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[/media-credit]NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
CAPITAL CITY 400 PRESENTED BY VIRGINIA IS FOR LOVERS
RICHMOND INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
APRIL 27, 2012
DALE EARNHARDT JR., NO. 88 NATIONAL GUARD/DIET MOUNTAIN DEW CHEVROLET, met with members of the media at Richmond International Raceway and discussed the Washington Redskins, his relationship with Steve Letarte and other topics. Full Transcript:
TALK ABOUT SHORT-TRACK RACING AND HOW YOU EXPECT YOUR WEEKEND TO GO:
“I like short tracks; this has been a good one for us for a couple of races. I have always enjoyed running here. It’s a fun track. Not your typical short track with the way the front straight-a-way is. It definitely makes each corner unique from the other and the way you drive the track can change throughout the race. It’s a lot of fun for a driver. I enjoy racing here. I think it will be a good race.”
WHAT IS YOUR REACTION TO THE WASHINGTON REDSKINS DRAFTING ROBERT GRIFFIN III LAST NIGHT?
“I hope it is a good deal. I hope the ‘skins are successful. I hope Robert is successful he seems like a good guy. It’s going to be fun to be a Redskins fan and see how that plays out this year and see how well he does. I know all the Redskins fans are excited and expecting big things, so am I.”
AFTER THE PAST FEW YEARS HOW MUCH HOPE DO YOU HAVE IN THE REDSKINS?
“Well you always go in every season hoping for the best and trying to justify the players, the positions they are in and what the teams potential can be. Every year you start off wishing them to the playoffs and justifying how that might happen. Then the season plays itself out. This season is no different.”
LAST WEEK YOU WERE ASKED ABOUT BEING THE BEST DRIVER, WHEN YOU ANSWERED THAT QUESTION DID YOU KNOW PEOPLE WOULD START GOSSIPING ABOUT IT?
“That is a healthy debate, that is healthy among race fans as far as who is the best driver and all the drivers in the garage feel like they are the best individually and they should. That is kind of the way you have to approach it. I learned a long time ago that if you don’t have confidence in your car that can be problematic for you. If you don’t have confidence in your crew chief then that can be problematic for you and if you don’t have the same confidence in yourself it’s not conducive to being successful. You have to feel like you’re here and you’re the best and that is the way you should feel. In any profession, you have to have that kind of confidence. You want to have that kind of confidence and that’s the way to be. I don’t know I figured that was definitely debatable and the race fans are going to voice their opinion and that’s good. I certainly don’t like to rock any boats, but you have to answer the question honestly.”
TAKE US BACK TO FOUR YEARS AGO HERE AND WHAT YOU REMEMBER ABOUT THAT NIGHT WHEN YOU AND KYLE (BUSCH) WERE RACING FOR THE WIN. ALSO HOW DO YOU THINK THAT NIGHT IMPACTED YOUR TRAJECTORY AT HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS?
“I don’t think it really had a big effect on our performance going forward. I feel like we had some good runs after that. We struggled as a team at times too. It didn’t really change the dynamics between me and Tony (Eury) Jr. which ultimately played itself out. We made all the changes we made and here we are today. That was not the best day ever. I don’t remember much about the race, but we were running well. I remember Denny (Hamlin) had a flat and brought out a caution. We had a pretty decent lead with just a few laps to go. It gave Kyle (Busch) an opportunity to race us on that restart. We got down in the corner. I’d been moving up the race track, as I was moving up the track, he was moving up the track to open his corner up; to give himself a better opportunity in the middle of the corner to roll the center. Turn one and three, both these corners going on the inside of somebody, it’s really easy to get in there a little too hard. I wrecked Kyle (Busch) the next race here getting into turn one, kind of doing the same thing, just over driving the car inside of him. I run over Jimmy Spencer getting into three once, in my first race here in 1999, just over doing it. It was for the lead with a few laps to go and it was really difficult to stomach, but it sure was exciting. It was a difficult pill to swallow. We have had a lot of good runs here; we’ve had some good runs since. Hopefully we can get a win. I’d like to win here again. That would definitely make me feel a little bit better about it. I felt like had the caution not come out we would have probably won that race.”
WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE DECISION AT BRISTOL TO JUST GO WITH THE GRINDING? WITH TWO STRAIGHT WEEKS OF NO WRECKS ARE YOU KIND OF PREDICTING ALL HELL IS GOING TO BREAK LOOSE THIS WEEK?
“No. I don’t think all hell is going to break loose anywhere. You might see more cautions being that it is short track racing and you might not, you just never know what you are going to get. There are positives in both styles of events. Races that do not have a lot of cautions to me are interesting in watching how the cars change and handle differently on long runs. Watching guys come and go as far as their cars getting faster on the long run or having trouble on the long run. I enjoy that. I enjoy races with a lot of caution and a lot of restarts. There are pluses to both sides of it. I think there are fans that enjoy both sides of it. I don’t know when we might all start getting more aggressive. I still feel like it is still pretty early in the season, everybody is trying to just get as many points as they can get. They are trying to put themselves in position to make the Chase. If you go out there running over each other, damaging your car and costing yourself 10 points here and 10 points there you can lose the opportunity to make the Chase pretty quickly. You have to be pretty smart the way your drive your car.
“As far as Bristol goes, I think the racing will be the same. I think the track is going to be the same. I know that they probably didn’t have a lot of time between now and the race to do everything they wanted to do. Just grinding that groove is going to take a little grip away from it. Once we lay the rubber back down, which we will, it will be just like the track is now. Which I think is fine. I don’t think everybody needs to get too stirred up about it. I think that the reason that attendance is down is that they spiked the hotel rates so bad there in that town as they do most of the towns. Gas is expensive. To stay in Knoxville, (Tennessee) or somewhere like that doesn’t make a lot of sense because of how expensive gas is. It’s just not as affordable to go to events as it used to be.”
