NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES

GATORADE DUEL RACE #1

DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY

TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT

February 17, 2011

BILL ELLIOTT, NO. 09 PHOENIX CONSTRUCTION CHEVROLET – Finished 15th

J.J. YELEY, NO. 46 RED LINE OIL CHEVROLET – Finished 17th POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT:

KERRY THARP: We’ll roll into post-race for the first Gatorade Duel here at Daytona International Speedway in preparation for Sunday’s running of the 53rd Daytona 500. Getting into the race based on his performance here today is certainly no stranger to this racetrack, that’s Bill Elliott.

Bill, talk about your run out there today and what it means to get into the lineup on Sunday for the most famous race in all of NASCAR.

BILL ELLIOTT: Coming in today we had a little bit of a cushion by qualifying well this past Sunday.

I still was pleased by the way we ran. We went at it pretty blindsided. Most of the guys that run extremely well when we’re testing here a month or so ago was able to do the swap fast and work very well together. That’s the key to breaking away and doing what you need to do on that side.

To learn it, get around different guys, figure it out, see whose car pushes better, whose car pulls better, whatever the situation is. I still feel we have a little bit we need to do to the car. All in all, we got our car for the 500. Hopefully we get through the next couple of practices, whatever it is. We got a good baseline to go. That’s important.

Where this team has been the last few years, it’s a great race team. I think they got great equipment. We need to get our execution down a little bit better.

All in all, I think things went well. The racetrack is great. I’ll telling you guys, it’s unbelievable. It’s so smooth. You can go high, low, middle, side, backwards, it doesn’t matter. The guys can get you pushing, jacked up, you can hang onto the thing for the most part. Sometimes the guy behind you, he’s driving you instead of you driving it. It’s fun. If it’s as wild looking at it from where we see it versus where you see it, it’s a heck of a race.

KERRY THARP: We’ll take questions for Bill.

Q. You’ve raced under so many different rules packages at this track. Now you have this different form of two car tandems. How does this compare to any other types of racing you’ve ever done here?

BILL ELLIOTT: Yeah, they don’t compare to anything. I’ve never experienced anything like what these guys, what you have to do today to make this work.

You know, when I was here testing, I tried to do this with Jeff Gordon, and it was at the very end of the last day. I couldn’t figure it out. We only did it for just a short number of laps. I couldn’t help him and he couldn’t help me. We sat down understand a talked about it. I came back.

The bad thing about it is for the guys, you know, like J.J. and the rest of us that have to qualify in, you’re so focused on laying down a lap that you don’t have time to do anything else or you don’t have any real teammates to fall back on. That being said, everything you do, you’re behind that eight ball every step you make. So now instead of two runs behind, you’re 15 runs behind because you have the multiple car teams going out and doing it, learning, knowing what they do. With NASCAR changing the square inches of tape opening that you have on the front of the grill, that has mandated a little bit of that. So now the swap has to be quicker. There again, the guys that are good at it, they’re the ones that drove away.

That’s the key things. When you get two really good cars that can work well together, they’re going to be hard to beat. This is the same thing you’re going to see all day Sunday, two guys working together to make it work.

KERRY THARP: We’re joined at the podium by another driver who raced his way into Sunday’s 53rd running of the Daytona 500, that’s J.J. Yeley. Congratulations. How does it feel to be lining up Sunday in the Daytona 500?

J.J. YELEY: It’s awesome. This is the first time I’ve ever had to make the race on my own without being already locked in. The stress that comes along with being a go or go homer, not knowing exactly what’s going to happen till you get to the racetrack is tough. We had a lot of help out there. Obviously I wouldn’t have made it up here without Marcos Ambrose. It took us a while till we got everything figured out for the swap. But once we got that done, we didn’t lose nearly as much time. We got where we needed to be.

KERRY THARP: We’ll open it up again to questions for Bill or J.J.

Q. Bill, you wondered aloud if the racing looked as exciting to the fans as it seems to you guys on the track. Did you watch the Shootout Saturday night?

