been doing this for a while, but yet you are still so young at the same time. Talk about what it was like kind of growing up as a kid, racing, and just not what your average kid when they were in school, and I think you even might have switched high schools so that racing would be a little more convenient for you. Can you just talk about what it was like growing up and racing at the same time?

MARC DAVIS: Well, I started racing when I was six years old, and I’ve been in this sport for 12 years now and started out having fun with my dad racing in midget cars and did well, and it was all about having fun. That’s what it’s all about right now.

So moved up to the series and ended up moving to North Carolina. I’m from Maryland originally, so it was a big change to come up from Maryland and come down here, but I knew a lot of people already and so it was just one of those things that you got to do to commit to it.

Q. And also, Joe Gibbs obviously has a great stable of drivers and things. What kind of advice have you got maybe from some of the other Job Gibbs drivers, and you’re obviously going to be filling the seat for Joey Logano, who has set things on fire since he started this year.

MARC DAVIS: It’s really great to have such great teammates here. It’s good to be able to bounce ideas off of each other. Joey Logano and I, we grew up together racing all the way back in core midget cars, and so it’s good to have a good teammate like that to kind of relate to myself with.

Q. Obviously this is a massively huge opportunity for to you get a top-tier team like this. How did the whole deal originally come about? Did Joe or JD contact you and did you believe it was them on the other line?

MARC DAVIS: Yeah, definitely, we knew we were going to get a whole season in the Camper World Series again and hopefully up for a championship, and we fell short of that this year. And we had been talking about doing some Nationwide racing earlier in the season and just came up that Memphis happened to be the right time for us. And got that deal put together and really excited about that and go out there and have some fun and perform.

JOSH HAMILTON: You finished fifth in the Camping World Series East this year, your second full year in the series; how do you think that driving those cars the past two years has prepared to you drive in the Nationwide Series this weekend?

MARC DAVIS: It’s definitely a great series to be in. The whole Camping World Series has definitely changed from what it used to be, and even between the last two years, definitely the competition level has gotten a lot better between last year and this year. There’s a lot more Cup-affiliate teams in the series and a lot more development drivers.

So it’s definitely a good series to step up to and get out with the stock cars and having the spec motor, it’s definitely a good motor and really reliable. So go out there and we get to run on some of the big tracks; ran good at Phoenix and Loudon and Iowa and Dover, as well. It’s definitely a good developmental series and looking forward to some more drivers coming out of it.

Q. What do you think will be the steepest part of the learning curve as you move up to this level?

MARC DAVIS: Well, with the whole Nationwide Series, the big thing is probably just going to be getting used to the longer races. We have run some longer races in the past and just try and get the whole strategy deal worked out. And there’s more pit strategy involved in the Nationwide races and the Cup races than there in the Truck Series or Camper World Series like I’m used to. That’s going to be a learning curve, but I’m on a good team and good sponsors and good teammates, so I’m looking forward to it.

Q. What do you think that you’ve learned along the way already that’s going to adapt the best when you start to race with some of the top racers in the league?

MARC DAVIS: Well, at Joe Gibbs Racing, they have the best racehorses, and the people around me, so I feel like I’m surrounded by some of the best people in the sport. And that’s definitely something to learn from, so I’m looking forward to it, and all of these guys are helping me get to the point right now, and still a long way to go but it’s definitely getting closer.

Q. We talked to Joey yesterday, and he said that since he’s going to be coming back from Atlanta in the first lap, he’s going to see the first lap of the face – he’s been doing a lot of practice on the video games. Have you been doing that sort of same kind of preparation, or are just going to come straight in and hit the practices really hard once you get to Memphis?

MARC DAVIS: Definitely. We use them a little bit to get used to the racetrack. It’s not exact details but gives you a good game plan to go to the race track. You know what to expect somewhat. So done that and watched some of the Memphis tapes from the previous years and go out there and get some practice going. So I think we’ll be pretty good and definitely, the 22 will probably use us a little bit to bounce ideas off of since Joey won’t be in the car for practice.

Q. Just kind of curious, have you sat down yet and really looked at the rest of the year and then looked on to next year and kind of come up with some kind of game plan or have you got your own personal goals ahead to the future? And I guess Joe Gibbs Racing, have they handed you some goals of what they would like to see you achieve in the future?

MARC DAVIS: Well, we have been sitting down the last week or two and trying to – helping me put some goals together and get some game plans going since the off-season is coming up pretty soon here. Looking at some more races for the end of the season. Not sure what all going to happen exactly. We are looking at some deals next year being outsourced from Joe Gibbs Racing to some of our tier teams (indiscernible). So nothing is laid out in stone yet, but it’s looking that way right now.

JOSH HAMILTON: Marc, thanks a lot for your time today, thanks for joining us, and good luck this weekend attempting your first Nationwide Series race.

We welcome Kevin Harvick. Kevin comes into Atlanta sixth in the series standings. Kevin, is it safe to say that Atlanta is a special place for you to return to as you got that first memorable NASCAR Sprint Cup win there back in 2001?

KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, it’s definitely a cool place to go back to just for the fact that your first win is something that you only do one time. Obviously every time we go back there, that’s what a lot of people want to talk about, and we are excited that we ran good in the first race there this year, so we are looking forward to going back this week.

Q. Had a question for you about Shane Wilson, since he’s been named crew chief for Clint next year and you worked with him during the 2006 Nationwide championship season, how do you think those two will fit together?

KEVIN HARVICK: I actually did not know he had been named the crew chief, so I guess I’m a little bit out of the loop. Obviously Shane has done a great job with everything that’s gone on in the Nationwide Series. We had a lot of success over the couple of years that I ran the car and won a lot of races.

I think he and Clint are going to have some success together, and I’m really excited for Shane just for the fact that he’s had so much success at RCR and been able to accomplish so many things that he definitely deserves the opportunity on that car.

Q. Do you think NASCAR should change up the tracks from year-to-year just to make things a little interesting?

KEVIN HARVICK: Well, you know, obviously I think it’s tough to build a consistency in knowing where you’re going and what you’re doing and put the schedule together so many months in advance. That would be probably something that’s pretty hard to do and probably take a couple years in advance to make those things happen.

Obviously I think the schedule is mixed up a little bit next year, not a whole lot, but you know, it’s hard to tell what the right mixture of what racetracks are in the Chase, but they have Talladega and leading up to the race you have the Bristol and Richmond races that obviously have a lot of excitement.

You know right now, I think our Chase format is really good for our sport and leads up to the 26th race and has a lot of excitement over the 13th, 14th, 12th, 11th place guys that, you know, sometimes we don’t get the exposure if we’re not racing for a championship and we’re not up in the points. I think it’s created a lot of excitement in races in the past that have not had that.

Q. Have you heard anything about the tire this weekend since I guess the racing was awkward in the spring race; do you expect it to be better this weekend?

KEVIN HARVICK: I don’t know about the tire to be honest with you. Obviously I’m not a Goodyear engineer, so I didn’t build the tire, and obviously the race at the beginning of the year was tough to drive. But that’s what we get paid to do. So it all depends on what you’re looking for when you’re watching the race I guess.

Q. In 2006, you won 14 races between Cup and Nationwide but did not win the title, and I guess somewhat overshadowed what you really accomplished that year. Do you think Kyle Busch is going through the same thing this year because he’s not going to win the Cup title this year; that the 20 wins he had will be overshadowed?

KEVIN HARVICK: I think obviously he’s had a really good year. The way that our sport works is if you’re not hot at the right time, you don’t come out on top and win the championship. It’s all about being consistent through the whole year, no matter whether it’s the old-style points or the new-style points, with the year he had, he would not be on top.

When you have a year like that, obviously you want to finish it off with a championship and we were fortunate to finish our year off with a Nationwide championship, and I think we finished third or fourth in the Cup points.

It’s obviously going to be tough for him to have won that many races and not win the championship, but that’s just how tough our sport is.

Q. Looking back at 2005, Carl Edwards burst on scene by winning the Atlanta race and following up in Texas to get into Chase contention; what do you remember about him as a driver and person there, and what do you think of him now?

KEVIN HARVICK: I don’t remember much, so I guess I’m the wrong person to ask that question.

Q. I would like to ask you about Shane Wilson, because Richard Childress Racing named him today as Clint Bowyer’s crew chief for ’09, and you have experience with him; did you talk a little bit about that?

KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, I guess have I would liked to have been in that RCR loop with the naming of Shane Wilson as the crew chief, but I guess I was a little bit out of the loop here.

Obviously Shane has earned that right to get that opportunity with the 33 car and I’m excited for him as a person, and he’s a good friend of mine and I think obviously with Clint’s situation, I think Shane will be a good fit. It’s great to see people get promoted within the company and get the opportunity to do that.

Q. Are you saying you didn’t know about that until now?

KEVIN HARVICK: That’s what I’m saying.

Q. Wow, okay. Well, what did you like about him so much? What can you tell us about him as a crew chief?

KEVIN HARVICK: Shane is just a really, really organized person. He’s really good with his people and understands what it takes to keep his people headed in the right direction, and that’s the majority of the battle of what we do on a week-to-week basis is keeping our people happy and keeping them understanding what you want to do next to accomplish on that side of it.

So he’s really good with that and always has done a really good job on the Nationwide side of it. I think he’ll do a good job in the Cup Series.

Q. You’ve done so much for the feeder series and Craftsman Truck Series and Nationwide, can you talk about the health of the Craftsman Truck Series particularly with both Ford and Dodge pulling back their financial support?

KEVIN HARVICK: I think as I look at the entry list for the races this weekend, and obviously the Truck race is pretty solid. And you look at the Nationwide Series, I think there’s 50 cars in it for the Memphis race. Obviously this is a tough time in our economy and sponsors are waiting a little bit longer than what they had before to place their sponsorship than in the past.

So everybody is just kind of wait and see on who the president is going to be and where the economy is going to turn. I really feel confident in the fact that we have been through this before with the manufacturers supporting the Truck Series.

The Nationwide Series has really never had any manufacturer support other than technical support. So it’s going to be more like it was before Toyota came into the Truck Series and kind of be back to the same formula as far as sponsorship dollars that you need to make your Truck team function.

Q. Do you feel like you’ve gotten a strong return on investment?

KEVIN HARVICK: I don’t really look for investment to be honest with you. I race because I like to race in the Truck Series, and you know, the main reason that we race the trucks is to win races and make sure that on the day, had something to do; that was the biggest reason that we stayed in it in the past. I thoroughly enjoyed being in the Truck Series garage, and that’s what I like to do in my spare time.

We don’t necessarily look – we don’t look for investment at all on a return for the Truck Series.

Q. Some drivers and some professional stick-and-ball players think that butterflies are a good thing to get before race day or a big day. Do you agree with that, and do you still get butterflies, and is there a best way to handle them I guess?

KEVIN HARVICK: I don’t necessarily know that there’s ever butterflies anymore. But there’s definitely that anticipation of what’s going to happen that day and what you need to do with your car depending on how it was in practice and how you think the track is going to change for that particular race.

I would say the anticipation of what you need to do to your car and the things inside that you can relay back to the team are more on your mind than being nervous for sure.

Q. Yesterday Yarborough was on and we were talking about the drivers of the past without the benefits of power steering and stuff like that; do you think the drivers of the past had to be a little bit more athletic to handle those cars?

KEVIN HARVICK: I would definitely say the drivers of the past are not near as athletic as the drivers of today, for sure. Obviously the guys that raced in the past are just pretty much just brute, strong guys and that was just kind of the nature of the sport at the time.

So I would definitely say that today’s drivers are more athletic than the drivers of old.

Q. I’m totally thrilled to see that you’re putting Ryan Newman in a truck this weekend. I cannot personally wait to see him race in a truck. I talked with him today and he was so psyched. Can you talk a little about Ryan racing a truck?

KEVIN HARVICK: Well, Ryan and myself and our wives are really good friends and we are really excited to have Ryan in there. We’re excited to make the change. We’re just excited as an organization to kind of have fun with the two trucks as we head towards the end of the year here.

Ryan was able to drive the truck, and so it will be fun to just kind of share that experience with your friends, and he gets his first experience with a truck and obviously taking him to Atlanta for the first time is probably the best place that we can take him with all of the success that he’s been able to have with the poles and as well as he runs there.

It will be fun to watch and we are excited to give him his first start.

THE MODERATOR: Kevin, thanks a lot for your time today. We certainly appreciate you joining us and good luck on Sunday.

In The Garage

NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Atlanta Natives
David Ragan (Unadilla) – No. 6 driver
Reed Sorenson (Peachtree City) – No. 41 driver
Bill Elliott (Dawsonville) – No. 21 driver
Jason Jones (Rhine) – No. 5 mechanic
Jayme Christianson (Marietta) – No. 83 media relations
Chris Golder (Alpharetta) – No. 88 shock specialist
Jacob Norman (Marietta) – No. 45 front-tire changer
Adam North (Sonoraville) – No. 31 jack man
Paul Craven (Summerville) – No. 45 jack man
Kenneth Purcell (Savannah) – No. 48 jack man
Jason Jones (Rhine) – No. 5 rear tire carrier
Sheila Lumpkin (Atlanta) – No. 9 scorer
Mike Brown (Statham) – No. 22 spotter
Shane Bourgeois (Peachtree City) – No. 41 pit support
Byron Goggin (Tifton) – No. 20 pit support

NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Atlanta Natives
Scott Brook (Carrollton) – No. 15 mechanic
Jerel Dawson (Danielsville) – No. 6 pit support
Kevin Gravitte (Conyers) – No. 13 jack man
Billy Ballew (Atlanta) – No. 51 owner

NASCAR Nationwide Series Tennessee Natives
Bobby Hamilton Jr. (Nashville) – No. 24 driver
Marty Oody (Loudon) – No. 5 front tire changer
Tim Whelan (Nashville) – No. 5 gas man
Brett Jones (Lebanon) – No. 27 gas man
John Reese (Mt. Juliet) – No. 27 jack man
Butch Waugh (Murfreesboro) – No. 27 rear tire carrier
Danny Rankin (Chattanooga) – No. 2 rear tire changer

Johnson Dominates, Lead Grows
Two-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson won his 13th career Chase race this past weekend at Martinsville. The Johnson-specific storylines:

• The list of superlatives grows: dominant, relentless, unstoppable. With his fifth career Martinsville win, Johnson extended his standings lead to 149 points. Johnson now heads to Atlanta, where he has three wins and a series-best Driver Rating of 113.4.

• All season long, Johnson’s quest was to match Cale Yarborough’s record of three consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Series titles. Yarborough did in from 1976-78, besting some of the all-time greats: Richard Petty, Bobby Allison and Darrell Waltrip. Johnson’s competition is likewise stout: fellow series champions Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Matt Kenseth.

• What makes Johnson so good is his ability to handle playoff pressure. Thus far, the series has returned to five of the six Chase tracks (New Hampshire, Dover, Talladega, Lowe’s Motor Speedway, Martinsville). During the “regular season” races at those tracks, Johnson averaged 126.8 points. During the Chase at those tracks, he has averaged 167.6 points per race.

Biffle, Edwards Optimistic
The task looks daunting. But it’s not impossible by any means. Greg Biffle trails Johnson by 149 points with four races remaining. The largest deficit overcome since the current points system was implemented in 1975: 144 points. In 1992, eventual champion Alan Kulwicki trailed Bill Elliott by 144 points with four races remaining.

Biffle, as does teammate Carl Edwards in fourth and Jeff Burton in third, needs strong finishes and no mistakes.

The schedule shakes out favorably for the Roush Fenway Racing duo of Biffle and Edwards. Three of the four remaining tracks are 1.5-miles in length, a Roush favorite.
Edwards has two Atlanta wins, while Biffle finished fourth there in March.

The Ratings Game: Cream Rises at Atlanta
This Sunday’s Pep Boys Auto 500 should feature the best-of-the-best in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series running up front. The top-10 drivers in Atlanta Driver Rating are all Chase contenders, led by points leader Jimmie Johnson. Take a look:

Jimmie Johnson 113.4
Tony Stewart 104.4
Dale Earnhardt Jr. 103.6
Carl Edwards 102.8
Greg Biffle 102.3
Jeff Gordon 96.6
Matt Kenseth 94.1
Jeff Burton 92.8
Clint Bowyer 89.4
Kyle Busch 88.5

NASCAR NATIONWIDE SERIES

JGR Future On Display At Memphis
Marc Davis and Joey Logano, both 18, will comprise the Joe Gibbs Racing team at Memphis this weekend. Logano is the “seasoned veteran” of the two, having started 15 races this year including his series debut.

Davis, meanwhile, seeks his first series start after making his NASCAR national series debut last month at Gateway in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series (he finished 16th). He’ll have to qualify on time to make the race at Memphis, but will have a stout ride in a No. 18 Toyota that’s totaled nine wins with Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin this year. Davis finished sixth in the NASCAR Camping World Series East this season; Logano was the champion of that series last year.

Memphis Home To Young Talent, Series Debuts
Davis and Logano will have plenty company in the youth movement this weekend at Memphis. Fellow 18-year-olds Austin Dillon and James Buescher are in the mix along with Landon Cassill, 19, who trails Bryan Clauson by two points in the Raybestos Rookie of the Year standings. Chase Miller, 21, and Cale Gale, 23 are entered along with Steve Wallace, 21, who made his series debut in 2005 at Memphis. Other notable series debuts at the track are Juan Pablo Montoya (2006) and Dario Franchitti (2007).

Last Stand-Alone Of Season
Memphis is the last of nine stand-alone races on the 2008 NASCAR Nationwide Series schedule and the final time this year double-duty drivers will make the back-and-forth trek, this time from Atlanta. Series-only regulars have won three of the previous eight stand-alone races this year. David Reutimann is the defending winner at Memphis, his first NASCAR national series win.

Elvis Fan Bowyer Seeks Title “Unification”
Four races are left and Clint Bowyer’s lead over Carl Edwards in the driver championship is at 196 points. Brad Keselowski remains in the hunt, 286 points behind in third. The largest deficit overcome to claim the driver championship with four to go is 127 points by Rob Moroso (who was in fifth place) in 1989.

Bowyer – a huge Elvis Presley fan – has the No. 2 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet back in first place in the owner point standings over the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota for the first time in 21 races. After a split decision in the driver and owner championships last year, RCR looks to unify the title and claim its third consecutive owner crown. Childress and Teresa Earnhardt are tied at four.

