NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES SUBWAY FRESH FIT 500 PHOENIX INTERNATIOINAL RACEWAY TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT February 25, 2011
MARK MARTIN, NO. 5 GODADDY.COM CHEVROLETmet with members of the media at Phoenix International Raceway and discussed racing at Phoenix, the Daytona 500 champions and other topics. Full transcript:
DO YOU LOVE RACING AT PHOENIX?: “I do love it and it’s really good to be here. Excited about the weekend and just getting to work. Can’t wait to get out on the race track and start working with my team and get back in the swing of things. Looking forward to it.”
HOW DIFFERENT IS IT TO COME TO PHOENIX AFTER LEAVING DAYTONA?: “Well, it’s cool coming here. It’s cool going to California too, but this feels normal. It feels a little different, but it’s a good place to start the season off with a restrictor plate race behind you. We have 34 events in front of us that all relate somewhat to this and only three more events this year that relate to what we just did last week. This is the beginning of the meat of the season. This is a great race track for racing. I remember from the first time that we came out here to race in ’88, it’s always been met with such great enthusiasm from the fans and it has through the years just always been a good race track to race on. A great facility and met with a lot of enthusiasm from the fans here.”
DO YOU VIEW GETTING OUT OF DAYTONA WITH A TOP-10 AS DODGING A BULLET AND HOW COMFORTABLE ARE YOU WITH LANCE MCGREW?: “We dodged a bullet at Daytona for sure because I was in that first wreck and damaged the car and got three laps down. To get a top-10 is pretty incredible. We were eighth with the next to the last restart and we didn’t get very far and they had another restart and we were in fourth. We had come from three down and thought anything can happen here and it did. But it didn’t happen for the good, we lost some spots there on that last restart. We still felt like it was a great day even though we got teased with a chance there at the end. We still view it as a great day. Great recovery, great team effort, incredible display of team effort. I feel comfortable with Lance (McGrew, crew chief). We will learn more and more as we go forward, but I’m comfortable and excited. The enthusiasm within the team is really high. It feels good to walk into my garage and be around my guys. That’s half of it right there. I’m anxious to get into the meat of the season here.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON ‘TREVORMANIA’ THIS WEEK?: “I think it’s great. I’m one of his bigger fans. I think it’s really great, but for me, it is overshadowed by how great it is for the Wood Brothers. To me, it’s much greater for the Wood Brothers than it is Trevor Bayne. Trevor is a really fine young man and I am so proud for the sport that I love so much to have him represent our Daytona 500 champion. That being said, to me, having the Wood Brothers win is a bigger deal. Trevor will win many more races. I was in the grandstand in ’76 when that car painted that way won that race. That means a lot to me and it means a lot to me to see them win because we’re not talking about a few years of history in NASCAR. We’re talking about 50-range. One of the very few that have been around for that kind of — the Woods and Petty’s — are important to our sport. Put it this way — they’re important to me. They are very important to me. That was huge. That was very, very cool and I’m still giddy over it. I would have liked to have won the race myself, but I couldn’t possibly be more happy for any other situation than to have the Woods celebrating and driver-wise, we’re represented very well by Trevor Bayne.”
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE OVERALL ENTHUSIASM AT HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS?: “That’s hard for me to answer. I’ll know more about that this evening after our debrief and I think the teams will too. They will certainly rebound from that quickly, especially if they go out today and have fast race cars. This evening, after the last practice we’ll have our debrief and we’ll see whose got smiley faces and who may have a long face — I don’t know. Right now, I think everybody is still optimistic about what we’re doing. We have a great, great plan. We’re looking at all different areas through with the four teams as far as what’s going to work the best and we’re going to be sort of looking at different avenues for setup stuff through the first several races. Then eventually probably migrate toward all the pieces that seem to be working the best. We have a good plan for today.”
ARE YOU SURPRISED AT THE FAME TREVOR BAYNE HAS SEEN THIS WEEK?: “One of NASCAR’s biggest initiatives for 2011 was go to after the kids, the young people