BILL ELLIOTT: Yes.

Q. You viewed the racing. What is your opinion watching it as opposed to being in it?

BILL ELLIOTT: Well, it’s wild watching it. But the problem is, it’s wild on the racetrack. Man, you get two guys hooked up, you get your timing wrong, then you get a guy swapping, I mean, you’re catching them at light speed. I couldn’t imagine the other night the speeds they were running. The closure is the same. All you’ve done is slowed the pairs down or the guys swapping down. So the total time comes down, but your closure rate is the same. That’s what is hard to guess.

One time there was a swap on a tri oval, Brian was on my tail, I went to turn under him, I couldn’t go high, I got all crossed up there. That’s the problem. You get to that deal, you catch them really fast, you don’t know if you’re going to go high or low, a guy is trying to help you from behind. It makes it tough.

I tell you what, it’s a heck of a lot of fun.

Q. If you were watching it as a fan, what do you think?

BILL ELLIOTT: It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen watching it Saturday night. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Just like a bunch of kids playing leapfrog, the groups, but they were doing it in pairs.

Q. Is a big key on Sunday, the next practice sessions are going to be devoted to how fast you can make the switches, how fast you can do the leapfrog?

J.J. YELEY: I think it really comes down to finding a partner that’s going to stay with you the entire race. You can’t afford to get caught out. There’s not going to be a lot of cautions, a lot of green flag stops. Trying to find that partner that wants to stay with you as well as the timing of making your pit stop to where you don’t end a straightaway separated because you lose so much time running by yourself or trying to get back to your partner.

At the end of the day, it’s going to be a matter of, like you said, guys working on the switch because you can’t afford to lose a half a straightaway of trying to get locked back in because it’s another 10 miles an hour and that time you’re losing as the next group is catching you.

It’s going to be interesting to see. You double the field, put 43 cars out there, at that rate, there’s going to be one left out by himself.

BILL ELLIOTT: One odd man out. The problem is, you already got the teams that work so much during the test a month ago, that’s all they did. Probably a day and a half, that’s all they did. They’ve done got a leg up on you. So now they’ve done got the timing down, what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, so on and so forth.

You get two really, really good racecars that work well together, you get the drivers where they have their timing right, if nothing foreseen happens during the day, they’re going to take off and see you.

The rest of us, like that pack I was running around with, it was like Mark Martin, Tony Stewart, all that group, it was like, hey, we were a bunch of cats and mouses scratching and digging for whatever we could get depending on who made the swap at what time.

Q. For J.J., seven laps to go, you were dead. I mean, you were a lap down, you got the blown engine. All of a sudden you found something on that last lap. Can you talk about how you came from a lap down and into the Daytona 500 in just a matter of minutes?

J.J. YELEY: Before the caution came off, I made my switch with Marcos. I was really hoping once the pack caught the 87, the 97, it was going to break them up. There were five groups going substantially faster than what we were. The caution was a huge benefit. I learned from the start of the race that just you and your usual drafting was a lot faster than trying to get partnered up with someone. It took almost a lap and a half, especially from caution speed, to get your speed to where you were going to get going. If it would have been more than two laps on the restart, both those guys could have blown back by me. I wouldn’t have had a shot. I was trying to keep them separated for as long as we could.

Nemechek and I beat up on each other down the back straightaway. That was enough to get me out in front and enough cushion that they couldn’t catch me before the checkered.

Q. What is the mental distraction at the end of the race on the restart? What can be a mental distraction in making the pass?

BILL ELLIOTT: I mean, the problem is, you’re so in a mode of racing. Then you have your pack that’s kind of broken away. You’re racing your own little group. Then the caution comes out and it’s a whole different game. It’s just like you’re playing poker and the cards have been reshuffled and you’re starting with a fresh deck but you only have a short time to put it together. That’s what it comes down to.

You don’t really have time to pick a dancing partner, you don’t have time to set a strategy up. You have to wait till that flag falls. When you roll off into turn one, you make your best guess and hope it’s the right one.