NASCAR CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES

Benson Back on Top
Johnny Benson carries a 65-point lead into the E-Z-Go 200. That’s the sixth-largest lead after 21 races in series history. When Benson won for the fifth time of the year at Martinsville Speedway this past weekend, it marked the ninth time in 2008 the No. 1 spot has changed hands. Ron Hornaday Jr. entered the race with a lead of 39 points and finished 29th. He also lost the lead at Martinsville a year ago but recovered to win his third championship.

Busch Looks for Atlanta Record
Kyle Busch goes for his third consecutive victory at Atlanta Motor Speedway and fourth overall, which would match the series’ single-track record. His owner, Billy Ballew, is from the Atlanta area and still has a chance to win the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series owners’ title. Ballew currently is third, 209 points behind leader Gail Davis.

Newman Makes NCTS Debut
Daytona 500 winner Ryan Newman set to make his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series debut this weekend, driving the No. 2 Kevin Harvick Inc. Chevrolet. His new boss, Harvick, won the 2007 Daytona 500.

JIMMIE JOHNSON
CHAD KNAUS

KERRY THARP: We are pleased to be joined by the winner today’s Tums QuikPak 500 winning for the, I believe, sixth time this year, and the fifth time here at Martinsville Speedway; that’s Jimmie Johnson.

Jimmie, certainly you enjoy running here, you’re successful here, and with four to go, you’re looking really strong; your thoughts?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Very proud of the effort we put up today. We executed. We had a car that could lead a lot of laps, one of the probably top two or three cars all day long, and stops were on the money, car was great, and I did my part and Chad had a great strategy. So very proud of the execution today. That was really what we needed to do.

I’m ready to go to Atlanta. I wish we were dropping the green flag at Atlanta right now. These guys are just on it, great cars. I’m focused and want this so bad, and ready to get to it.

Q. Just to check, is it time to start asking you about Kato (ph) yet?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: It’s getting closer. I’m going to have to answer those questions one of these days, aren’t I?

Today was a big step in the right direction. Still, as long as I can stay scared and on my heels and worried about losing this thing, the better this team is going to be. If we start getting comfortable and complacent, we are going to stub our toes and make mistakes.

Yesterday in practice, I knew the 24 was the best car and I was kind of content being second fastest. Felt good about things. Was worried about the 99, 31, 16. Yeah, we were better than those guys and we are good, and Chad was cracking the whip on me and he was like: “Dude, it doesn’t matter. Why are you worried about those guys? We need to go out and make sure we are the best car on track. Let’s not change what we have done. Let’s stay focused on being the best car.”

I looked at him; “Thanks.” If I worry about protecting something we are going to make mistakes, and he is, as well, and same with those pit stops. We are trying to keep our eye on the prize and go out and get points each week.

Q. What is it about Martinsville? You flat out dominate here. Jeff Gordon said in college he called you Mr. Martinsville.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: I have no clue. It’s amazing how I’ve gone from my first year running here and disliking the track and being totally lost on it to getting the rhythm of it and doing well here.

I typically do better at quirky tracks, tracks that need some type of technique. If it’s a rough track and an abrasive track, odd shaped, whatever it may be, those tracks really fall into my style, and I think it’s due to my off road racing background.

The tracks where there is a ton of grip and it easy to go fast, I don’t seem to I’m just kind of average there. I guess it’s probably easier for everyone, and everyone is brave and has confidence and is not scared of much, so they go fast.

But at tricky tracks like this, I do a much better job. I feel good at shorter tracks, and that’s leaving Bristol off the schedule but other than that, I feel like I do a great job on short tracks.

KERRY THARP: Shifting gears here for a second, no pun intended, but we have Chad Knaus, crew chief in here, we’ll take some questions for Chad and then let him get out to post race technical inspection.

First, Chad if you can just give some opening comments about performance out here, certainly the 48 team is very, very good right now.

CHAD KNAUS: Yeah, first off, I just want to say thank you to everybody at Martinsville Speedway for the incredible job they did on pit road and the renovations they did here. The pit road here used to be very, very treacherous. The pit road needed some assistance and they did a good job with that. All of the competitors appreciate that are.

As far as the 48 team, the Lowe’s Impala SS, it was good. We went through practice and we had some opportunities to try some different things and they didn’t show a lot of fruit for us. So we kind of went back and worked with some of our old stuff, and kind of tuned up a little bit, and used what we used in spring as a baseline and made some adjustments.

And Jimmie did a fantastic job all day today. We were in a position a couple of times where he could have gotten frustrated and lost his cool, and same with the pit stop guys. We had one vacation where our jack band slipped in the brake dust from the right front wheel, and he was able to recover from that and came back in and not make any more mistakes. It was a total team effort and fortunately enough, we did not get into a position today which would be typical Martinsville to where you get your cautions every 40 laps. We had some long green flag runs that kept the pit cycles, everyone on the same pit cycle, and that definitely worked out for us.

Q. With the car dominating and leading and everything and you on the radio to Jimmie saying that you’re making some changes that you’re going to like, does that mean you guys are satisfied with just never being good

JIMMIE JOHNSON: He’s never satisfied.

Q. as front runners now as compared to catch up guys compared to the last few years.

CHAD KNAUS: Yeah, I’m never satisfied. You know

JIMMIE JOHNSON: He’ll lie to me on the pit box and say, “Oh, we’re a tenth off” and we’ll be a tenth ahead. Only way I find out is from my wife and Mr. Hendrick. Mr. Hendrick busts his butt all the time on that.

CHAD KNAUS: (Coughing) excuse me, I’m sorry got a frog in my throat.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Truth hurts, huh?

CHAD KNAUS: Stings a little, geez.

But no, we have to be that way. I think it’s real easy in this industry to get complacent. People that stay in a job for a long period of time, you win races and get comfortable, and it’s easy to get complacent. And the one thing we strive on at Hendrick Motorsports is to make sure that we staff up with personnel that are competitors. If you’re a true competitor, you are never satisfied and you always want more. You can call it greed or whatever you want, but it’s the competitive nature that we have at Hendrick Motorsports that makes us do what we do.

If we would have left the car alone, which it was good at that point and the 89 and 99 had made adjustments to their car and got better to their car; and if we lost because we didn’t, it would be shame on us. And so we have to continually do that and if we don’t, championships and race wins won’t come.

As far as being front runner, we are happy to be the position we are in, but there’s no room for complacency. We have to continue to push and go for more wins.

Q. You talked about making changes throughout the race. How much does a track change from the beginning of the race through when the shade starts coming over especially through turns one and two?

CHAD KNAUS: It changes an awful lot, and I think if you even watch the way the racetrack develops throughout a run, if you go about 60 laps on a green flag run you’ll actually see the racetrack starts to lay down rubber and you’ll see big chunks of rubber. And the handling characteristics of the car are going to be different than when you just come back to green flag racing, because when you run around the caution, it picks up all the rubber on the racetrack.

It changes a lot not only from mid day to evening, but even from 60 laps to 120 laps into a specific run.

Q. Jimmie told a story when we came in about you kind of gut checking him, reality check after practice, and maybe you could share that story from your side of it. He was talking about you kind of making him rethink things, and also, your crew and team are so used to being around together for so long, that’s good; and also, when you talk about complacency, that can be more difficult to manage.

CHAD KNAUS: Yeah, you know, again, it’s the competitive nature that we’ve got. I think the deeper that fire burns inside of you, the more success you’re apt to have.

Yesterday in practice, I felt like we were probably the second best car here compared to the 24. And it’s real easy to look at the practice sheet, look at the lap times and the lap count and see where you fall and figure who it is you’re racing and say, okay, we are good enough to beat them.

But what will happen is if you sit back and do that, you’ll put yourself in a vulnerable situation, and you’ve got to continue to push. If you’ve got the fastest car, you’ve got a Top 5 car and those guys have problems, then you can kind of start to determine your own destiny.

If we would have been in a situation with the 88 pressuring us right there being ahead of those other guys, we could have backed off but if we were struggling to be in the in the top five, we would not have been able to that. We have to continually be able to push and hopefully that will push us on through.

Q. With 50 some laps left, there’s a caution flag, and all season long, track position has been so important and you’re in the situation that frequently becomes the no win situation and the leader comes in and nobody stays out and you came in and nobody came in with you. Talk about making that call. As a second guesser who gets paid to do that, I’m sitting here going: Well, there’s no way I’m coming in here and next thing you know, you’re all coming into pit road. That seems to have gone against the grain much the season and recent trends.
Talk about that decision.

CHAD KNAUS: If you look at the pace of the race and how the speeds had declined and realizing that we pitted on lap 358, and so with 50 laps to go at that point, everybody had no, it wasn’t 358; that’s a lie. But we had about 50 laps and at that point, that’s an awful lot. There were other six cars on the lead lap at that point, and if we pitted and all those guys stayed out an old tires, we stayed out on fresh tires, we would have beat these guys on however many laps are left.

I think the 17 stayed out and he was not able to hang on very well; I don’t know where he ended up but he felt back pretty quickly. You know you just have to pay attention that. We lost a race here in 2003 in the fall, we were leading the race, and there was 45 laps to go, caution came out, and we stayed out and everybody else, the top 20 cars behind us came down pit road and I think we ended up third, so a little bit of a lesson learned there maybe.

Q. You talk of just continually pushing yourself and racing your competition. For someone like you who has been in the sport as long as you have, how much in a way, and maybe in an indirect way, are you chasing history?

CHAD KNAUS: Well, I don’t know. I mean, we are chasing. We are running like hell. I don’t know what we are chasing but we are chasing something.

You know, we have got a great opportunity to do a lot of things. I feel like that we and myself, probably primarily, gave away two championships and 2004 in 2005, and I feel like that we had a big learning curve at that point and I’d like to somehow get those championships back.

I feel like if we can go on to win a couple more championships and maybe be status quo and I can fall over and die, because that’s probably what is going to happen when I finally quit.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: He’s also very hard on himself.

Q. Chad, do you ever have fun? You’re so driven on this thing, do you sit back on Monday morning or something and actually just grin and realize you came out here and just whipped everybody’s butt?

CHAD KNAUS: I love it.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: This is fun for him. Today what was.

CHAD KNAUS: This is fun.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: He’ll be miserable again tomorrow. This is happy. This is good. (Laughter).

CHAD KNAUS: You have to realize, I love racing. And it’s like the old saying says, you know, find an occupation that you enjoy and you’ll never work a day in your life.

Every day when I go into Hendrick Motorsports and look at the big beautiful buildings and realize the driver and teammates that we have got, it’s awesome. And I want to prove it to everybody that we can do what needs to be done. And I owe it to Rick and I owe it to Jimmie and the rest of the team to give it everything I’ve got. Whether that means I’m grouchy from time to time or whatever, but that’s just the way it is, man.

KERRY THARP: Chad, you’re clear down here, congratulations. We appreciate it. Now let’s go back to Jimmie Johnson. Who has got questions for Jimmie Johnson?

Q. You’re talking about complacency, but look back last year, this started your four race winning streak that clinched the championship. You’re going back to these tracks and you have multiple wins on several of them. How can you not be fairly confident going into those, overconfident?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Overconfident would be a mistake. That’s the thing that we really want to focus on not doing and we need to carry the momentum and have it work in the right direction for us and we need to be confident in what we are doing and the equipment we are taking to the track. But we can’t be cocky. Cocky, we are going to get our hand slammed in the door. It’s just not what we are about and how we operate right.

We are going to go in with plenty of confidence. We feel very good about what we are doing and where we are at right now. But the hungrier we can stay, to go out and have performances like we did this weekend, that’s what is going to make this thing right and that’s how we would want to win a championship.

So the perfect world is do it two or three more times and just lock it up and go to Homestead and hang out and that would be the perfect world. Is that going to happen? Doubt it. But I’m not preparing for it. We are striving for that but we want to win out and do all that we can, but the guys are (indiscernible) awfully damn tough to beat.

Q. We are all going to write a lot of words about how good your team is and how good you were today, but before you came in, Dale and Carl were talking about how good you are and how good your team is. What does that mean to you when your peers are the ones standing in line and waving the banner and saying how good you are check heck?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: That truthfully means more to me than anything. Trophies are great. All of the different markers that we have out there that show that you’ve been success, they are all great. But when you walk through that garage area and I might not know the guy’s name and it’s a crew member on the 83 team or wherever it may be, and you see people and you can tell that they respect you and respect what you’ve done, there’s nothing that feels better. And to have competitors that I’ve raced with over the years, it’s not easy being competitors, and also respecting someone, that means more than anything to hear that those drivers have said those things.

I remember after winning the championship in ’06, walking into the garage area in Daytona and guys that I never met before and new on other teams would shake my hand and say: Congratulations, you won the championship, you’ve done a great job. That means more to me than anything, it really does.

Q. We always hear competitors say that it’s hard to stay on top once you get there. Based on your recent success, your team seems to be disproving that theory. Having trailed in the points for much of the year, which was more difficult getting to the top or maintaining that position through the Chase?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Truly getting back in championship form was the hardest for us. We got off to a start we were not accustomed to that start of the season, and that was frustrating. But it made our team stronger and made the relationships stronger inside the team and makes me really proud today to be where we are at knowing that we flat out sucked at start of the season. There were times where we were terrible.

So to fight through that is a lot of fun and I can say that for the first time in my career I feel more comfortable in this position, in leading and being on top, than I ever have. I think that comes from experience and also just being confident in my race team and what we are doing.

If you look at other pro athletes, there are a few that can do it and can stay on top. We all want to be that guy, and hopefully I can do it and I’m trying to do all that I can and I know my team. Is but you watch somebody like Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, you go through guys that have just dominated year after year, it’s out there. Some people can do it. And I would love to be that guy in NASCAR racing.

Q. In light of what you just said, have you had a pinch me moment that you’re winning and tearing it up every week; does winning races come really naturally to you?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: I wouldn’t say natural. I do get more used to the situations from time to time and I think that helps, and the team does, as well, and that helps us from having so many peaks and value he’s.

We have to go in this stride and we are focused on next week, and I think that focus really helps us in championship battles. Even when you have a bad week, you learn from it and you stay in stride and stay focused on the next race.

So you know, I can say, at the end of the season, last year for that matter, the fact that we won four races in a row, I remember leaving Phoenix and just shaking my head the whole way home, like I cannot believe that I’m experiencing this.

I can go back through major moments in my career from the Brickyard to the Daytona 500, my first win, those moments have really been there for me.

My rookie season was a special year, to finish fifth in points, win three races, and not win Rookie of the Year somehow which is crazy to me; that was a pinch me year, the first year.

And since then, I’m like, well, I guess I’m awake. Better figure out how to keep doing this.

Q. Earlier in the race, I think you had gotten maybe behind a little bit, we were sitting here watching you and you were three wide against two lap cars and splitting the middle of guys going in the corner, and second and third place guys are struggling and you had a good race car and you’re up 150 points; what in the heck are you trying to prove? Last year we asked you the same question in Texas when you were racing Kenseth. Do you just not have a dimmer switch? Are you set on kill all the time?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: I feel that I felt like I was making calculated moves and I was in the right position on those three wides. I feel like maybe I’m crazy, but I feel like I’m doing the right things at that point in time, and it might be risky. But I kind of evaluated the chase going on and I’m in the best position of the three guys that are three wide.

So there’s times where you’ve got to race, and I feel that I’ve raced people very fair over the years, and people race me back the same way. So I feel like I can get into situations with guys like Kenseth last year where we can run side by side at 190 for five laps and not wreck each other because we have history and respect one another.

I put a lot of faith in that stuff, and I think it speaks a lot to the relationships that I have and the kind of guy I try to be out on the racetrack. Sometime I’m criticized for not being rough enough but at the end of the day, you have to race these guys week in and week out. I have guys, lap cars today, being respectful to me that typically aren’t. I had some that weren’t which drove me crazy. But you’ve just got to take your chances when you think you can.

Today I was focused on winning a race. I wanted to win a race and get maximum points and tried not to think about the 31, the 99, the 16. I felt myself looking in the mirror from time to time, and the 16 every once in awhile, didn’t see the 31 much and saw the 99. I’m still paying attention to those guys but the more I can focus on doing my teal can trying to get the trophy, the better we’ll be.

Q. Would you say you’re motivated more by a fear of failure or the idea of winning, and if you would just explain that a little bit?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: I think in 2005, 2006, that period of time, it was failure.

Now I’m excited about what I think we can do, and that transition has been because of experience and going through this championship battle in the past, and having confidence in myself and our team and not having fear. You hear guys hit golf shots that say, you get over the ball if you have any fear, you’ll pull it and pull it in the water. It’s the same thing, I don’t want to be cocky, but I want to be confident with what we can do and go out and race without any fear and just race and do our jobs.

That’s changed a lot this year. I think last year we were heading that direction and then this year, we’re certainly in that place mentally.

Q. Not just feeling comfortable in the championship situation which you appear to be, but this seems to be a different Jimmie Johnson, if we are talking about Chad not having fun all year, you’ve been laughing more and I just think feeling more comfortable about yourself and I don’t just mean in the championship situation, because of championship experience?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: I was worrying about saying the right thing, being the right place and doing all that stuff but I do have a personality and over the years, I’ve grown more comfortable in my work environment to let that come out. Not like I’m trying to hide anything, but I wanted to do this for a long time and realize that two stressed out guys not having fun is not good for this race team. And so I try to keep my crew guys spirits up and take them out for a beer and have fun and keep them light hearted and that’s my job on the team.

Q. Is it the only thing that’s going to stop you is if we take every race out here and change it around?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Don’t give them any ideas (chuckling) there’s still four races, we can have a flat, get a wheel loose, cut an engine, get caught up in a wreck. It’s nice to see that we can execute like we feel we can and shown ourselves, like history shows, it’s tough to do. And I’ve never been like this in my career and never had this fortune and been able to do this kind of stuff.

I wish, I hope that we can bottle it up and keep it for many, many more years, but there’s something special going on with this race team and just very proud of that and ride the waves as long as it’s up.

Q. I wonder if you can talk about the day that Hendrick Motorsports as a whole had.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Good day. Tough circumstances to come back for Rick. It’s nice to all four cars run well, so he goes home and knows that we have honored his family and friends in the right way.