ARE YOU DISAPPOINTED THAT YOU WEREN’T CONSULTED ON THE UPDATES AT BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY AND APPARENTLY NO OTHER DRIVERS WERE EITHER?
“I’m not disappointed. Anytime somebody does something or makes a decision in this sport I don’t expect someone to pick my brain about it or get my opinion about it. It would have been comforting to know that he had spoken to a handful of drivers that actually raced on the track this past year. I don’t know that he didn’t. Again, I’m not too worried about it because I don’t think they had a whole lot of time to do a lot to it. I don’t think they had time to really dig the place up and do everything that they would love to do there. Whatever it is that they want to do; I don’t think they really had the time to go into it. Maybe it wasn’t necessary to get with the drivers. Our ideas would have probably been time consuming and more costly than they were willing to get into. They own the track, they make the decisions they want to make. They made the one they feel is best for them and I support it. I feel like the track will be similar. I think the racing is fine, I think the racing will be just fine when we go back.”
YOU’VE NEVER BEEN A FAN OF THE TWO CAR TANDEM SO NOW THAT WE ARE BACK TO PACK RACING AT PLATE TRACKS, HOW MUCH ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO TALLADEGA NEXT WEEKEND? WHAT ROLE DO YOU THINK THE TANDEM MIGHT STILL PLAY AT THE END OF THE RACE?
“I think to win the plate races you are still going to tandem at the end. We can still tandem and we will develop and work on our cooling systems. Every team in the garage will work toward the same goal and that is to get it back to the tandem, because that is the fastest way to go. Even though I don’t like the tandem, it is the fastest way to run around the track. Every team in the garage is thinking, working and engineering toward ‘how can we get to where we can tandem the whole race’. NASCAR will have to continue to do whatever they need to do within the rule book and what have you to keep eliminating that or keep that to a minimum like we had at the (Daytona) 500. Again, to be honest I feel like the style of racing we had in the Daytona 500 this year suits me better. I feel more confident in that style than I do the tandem. The tandem is difficult to really commit with someone all day long. Knowing if you are going to work together and you are going to be going for the win off the corner you are going to have to split it between the two of you one way or the other. You are going to run second or you might win. It is just difficult to really grasp that and feel like that is racing to you. At its purest form to me… it’s not. The way we did it in the (Daytona) 500 was nice, but the tandem is going to win the race which is fine to me. I do like having more control on destiny and making my own decisions for myself. Looking out for number one and my team all day long trying to do whatever I can to put myself in position to win the race. That is really what I feel like I have been doing all my life. To do anything different just doesn’t feel comfortable. It feels odd to me.”
YOU TALKED ABOUT GUYS MAYBE NOT WANTING TO RACE TO AGGRESSIVELY IN DANGER OF LOSING POINTS AND NOT MAKING THE CHASE. YOU ARE FOURTH IN POINTS YOU HAVE A 64 POINT CUSHION. CAN YOU RACE A LITTLE DIFFERENTLY? WOULD YOU RACE MORE AGGRESSIVELY TO GET THAT WIN?
“I can’t race any harder than I’ve been running. There isn’t a lap that I have run to this point this year that wasn’t run as hard as it could have been run as far as I’m concerned. I read a quote from Brad (Keselowski) in USA Today or some newspaper this morning where he was talking about the aerodynamics playing such a big role. That we can’t even get to each other to really race. He has a great point. You do see side-by-side racing especially at the short tracks and stuff, but on the bigger 1.5-mile tracks you are kind of limited a little bit. You are limited by the aero and the dirty air by the car in front of you. That is always going to be a factor no matter what. There is nothing really that can be done to eliminate that entirely. You just run as hard as you can run. If you get tight behind a guy or you just can’t catch him because you are in the dirty air or whatever, you try to move around and find some clean air. You move up to the top, not every track provides you with multi-grooves to run and try to catch somebody or pass somebody. To really make a pass on a 1.5-mile track, it’s difficult to run right up behind somebody and just pull over and go by them. The cars get pretty tight in that dirty air. I think everybody runs as hard as they can and everybody is as aggressive as they want to be. I don’t think we are all out there being overly nice about it. Everybody is running pretty hard and pretty aggressive for positions and it’s the way the racing is right now. It is how it is and I don’t think there is much that can be done to alter it. I really don’t see a problem with it but I know I’m not watching the races I’m driving in them.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR IN-RACE RELATIONSHIP WITH STEVE LETARTE (CREW CHIEF)? IT SEEMS TO BE UNCENSORED, VERY HONEST. HE SEEMS TO BE REALLY POSITIVE THROUGHOUT, IS THAT ACCURATE AND HOW HAS THAT HELPED YOU THIS YEAR?
“I’ve always been uncensored (laughs). I think I have gotten a lot better since working with Steve. Obviously, Steve is not family and there are things you can say to your family and you won’t say those things to other people. He’s definitely made me more accountable, would be a way to explain it for the words I chose to use and how I chose to describe the car to him. He’s not going to put up with me verbally abusing him or the equipment. I wouldn’t expect anything less than him being a professional as well. I think we have a good in-race relationship. He does a really good job of providing me with information and calming me that we are going to fix any issues we have. I feel confident that he has fixed enough issues and improved the car during enough races that I don’t really get as worried about it when something isn’t quite right. I know that the chances of it getting improved and fixed are really good. I really don’t even have to get in a conversation with him about it. He’s pretty talented, he does a great job. He’s really on top of what his responsibilities are. He manages his team really well. I’ve got great confidence in him and his abilities to orchestrate the weekend as good as I would expect. We get along really good because of that confidence between each other. I think there is good trust there too.”
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