J.J. YELEY: The key is going to get good restarts. You have to be able to push the guy in front of you. The problem you run into, doing the train racing like we’re doing, is the pusher. You can’t really see what’s going on. You’re relying so much more on your spotter than you ever had to in years past. Sometimes you’re pushing the guy a lot faster than the group you’re catching. A lot of times you’re trying to be as smooth as you can at the wheel so that guy behind you can stay directly behind you. When you have cars passing on the outside, he can’t see behind you. Hopefully that spotter is letting you know the group behind you at the closing rate, there’s enough cushion there the two of you can get up before a wreck happened.

I think that’s what happened to Dale Jr. in practice. They didn’t get the timing down. It’s so hard to do because the closing rate is so much more than we’ve seen in a lot of years here.

Q. Bill, it looked like from up here when you made the swap that the field got really strung out. It didn’t look like the race was nearly as close or competitive as it was Saturday night. Does NASCAR need to adjust something else or what should they do to even things up a little bit more?

BILL ELLIOTT: Well, I don’t know what you’re going to do because you’re going to come up with that same situation. There’s going to be a combination of cars that run better together than others. Once those teams and those drivers during the race figure out who that is, they’re going to work together the rest of the day, whatever it takes.

You get in those situations like we did today where they got their timing down of changing. These guys will get better. For me, this is only my second stab at it. We got very limited practice the other day. That’s really the first time I had at it doing this kind of deal. Here we got thrown in this mess today. You try to make all this work, you try to do it all in one afternoon, but now we have 150 mile race under our belt, now we got a couple more practices to think about it. When everybody gets to understand what they need to do Sunday, I still say you’re going to see several groups of cars kind of run away from everybody else. That’s the MO. Everybody else is going to have a harder time swapping.

The problem I see, if when you get farther back in the field, it’s harder to make a clean swap with more cars around you, make it work, because then you’ve got a couple more groups or two around you. You might not have to swap at the right time. You might have to breathe your motor a little bit and stay behind the guy, then it just costs you more time.

Q. J.J. can you talk about the emotions of the last couple months coming into Daytona not knowing whether you’re going to be racing and now finally last lap you’re in the field.

J.J. YELEY: It’s definitely tough. I was starting to get worried if we were going to get our car ready to come down here. We got our engine very, very late. The guys worked over the weekend to get the car ready. They spent most of the day Tuesday at the pulldown rig and doing chassis dynos and the car left at 7 p.m. in order to get here for practice and tech and everything. Just to know we made it was a stretch.

We were really optimistic how our qualifying was going to go. This particular car was really fast at Talladega last year to be as slow as it was through qualifying.

It was a rollercoaster of emotions not knowing what was going to go on, knowing we had to race our way in. Once I took the checkered flag in, and rolled across there and realized that we just put this thing in the show, I was beyond myself with excitement. Like I said, I couldn’t thank Marcos Ambrose enough, because he shoved me for a really long time and I’m sure cost himself a really good finish by doing it.

Q. Bill, what was the breaking point as far as the water temperature goes? Did you get to a certain point and go, I got to get out of this?

BILL ELLIOTT: Absolutely. That’s what everybody was trying to do. You just get to a point, you’re going to try to push a little bit more towards the end of the race. We had a game plan of what we were going to have to do. Then the caution comes out, it’s a whole different plan.

You know, the bad thing about it is you don’t know what the limit is. The guys tell you you’re kind of shooting for this range but give or take 10 degrees or so one way or the other. We just try to monitor it and say, Look, I say to the spotter, we got a quarter of a lap to go, I got to make it work. It’s been the most communication between so many different spotters than I’ve ever seen in any previous Daytona 500 or any Daytona event.

Q. Can you talk to me a little bit about last year at Lakeside Speedway on the dirt? Did you think you would be in the Daytona 500 six or eight months later?

J.J. YELEY: It’s been a long road back. 2009, I took that nasty flip there in a Sprint car, pinched two vertebrae in my neck that I had to have fused in September. It took about eight months to where they were going to clear me and do the rehabilitation to where I was safe getting behind the wheel.