Just a great performance. I’ve always said that I’ve had better equipment here than what I’ve been capable of over the years, and I’m certainly doing my part now, and I think Kasey did an awesome job today and same with Junior and Jeff.

It’s good when it works like that. I wish these setups, they were much closer here than any other track we run at. I wish our styles crossed enough where we could use and expand that program, but our styles are all different and we end up with different setups trying to get the same result. So here would be the closest that we would ever have the four cars, and it’s nice to see all four run well.

Q. You spent a lot of time today racing with Gordon and you had Earnhardt in your mirror. How much give do you have compared to racing with guys like Juan Pablo who you are not affiliated with?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: It gets tough out there sometimes. There’s sometimes where teammates for whatever reason race me harder than other guys.

I look at Junior trying to win a second race and Jeff trying to win a race, it helps me understand where their mind set is at. We were joking in our debrief yesterday. Junior and Jeff and Kasey all three said: If you’re leading this thing, and I’m behind you, be ready, be ready. And I’m thinking about that when the 88 is behind me, damn, I’d better get back. Jeff was wanting to lead some laps early in the race and kind much got me into a tough situation, where I could have lost a bunch of sports, fortunately I didn’t.

At times teammates really work well with you and at other times they have had a job to do, as well. I find that sometimes lappers, you mention Montoya, and Montoya has been great to me, and I give him the different respect at different points in time in the races and we trade that back and forth. Tony, today, the 26, as well, guys that I’m catching them slowly but surely chipping away at it, but they just pulled me over and let me go. So I have done that for them in the past. Each situation is different, and it’s nice to have friends out there that will work with you instead of guys taking shots at you all the time.

Q. You mentioned you expected kind of at the beginning of the race to see Jeff and Carl there in contention, but did you expect to see Dale in your rear?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Yeah, this is one of Junior’s better tracks. Before he was a teammate in all of the years I’ve raced against him, he’s done a great job here. I really felt like he was going to be one of the cars to beat today. I was impressed with Carl’s effort and know he’s been making gains on this track and today he was rock solid all day. I would say he impressed me the most.

Q. Do you have any emotion one way or another going to Atlanta next week, because it will be the last time you’ll have a race in Atlanta; they traded with California next year.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Forgot all about that. Luckily we run well at California. I had completely forgot about that.

It’s going to be nice on the West Coast where it is warm and not freezing in Atlanta and raining potentially. I wish I had something for you but I just have not thought about it.

Q. What do you do with all of the grandfather clocks? You have to have a pretty big house for all of those clocks.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Yeah, I have some at my office, one at the house, and a really cool warehouse that I’ve been putting together and collecting I collected my first off road buggy, trying to find my off road trucks that I’ve raced, I have my Iroq car that I won in, ’06 championship car, and I even have a jet ski that I raced back when I was 13 that my brother found and is restoring it.

So I have all of this stuff that I’ve been collecting over the years and really cool where I’ve been putting the grandfather clocks so there’s room for another one there.

An Interview With:

DALE EARNHARDT JR.
CARL EDWARDS

KERRY THARP: We are going to roll into our post race press conference and we are pleased to be joined in here by race runner up Dale Earnhardt Jr. He drives the No. 88 Amp energy National Guard Chevrolet.

Had a great run out there today, Dale, and your thoughts about your performance chasing that 48 all day, but certainly you’ve got to be pleased with your strong run.

DALE EARNHARDT, JR.: Yeah, I have to hands it to Chad, and the whole team, Jimmie, he did it a great job today. Really he had such a good race car. He was able to cut, roll the center (inaudible, video static) tried to put the gas and get the gas to full throttle. It was pretty difficult for me at the end, and I feel like I was going to just try to do what I could with Jimmie, but he was too strong, just trying to protect our position on the last lap.

Pretty tough, pretty proud of my team. We had a long day and it was a tough day, run real hard and this place, you have to run so hard here every lap, and to get what you want, to get the finish you want, you can’t really take any time off or pace yourself any. I’m proud of my team. We did a good job on pit road and had some good pit stops that helped us stay up front, and I had some good adjustments from Tony Jr., too. We started the race car really tight, and we had it running up there real good at the end. I’m just proud of my team.

Q. You’ve watched Jimmie’s team from afar over the last few years and now seeing it up close what they are doing. How good is what they are doing in the Chase?

DALE EARNHARDT, JR.: Oh, man, it’s pretty obvious I think to everyone that they are such a great race team. Reminds me a lot of it’s very, very similar to the three serious I don’t know, there’s a lot of great teams that were huge into sport, obviously Daddy had a great run and was dominant. He run a lot of races on just brute instinct and determination.

But they only really dominated the sport in ’87 and maybe a little bit in ’86. All of the other things they did in sport were just by brute determination.

Jimmie and those guy ares are slick and they are faster week and they win races by being the best car. I look at the history of the sport, and I think about Richard Petty and David Pearson and the Wood brothers and Yarborough, and later on Darryl and Junior, and I put them right up there with them teams there, and there’s maybe only a good handful or half a dozen teams that are in that group and I feel like they are really achieving that. To do it, Dad and Jeff and several other great competitors, Rusty and all those guys were great race car drivers and had awesome careers.

But to pack it in three years and just dominate like that, there’s only a good half a dozen teams that’s ever been good like that and been that strong consistently year after year after year.

Q. On the long run you seemed to be able to reel Jimmie back in a little bit. Do you think if that last 30 some laps had gone green the whole way you might have a chance to get to him?

DALE EARNHARDT, JR.: I felt like I had a better car handling, a better set of tires, my car was a little free, it had been free the first 20, 30 laps of the run. So I was struggling with that a little bit.

We were, I felt like, the best car at lap 100 on tires, but you’re never going to get that here hardly. You might get it once or twice in the middle of the race like we did today but you won’t get a hundred. NASCAR is not going to let that thing go green to the end. We had a race to green to the end, I can’t remember how long, but you’re going to get a caution near the end, bunch the field up and get the fans back into it and give everybody at home a good race to watch.

You know that going and you try to set your car up for that and be ready to be good when you need. It was real tight, the air pressure was real low on the left side and I was real tight for five or ten laps and the car would start pinning the tires up by the curb, and by lap 50 just turned into a great race car and we just get better and better as guys were falling off really bad. I would have liked to have had that opportunity and I think I could have give Jimmie a good run for his money, but I knew for a fact that that wasn’t going to be the outcome.

Q. Dale, you talked about your perspective on where Jimmie in history, a lot of people say second can be the first loser but is it almost a win, anyway, for you, especially at a track like this?

DALE EARNHARDT, JR.: I did the best I could today and got a great result out of. It I would have liked to won the race. I felt like we got it going at about lap 300 and I really started Targeting trying to win the race, and consistently considering and thinking that every lap we had been just the first half before the race you’re just tuning on the car and concentrating on how to make the car roll to the center, power down and do all of these things. And we got the car better and better and better, and I was just really determined on trying to win and whatever it took to win. And we ran hard and got guys up on the racetrack and tried to take positions with force and whatever.

But I just couldn’t, I never had an opportunity. I could catch Jimmie and those guys in traffic and maybe make a move at that point or do something there, but running in a straight line, their car was so dominant, man, I just didn’t have an opportunity with the kind of with the way our car was handling, there was nobody was going to be able to get to him and even try to get by him. His car was just so good.

But it does feel good, it does feel great finishing like this. We have had such bad luck the last six weeks and tore up so many race cars. I’m proud of myself all year long of not wrecking cars and keeping all my cars in one piece. I think we went through about six in the last month or something like that; it’s been terrible. But this is good for my team.

Q. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but seems like to me that you were in a hell of a fix at the end because if you have a car that takes awhile to come in, you can’t afford a caution flag because you want a long run, but by not having a caution flag you’re so far behind that it doesn’t do as much good because of the time it will take you to track him down. I know that seems kind of simple, but it puts you in a tough spot where you’re trying of damned if you do either way?

DALE EARNHARDT, JR.: Not really. With 60 to go, with 60 or 50 to go before the caution came out, we were catching the tail end of the field, and that was going to be really what I needed to put some moves on Jimmie was see him get in traffic and struggle. Or we were in the tail end of the field, I can’t remember.

But I feel like that my best chance was for the race to go green, and my best my worst chance was how it turned out.

Q. Obviously you had Carl running close at the end. How tough was it to hold him off down the stretch?

DALE EARNHARDT, JR.: Well, Carl is a real hard racer and you know, we got to running there earlier in the race and I took care of him a little bit.

I don’t mind a guy getting into me a little bit. I just don’t want to get spun out or run up into the marbles, you know. When it’s ten to go, and a guy gets underneath you, you have to expect to get run up a racetrack a little bit and the guy is going to use up some of the racetrack a little bit. But I just don’t like get putting in the marbles, and that’s all I was really worried about at the end of the race here.

We run together about a hundred to go and took care of each other a little bit there and I guess, you know, he had that in the back of his mind there at the end of the race. I don’t know, he can answer that.

But it was fun. I was trying to take my position. Me and Carl had about equal cars there at the end and I was having trouble getting a straight run out and getting the power down and having to stop at the end of the corner, and he had some opportunities to get into me a little bit if he wanted to.

Q. You were talking about beating and banging a little bit. Can you just talk a little bit about how balanced that with patience today you appeared to be pretty patient at times.

DALE EARNHARDT, JR.: I was sitting there watching Tony Stewart, and he would run Tony is kind of funny to watch.

We were sitting there running and he’s running real hard and his car starts pinning up on the conner and he just kind of drops back and punts. What he does is he’ll just pull over and get behind you and cruise and try to wait on his car.

I’m sitting there thinking, you know what, Tony is always near the front of this thing near the end, and I’m always the one burning my brakes off and never having nothing to stop my car from going into the corner at the end of the race and rear hopping the tires because the front brakes is burned off at the end of the race.

So I just started taking care of my car. I was doing the same thing at Charlotte. I was like, man, I never finish this race, never got top fives here and always lead or run or mess something up.

So today there was a lot of times we were sitting there running fourth and fifth and I was just sitting there chilling, keeping my two car length distance between me and the guy in front of me and just laying off the brakes and rolling down in the corner and trying to save a whole lot of race car and see what happened there at the end is and see if it pays off and I never had good brakes at the end of these races because I run so hard these first 400 laps; so I was trying to take care of it.

Q. Kind of mean this in a humorous fashion, but we were talking the other day how you would like to see some other tracks into the Chase; if Jimmie keeps winning and doing so well, do you want to change it up to make sure he doesn’t have the same luck the next two or three years going on?

DALE EARNHARDT, JR.: I think, you know, I’m fortunate enough to be in the shape shop as Jimmie and see how they work and what they do and hopefully a lot of that stuff is going to rub off on us. We look at their setups and our setups and we try to understand how their setup makes their car drive and what he likes and whatever, but I don’t think I want to change it up too much.

It’s good when you have a teammate running good, really good, because you like to lean on that. You know, Jimmie, I don’t know, I would rather have him running really good, because I want to know what I need to put in my car every week, you know, or at least have a backup plan if we can’t get it working, and having Jeff definitely provide that for us.

So I still have not really truly ran their setup here. I’ve always kind of we’ve still kind of huddled around our little thing we have been working on the last coupleful years because we run pretty good here but we may ease in that direction because they are having such good success and they are winning so many races.

KERRY THARP: We appreciate it very much, thank you and good luck in Atlanta.

We are also pleased to be joined by our third place finisher in today’s race, Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Office Depot Fusion. Carl is currently fourth in points, 198 out of the lead.

Carl, hard fought race, your thoughts about how you performed out there today.

CARL EDWARDS: For us, this is almost a win. You know, we have never run this well here, so that was good for us.

You know, it’s just Jimmie is just doing an unbelievable job. We had obviously some misfortune last week that you know, really, really made this race important. I felt like if we came here and ran good today it would keep our hopes alive, and if we didn’t, it would put us in a hole. So it’s a great day for us.

Q. As well as you ran and as pleased as you are with that, is this like the final nail in the coffin maybe for everybody with what Jimmie did?

CARL EDWARDS: No way. He could have any sort of trouble at the next two races and be right back there with us. So you know, with all of these guys that are kind of bunched together, look like all of us were within 40 or 50 points, second through fourth maybe.

So, it could happen to anyone. We saw what happened with Kyle and his team. Those guys seemed unbeatable and they just had the bad luck. You know, like what happened to us last week. We still don’t know exactly what happened. Just some sort of gremlin in the electrical system.

No, this isn’t over until the last lap at Homestead, that’s for sure.

Q. Even though you said it’s like a win for you, how does it feel when you’re out there running maybe your career best race so far at this place, and you still see that 48 up there just going away, going away, going away?

CARL EDWARDS: Yeah, I mean, it feels just like you think it would feel like. You think, damn, those guys are good. You know, they are just good at what they do.

We all know how important this place is and how special it is for them, and I mean, I have a lot of respect for Jimmie and Chad and the way those guys compete. They are I think some of the best competitors out there. I mean, if you looked up competitor, it would be those guys. They are real competitive and have a lot of respect for everyone. So that’s cool.

Q. I just thought about the second part of my question, considering that this is sort of their track, did you guys kind of come in here expecting to lose some points to them and just try to keep that to a minimum?

CARL EDWARDS: After practice yesterday, we thought, man, if everything goes perfectly, we can win this race. Our car was fast enough.

Bob and I actually talked about it and I said, “It would be awesome to win this thing.”

He said, “Listen, Bud, if you can just finish in the Top 10 and not lose too, too many points at Martinsville, that’s a win for us.” So being realistic, this was a very successful day for us.

Q. You and Biffle and Burton are all sort of right there in the chasing mode, so they kind of had weeks this week like you had last week. So how are they feeling right now from your experience from last week? How does it feel to come in and see that happen?

CARL EDWARDS: It’s frustrating when you have something bad happen, and you lose a bunch of points. You start to think, man, you know, this is going to be a whole ‘nother year. It’s like if you have a bad game bowling and you think, okay, this game will be over in a couple of frames and you just start over. You know, that feeling, boy, it feels good to start over.

But there is no starting over. You have to dig until the end. It’s interesting that way. It crescendos pretty big that way the whole year. We’ve got to essentially go out and win the next four races; that’s what we’ve got to do.

Q. I was wondering, NASCAR is getting away from more and more short track events. What do you think it’s going to take for NASCAR to add a short track field to these cookie cutter tracks?

CARL EDWARDS: You know, we have been having good races at all the racetracks. The short tracks are real fun. They are exciting. I think the fans enjoy them a lot. I liked watching them before I was racing here.

I think NASCAR is doing the best we can. We still have some very exciting finishes at the big tracks. There’s a balance. The sport has to be able to get out there to people in Kansas or maybe the northwest some day or whatever and we might have to build new tracks for that.

But as long as we get to race at places like this and Darlington, the tracks that have been on the schedule for a long time, I think that’s a good balance there.

Q. Where three of the next four at intermediate tracks, how do you see that panning out trying to catch Jimmie, or at least leveling it out a little bit?

CARL EDWARDS: You know, if we run the way I believe we can run at the next two, without having any bad luck, we should be pretty tough.

But Jimmie has been running real well at those places, too. If you look at what happened at Lowe’s, I’m not sure where he finished, but I think it was ninth, seventh or ninth or something like that.

Q. Sixth.

CARL EDWARDS: Sixth? Well, that’s pretty good. That’s not going to make a good point there. (Laughter). Ninth?

Well, let’s see he finishes tenth and we win the next four, we could catch him, it would be pretty close, I don’t know. I’m done worrying about it. I’ve got to worry about, we have got to get all the points we can, and Jimmie is going to do the same.

Q. Greg was talking about how he had never had as good of breaks here since he’s ever competed here. Is that in part why you said you were as good this weekend?

CARL EDWARDS: I did have real good brakes. I don’t know if we did something a little different. I know the guys have been working really hard on making sure that we don’t waste any of the cooling energy. So that’s good.

But it takes the whole package here. It started off with qualifying being rained out and giving us a spot up front. I think we could have qualified pretty well this time.

But starting out up front is a big deal. Pit strategy is big and obviously like deal was saying, the breaks, it’s really easy to ruin the breaks here on all of those long runs, and definitely a key I think to running well here.

KERRY THARP: Carl, appreciate it is. Enjoyed watching you race today.

FastScripts by ASAP Sports …

By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — At the same track where he started his phenomenal run to the title last year, Jimmie Johnson distanced himself from his closest pursuers on Sunday, winning the Tums QuikPak 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Martinsville Speedway.

Johnson won in a cakewalk, leading 339 of 504 laps. His No. 48 Chevrolet was so good on short runs, and so strong off the corners, runner-up Dale Earnhardt Jr. couldn’t mount a charge during the green-white-checkered-flag finish that took the race four laps past its scheduled length.

“I didn’t have a good enough drive up off the corner to catch Jimmie,” said Earnhardt, who gained one position to ninth in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings but fell to 379 points behind his Hendrick Motorsports teammate. “They had such an excellent racecar. I did the best I could to protect my position.

“I didn’t have anything for Jimmie. His car was so awesome. We were spinning the tires up off the corner, and that’s where we got beat.”

Even with the short green-flag run at the end, Johnson stretched his advantage to .708 seconds at the finish. Carl Edwards ran third, followed by Jeff Gordon, Denny Hamlin and Casey Mears, as Hendrick placed all four of its cars in the top six.

Greg Biffle recovered a lap he lost during an off-sequence green-flag pit stop on Lap 248 and finished 12th to move into second place in the Chase standings. But it’s second and long: Biffle is 149 points behind Johnson with four races left in the season.

Penalized one lap for pitting outside his box late in the race, Jeff Burton came home 17th and dropped one position to third in the standings, 152 points behind the leader. Despite his career-best finish at Martinsville, Edwards is fourth, 198 points behind Johnson.

Biffle, Burton and Edwards are chasing an abundantly confident No. 48 team heading for tracks where Johnson has excelled in the past. After last year’s victory at Martinsville, Johnson won consecutive races at Atlanta, Texas and Phoenix to seize control of the Chase entering the season finale at Homestead-Miami.

This season is different. Johnson already has control heading to Atlanta, and the attitude of the team was evident in crew chief Chad Knaus’ words as Johnson crossed the finish line.