Obviously in this sport, if you’re not in clear view, you can easily get forgotten. That’s what I started to feel like. You roll through the garage, people would look at you with a second glance. It was that quick you that could be forgotten.

Getting the opportunity isn’t where I want to be back in the NASCAR scene. Doing the start and park program with the guys last year, really taking a brand new team with new equipment, less horsepower, going out there and running well I hope is opening eyes and showing that I still have the ability as well as the guys working on the team. To start as late as we did for this year, make the Daytona 500 based on racing our way in is a big accomplishment for myself and all the guys.

Q. On Sunday, if we get into a situation two teammates find they’re working together perfectly, swap back and forth, how do you imagine that’s going to work if we go green till the end without cautions? How are these two teams going to determine when the last swap happens and who has the advantage?

BILL ELLIOTT: I don’t think I want to be the guy in the front ’cause he’s going to be the sitting duck. But it just depends on the cars. It’s hard to make that pass, but you got to time it just right.

We saw Denny in the Bud Shootout make a very good pass at a crucial time. He timed it perfectly. Unfortunately there’s this little yellow line down there that was an obstacle.

I don’t see it any different than any other. It’s going to come down to those two guys. Either one of them, whether one is going to choose to run second, the other one do what he does to win the race, that’s the way it’s going to go up, especially if things go like they did in this 150.

Q. Kevin Conway thought maybe you started in the wrong spot on that restart because he thought you should have been down some lap down cars. Did they wave you around? Did you have any idea? Was there any confusion on your part where you should start?

J.J. YELEY: No. Obviously when you get the free pass, you follow the back. As I rolled off of turn four, I was, I don’t know, four or five car lengths behind the back of the pack. When you’re going green, if somebody is hanging back, want to pass, they’ll fall back with you. There was a huge gap between everybody. Obviously I’m not going to cost myself time by hanging back behind those guys.

I didn’t do anything different than I did every time I did last year. I really don’t think it changed the outcome. I think they were planning the 9 car, because he hung back with me, we were going to lock up and push through. Obviously that wasn’t the case.

I didn’t feel like I did everything different. Obviously I knew I had to be the last car in the line.

Q. Bill, are you in favor of NASCAR maybe coming up with different rules throughout SpeedWeeks or do you want to see NASCAR kind of let the story play itself out?

BILL ELLIOTT: I really don’t have an opinion one way or the other. Sometimes a change is good. Sometimes it helps you; sometimes it hurts you. You don’t know till they decide what they’re going to do.

Over the years, you realize they’re going to do pretty much what they feel like they need to do, if they need to do it for the drivers’ safety or fans’ safety, that’s their prerogative. Like seeing what they’ve done for the Nationwide cars. We’ve had, what, three plate changes in the last couple of days, yeah. So they feel like they need to adjust.

That’s what it is. You go to any racetrack, over the years, whether I agree with it or disagree with it, it’s something you got to look at and say you need to adjust this or that, whether I’m winning or the next guy is winning. Seems like eventually it will work out.

Q. Bill, I covered you since you started about ’83 or so. But you were driving for the Ford team. Your family, George, your brothers, had that Ford dealership. You’re driving a Chevy. How does it feel to be in the seat of a Chevrolet?

BILL ELLIOTT: It’s just the way life sometimes goes. I’ve poured my heart out for Ford, and I think we’ve done a good job. But we’ve moved to another chapter. It’s another chapter in my career.

Unfortunately things didn’t go the direction that they were going to go. It just wasn’t in the cards or whatever. The page is turned and here I am in a new deal. I just look at it, I’m going to try to work on new relationships and try to work hard.

Right now I’m in a Chevrolet. That’s what I want to support. I feel like whatever we need to do we need to do. James is a great supporter in this series, the owner of the car. He’s put a lot of money into it. I try to go about and do things on my own. I financially can’t afford to do it. Here I am.

So sometimes opportunities lead you in different directions. But sometimes that’s not all bad.