“That’s what you call points racing — getting them all,” Knaus said.

Don’t expect Johnson to try to sit on his lead.

“I think we really need to go out and do the same stuff,” said Johnson, who won his sixth race of the year and the 39th of his career. “We can’t lose this points lead. We’ve got to go out and swing at it — and that’s what we’re best at.

“Truly, we feel confident at all the tracks left on the schedule.”

Besides tying Tim Flock for 15th in career wins, Johnson moved one step closer to a third straight Cup title, a feat accomplished previously only by Cale Yarborough (1976-1978).

“Today was big step in the right direction,” Johnson said. “As long as I can stay scared and on my heels and worried about losing this thing, the better this team is going to be. If we start getting comfortable and complacent, we’re going to stub our toes and we’re going to make mistakes.”

Also this weekend, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series will race Saturday at Martinsville. The NASCAR Nationwide Series has its final off-week of the season.

Storylines for this weekend follow, starting with a look at “in the garage” local angles for the Martinsville Speedway weekend, a group highlighted by two Chase competitors from Virginia – Jeff Burton and Denny Hamlin.

In The Garage

NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
Jeff Burton (South Boston) – No. 31 driver
Denny Hamlin (Chesterfield) – No. 11 driver
Elliott Sadler (Emporia) – No. 19 driver
Robert “Bootie” Barker (Brookneal) – No. 66 crew chief
David Bryant (Farmville) – No. 88 car chief
Todd Brewer (Manassas) – No. 96 car chief
Jeff Curtis (Fairfax) – No. 31 engineer
Darian Grubb (Floyd) – No. 88 engineer
Tom Stewart (Hampton) – No. 88 engineer
Brandon Evans (South Hill) – No. 48 engineer
Rick MacGowan (Reston) – No. 96 engineer
Kevin Kidd (Tazewell) – No. 19 engineer
Tommy Wallace (Richmond) – No. 07 mechanic
Jim Jenkins (Hampton) – No. 88 mechanic
Alan Howard (Covington) – No. 84 shock specialist
Todd Bosserman (Waynesboro) – No. 48 shock specialist
Tracey Ramsey (Fredericksburg) – No. 31 tire specialist
Charles Moles (Floyd) – No. 07 tire specialist
Franky Nester (Ridgeway) – No. 31 transporter driver
Barry Sheppard (Stuart) – No. 07 transporter driver
Kirk George (Ararat) – No. 24 transporter driver
Jay Hackney (Haysi) – No. 2 front tire changer
Curt Bowman (Meadows of Dan) – No. 31 gas man
Caleb Hurd (Pulaski) – No. 24 gas man
Rodney Rhodes (Hickory) – No. 10 gas man
Andy Pope (Midlothian) – No. 21 gas man
Ed Watkins (Richmond) – No. 19 jack man
Ben Surface (Pulaski) – No. 96 rear tire carrier
Mark Robertson (Richmond) – No. 20 spotter
Ryan Quann (Richmond) – No. 42 pit support

NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series
Jim Harris (Lynchburg) – No. 59 owner

Jeff Hensley (Ridgeway) – No. 16 crew chief
Trip Bruce (Chester) – No. 23 crew chief
Hal Ralston (Staunton) – No. 6 engineer
Chuck Day (Alexandria) – No. 33 engine tuner
Curtis Key (Chesapeake) – No. 40 general manager
Dan Mrak (Woodbridge) – No. 11 catch can man
Curtis Martin (Rocky Mount) – No. 23 rear tire changer
Scott Blackburn (Mechanicsville) – No. 16 rear tire changer
Mary Quay (Halifax) – No. 22 scorer
Kevin Riddle (Martinsville) – No. 5 pit support

Halfway: Chase Reaches Its Mid-Point
Five races are complete in the 10-race Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. The plot thickens – in a variety of directions. Check it out:

• Coming into Sunday’s event, the top three drivers – Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Burton and Greg Biffle – are separated by only 86 points.

• Jimmie Johnson has the points lead coming into a track where he has seriously excelled. Johnson has won four times at Martinsville since 2004. His chances of winning a third consecutive series championship look more realistic all the time. Only one driver has ever pulled off that trifecta – Cale Yarborough from 1976-78.

• Jeff Burton is in the sport’s top echelon – for the second time. The South Boston, Va. native was one of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series’ premier drivers from 1997-2000, posting 15 wins during that four-season span, driving for car owner Jack Roush. After a several-season slump, Burton has returned to prominence the last few years with owner Richard Childress, who he joined in 2004.

• Two weeks ago, the Chase made an always-precarious stop at the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series’ biggest track, 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway. This week, the Chase comes to the series’ smallest track, .526-mile Martinsville Speedway. Those two disparate layouts have one undeniable common denominator – unpredictability, due to close-quarters racing. A bump here, a spin there … and the standings could easily be altered drastically, this Sunday.

• When the Chase’s top seed, Kyle Busch, fell far behind after the first two Chase races, Carl Edwards looked like the smart pick to win the title. With five races to go, however, Edwards’ title chances are on the ropes. He crashed at Talladega and had engines problems this past week at Lowe’s Motor Speedway – resulting in finishes of 29th and 33rd. He comes into Martinsville fourth in points, 168 points behind Johnson. Edwards has one top 10 in eight races at Martinsville, and a Driver Rating of 72.4 over his last seven races there.

The Ratings Game: Hendrick Duo Top Martinsville Driver Rating
Clearly, Hendrick Motorsports has figured out Martinsville Speedway. Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson rank one-two in Driver Rating over the last seven races at Martinsville, one of the trickiest tracks in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Over that span, Gordon has an average finish of 2.3, while Johnson has a 3.0. Below are the top 10 drivers in pre-race Driver Rating at Martinsville. (x-denotes non-Chase driver)

Jeff Gordon 124.5
Jimmie Johnson 121.2
Tony Stewart 116.3
Dale Earnhardt Jr. 100.7
Denny Hamlin 100.6
Kyle Busch 93.3
x-Jamie McMurray 87.9
Kevin Harvick 87.4
x-Ryan Newman 85.8
Jeff Burton 85.3

NASCAR NATIONWIDE SERIES

Testing….1,2,3
This final open week of the season begins with the final “new car” test of the season, scheduled for Monday and Tuesday at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Seven teams are expected for the session. It’s the first test at an intermediate track for the car following the inaugural test at Richmond International Raceway in early September. Seven teams are expected to participate including Joe Gibbs Racing which did not test at Richmond last month. Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, Roush Fenway Racing (two teams), Richard Childress Racing, JD Motorsports and Michael Waltrip Racing tested at Richmond and are back at LMS.

Championship Battle: Bowyer Maintaining Series Lead
Clint Boywer’s lead in the series points over Carl Edwards remains at 196 points. Third-place Brad Keselowski is still in the hunt, 286 points behind. in third.

Championship Battle, Part 2: RCR Entry Takes the Lead
Clint Bowyer’s second-place finish this past week at Lowe’s Motor Speedway also helped his car owner, Richard Childress, take the lead in the car owner championship standings. The No. 2 entry driven by Bowyer has a one-point lead over the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota that has had a variety of drivers this year. Joey Logano drove the No. 20 at LMS, finishing 14th.

Record Chasing: Kyle Busch Eyes Ard
Kyle Busch’s win at Lowe’s Motor Speedway last Friday night was his ninth victory of the year in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. The series record is 10 set in 1983 by two-time series champion Sam Ard.

Busch is not expected to compete in the next event, the final stand-alone of the season at Memphis Motorsports Park on Oct. 25, but is planning on running in the following three events to close out the year at Texas Motor Speedway, Phoenix International Raceway and Homestead-Miami Speedway. He won the fall race at Phoenix last year and also won at Texas and Phoenix earlier this year. With Busch out at Memphis, JGR development driver Marc Davis, 18, will attempt to make his NNS debut.

NASCAR CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES

Championship Battle Picks Back Up
Ron Hornaday Jr. reassumed the championship lead with a second-place finish at Talladega Superspeedway. Johnny Benson, who entered the season’s 20th race with a single-point advantage, is 39 points out after finishing 11th. The lead changed hands for the seventh time in 2008.

Hornaday’s lead is fourth-closest in series history following the season’s 20th race. Point leaders after 20 races have won the championship in three of the past four seasons and nine times in the series’ 13 previous years. The last 20-race leader failing to become champion was Dennis Setzer in 2005.

Setzer Looks for Four Pack
Dennis Setzer won Martinsville Speedway’s March 31 race, matching Mike Skinner’s record of three victories at the .526-mile track. Setzer attempts to become the series’ third different driver to win four races at a single track. (Brendan Gaughan and Todd Bodine, Texas Motor Speedway).

Contenders Looking for First Martinsville Win
Coming into Martinsville, the last short-track race of the NCTS season, Hornaday and Benson are among five short-track winners in 2008. While neither Hornaday nor Benson has a victory at Martinsville despite a combined 22 starts, the two have victories at the tracks on the remainder of the schedule. Hornaday has wins at Atlanta, Texas, Phoenix and Homestead-Miami; Benson at Phoenix and Homestead-Miami.

Youngest Skinner to Debut at Martinsville
Dustin Skinner, youngest son of 2005 NASCAR Craftsman Truck champion Mike Skinner, will attempt to make his first NCTS trace this weekend at Martinsville, running the No. 03 Germain Toyota. Dustin, 23, follows in his father’s and brother Jamie’s footsteps — both made their NASCAR debut at Martinsville.

Several other new names will be behind the wheel of some trucks this weekend: Hermie Sadler (No. 48 Chevrolet), Jamie McMurray (No. 09 Zaxby’s Ford), Kevin Harvick (No. 2 American Commercial Lines Chevrolet), Sam Hornish, Jr. (No. 4 Bobby Hamilton Racing Dodge).

Then, there are some series veterans set to strap into new rides. Terry Cook will pilot the No. 59 Team ASE/Harris Trucking Toyota for the remainder of the season while Jack Sprague will be in the No. 60 Wyler Racing Toyota.

As the 2008 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup reaches its mid-point, there have been ample storylines touting the top contenders for the championship.

First, there was the attention given to Kyle Busch (No. 18 M&M’s Toyota), who dominated the season’s first 26 races by winning eight times to lock up the Chase’s No. 1 seed.

Then, there was the underdog story of Greg Biffle (No. 16 DISH Network Ford), who came out of nowhere to win the first two races of the Chase. Roush Fenway teammate Carl Edwards (No. 99 Office Depot Ford) has also been at the forefront, as he maintained a firm hold of positioning himself among the top two spots.

The past couple weeks, the focus has been on Jimmie Johnson (No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet), as the two-time defending NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion has demonstrated he’s not going to relinquish his crown without a battle.

Now, based upon his Bank of America 500 victory last Saturday night at Lowe’s Motor Speedway coupled with his consistent performance over the first half of the Chase, you can add another name to the list of contenders for the 2008 series championship — veteran Jeff Burton (No. 31 AT&T Mobility Chevrolet).

Burton has indeed been a model of consistency throughout this season and as a result, has been flying under the radar somewhat. However, he has been in the top 12 the entire season, and for a four-week stretch early on (after the first Martinsville race until after the first Richmond race), he was the series points leader. In fact, he’s only strayed outside the top five in points four times this season.

Burton won his 21st career NASCAR Sprint Cup race last Saturday at LMS. It was his second win of 2008, marking the first time since 2001 he has posted more than one victory in a season. Burton is no stranger to competing for a series title. He finished third in the 2000 standings, fourth in 1997 and posted back-to-back fifth-place finishes in 1998-99.

Burton says he gets a special feeling when he competes at Martinsville, the .526-mile short track located just 50 miles from his hometown of South Boston, Va.

“There’s no question, when I come to Martinsville, it’s different,” said Burton. “There are a lot of people who supported us when no one knew who we were who are still in the stands today. We take a lot of pride in that.”

Burton has one win (2nd race of 1997), seven top fives and 17 top 10s at Martinsville. Burton knows that the tricky short track can quickly wreak havoc.

“I’ve got a feeling some things will happen with some of the Chase contenders this week at Martinsville,” said Burton.

Jimmie Johnson Pads Lead: Points Toward Third Straight Championship

Two-time defending NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson takes a 69-point lead into Race 6 of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup at a venue where he has nearly a flawless record during his career. Since his first race at Martinsville Speedway in 2002, Johnson has posted four wins, 12 top-10 and nine top-five finishes.

Johnson is attempting to become only the second driver in NASCAR history to win three consecutive series championships. Cale Yarborough accomplished the feat from 1976-77-78. While his 69-point lead over Jeff Burton may seem a bit secure, recent history indicates otherwise. The points leader with five races remaining has failed to win the championship in each of the past two seasons.

In 2006, Johnson was in seventh place and 146 points behind leader Jeff Burton with five races to go. Johnson went on to win his first title by 56 points, a swing of 202 points.

Last season, Johnson was in second place, 68 points behind teammate Jeff Gordon (No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet). Johnson won the championship by 77 points, a 145-point swing.

Loop Data: Hendrick Teammates Shine At Martinsville

Yes, Jeff Gordon made the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup and currently sits eighth in the standings. Yes, he has been in the top 12 for a solid 22 of the 31 weeks. Yes, his Driver Rating is 95.2, which is fifth-best in the series. But, by some accounts, this has been a tough year for the four-time series champion. That’s what can happen when you set the bar that high.

For one, Gordon’s top 10 production is down. But, how could it not be? Last season, Gordon scored a modern era record 30 top-10 finishes. This year, he has only 15. Unless he finishes inside the top 10 in each of the remaining five races, he’ll have less than 20 top-10 finishes for only the fifth time in his career. What’s been more troublesome for Gordon is his absence from Victory Lane in 2008. The 81-time race winner is in danger of ending a 14-year streak with at least one win per season — actually Gordon has posted at least two wins a year for the past 14 years. But, up next on the schedule is Martinsville, a track at which Gordon has displayed unparalleled brilliance over his career.

In 31 starts, Gordon has 25 top-10 finishes. He is the active leader in wins with seven. He is also on an incredible seven-race Martinsville top-five streak. Over that span of top fives, Gordon has a Driver Rating of 124.5, an Average Running Position of 7.2, 420 Fastest Laps Run and Laps in the Top 15 percentage of 86.7%. A top 10 finish would seem to be a lock for Gordon. But a win will be tough for one reason: Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson.

Johnson is likewise strong at Martinsville. He has scored 12 straight top-10 finishes at Martinsville, which includes four wins (including a season sweep in 2007). In the seven races since the inception of Loop Data in 2005 (which includes six top fives), Johnson has a Driver Rating of 121.2, an Average Running Position of 7.1, 337 Fastest Laps Run and a Laps in the Top 15 percentage of 87.7%.

Native Virginians Aplenty In NSCS Garage

The Commonwealth of Virginia boasts more than 30 drivers, crew members and team members among those that work in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series garage.

Drivers Jeff Burton (South Boston), Denny Hamlin (No. 11 FedEx Toyota, Chesterfield) and Elliott Sadler (No. 19 Best Buy Dodge, Emporia) are all from Virginia.

Crew chief Robert “Bootie” Barker (Brookneal) (No. 66 Haas Automation Chevrolet) and car chiefs David Bryant (Farmville) (No. 88 National Guard/AMP Energy Chevrolet) and Todd Brewer (Manassas) (No. 96 DLP HDTV Toyota) also hail from the Commonwealth.

Other NSCS crew members from Virginia include: Jeff Curtis (Fairfax—No. 31 engineer); Darian Grubb (Floyd—No. 88 engineer); Tom Stewart (Hampton—No. 88 engineer); Brandon Evans (South Hill—No. 48 engineer); Rick MacGowan (Reston—No. 96 engineer); Kevin Kidd (Tazewell—No. 19 engineer); Tommy Wallace (Richmond—No. 07 mechanic); Jim Jenkins (Hampton—No. 88 mechanic); Alan Howard (Covington – No. 84 shock specialist); Todd Bosserman (Waynesboro—No. 48 shock specialist); Tracey Ramsey (Fredricksburg—No. 31 tire specialist); Charles Moles (Floyd—No. 07 tire specialist); Franky Nester (Ridgeway—No. 31 transporter driver); Barry Sheppard (Stuart—No. 07 transport driver); Kirk George (Ararat—No. 24 transport driver); Jay Hackney (Haysi—No. 2 front tire changer); Curt Bowman (Meadows of Dan—No. 31 gas man); Caleb Hurd (Pulaski—No. 24 gas man); Rodney Rhodes (Hickory—No. 10 gas man); Andy Pope (Midlothian—No. 21 gas man); Ed Watkins (Richmond—No. 19 jack man); Ben Surface (Pulaski—No. 96 rear tire changer); Mark Robertsson (Richmond—No. 20 spotter); Curtis Markham (Glen Allen – No. 11 spotter) and Ryan Quann (Richmond—No. 42 pit support).

NASCAR CAM Video Teleconference: Jimmie Johnson

This week’s guest on the NASCAR CAM Video Teleconference was series points leader Jimmie Johnson.

Here are some excerpts:

On the opportunity to win three consecutive NASCAR titles: “I’m excited about the possibilities. I feel like I’m focusing on the right things. And the team has been doing a great job calling the race, preparing cars, pit stops. I feel like I’m doing a good job driving the car. We’re hitting on all eight cylinders and looking good. So I’m excited about these next five…

On becoming the first driver to do so since Cale Yarborough’s three titles in 1976-78: “If it does take place, it would be a very special thing. I’ve been able to accomplish a lot more in this sport than I ever thought I would. To find my name in the record books and hopefully have it in a situation to be in the company of Cale in such an elite situation would mean the world to me…

On childhood memories of Yarborough’s career: “When I was growing up in Southern California, NASCAR was so far away. I would catch a few of the big races during the season. One of the names I did know when I was a kid was Cale’s. I was a fan of Cale’s as a kid growing up. I just loved his stocky attitude and even in appearance. The guy just had muscles all over the place. He was someone that led his actions on track speak for themselves….

On his success at Martinsville Speedway: “I absolutely was terrible at Martinsville the first time there. I knew the equipment was good. (Hendrick Motorsports teammate) Jeff (Gordon) was winning there and won there when we were running so bad. So a lot of it had to do with me learning the track and understanding it. And I think my background did help me. It’s not a standard racetrack. It is a quirky little place. Once I figured out the rhythm to it, things started to click, and I could give good information to (crew chief) Chad (Knaus) so he could work on his set up.”