Q. How do you get your partner for the two car deal? Do you wait till the race gets started? How much would you promise to a good partner, give him half the winner’s purse? How far would you go?

BILL ELLIOTT: Bobby Labonte and I tried talking about working together and we never did, up to the last lap of the race. The way things got shuffled out, Brian Vickers was the odd man out. Here I came long. He and I worked decently together. We had our times. We missed the deal coming to pit road. We were still able to catch back up to that group that we were running with because it seemed like everybody that’s where that little bit of communication makes all the difference in the world and gets that timing down right. Okay, this is what I’m going to do. This is what I’m going to commit to. This is how we’re going to do it. By gosh, just go do it.

For those guys, like I said, that were here a month ago, they’re light years ahead of you in that respect. That’s the things you got to work through, whether you come down Saturday night and say I’m going to work with J.J., the race starts, you never see the guy the rest of the day, that’s the way it is. You can’t go find a guy. Like he said, there’s 43 cars. Who is going to be the odd man out?

Q. Given the nature of these two car hook ups, is there any concern we might have blown engines, guys overheating?

J.J. YELEY: Absolutely. Right now you’re seeing a lot more sustained RPM at a restrictor plate race than we usually do. Obviously, the temperature adds to the problem. When you go to restrictor plate engines, they’re so much more finicky than your open comp engine. That’s what is hurting our team the most, there’s big teams with the budget with the chassis dynos to figure out these problems. When something comes up and NASCAR needs to make a change because the cars are going too fast, those teams go back and spend a lot of time at the wind tunnel to figure that out. That splits up the racing groups. There are teams that can go out and figure that out in a day and the rest of us have to figure it out from looking, seeing.

I definitely think you’re going to see a lot of engine problems on Sunday.

Q. Bill, your son Chase has had a lot of success on the short tracks around the southeast at the age of 15. How much of an inspiration has that been for you at the age of 55? And your thoughts on Chase signing with Hendrick Motorsports this week?

BILL ELLIOTT: You know, I’ve kind of looked at it, when I felt like I was going to get out of racing, I was going to totally get out of it. He comes along, he wants to race. Here I am right back in the middle of it. I feel, if I’m going to get back in the middle of it, I’m going to get back in the middle of it. That’s kind of the way I feel about it.

The situation that come with Rick, there again, it was an opportunity, the door opened. He’s going to try to help us bits and pieces along the way. I’m going to race my deal out at Dawsonville, and see how things go.

I tell you what, that kid has done a fantastic job. I’ve watched him race in the last two years in the late model stuff. We went from Pensacola, Mobile, Winchester, Michigan, wherever. Man, he rolls on. I don’t know what goes on in that little head of his, but he figures it out.

KERRY THARP: Bill and J.J., congratulations for getting into the Daytona 500 on Sunday.

FastScripts by ASAP Sports

Note: Team Chevy press releases, high-resolution images, and media kit can be downloaded from the Team Chevy media website:

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FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES Gatorade Duel 150 – Race #1, Page 1 February 17, 2011 Daytona International Speedway

DAVID GILLILAND – No. 34 Taco Bell Ford Fusion (Finished 24th) – “We burned a plug wire, so we lost a cylinder because the plug wire was too close to the header and burned it up. It’s not really worth going back out there now and taking a chance of wrecking our car. I think we’ve got a good car. It’s fast. It’s got good speed pushing people. We were right there running times with everybody else, so I feel good about it for the 500. It’s kind of a wild race and definitely a different day out there, but I feel like we learned what we needed to learn today. Now we need to get to work on figuring out how to not have that happen again.”

IS IT KIND OF A BLESSING BECAUSE YOU HAVE YOUR PRIMARY CAR IN ONE PIECE FOR SUNDAY? “Yeah, for sure. Our back-up is definitely not as good as this one, so we got that and we learned something that could have potentially taken us out of the 500.”