NSCS Etc.

Martinsville Makes Some Upgrades:

Martinsville Speedway has made some improvements to its facility since the spring race, including:

A new video display scoreboard has been installed. Positioned 86 feet above the ground in the center of the infield, the scoring tower is now topped by three 30×20 feet video screens that will be utilized by Sprint Vision on NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race weekends.

The old pit road surface was removed during the summer and the asphalt was replaced with concrete.

The entrance gate to the infield has been reworked to allow for the installation of roughly 100 feet of SAFER barrier to cover the Turn 4 pit gate and the exit of Turn 4.

The infield media center has doubled in size and has enhanced its amenities.

Martinsville Milestone:

Sunday’s event marks the 120th NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway. The first NASCAR Sprint Cup race was held in 1949, with Red Byron driving Raymond Parks’-owned Oldsmobile to Victory Lane. Richard Petty’s 15 NSCS victories at Martinsville is the most by any driver.

Manufacturers’ Battle Still Tight:

The 2008 Manufacturers’ championship battle remains tight, with Toyota holding a slim six-point lead over Chevrolet (189-183). Ford is third with 178 points, while Dodge is fourth with 132 points. Chevrolet has won a total of 30 Manufacturers’ titles, including the previous five in a row.

Mike Bliss to Pilot The No. 00 Toyota:

Veteran driver Mike Bliss will attempt to qualify and race the No. 00 Champion Mortgage Toyota for Michael Waltrip Racing this weekend at Martinsville. In the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, Bliss has 13 career wins, 18 poles, 61 top-five and 107 top-10 finishes. In the NASCAR Nationwide Series, Bliss has racked up one win, three poles, 20 top-five and 50 top-10 showings. The No. 00 Toyota is currently 63 points out of the top 35.

Up Next: Race 7 In The Chase: Atlanta Motor Speedway

Race 7 in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup will be the Pep Boys Auto 500, Sunday, Oct. 26 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Two-time defending NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion and current points leader Jimmie Johnson is the defending race champion. In fact, Johnson swept both events at Atlanta in 2007.

Johnson is a three-time winner at Atlanta, having also won the fall race there in 2004.

Greg Biffle was last year’s pole sitter. Jeff Gordon’s four wins at Atlanta rank first among active drivers. The late Dale Earnhardt won nine times at this track — the most of any driver.

Race 6 in the Chase: TUMS QuikPak 500
The Place: Martinsville Speedway
The Date: Sunday, October 19
The Time: 1:30 p.m. (ET)
The Track: .526-mile oval
The Distance: 500 laps/263 miles
TV: ABC, 1 p.m. (ET)
Radio: MRN (Local Affiliate: WZBB-FM 99.9), SIRIUS Satellite Radio
2007 Winner: Jimmie Johnson
2007 Polesitter: Jeff Gordon
2008 Points
Driver Points
1 Johnson 5,878
2 Burton 5,809
3 Biffle 5,792
4 Edwards 5,710
5 Bowyer 5,693
6 Harvick 5,671
7 Stewart 5,650
8 Gordon 5,633
9 Ky. Busch 5,552
10 Earnhardt Jr. 5,524
11 Kenseth 5,518
12 Hamlin 5,498
Pre-Race Schedule: Friday—Practice, 12-1:30 p.m. Qualifying, 3:40 p.m. Saturday—Practice, 11:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m. and 12:50 -1:50 p.m.
Track Contact: Mike Smith, (276-956-1543)mksmith@martinsvillespeedway.com

The theme song to the environmentally-conscious movie “Hoot,” penned by Nashville Hall of Fame songwriter Mac McAnally, reminds us that, “Now and then, just when you think it won’t happen again … the good guys win.”

During the 2008 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, driver Jeff Burton is reminding us of the same thing.

One of the most difficult roles to fill in any professional sports arena, NASCAR included, is that of “the guy nobody dislikes.”

You have to race well enough to keep your job and make your sponsors happy, but if you win too often, you alienate the fans of every other driver, so it follows that they will begin to dislike you. (Kyle Busch, with eight wins on the season so far, could attest to this.)

You can’t straddle the fence, but you can’t plant yourself firmly on one side or the other. If you try to play both sides you can never hope to win. You can try to play both ends against the middle, but that’s ill-advised. Sometimes you might come out on the front end, but all too often this tactic could land you in the back of the field, literally.

You have to perform well enough to make the Chase, meaning you need good finishes each week, but you can’t be the guy who always beats Dale Earnhardt, Jr. If you do that, well, then you’re the guy who always beats Junior, and dislike may be too delicate a term for the reaction of his fans.

You must be willing to follow in the footsteps of others, but not eclipse them by leaving a larger footprint.

Case in point: The old Baby Ruth car, which competed in the Nationwide Series during the ’90s. The 1991 Nationwide Series Rookie of the Year Jeff Gordon (you may have heard of him) used his performance in the Baby Ruth Ford as a springboard to a full-time ride in the Sprint Cup Series and a job with Hendrick Motorsports the following year. Gordon’s successor in the Baby Ruth car? Jeff Burton. Gordon piloted the car to a fourth-place finish in the driver standings in 1992. Burton followed that with a 14th-place finish in 1993. That’s pretty good, but not as good as Gordon.

You would think all that fence sitting and line-walking would make a guy sore after a while, but not Burton.

In general, each major league baseball team has at least one member of the team who can be described as a “utility player”. Pete Rose, his later illicit behavior notwithstanding, was a great example of a utility player. During Rose’s career, he played left field, right field, center field, third base, second base and finally, first base. Whatever skill was deemed necessary at the time, he delivered it. Wherever he was needed, he was there.

Rose was not known as a slugger or a power hitter. Instead, consistency was his key strength. He holds the Major League Baseball Record for career base hits. When the job needed doing during a game, he did it.

In a sense, Jeff Burton is NASCAR’s ultimate utility player. With 21 Cup Series victories, he has won more than some, fewer than others. He raced well enough to make the Chase in the past two seasons, but never seriously contended for the title, finishing seventh in 2006 and eighth last year. He has plenty of fans, but his souvenir hauler is not the most crowded at the track on race day.

He has emerged as a sort of de facto spokesperson for the Sprint Cup Series drivers. He has been tactfully critical or wholeheartedly supportive of various “hot button” issues in the sport, as he has seen fit. Somehow, he never seems to get in hot water with NASCAR for his willingness to speak his mind. He is honest and forthright.

No one ever gets mad at him.

What the heck, it’s an election year. Let’s go ahead and say that where the Sprint Cup Series championship is concerned, Burton is a terrific candidate for the job. Dare we go so far as to call him a role model? Yes, I believe we do.

NASCAR news of late has concerned things like R-rated radio communications and shoving matches in the garage. In an atmosphere so absolutely fueled by adrenaline, emotions can’t help but run high. But in the midst of all this flash and fury, instead of being a “character,” Jeff Burton displays character.

So let’s not be too quick during this year’s championship Chase to hitch ourselves up to the “nice guys finish last” bandwagon. This contest is far from over, and so far, there seems to be a better than fair chance that Jeff Burton — a very nice guy indeed — just might finish first.

I believe it would be an outcome nobody in general, and true NASCAR fans in particular, could possibly dislike.

MARTINSVILLE SPEEDWAY 2008
NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
NASCAR CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES
EVENT SCHEDULE
REVISED AS OF 3:30 PM, OCTOBER 17, 2008

Friday, October, 17th

NSCS QUALIFYING (TWO LAPS – ALL POSITONS)-CANCELLED
LINE-UP SET PER THE RULE BOOK

3:00 PM NSCS GARAGE & REGISTRATION CLOSES

4:00 PM NCTS REGISTRATION CLOSES
4:00 PM NCTS GARAGE CLOSES

Saturday, October, 18th
6:30 AM ***HOT PASS IN EFFECT***(ENTIRE INFIELD AREA)
6:30 AM TRACK SERVICES MEETING
7:00 AM NCTS GARAGE & REGISTRATION OPENS
8:00 AM 8:50 AM NCTS FINAL PRACTICE
9:30 AM NSCS GARAGE & REGISTRATION OPENS
10:10 AM NCTS QUALIFYING (TWO LAPS, ALL POSITIONS)
11:30 AM 12:15 PM NSCS PRACTICE
12:15 PM 12:45 PM TV EXHIBITION RUN
12:30 PM NCTS DRIVER/CREW CHIEF MEETING (GOODYEAR TENT)
12:50 PM 1:50 PM NSCS FINAL PRACTICE
2:30 PM NCTS DRIVERS INTRODUCTION – SECURITY–CLEAR PIT ROAD
3:00 PM NCTS RACE (200 LAPS, 105.2 MILES)
4:00 PM NSCS GARAGE & REGISTRATION CLOSES
4:00 PM NCTS REGISTRATION CLOSES

Sunday, October, 19TH
7:30 AM NSCS GARAGE & REGISTRATION OPENS
10:30 AM TRACK SERVICES MEETING
12:00 N NSCS ** HOT PASS IN EFFECT ** ENTIRE INFIELD AREA – UNTIL ONE HOUR AFTER RACE
11:30 AM NSCS DRIVER/CREW CHIEF MEETING (GOODYEAR TENT)
1:00 PM NSCS DRIVERS INTRODUCTION – SECURITY–CLEAR PIT ROAD
1:30 PM NSCS RACE (500 LAPS, 263 MILES)
2:30 PM NSCS REGISTRATION CLOSES
ALL TIMES ARE LISTED IN EASTERN

10/17/08 NSCS MAR 08-02 TENTATIVE, SUBJECT TO CHANGE

Also this weekend, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series will race Saturday at Martinsville. The NASCAR Nationwide Series has its final off-week of the season.

Storylines for this weekend follow, starting with a look at “in the garage” local angles for the Martinsville Speedway weekend, a group highlighted by two Chase competitors from Virginia – Jeff Burton and Denny Hamlin.

In The Garage

NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
Jeff Burton (South Boston) – No. 31 driver
Denny Hamlin (Chesterfield) – No. 11 driver
Elliott Sadler (Emporia) – No. 19 driver
Robert “Bootie” Barker (Brookneal) – No. 66 crew chief
David Bryant (Farmville) – No. 88 car chief
Todd Brewer (Manassas) – No. 96 car chief
Jeff Curtis (Fairfax) – No. 31 engineer
Darian Grubb (Floyd) – No. 88 engineer
Tom Stewart (Hampton) – No. 88 engineer
Brandon Evans (South Hill) – No. 48 engineer
Rick MacGowan (Reston) – No. 96 engineer
Kevin Kidd (Tazewell) – No. 19 engineer
Tommy Wallace (Richmond) – No. 07 mechanic
Jim Jenkins (Hampton) – No. 88 mechanic
Alan Howard (Covington) – No. 84 shock specialist
Todd Bosserman (Waynesboro) – No. 48 shock specialist
Tracey Ramsey (Fredericksburg) – No. 31 tire specialist
Charles Moles (Floyd) – No. 07 tire specialist
Franky Nester (Ridgeway) – No. 31 transporter driver
Barry Sheppard (Stuart) – No. 07 transporter driver
Kirk George (Ararat) – No. 24 transporter driver
Jay Hackney (Haysi) – No. 2 front tire changer
Curt Bowman (Meadows of Dan) – No. 31 gas man
Caleb Hurd (Pulaski) – No. 24 gas man
Rodney Rhodes (Hickory) – No. 10 gas man
Andy Pope (Midlothian) – No. 21 gas man
Ed Watkins (Richmond) – No. 19 jack man
Ben Surface (Pulaski) – No. 96 rear tire carrier
Mark Robertson (Richmond) – No. 20 spotter
Ryan Quann (Richmond) – No. 42 pit support

NASCAR Truck Series
Jim Harris (Lynchburg) – No. 59 owner

Jeff Hensley (Ridgeway) – No. 16 crew chief
Trip Bruce (Chester) – No. 23 crew chief
Hal Ralston (Staunton) – No. 6 engineer
Chuck Day (Alexandria) – No. 33 engine tuner
Curtis Key (Chesapeake) – No. 40 general manager
Dan Mrak (Woodbridge) – No. 11 catch can man
Curtis Martin (Rocky Mount) – No. 23 rear tire changer
Scott Blackburn (Mechanicsville) – No. 16 rear tire changer
Mary Quay (Halifax) – No. 22 scorer
Kevin Riddle (Martinsville) – No. 5 pit support

Halfway: Chase Reaches Its Mid-Point
Five races are complete in the 10-race Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. The plot thickens – in a variety of directions. Check it out:

• Coming into Sunday’s event, the top three drivers – Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Burton and Greg Biffle – are separated by only 86 points.

• Jimmie Johnson has the points lead coming into a track where he has seriously excelled. Johnson has won four times at Martinsville since 2004. His chances of winning a third consecutive series championship look more realistic all the time. Only one driver has ever pulled off that trifecta – Cal Yarborough from 1976-78.

• Jeff Burton is in the sport’s top echelon – for the second time. The South Boston, Va. native was one of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series’ premier drivers from 1997-2000, posting 15 wins during that four-season span, driving for car owner Jack Roush. After a several-season slump, Burton has returned to prominence the last few years with owner Richard Childress, who he joined in 2004.

• Two weeks ago, the Chase made an always-precarious stop at the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series’ biggest track, 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway. This week, the Chase comes to the series’ smallest track, .526-mile Martinsville Speedway. Those two disparate layouts have one undeniable common denominator – unpredictability, due to close-quarters racing. A bump here, a spin there … and the standings could easily be altered drastically, this Sunday.

• When the Chase’s top seed, Kyle Busch, fell far behind after the first two Chase races, Carl Edwards looked like the smart pick to win the title. With five races to go, however, Edwards’ title chances are on the ropes. He crashed at Talladega and had engines problems this past week at Lowe’s Motor Speedway – resulting in finishes of 29th and 33rd. He comes into Martinsville fourth in points, 168 points behind Johnson. Edwards has one top 10 in eight races at Martinsville, and a Driver Rating of 72.4 over his last seven races there.

The Ratings Game: Hendrick Duo Top Martinsville Driver Rating
Clearly, Hendrick Motorsports has figured out Martinsville Speedway. Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson rank one-two in Driver Rating over the last seven races at Martinsville, one of the trickiest tracks in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Over that span, Gordon has an average finish of 2.3, while Johnson has a 3.0. Below are the top 10 drivers in pre-race Driver Rating at Martinsville. (x-denotes non-Chase driver)

Jeff Gordon 124.5
Jimmie Johnson 121.2
Tony Stewart 116.3
Dale Earnhardt Jr. 100.7
Denny Hamlin 100.6
Kyle Busch 93.3
x-Jamie McMurray 87.9
Kevin Harvick 87.4
x-Ryan Newman 85.8
Jeff Burton 85.3

NASCAR NATIONWIDE SERIES

Testing….1,2,3
This final open week of the season begins with the final “new car” test of the season, scheduled for Monday and Tuesday at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Seven teams are expected for the session. It’s the first test at an intermediate track for the car following the inaugural test at Richmond International Raceway in early September. Seven teams are expected to participate including Joe Gibbs Racing which did not test at Richmond last month. Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, Roush Fenway Racing (two teams), Richard Childress Racing, JD Motorsports and Michael Waltrip Racing tested at Richmond and are back at LMS.

Championship Battle: Bowyer Maintaining Series Lead
Clint Boywer’s lead in the series points over Carl Edwards remains at 196 points. Third-place Brad Keselowski is still in the hunt, 286 points behind. in third.

Championship Battle, Part 2: RCR Entry Takes the Lead
Clint Bowyer’s second-place finish this past week at Lowe’s Motor Speedway also helped his car owner, Richard Childress, take the lead in the car owner championship standings. The No. 2 entry driven by Bowyer has a one-point lead over the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota that has had a variety of drivers this year. Joey Logano drove the No. 20 at LMS, finishing 14th.

Record Chasing: Kyle Busch Eyes Ard
Kyle Busch’s win at Lowe’s Motor Speedway last Friday night was his ninth victory of the year in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. The series record is 10 set in 1983 by two-time series champion Sam Ard.
Busch is not expected to compete in the next event, at Memphis Motorsports Park on Oct. 25, but is planning on running in the following three events to close the season at Texas Motor Speedway, Phoenix International Raceway and Homestead-Miami Speedway. He won the fall race at Phoenix last year and also won at Texas and Phoenix earlier this year.

NASCAR CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES

Championship Battle Picks Back Up
Ron Hornaday Jr. reassumed the championship lead with a second-place finish at Talladega Superspeedway. Johnny Benson, who entered the season’s 20th race with a single-point advantage, is 39 points out after finishing 11th. The lead changed hands for the seventh time in 2008.

Hornaday’s lead is fourth-closest in series history following the season’s 20th race. Point leaders after 20 races have won the championship in three of the past four seasons and nine times in the series’ 13 previous years. The last 20-race leader failing to become champion was Dennis Setzer in 2005.

Trucks Back In Action
The series returns to action at Martinsville Speedway for the Kroger 200 on Oct. 18. This will be the season’s sixth and final short track race. The event begins a three weekend stretch on tracks visited earlier this year: Martinsville, Atlanta Motor Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway.

Setzer Looks for Four Pack
Dennis Setzer won Martinsville Speedway’s March 31 race, matching Mike Skinner’s record of three victories at the .526-mile track. Setzer attempts to become the series’ third different driver to win four races at a single track. (Brendan Gaughan and Todd Bodine, Texas Motor Speedway).

Contenders Looking for First Martinsville Win
Hornaday and Benson are among five short track winners in 2008. While neither Hornaday nor Benson has a victory at Martinsville despite a combined 22 starts, the two have victories at the tracks on the remainder of the schedule. Hornaday has wins at Atlanta, Texas, Phoenix and Homestead-Miami; Benson at Phoenix and Homestead-Miami.

New Faces Visit The Series
Several new names will be behind the wheel of some trucks this weekend: Hermie Sadler (No. 48 Chevrolet), Jamie McMurry (No. 09 Zaxby’s Ford), Kevin Harvick (No. 2 American Commercial Lines Chevrolet), Sam Hornish, Jr. (No. 4 Bobby Hamilton Racing Dodge).