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Crown Royal Ford Fusion (Finished 4th) – “It was just a matter of timing there. We tried to make plans before the race and I was gonna kind of hook up with Kurt and it didn’t work out, so I got with Kevin and obviously Kevin is very good at this. He’s won a ton of races, and after we got hooked together I just committed to stay with him the whole race no matter what. My guys in the pits on the Crown Royal team did a good job and got me in front of him, so I was committed to staying in front of him and somebody got a run and got him out of line and stalled him right at the wrong time and we lost momentum. But, overall, it was a good race and I think I learned a little bit. It was nice to be in front of most of it.”

AJ ALLMENDINGER – No. 43 Best Buy Ford Fusion (Finished 7th) – “That was nuts. It is very interesting. I wouldn’t say I like it, it is tough. It is all strategy. You get someone that you hook up with and that is cool. I got to hook up with 5-time and made him a friend of mine. We were working good together. Everybody is trying to learn out there together. I felt like you have to be pin point with everything. We ran up on a groove and it separated us. We got broken away from the lead group and then those guys were able to draft with each other and be quicker. The car was fast though. I felt like our cooling is really good in these Ford’s. The guys in the engine shop have done a great job with that. We learned some things, and we will go back out there Sunday and try it again.”

IS IT ALL GOING TO COME DOWN TO WHO YOUR PARTNER IS ON SUNDAY? “I think you just have to find the guy that you work well with. I had planned to work with Mark Martin, but that never worked out because he got up in the front drafting with Tony and me and Jimmie got hooked up. I think you just have to find somebody. If you can find one guy that you are really good with, you are better off. On the restart, everybody went with the same group of guys. That is what it is all about.”

MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 9 Stanley Ford Fusion (Finished 21st) – “We had a bad day. It was very frustrating. We didn’t have any friends. We got stuck in some tough positions. We kept getting stuck and it made for a rough Duel. We will get back at it come Sunday though.”

Thursday, Feb. 17, 2011 Denny Darnell Scott Sebastian Dodge Motorsports PR Daytona Int’l Speedway Daytona 500 Gatorade Duel #1 Post-Race Quotes NASCAR Sprint Cup Series

KURT BUSCH (No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger R/T) Race Winner YOU’RE TWO FOR TWO THIS WEEK IN DAYTONA. TALK ABOUT THIS VICTORY AND WHAT IT TOOK TO GET THE WIN? “This is sweet. It was just an overall team effort to get this victory. To have Shell/Pennzoil on board and start this strong with the double-deuce Dodge, I’m beside myself. The teamwork that it takes at the shop and the teamwork that it takes on the race track, this new draft is something different. I think it’s pretty special how Daytona can be repaved after 30 years and you see something completely different, yet it’s still the same old Daytona. You have to have a partner. The slingshot is there. Regan Smith, awesome competitor. He’s been strong on these restrictor plate tracks and he was a great teammate today.”

WHEN THE LAST CAUTION CAME OUT, WAS THERE ANY THOGUHT OF TEAMMING UP WITH ANYBODY ELSE? “There’s so many thought going through your mind. What are the two front row guys going to do? Who’s been teamed up all day? Who’s been there trying to get to their buddy? There are so many different scenarios, it’s almost like a roulette table spinning and you wait to see if the marble land on your number. And today was our day.”

HOW ABOUT THE WATER TEMPERATURE SITUATION AND THE TWO CAR SWAP? “It’s tough. It’s going to continue to get warmer as the week progresses. NASCAR tried to mandate how long we could stay behind another car. My car was hot many times and I was trying to protect it. It’s going to be a whole different game when we have to come out here and do this for 500 miles because the mental fatigue is tough. You have to know where your teammate is going to be and what you have to do to win this bad boy. Hey, two for two so far, we want that big one next weekend.”

TOYOTA NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) Post-Race Notes & Quotes Gatorade Duel 150s Race #1 — February 17, 2011

KASEY KAHNE, No. 4 Red Bull Toyota Camry, Red Bull Racing Team Gatorade Duel 1 Finish: 5th Are you happy with your finish today? “It’s not a bad day, but I would’ve liked to have finished a little bit better. I thought we had a good chance at winning, but so did the other five that we were battling there. Myself and Juan (Pablo Montoya) worked really well together. The Red Bull Toyota was good. It seemed fast with a couple of cars. I just got together with Juan and we tried to stay together the rest of the day and we ended up getting beat a little bit there at the end.”