Then, there are some series veterans set to strap into new rides. Terry Cook will pilot the No. 59 Team ASE/Harris Trucking Toyota for the remainder of the season while Jack Sprague will be in the No. 60 Wyler Racing Toyota.

JEFF BURTON
SCOTT MILLER
RICHARD CHILDRESS

KERRY THARP: We will roll into our post race press conference, our winning driver, Jeff Burton, driver of the No. 31 AT&T Mobility Chevrolet. Jeff, your thoughts on this victory here tonight.

JEFF BURTON: Well, obviously it’s a big night for us. Scott Miller did a great job, made that call there at the end. That’s what won the race. More importantly, they got the car, the last two runs, the best it was all night. We went up and passed Biffle for the lead, and never gave it back.

Came on pit road, the guys did a great job with fuel. We picked up spots on pit road pretty much all night tonight. Had the car right at the right time. It all worked out for us.

We’re real, real happy with that. Again, Scott made just a great call. I’m sure everybody was questioning it. Hell, I was questioning it. I was thinking, I don’t know if this will work or not (laughter). But it did. You know, it was a great call.

KERRY THARP: Scott, you did make some good calls out there tonight, some gutsy calls. Talk about them.

SCOTT MILLER: Well, it wasn’t without a lot of research. That has actually worked at this race for some other teams, most notably the one that finished second. So if we hadn’t have done it, they would likely have pulled off that same thing again.

You just go back and look at the history of these races, what’s worked for people down the stretch. You know, fortunately our car liked that set of tires that it had on it. It seemed like it was about as happy as it had been all night. So that gave us the option to do that. Had we had a set of tires on for that short run that wasn’t really what the car wanted, then we wouldn’t have had that option. But fortunately we had the right tires on at the right time, track conditions were right, made the right call. That’s what it takes to win these races today with the competitiveness throughout the field.

KERRY THARP: We’ll start with questions.

Q. Scott, do you have any idea how much was left? I know you were worried about a ‘green white checkered’. You cut it a hair close there, you said?

SCOTT MILLER: Yeah, I think I got a little bit anxious trying to get him out of the box, not lose the lead there. The numbers showed, you know, we had enough to make it with the laps we had remaining.

But I would have been really nervous on a ‘green white checkered’ deal. I was trying to give ourselves that flexibility. But I got a little quick on the trigger there sending him.

I won’t know how much it actually took till I get back over to the garage.

Q. Jeff, in Victory Lane you were saying all the other guys have a tremendous amount to lose, you have nothing to lose. Two years ago you left here with the points lead, then obviously whatever happened at Martinsville happened. Are you almost maybe in better position now than you were two years ago, being the hunter instead of the hunted?

JEFF BURTON: I’d rather have the lead. The only reason you wouldn’t want the lead is because you’re messing yourself up in your head. If somebody give us a hundred points a day, I’d take ‘em. Having a hundred points ain’t going to make us run poorly at Martinsville. That’s not going to determine our level of success. We’re going to do that.

There’s going to be some things that happen to every team that you can’t control. But the things that we can control, we set that destiny, not the points that we have.

So, you know, we’ve come into this things very relaxed, committed to having a good time, committed to having fun. We may have gotten a little too tight the first year because, you know, we never done it before. I didn’t think we were last year, but we got off to a slow start. This year we just said, You know what, we’re going to go, have a good time, race hard, we’re going to do the best we can, and it will be what it will be.

I truly believe that those guys that won all the races and were the guys that everybody picked, you know, those teams are in the position anything less than a championship and their year’s not going to be successful, it’s just that simple. We’re not in that case. Our deal is we’re just going to go have fun. Nobody’s picked us. You know, I don’t blame them. You should have picked Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards. You still should. Why wouldn’t you?

We’re just having fun. We’re paying attention to us. We’re not going to get caught up in the point thing. We’re paying attention to it, but we’re not going to get caught up in it. If we don’t win the championship, our year’s not a failure. We weren’t one of the teams that set the bar up there. We’re just laying it out there, having a good time.

Whatever happens, we look at each other at the end of the race, we all know we put a lot of effort into it. If we don’t do well, we’ll go back and try to do better next time. That’s how we’re going to approach it. That’s how we’ve done it up to this point. That’s how we’re going to do it till the end of it.

Q. Jeff, in Victory Lane you said you were hanging it out. As one of the older drivers, how do you enjoy being able to hang it out, to go for wins?

JEFF BURTON: No one’s ever proven to me why you can’t do at 41 what you could do at 23. If you convince yourself you can’t, then you can’t. Mark Martin in a (indiscernible) and see what that 21 year old thinks when he gets back out of it. It is what it is.

We’re lucky to be in a sport that you can be successful in your 40s. You know, you can convince yourself you’re too old to do it. Trust me, a lot of people will try to convince you you’re too old to do it. But with age comes a lot of advantages, too. And we’ll try to take those advantages every chance we get.

KERRY THARP: We’ll take some comments from team owner Richard Childress. Richard, have to feel good about this victory tonight?

RICHARD CHILDRESS: It was a great run. I stayed up at the condo and watched it there because I was a little under the weather.

Jeff, he just kept digging and digging. That race team just kept making the car a little better, a little better. When the time came, Scott made a great call at the end to take nothing but fuel.

It’s just a great night. It was one of the things, to win a championship you’ve got to win races. So I’m proud of these guys, everything they did, that whole race team.

JEFF BURTON: Scott’s not that young either, by the way. He’s a helluva lot older than I am (laughter).

RICHARD CHILDRESS: Someone asked me a while ago about age, why I pick drivers not in their golden years but in their good years, I call ‘em. But Dale Earnhardt in 2000, we finished second. I think he was 49, 48. We were going to win the championship the following year.

So age, like Jeff said, is just only in your mind. If you take care of your body like Jeff does physically, your mind will be good.

KERRY THARP: We’ll continue with questions.

Q. Jeff, we’ve written about four or five times this year about who’s peaking. You have run strong in the Chase, you pop through and win. Do you sense your team peaking a little bit now? When you were going at it with the 48, with the 9 coming after you, were you prepared to do what you had to do? Would maybe the never rough driving Jeff Burton have done what he had to do in those situations?

JEFF BURTON: I don’t change the way I drive because of the situation I’m in. I’m going to drive hard, but I’m going to race clean. That’s what I’m gonna do. I’ve tried to stick with that my whole life. I’m not going to intentionally change it now.

So, you know, I was prepared to do what I had to do to win the race and drive as hard as I could drive. But I’m not prepared to lay a fender to somebody and knock ‘em out to win the race. By the way, doing that means that they probably won’t do that to you, too. So, you know, it was a two way street.

I’ve won plenty of races because I had that consideration returned to me. You know, tonight, Jimmie was on the inside of me. He could have easily I could have easily got pointed in the wrong direction. You know, that’s how I try to race. I make mistakes. But I try to race like that.

You know, as far as peaking, you guys have heard me say this before, you know, momentum I think is a highly overused word. Momentum doesn’t create success. Success creates momentum. It’s the other way around. You know, a lot of people think there’s this magical swirling ball above their head. If it’s swirling in the right direction, they’re going to win races. It doesn’t work like that.

A good effort, dedication, skill level, all those things are what make you win races, and doing that at the right time. People that have momentum have momentum because they’re doing a good job. They don’t have momentum because, you know, the great ball above their head says, Okay, now you can win. You create that. It doesn’t just happen.

Q. Jeff, the last two years Jimmie said it’s been consistency, wins, top fives. Tonight you showed that if you gamble and win you can also challenge the guy who is No. 1. For the last five races, is gambling for yourself or other drivers going to be a major factor that we may not have seen the last couple years?

JEFF BURTON: No, we’re going to race like we’ve always raced. We’re going to make the calls that are smart. Scott did a great job tonight. He did research and made a decision based on what he believed was the right thing to do to win the race. I guess you can call that gambling. I don’t know. To me gambling is doing something where you have no idea what the end result’s going to be. That’s not Scott’s personality. That’s not my personality. That’s a little bit of his personality (smiling).

But, you know, Scott and I are very conservative in the way we work together. Our gambling is probably a different level than some other people’s.

Q. Would you elaborate a little bit more, you said you were concerned when Scott made the call. You weren’t sure it would work?

JEFF BURTON: Well, if we would have put four on, I wouldn’t have been sure that would have worked either (laughter).

You know, these races are funny, man. Everybody tonight, when they made the last stop, thought they were doing the right thing. You know, nobody did something they thought was wrong. They all definitely thought it was the right thing to do. You don’t know what the result’s going to be.

If we put four on, I’d have been really nervous because we were never good on four tires. We were never good on new tires. I would have been really nervous about that. I thought we were going to put two on is what I thought was going to be happen. To be perfectly honest, we hadn’t had two on all night long. Who knows what would have happen.

At the end of the days, doing none, as silly as that sounds, may have been the least gamble of all. I don’t think about those calls. That’s this man’s job. I drive the racecar and tell him what it’s doing, what it’s not doing. They make those calls. I don’t get in the way of it.

Q. Jeff, real simple: how important was clean air?

JEFF BURTON: It’s really big. I mean, it’s important for everybody. I mean, you could see whoever got out front, you know, they ran the best. Being at the back of the pack’s really difficult. It’s real hard to pass back there. It’s really weird. In the old cars, you’d get tight behind people. These cars you actually get loose behind them. I do. I get looser behind people than I do kind of crazy, I get loose behind people.

We want clean air every chance we get. But a slow car in clean air is still not going to win the race. The reason we won the race tonight is because Scott did a great job of getting the car fast. Before we did no tires, we went up there and we passed the leader for the lead. We took the lead, came on pit road with the lead, left pit road with the lead, and obviously won the race.

All that hinges on is having a fast racecar. It wasn’t a 10 lap dash to the end, 30 laps or whatever. It was quite a bit of racing.

Q. Jeff, at any point when Jimmie was alongside of you, did you just kind of have the feeling his car didn’t have it to get by you at that point? I know you’re focused on what you guys do, but it seems like the 48 hasn’t had its Mulligan yet where everybody else in the Chase has. Is that still yet to come for them?

JEFF BURTON: Well, I’d have to put us in that category, too. I mean, honestly, Clint, the 48, the 31 are probably the three teams that haven’t had the bad day yet. So, you know, we’ve had some good fortune, too. We certainly can’t argue about that. We’ve had good fortune.

So what I thought was going on with the 48 is he was too loose underneath me. I thought he’d keep running and get tighter, get tightened back up, be able to make a run back at me again. I kind of found that middle groove. I don’t know if he got slower, but we actually got faster as the run went on. We started going faster. But I thought he would make another run at us.

Q. Jeff, you said that you’re more relaxed this time than you were in ’06 when you were leading. What was ’06 like for you? Of your whole career, do you feel that’s the year that it slipped away more than any other year?

JEFF BURTON: No, not really. There’s been a couple years. That’s certainly one of them. That’s one of the three years that I thought I really had an honest shot to win a championship, and didn’t get it done.

I don’t know. I mean, there was a lot going on that year. It was our first year in the Chase. We had worked really hard. It was Scott’s first year, our first year together. It was my second year at Childress. We had been through a lot of changes, a lot of stuff going on at the shop, trying to make things better. Being a small part of Richard Childress Racing, we had both teams in the Chase. Just a lot going on, you know what I mean? It was kind of like our first shot at it.

It had been a while since I had been in the mix. So we were getting accustomed to all that again. As relaxed as we wanted to be, you know, I wasn’t as relaxed as I thought I could be. You know what I mean? I was saying all the right things, I was doing all the right things, I thought. But at the end of the day, I was still kind of tensed up about it.

So lesson learned and we won’t do that again.

Q. The other two years?

JEFF BURTON: The other two years were years at Roush. One we finished third. On the last lap of the last race of the year, Earnhardt passing people, got by ‘em, put us to third instead of second. Whatever year that was. Then there was one year, I don’t even remember the year, but there was one year that, I don’t know, we just broke a lot of motors, had a lot of mechanical problems. We won a bunch of races. We had consistently the fastest car, but we didn’t have the reliability to get it done.

So those two years in particular stand out.

Q. Scott, being such a big fan of this Car of Tomorrow, there was some talk about this being sort of a next generation or a new kind of chassis, some stuff you have done lighter. How much work went into this car? Was it a car you worked specifically on for this race?

SCOTT MILLER: Well, not specifically for this race, per se. Every time we build another car, we just try to do a better job at it. I mean, that’s how you improve your product, is just evaluate everything you’re doing and just do all those little things that you can do to build a better mousetrap, so to speak, just trying to make things any piece that goes on the car you can make a little bit lighter to help the CG, all the other technical aspects of the car, every time we build a new one we try to do a little bit better job at all that fine detail work.

This car tonight, it was its first race. First run on the track was the other night here at the test. So, you know, it’s worked out pretty good. Hopefully it will serve us well a couple more times down the stretch here.

Q. Jeff, on Thursday you noted Jimmie Johnson’s two best racetracks were this one and Martinsville. The strategy would be that you had to beat him, make him earn it. You did that exactly that tonight. Does it mean more to do it that way, to beat a guy dominating here? Can you do it again at Martinsville?

JEFF BURTON: Let’s enjoy this one first (laughter).

They’ve been incredible at Martinsville. I mean, Hendrick in general, between Jeff and Jimmie, they’ve been I mean, give them the clock. It seems like they’ve been unbelievably fast.

It is rewarding. We didn’t come here to race Jimmie Johnson. We came here to try to beat 42 other guys. Jimmie Johnson and that team are the point leaders, and they certainly set the bar pretty high. But we didn’t come here to focus on them. We didn’t come here to focus on the 18 or anybody. We just focus on us.

We understand that we’ve got to beat them. But the only way we can beat them is for us to pay attention what we’re doing. You know, it’s really rewarding when you can do that because these don’t happen a whole lot.

So it is rewarding because they’ve done a great job. But it’s more rewarding internally for what we’ve accomplished rather than the feeling we get for knocking them off their perch.

Q. Scott, Jeff Burton last night in the Nationwide race decided to take four tires. You found he wasn’t able to get back through the pack in time. Did that enter in your decision?

SCOTT MILLER: I mean, a little bit I would say. But mostly just history, you know, here at this track, on mile and a half’s in general. The strategy that we did tonight has worked for others. Like I said, the car was happy on that set of tires. So it made sense to play it that way, leave a set of tires on that the car seemed to be happy with there at the end.

Q. Scott, you and Greg Biffle were the only two cars that ran in the top 10 for the entire race. How did you keep the car ahead of the pack that much and how many changes did you have to make throughout the night to be able to stay on top of it that well?

SCOTT MILLER: We didn’t have to make big adjustments tonight fortunately. We started off a little bit on the tight side. We got it free there in the middle of the race. We were really just working with air pressure and stagger in the tires.

Fortunately the track conditions came to what our racecar liked there toward the end of the event. We’ve been on the other side of that at times where we’ve been pretty good early and haven’t been able to put the pieces together at the end when it’s time to win. So fortunately tonight the shoe was on the other foot and we were good when we needed to be good.

Q. Jeff, this will be your first multiple win season since 2001. When you look back, do you think you’ve had more opportunities to be in Victory Lane this season compared to others or did you have as many other opportunities in recent seasons?

JEFF BURTON: You have to excuse me, I have to think about that a minute. I don’t remember earlier in the year feeling like one got away from us. I mean, I don’t think so. We hadn’t been a team that’s led a tremendous amount of laps. I feel like when we’ve had the opportunity, we’ve pretty much been able to take advantage of it.

What our anxiety has been about is not having enough opportunities, ’cause you’re going to not succeed more than you do. We’ve been working hard to try to give ourselves more opportunities. But the opportunity’s presented itself a couple times, maybe three or four times this year, and we’ve done it twice. So I think we’ve done a good job of executing.

Q. Richard, how do you handle Jeff’s success and the other two guys in the Chase, keeping them all together going into Martinsville and the rest of the season?

RICHARD CHILDRESS: I’m a fortunate owner to have three drivers that work so close together and work good together. They’re as happy for Jeff as I am tonight because, sure, they would have wanted to win. But we can all talk about things and talk through it. So I think they’re happy, too.

Q. Jeff, you’re 69 back, Biffle is 86 back. Nobody else is in a position to lead. As this thing gets deeper, there are fewer guys at the front, how much easier does it make you having to race two or three guys for a championship versus five or eight or ten?

JEFF BURTON: I guess it makes it easier. Obviously it’s less people to race. But they’re not going to race you any less hard. You know what I mean? Matt Kenseth obviously has had some bad luck, but he’s not gonna go to Martinsville and not try to win because he’s not in the Chase. So we still have to race him. That’s how it should be. The guys that aren’t in the Chase or that have had trouble and aren’t going to be able to win, or doesn’t look like they’re going to be able to win, they still have the same right to the racetrack that everybody else does. So you still got to go race ‘em.

Again, we just aren’t going to get caught up in watching the 48 and watching the 07. There’s a lot that’s going to happen between now and then. I mean, I know everybody keeps saying this, everybody wants to give somebody a trophy right now. Just hold on for a little while. We’re halfway through this thing. Anything can happen. And, by the way, it probably will happen.

Q. You were talking about how hard it is and how rare these wins are. 10 years ago you were going to be the guy, right? You were winning a lot, having a ton of success. I wonder if winning now feels any different for you? How does it feel different? How much more do you respect and appreciate it?

JEFF BURTON: I appreciated it then because Mark Martin was my teammate and he taught me to appreciate it. Mark Martin helped raise me as a racecar driver at this level. He emphasized to me, over and over and over, that you never know when you’re going to win another race. You win a race, it might be your last. I used to laugh at him. Not about me winning, but I used to laugh at him thinking he might not ever win again. I thought that was hilarious.

But it’s hard. Ryan Newman and I had this conversation before the race. He and I were obviously they’re not having a great year. They’re struggling. I said, Man, I know it’s been hard, but keep digging. He made the point saying, You know, when you come in, and things go well, you just take for granted that’s how it is. Not until it gets taken away do you realize, Wow, this is hard.

So they’re all special. I definitely have a greater appreciation for it.

The thing that stands out in my mind is we left Pocono one day, and Earnhardt was struggling in ’99 I guess it would have been. There was a sticker on the back of somebody’s van going down the interstate. It said, Earnhardt, time to cash in the 401(k). Now, here is a seven time champion that had won however many races they’d won. The next year went and almost won a championship.

So I hear today about Gordon. Jeff Gordon, he can’t drive any more. Guess what? Jeff Gordon can drive. I said in here the other day, it’s ludicrous to think he had a baby so now he don’t want to win any more. I mean, it’s insane.

It means a lot to me Richard believing in me, asking me to be a part of his corporate company. You know, that means a lot to me. I drive every lap with that appreciation. There was a time in my career where everybody wanted me. Then it wasn’t long after that there weren’t many people that wanted me. So that’s a humbling experience to go through. I guess we’ll all go through it at some point in our life. But it’s a humbling experience.

Part of the reason when I win a race I don’t get cocky and think everything is going to be great in the world, I know there’s a lot of challenges ahead of us. But I appreciate this win for what it is today. Come Monday, we’ll start getting ready for Martinsville.

Q. Richard, you’ve seen a lot of these championships won. How does Burton look? Does he look like he’s in championship form right now?

RICHARD CHILDRESS: I think they’re definitely going to be a contender. I know the work that they’re putting into it, everybody’s putting into it. So I really truly feel this could be the year that he’s a contender up for the championship.

Q. It’s cool you guys are having fun, but as you get closer and closer to being realistically in the Chase, is it hard, don’t you start strategizing more, looking at points?

JEFF BURTON: I’ve thought a lot about this over the last two years. What the hell’s not to have fun about? Honestly. We’re not curing cancer here. We’re not trying to solve world hunger. We’re racing. You know what I mean? I mean, when I was seven years old I wanted to drive a racecar. I’m 41 and I do this for a living. Why shouldn’t this be fun? We’re going to argue and fight and disagree. But at the end of the day, the reason we got into this thing was to have fun. That’s why we got in it.

It’s really easy to start focusing on the business side of things, focusing on points, all that stuff. I went this morning with my son, he’s seven years old, sorry, just turned eight years old. We went and raced quarter midgets. We did that for fun, that’s why we did it. That’s what we’re going to do here. We’re adults. We have a job that we love. What do we have to be afraid of? We’re not going to be afraid of not succeeding. We’re just going to have fun, go race hard, enjoy ourselves, learn from our mistakes.

I’m not saying we’re not going to hold ourselves accountable. We’re going to do that. But we’re going to do it in a way that’s constructive and we’re going to do it in a way that’s enjoyable.

If we can’t do this, we ought to be doing something else. We live blessed lives. There’s no reason not to have fun. I’m not worried about it. I’m telling you the God’s honest truth. I’m not worried about it. My wife is sitting right there. She can tell you, we’ve had no conversations about points. We’re just going to go race and have a good time.

Q. You said earlier you couldn’t remember a race like you felt you gave away. Martinsville in the spring, you finished third, led within the last hundred laps. Is Martinsville the one? Can you talk about how you feel like you have run there the last year and a half?

JEFF BURTON: That race, I thought that was last year (laughter). I don’t remember the spring race at Martinsville. I don’t remember it. I go back and watch videos this week. But right now I know we finished third because somebody told me that the other day. I don’t remember where we qualified. I remember nothing about Martinsville right now. So I can’t really answer.

I thought, the comment, was in the fall of last year. You’re saying it was this year. That shows you what I know.

I do remember, because of that, if that was the spring race, not the fall race, that we were good, we had a fast car. We were in position to win a race. But a couple people got better than we did late. I do remember that. But, I’m sorry, I thought that was last year.

Q. You talk about the fun atmosphere you’re having. How much do you not see that in the garage area?

JEFF BURTON: Well, I mean, I don’t think everybody has forgotten that. This is a great place to be, honestly. There’s a lot of great people in here. Y’all do the same thing. Y’all complain about your job, too. We all do that from time to time. It’s human nature.

But for the most part I think that everybody kind of enjoys themselves. But the stress level can get turned up pretty high. If your whole world revolves around this, it doesn’t go well, what’s gonna happen? This isn’t my whole world. It’s not Richard’s whole world. I don’t want it to be my team’s whole world. When they’re doing this, I want it to be the most important thing in their life. But when they’re not doing this, I don’t want it to be in their life. I want them to have freedom to spend time with their family, Richard to spend time with his grandchildren. That’s what life’s all about. But when you’re doing this, you’ve got to be doing this, nothing else. You can’t mix the two while you’re trying to do it.

You know, I think this is a good place to be. I mean, a lot of people have fun dealing with it.

Q. Jeff, in Victory Lane you made a special point to thank the fans that came out with everything that’s happened with the stock market. Do you wish they had as much fun watching you fight off Kasey Kahne as you had fighting him off?

JEFF BURTON: I hope so. In the economic times we have now, families are making a real sacrifice to come to the races. Honestly we probably all have taken that for granted, too, because we’ve had so many great years of stands full and all that. This is a hard time for people. People have to make real decisions about God, I sound like a politician (laughter). I’m not sure which I sound like. They all sound the same.

But it’s hard for ‘em. To be able to come and bring a family to the race is expensive. So if we can’t put on a great show for ‘em, then that would be a disappointing thing.

Q. With clean air being so vitally important, are you surprised more people didn’t just take fuel to try to get track position or would it just work with your car?

JEFF BURTON: I think some people put two on. I mean, I think some people just did two thinking that was going to be they didn’t do four because they were going to lose track position. They did two to try to gain the track position or not lose what they had.

We had run 30 laps. I’m guessing. You know better than I do. We had run about 30 laps on that set of tires. It was a lot of laps to not be putting tires on, honestly. When he said, Fuel only, I thought, Wow, we’ve run a lot. So I think the track position game for most people was doing two rather than gas.

The 9 car, I’m not sure what he did. I think he only did fuel ’cause he came I never saw the 9 car all night. Next thing I know we’re racing for the win. So I think most people probably had the same opinion I had when he called for no tires. I thought, That probably won’t work.

Q. Richard, in light of the economy, are you anticipating any changes in the way you do business? Do you see any changes coming next year in terms of how all the owners will be running things?

RICHARD CHILDRESS: Well, I think we all, no matter what business you’re in today, you have to look at running a smarter business. We won’t cut anything to cut our competition. But, yeah, we’ll have to look at other ways to save the money, put the money where it’s going to be the most effective, and that’s in the competition side.

KERRY THARP: Gentlemen, congratulations.

An interview with:

KASEY KAHNE
KURT BUSCH
JIMMIE JOHNSON

KERRY THARP: We’ll start with our post race press conference, tonight’s Bank of America 500 here at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. We have our third place finisher, Kurt Busch, driver of the No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge, and our points leader, Jimmie Johnson, driving the No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet.

I’ll start with you, Kurt. Certainly a strong performance out of that No. 2 car tonight.

KURT BUSCH: Yeah, it was. It was great to be able to see the front and stiff a little bit of the lead of the race with 25 to go. It was a good feeling to know that it was right there and we ended up with a solid finish, racing in the top five, something that we hadn’t done as of late.

But give credit to Penske Racing, the overall group effort. We put the 77 setup in. We put some 12 car geometry in the front. We adjusted on it like the 2 car knows how to do. The Penske Racing effort to me is showing signs of communication and strength and moving forward.

Secondly, it was the second race for the R6 engine. I felt confident it hit with the power that it gave me and the reliability that it’s showing. So just an overall great group effort from Penske. Happy to finish third with the Miller Lite Dodge.

KERRY THARP: We also have our second place finisher, Kasey Kahne. You certainly came close to getting Trifecta here at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Your thoughts?

KASEY KAHNE: We kind of battled with the car all night, kept battling, got our lap back. Got up to about seventh. Just took right sides there at the end. We got some good track position. My car was changing a ton throughout the runs. I would start tight, start loose; it would go opposite throughout the runs.

It was a good run. I’m glad we finished where we did. We had a nice try to catch the 31. He was fast. We tried, but just didn’t get to him. But it was still a good run for our Budweiser Dodge. First top five in a while, so that feels pretty good.

KERRY THARP: Jimmie Johnson, our points leader, I believe for the third consecutive week. Your thoughts about how the race unfolded out there tonight, Jimmie?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: First two thirds was good for us, then we were junk at the end. Tried to get up there. Took a lot of risks tonight trying to get as many points as I could on the 16 and trying to hang with that 31 and get by him. Damn near threw it away a couple times. Early in the race we had some pretty big moments as well.

Just hate the last third of the race. We got out in left field and couldn’t get it back.

KERRY THARP: Questions now for these three.

Q. Jimmie, as Jeff Burton had kind of lurked there right near, had you noticed him when you looked at the standings week by week? Did you wonder if he was going to pop through and get a win? Also, how frustrating was it to not quite get it done in that duel, and did that cause your car to get worse to fall back like that?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: No, the duel, I was just trying to get it done when I had those fresh right side tires. That’s what put me on pace with him. The old characteristics showed back up in the car, what we were dealing with.

But for sure it’s frustrating not being able to complete the pass. He didn’t leave me a lot of room. There’s two times on the entry to one where I was dead, one into three and the other into one actually. Thought I was going to clean us both out. Fortunately that didn’t happen. But I was certainly frustrated slipping back through the field. You don’t know important those points are going to be till the end of the year. Watching each guy go by, counting them as they go by, is no fun.

What was the first question?

Q. Had you noticed Jeff week by week lurking there close to the standings under the radar?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: He’s always been on my radar screen. I think in ’06 he led most of the Chase. He’s been doing this a long time. He knows the tracks. He’s revitalized RCR over the years. I think we can all give him a lot of credit for the turnaround RCR has had. On track he’s smart. He knows how to race hard. He’s been out there a long time. He knows how to race and get points.

He’s always been on my radar.

Q. Jimmie, are you really confident now going into Martinsville? You’ve won there before.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: I feel good about Martinsville. Right now I’m pissed about tonight. But, you know, tomorrow, Tuesday, whatever it is, be ready for Martinsville. I think we’ll be real good over there. It’s been a great track to us. I’m excited to go there. Hopefully we can take advantage of going to a good track.

Q. Kasey, did your car have the new engine here tonight also?

KASEY KAHNE: No. We had the engine that we’ve had for a while. We’re still working with that one. It ran great tonight as well. So it was a good night for all Dodge engines, it looked like.

Q. Kurt, it sounded like you were having some sort of brake problems with a third of the race to go. How did those get resolved or did they?

KURT BUSCH: Yeah, felt like my pedal effort, it was getting too long. It was almost bouncing off the floorboard. To me that means the car isn’t handling all that well. I had to slow it down too much on corner entry.

At that point that’s when the fronts seemed to be glazing over and the rears started to grab and get more aggressive. That makes you loose in. So I had to pump the pedal twice each straightaway, just hope the brakes stayed underneath it.

We made two adjustments at the end that allowed our car to free up a little bit, that way we didn’t need as much brake to run the bottom side of the racetrack.

But something with the COT, it’s not all that efficient with brake cooling and radiator cooling. Things get plugged up in the front. There’s quite a few things that are wrong with the front end of the car. Sometimes you have to just commit to running brake ducts, keeping the brake cool, even though you’re only at a mile and a half.

Q. Kurt, you ran the engine at Kansas. It was more handling issues that slowed you up there. What kind of feedback do you get on that engine or can you tell after two races?

KURT BUSCH: The two races have shown consistent signs of real low water temperature and high oil temperature. That’s something that we’re not used to. Normally they’re within 20, 30 degrees. Both races they’ve had 50 degrees of split. So that allows us to run more tape on the car, to let the radiator temp get warmer, but then the oil temp seems to be shooting up with that. That just makes it more uncomfortable in the car.

Ideally you want the water to be warmer and the oil is going to be shooting up towards 270. To me that’s a bit warm.

Then this time around we didn’t have any water issues. We were squirting out water last time even though we were running cool. We’ve made progress in just two races with this engine and it shows some sign of durability. We need that all important more power.

Q. Kurt, can you talk about what kind of horsepower is it giving you? Where is it helping you on the track?

KURT BUSCH: They’ve showed me the dyno curves. It shows pluses in all rpm ranges: low, medium and high. Maybe it noses over at the very high end, 9600, 9700. With the new gear rule that NASCAR has given us, that isn’t a very important rpm range any more. So I’m still looking for that low end torque. I want this grunt coming off the corner when you’re about the 8000 to 8500 range. So we’re still pushing to get that, and hopefully we’ll get some more R&D testing done on the new R6 engine so we can put it in our restrictor plate program as well.

Q. Jimmie, we talk about consistency, we talk about top fives. Today was a gamble. The guy wins on a gamble. Is a gamble what it’s going to take to beat you from this point on, being the points leader?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Hell, I don’t know. I think that it might have been a gamble for the 31. I’m not sure it was that big of a risk. We took fuel only earlier in the race. If you’re stuff’s working right, and you’re on, you know…

I think it was less risk than it looked like. It wasn’t like Atlanta or something where we didn’t take tires and you really need ‘em. He had plenty of speed. They took off and ran away from us.

Q. Jimmie, I don’t think I’ve seen you this pissed in a while. Obviously the guys passing you there in the end, falling back in the field, are you upset with that specifically or the way the car was handling at the end? Is something that frustrated you the most?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: It’s probably all of it rolled up into one. Had to take a lot of chances today to get the result that we did. I don’t like putting myself in that situation. Almost lost the car a handful of times. So that frustration of being on pins and needles out there, trying to run as hard as you can, watching positions slip by and things like that, all just keeps adding up.

Really the last third of the race, it was like that. So I’ve got a good hour of being upset in me. Take a little while to get it out of my system (laughter).

Q. Kasey, what is it about this place? You can come in here riding high or struggling and you always seem to run so well.

KASEY KAHNE: I think for one, Kenny Francis, Gillett Evernham, we have good setups, every time we came here four or five years, the cars have been good. You run well, you kind of figure out what you’re looking for, what you want the car to do in the corners and things. We’ve had a lot of great luck, too. We put on two tires at the right time. We’ve taken zero at the right time. We got the Lucky Dog at the right time, which puts on new tires. The caution comes out 10 laps later, half the guys pit, we’re still on fairly new tires and up front.

I mean, it’s just things have worked out good for us here. We’ll keep working to try to find ways to be this good at other tracks. I mean, that’s the main thing. We run pretty strong here all the time. We have to figure out how to be this strong at other racetracks.

I think our team’s doing a good job. We’re working hard to keep getting better. Hopefully be able to contend for a championship at some point down the road.

Q. Jimmie, looking at the points standings, there’s two other guys within 150 points of you. Fourth place is 168, Carl. You came back from 146 in 2006. How comfortable does it make you? Do you feel you’ve narrowed the field to you, Jeff and Greg?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: You know, in some ways I do. But it’s such a relative situation. If us top three guys have problems, those guys are right back in it. As we get down to fewer races on the schedule left, I think that margin becomes more comfortable.

That’s a decent margin. Heck, we’re only halfway through it. I was more than that and down after Talladega it was. But it took other guys having problems to let me into it.

So if we go clean, that’s going to be really tough for the 99 to overcome. But if we all have trouble, then he’s right back in it.

KERRY THARP: Guys, thanks so much.

FastScripts by ASAP Sports

CONCORD, N.C.—Despite Jimmie Johnson’s fast start to the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Jeff Burton hasn’t been willing to concede the trophy to the two-time defending champion.

On Saturday night, Burton gave more than lip service to that notion, holding off Kasey Kahne to win the Bank of America 500 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. The victory, Burton’s second of the season and the 21st of his career, vaulted the driver of the No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet into second place in the standings, 69 points behind Johnson with five races left in the Chase.

“He (Burton) has always been on my radar,” said Johnson, who fought late-race handling problems and faded to sixth at the finish after battling Burton for the lead early in the final 33-lap green-flag run.

Burton had enough speed to hold off Kasey Kahne, who crossed the finish line .946 seconds behind the winner. Kurt Busch ran third, followed by Kyle Busch and Jamie McMurray.

Johnson finished one spot ahead of Greg Biffle, who remained third in the standings. Ignition problems cost Carl Edwards 16 laps early in the race and dropped him to 33rd at the finish. Edwards fell from second to fourth in points, 168 behind Johnson.

“We’re halfway (to the end of the Chase),”Burton said after climbing from his car. “It’s way too early to be handing anyone the trophy. It’s our job to put ourselves in position to go to Homestead (the season’s final race) with a chance to win.”

Burton kept the lead with a gas-and-go on his final pit stop on Lap 298, a call made by crew chief Scott Miller.

“That’s what won the race for us,” said Burton, who held the lead for the final 57 of 334 laps after passing Biffle for the top spot on Lap 278.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. cut a tire and slammed into the Turn 2 wall on lap 103. He finished 36th, 45 laps down.

“No warning — it just popped,” Earnhardt said. “I was running about 90 percent really, not running hard at all. The car was handling pretty good, just popped a tire up there … might have run over something.

“It is pretty disappointing, because I was just taking it pretty easy. We ran real, real hard here in the spring and worked our car too hard. I was just going to take care of the racecar; that was what I was trying to do. We just got some bad luck there.”

Clean air was king at Lowe’s, where Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch and Brian Vickers all opened leads of more than seven seconds at various points in the race. Stewart’s handling suffered in traffic, however, and he finished 11th but remained seventh in the Chase standings, 228 points behind Johnson.

Vickers suffered a hard brush with the Turn 4 wall on Lap 252 and fell to 18th at the finish, one lap down.

For Edwards, the end to the fifth Chase week couldn’t have come soon enough, after he scuffled with Kevin Harvick in the Nationwide garage on Thursday and spent the next two days fending off questions about the fracas.

“There’s only one thing to do, and that’s to learn from everything this week,” Edwards said. “That’s for sure. I can guarantee you that if I had the week to do over again, the last seven days would be a lot different. But you just have to do what you think is right at the time and move on after that.

“Today’s race didn’t help at all. That car right there is a great racecar. I don’t know if we’ve ever had the problem that we had there. It was something with the ignition system, so it’s very frustrating, but nobody got hurt at least, I guess.”

The 10-race sponsorship package will be divided amongst four popular Unilever brands – Hellmann’s® mayonnaise, Ragu® pasta sauce, Klondike® ice cream, and Lipton® tea. Three different drivers will compete in select races in the Unilever-branded No. 5 car – two-time series champion Earnhardt Jr., all-time wins leader Mark Martin, and current Raybestos Rookie-Of-The-Year contender Landon Cassill. Martin and Earnhardt Jr. alone combine for 70 NASCAR Nationwide Series victories.

“Unilever is thrilled to associate our brands with two of racing’s most popular and respected drivers, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mark Martin, and with one of the sport’s top rising talents, Landon Cassill,” said Marc Shaw, Director of Integrated Marketing for Unilever. “By partnering with Dale Jr. and JR Motorsports, we are expanding an already successful history with NASCAR – especially with a driver whose popularity transcends motor racing with wide appeal and recognition. We are extremely pleased that Dale, Mark and Landon will represent our brands in the 2009 NASCAR Nationwide Series.”

The select races that will feature Unilever brands on the No. 5 Chevrolet are still being finalized. However, it is confirmed that Earnhardt Jr. will kick off the partnership by piloting the No. 5 Hellmann’s Chevy in the season-opening race at Daytona International Speedway on Feb. 14. Five of Earnhardt Jr.’s 22 NASCAR Nationwide Series victories have come at the 2.5-mile superspeedway.

“I am really excited to partner with Unilever and continue what we’ve been able to accomplish with JR Motorsports,” said Earnhardt Jr., who co-owns the No. 5 team with Rick Hendrick. “In a short amount of time, we’ve gone from an upstart, single-car team in the NASCAR Nationwide Series to having two highly competitive teams that won races in 2008. When we merged our Nationwide Series operations with Hendrick Motorsports last year, it really elevated our program to the next level. Having Unilever come on board will help us continue that momentum.”

The 2009 campaign will mark the second consecutive year that Earnhardt Jr., Martin and Cassill share driving duties in the No. 5 Chevrolet. Martin, whose 48 Nationwide Series victories are the most of any driver, kick-started JR Motorsports’ breakout season with a win in the Sam’s Town 300 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 1. It was the first of two wins achieved by the No. 5 team this year, and the first of four that JR Motorsports has celebrated among its two full-time teams thus far in 2008.

Like Martin, Cassill has played a contributing role in the team’s success this year. The 19-year-old driver from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, scored a career-best finish of sixth at Gateway International Raceway on July 19, and he won the pole for the June 28 race at New Hampshire International Speedway. Cassill currently holds a one-point lead in the Raybestos Rookie of the Year standings.

“We know that NASCAR fans crave real food that tastes great and is made from simple, ingredients; we’re all about real food for real fans,” said James Fish, Senior Brand Manager for Hellmann’s and Best Foods. “One of the main platforms for our involvement in NASCAR has been to search for and reward ‘real’ fans, and we plan to continue and even expand our campaign with Dale Jr., Mark Martin, and Landon Cassill, three NASCAR drivers who are real in every sense of the word.”

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Get all you can.

That’s this week’s mantra for Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup competitors, whose ranks were stirred last Sunday at unpredictable Talladega Superspeedway and whose opportunities for advancement are dwindling.

Saturday night’s Bank of America 500 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway may represent an ideal follow-up; it’s proven ground for many of the 12 teams battling for the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series title, and also represents the opportunity to rebound, or establish momentum.

The fifth race in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Saturday’s event marks the halfway point, and with seven of the 12 Chase participants switching positions after Talladega, those out front likely have eyes on rear-view mirrors.

Only 99 points separate the top four Chase drivers, who all retained their spots; only 27 points separate second from fourth.

Reigning and two-time series champion Jimmie Johnson (No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet) extended his lead over second-place Carl Edwards (No. 99 Aflac Ford) to 72 points.

Edwards leads third-place and Roush Fenway Racing teammate Greg Biffle (No. 16 3M Ford) by five points, while Biffle leads fourth-place Jeff Burton (No. 31 AT&T Mobility Chevrolet) by 22 points.

Johnson will be formidable at LMS, where he has five career wins and a series-high Driver Rating of 116.5. He’s attempting to become only the second driver in NASCAR history to win three consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup titles. Cale Yarborough (1976-78) is the other driver to do so.

Saturday also marks Johnson’s 250th career start.

“I’m fortunate to be able to do what I love for a living,” he said. “I’m so thankful for the success this team has had. I also know that I wouldn’t be where I am today without the hard work of (crew chief) Chad (Knaus) and my guys. This sport is a total team effort and I am so lucky to have such an awesome team.”

Other Bank of America 500 storylines:

Four-time series champion Jeff Gordon (No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet) is the defending winner of Saturday’s Bank of America 500. It’s also the last time he won. Gordon, currently eighth in the Chase standings, hasn’t had a winless season since his rookie year of 1992.

Edwards, Biffle and teammate Matt Kenseth (No. 17 Carhartt Ford) all hope to right themselves at LMS, after getting caught in a Lap 175 accident at Talladega. All three excel at LMS — Kenseth notched his first career win there, Biffle finished second in the May event and Edwards has an average LMS finish of 7.6.

Despite a wreck-induced 38th-place finish at Talladega, Gordon is optimistic about his chances this weekend. He finished fourth two weeks ago at another 1.5-mile track – Kansas Speedway – and posted the fastest speed during last month’s series test at LMS.

“There’s still a lot of racing left this year, and I’m not counting anybody out just yet,” Gordon said.

On The CAM: Tony Stewart On NASCAR CAM Video Teleconference

Tony Stewart (No. 20 Home Depot Chevrolet) was this week’s guest on the NASCAR CAM Video Teleconference, held Monday afternoon, from the NASCAR Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C.

Some excerpts follow:

On Saturday’s Bank of America 500: “We’ve had a lot of success at all these tracks coming up, but I think the way that we have ran the last three races at Charlotte here, we’re pretty excited about it. We felt like we had a good test there a week ago and we’re looking forward to it. I feel like we’ve got a shot at this weekend’s race. If we can do what we’ve been doing, we’ve got just as good a shot as anybody else. …

On becoming a team owner (Stewart-Haas Racing) in 2009: “It’s an exciting time for me. It’s the busiest I’ve ever been in my life right now, but at the same time, this is normally the point of the season where I’m starting to get rundown.

“But I think this new race team has been kind of a shot in the arm to me and giving me a lot of motivation that at this time of the year it’s easy physically to get rundown and mentally.

“But to have an opportunity like what I have for next year, there’s just that much more motivation, and I think it’s helping me not only like (last Sunday) and for the rest of the season this year, but I’m really excited about next year. I’m enjoying spending the time. Any time that I get a second to work on it, to try to get things going for next year. …

On the pressure to get the season’s first win: “Obviously you want to win every race you run, but when you’re leading with a quarter lap to go, it’s not so much the pressure, you’re just going through the motions of doing what you do as a driver. You’re not thinking about the pressure, you’re not thinking about where this win could come at. You’re just strictly doing your job as a driver behind the steering wheel. …

On 2008 title hopes: “If we have a chance to win the championship at the end, trust me, we’re all for that and we would love nothing more than that. But I think right now where we’re at and how many points we’re at, I think it lets us have a go-for-broke attitude and just go out and try to do what we did (last Sunday) and win races. …

On not climbing the frontstretch fence after winning at Talladega: “I’m kind of big on not necessarily tearing the equipment up, especially now that I’m a car owner. I don’t want to rip the transmissions out and hurt the motors, too. So just being able to turn around and get that close to the fans and drive down that whole front straightaway grandstand and see all those fans was important to me, not just that one little section by the flag stand. That seemed to me to be more special than just climbing the flag stand. …

One reason the win was so special: “Just the fact that those guys have worked so hard all year and haven’t had the results, it’s like (crew chief Greg Zipadelli) Zippy said, ‘We win as a team, we lose as a team.’ But those guys had to put in hours and time and effort that is above and beyond a typical race weekend and above and beyond the typical hours that they have to spend at the racetrack. …

On winning his 33rd race with Joe Gibbs Racing, which he will leave at the end of the season to oversee Stewart-Haas Racing: “It’s easy to look on paper and 33 is just a number. But when we think back at some of these wins and the obstacles that we had to overcome to accomplish those numbers, and when you look in the record books and look at guys that have over 30 wins, you start getting yourself in a smaller elite group every time you win another race.”

Note to media: For a written transcript and/or full audio recording of the teleconference, go to NASCARMedia.com, NASCAR’s media-only Web site.

NASCAR Reiterates Position On Racing Below The Yellow Line At Daytona And Talladega

On Monday, NASCAR President Mike Helton reiterated the sanctioning body’s rule about passing below the yellow line at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway.

It applies to all three NASCAR national series, which compete annually at both tracks.

Drivers and crew chiefs are reminded of the yellow-line policy during each pre-race drivers meeting at Daytona and Talladega. The verbatim language is read aloud and included in a handout.

It is:

“This is your warning: race above the yellow line. If, in NASCAR’s judgment, you go below the yellow line to improve your position, you will be black-flagged. If in NASCAR’s judgment you force someone below the yellow line (in an effort to stop him from passing you), you may be black-flagged.”

Helton further clarified that language on Monday.

“Since the end of the race there has been some confusion as to what is allowable during the last lap at Daytona and Talladega,” he said. “To be clear, as we go forward, there will be no passing under the yellow line at any time during NASCAR races at Daytona or Talladega, period. This includes any passing below the yellow line near the start/finish line on the final lap.”

Times Three: Kahne Going For The Three-Peat At LMS

Lowe’s Motor Speedway may be known as Jimmie Johnson’s house, but Kasey Kahne (No. 9 Budweiser Dodge) can stake a claim, too.

The reigning series champion usually rules at what’s considered the industry’s home track in Concord, N.C., just outside Charlotte, but Kahne maybe the driver to beat in Saturday night’s Bank of America 500.

He’s attempting something not even Johnson has accomplished — to become the first driver to sweep all three NASCAR Sprint Cup Series events at LMS.

Earlier this season, Kahne’s back-to-back wins at LMS kick-started a run to make the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup,

He first won the non-points NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race there on May 17, following with a victory on May 25 in the Coca-Cola 600.

Kahne didn’t make the Chase — he’s currently 14th in the series standings — but making history would be a high note.

“Lowe’s is definitely one of my favorite tracks and we have a unique opportunity to win all three races here this year,” Kahne said. “We’ve won all the races here — we are just trying to get it done in one year. It would be a huge accomplishment for me personally and everyone at Gillett Evernham Motorsports to be able to complete the sweep.”

Kahne has three wins, three top fives, four top 10s and one DNF (did not finish) in nine career starts at LMS (this doesn’t include non-points All-Star events).

He also ranks well in pre-race NASCAR Loop Data statistics for LMS — third in Driver Rating (98.4) behind Johnson and Kyle Busch (No. 18 M&M’s/Susan G. Komen For The Cure Toyota), respectively. He also ranks third in Average Running Position (12.7) and Quality Passes (296).

Kahne ranks second in Fastest Laps Run (227) and Green Flag Passes (516).

“It’s a track where I seem to know what the car needs to go fast,” he said of LMS. “The line that you need to run here is so crucial. Lowe’s Motor Speedway is such a sensitive track, you can really mess up here by missing your line by just a little bit or not slowing down quite enough getting to the white line throughout the race.

“It’s a great track and hopefully we can continue to keep up the success here and get a win in the Bank of America 500.”

In The Loop: Johnson Solidly Out Front At LMS

How can you explain Jimmie Johnson’s success at Lowe’s Motor Speedway?

Is it just coincidence? Is it that LMS suits Johnson’s style perfectly? Or maybe there’s added pressure to succeed considering the number of sponsor eyeballs on the No. 48, and Johnson is certainly a driver who thrives on added pressure.

Whatever the reason, Johnson is always the man to beat at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

In just 14 starts, Johnson has five wins (tying Jeff Gordon – who has 31 LMS starts – for the active lead in LMS victories), eight top fives and 11 top 10s.

Since the inception of Loop Data in 2005, Johnson is far and away the class of the field at LMS – despite having two of his three non-top-10 finishes fall during that span.

Over the last seven LMS races, Johnson owns series-high statistics in Driver Rating (116.5), Average Running Position (7.7), Fastest Laps Run (260), average Green Flag Speed (176.860 mph), Laps in the Top 15 percentage (88.5) and Quality Passes (passes of cars in the top 15), with 388.

What makes his stats even more impressive are the numbers of those who rank second in each of the above categories. They’re not really close:

Kyle Busch is second in Driver Rating with a 98.7, 17.8 points behind Johnson.

Mark Martin (No. 8 U.S. Army Chevrolet) is second in Average Running Position with a 12.2, 4.5 positions lower than Johnson.

Kasey Kahne ranks second in Fastest Laps Run with 227, 33 fewer than Johnson.

Busch ranks second in average Green Flag Speed with 176.378 mph, .483 mph slower than Johnson.

Martin ranks second in Laps in the Top 15 percentage at 74.5%, 14 percent worse than Johnson.

Busch ranks second in Quality Passes with 335, 53 fewer than Johnson.

In other words, if Johnson wins, it won’t be a surprise. But who could be a surprise winner this weekend?

Martin has won four times at LMS and has posted solid stats recently there. He has a Driver Rating of 91.5 (fourth-best), an Average Running Position of 12.2 (second) and Laps in the Top 15 percentage of 74.5% (second).

Also watch for a strong run from Dale Earnhardt Jr. (No. 88 AMP Energy/National Guard Chevrolet), who had a strong run at Talladega before getting caught up in a late-race accident.

He’ll look to rebound at LMS, his home track. He has yet to win at LMS, but has three top-10 finishes in the last four races there.

Over the last seven, he has a Driver Rating of 89.7 (fifth), an Average Running Position of 16.2 (seventh) and 106 Fastest Laps Run (fifth).

Three Drivers To Attempt Series Debuts This Weekend

Much is on the line in Saturday’s Bank of America 500, but so too could be the start of three NASCAR Sprint Cup Series careers.

Brad Keselowski, Bryan Clauson and Scott Speed all will attempt to make their series debuts in the race, and all three first must qualify on speed during Thursday night’s qualifying session.

Keselowski will qualify Hendrick Motorsports’ No. 25 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet. Clauson will qualify Chip Ganassi Racing’s No. 40 Target/Sony’s Motorstorm: Pacific Rift Dodge. Speed will qualify Team Red Bull’s No. 82 Red Bull Toyota.

All three drivers are considered future talents and all are busy in separate series this season.

Keselowski, 24, who drives the No. 88 Navy Chevrolet for JR Motorsports in the NASCAR Nationwide Series, is third in that series’ standings. He’ll also attempt to qualify for one other NASCAR Sprint Cup event this season, at Texas Motor Speedway.

Clauson, 19, has 18 NASCAR Nationwide Series starts, with one pole and one top-five finish.

Speed, 25, who will drive the No. 84 Red Bull Toyota in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series next season, currently leads the ARCA RE/MAX Series standings. He’s a former Formula One driver making the transition to stock cars.

NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Etc.

Milestone Watch … Several NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers will mark personal series milestones in Saturday night’s Bank of America 500.

Jimmie Johnson will make his 250th career start. Kasey Kahne will make his 175 career start. If he qualifies the No. 70 Hunt Broithers Pizza Chevrolet on Thursday night, Tony Raines will make his 125th career start.

This weekend also means a milestone for LMS, which will host its 100th NASCAR Sprint Cup and 54th NASCAR Nationwide events. A total of 499 drivers have competed there.

Four will attempt to make their first LMS starts this week — Brad Keselowski, Bryan Clauson, Scott Speed and Chad McCumbee (No. 45 Marathon American Spirit Motor Oil Dodge).

Allmendinger Back In Action … Two weeks after parting ways with Red Bull Racing, AJ Allmendinger is back behind a steering wheel.

Michael Waltrip Racing announced this week that Allmendinger will qualify the No. 00 Champion Mortgage Toyota for Saturday’s Bank of American 500.

Owner Michael Waltrip said following the NASCAR Sprint Cup event at Kansas Speedway that several drivers will be used during the remainder of the season. The No. 00 currently is 36th in the owner standings; the top 35 each week are guaranteed starting positions.

Michael McDowell had driven the No. 00 since the fifth race of the season. Kenny Wallace drove it last week at Talladega and finished 12th — the team’s best result this season.

Jail And Bail For A Good Cause … Many in the NASCAR industry, including nearly a dozen drivers, will participate in a Jail and Bail Charity Event benefitting the Brienne Davis Scholarship Fund on Wednesday, Oct. 8. It’s from 5-11 p.m. at the Brickhouse Tavern in Davidson, N.C.

The scholarship honors Davis, a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series official, who passed away earlier this year.

Up Next: Chase For the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Race 6 @ Martinsville Speedway

Another hurdle awaits those who would be the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion — Martinsville Speedway.

The .526-mile short track in Virginia has hosted the series since 1949 and is considered an always-worthy opponent.

This time, it’s the TUMS Quik Pak 500 on Sunday, Oct. 19. (1 p.m., ET; ABC)

Jimmie Johnson is the defending winner. Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon — who leads all active drivers with seven Martinsville wins — is the defending pole winner. Johnson swept both Martinsville events last year.

This season, it’s Denny Hamlin (No. 11 FedEx Office Toyota) who will attempt the Martinsville sweep. A Virginia native, he won the March event.

The Race: Bank of America 500
The Place: Lowe’s Motor Speedway
The Date: Saturday, Oct. 11
The Time: 7:25 p.m. (ET)
The Track: 1.5-mile tri-oval
The Distance: 501 miles/334 laps
TV: ABC, 7 p.m. (ET)
Radio: PRN, SIRIUS Satellite. (Locally on WSOC-FM 103.7).7
2007 Winner: Jeff Gordon
2007 Polesitter: Ryan Newman
Series Standings
Driver Points
1 Jimmie Johnson 5,718
2 Carl Edwards 5,646
3 Greg Biffle 5,641
4 Jeff Burton 5,619
5 Clint Bowyer 5,566
6 Kevin Harvick 5,547
7 Tony Stewart 5,515
8 Jeff Gordon 5,486
9 Matt Kenseth 5,473
10 Dale Earnhardt Jr. 5,469
11 Kyle Busch 5,387
12 Denny Hamlin 5,383
Pre-Race Day schedule (all times local/ET): Thursday—Practice, 3-4:30 p.m. Qualifying, 7:10 p.m. Friday—Practice, 5-5:45 p.m. and 6:20-7:20 p.m.