Are you confident going into Sunday’s Daytona 500? “It’s not bad. We were real similar in the Bud Shootout on Saturday night and similar today so we definitely have a chance come Sunday. There’s a lot of cars that do and I think we are definitely one of them, too.”

Did you notice any difference today compared to Saturday’s Shootout? “I raced the whole race. I was happy with that. The Red Bull Toyota held up well. It was as good as most of the cars out there I think. We were just kind of right in that mix — that top-six mix. We worked great with Juan (Pablo Montoya). I’ve had better days at Daytona or more exciting days. I don’t know what we’re looking for, but to me i t could be a little better. I don’t know how to do it, but it seems like it could be a little more exciting.”

What are some of the differences from previous years at Daytona with the new surface? “It’s just really different. It just feels kind of like you are at a Texas or Charlotte, but on an even bigger track than that so you’re a little more spread out. Everybody knows the fastest way around so they’re going to get that way quick. It’s going to get spread out and you’re just going to have these little packs racing each other all day.”

Is the key to find one guy that you can work together with the entire race? “The thing is you figure out how hard they can push, how hard you can push, how difficult it is to keep them on your bumper without getting that air gap that a couple cars can get away from you. You figure that out and you just want to keep it. So, everybody kept it there at the end. I probably should’ve mixed it up a little bit and made everybody go different directions. It would’ve definitely created a different finish.”

How important is it to work with your spotter when you are racing in a pack of two? “It’s really key when the pack is a little bit bigger. When there’s two and when you are racing a couple other teams like we were throughout most of that race it’s not that big of a deal at all. It’s very similar to any other race.”

BRIAN VICKERS, No. 83 Red Bull Toyota Camry, Red Bull Racing Team Gatorade Duel 1 Finish: 14th What did you think of the first Duel race? “What an interesting race. We started out really strong and got all the way up to second. Then we lost our help. The 39 (Ryan Newman) got behind me and he pushed me into three once and I just got sideways. He checked up and then the whole field went by us. Then it was just playing catch-up the rest of the time. We ended up losing our help and the pit stops messed up. We ended up just stuck back there without much help.”

Will this be the type of racing that we will see in the Daytona 500? “I guess so — probably. I don’t know if I would want to do that for 500 miles to be honest with you. If everyone’s doing it then everyone has to do it. You don’t have a choice if you want to keep up. If guys are driving away from you then you have to get together and go. Maybe everyone will calm down and just kind of choose to ride in the pack. Once two or three guys take off then you have to run them down or they’re going to lap you.”

How did it feel to be back in a race? “It felt good — it felt really good to be back in a race. It was fantastic.”

BOBBY LABONTE, No. 47 Kroger/USO Toyota Camry, JTG-Daugherty Racing Gatorade Duel 1 Finish: 16th What did you think of the racing in the first Duel race? “I don’t really know what to say. It was just two-by-two. That last restart we were like ninth or 10th and the inside lane didn’t go, for me. A couple cars in front of me jacked up. It was okay.”

Do you feel like this is the type of racing we will see on Sunday? “It’s hard to say. You just have to have somebody to run with. That’s really it and if you don’t then you don’t. I can see it changing a little but before the race, but between now and then I don’t know what you would try. You’re pretty much where you are now.”

KEVIN CONWAY, No. 97 Extenze Toyota Camry, NEMCO Motorsports Gatorade Duel 1 Finish: 18th

JOE NEMECHEK, No. 87 AM FM Energy Toyota Camry, NEMCO Motorsports Gatorade Duel 1 Finish: 19th

MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 66 HP Racing LLC Toyota Camry, Prism Motorsports Gatorade Duel 1 Finish: 23rd

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES

2011 DAYTONA SPEEDWEEKS

DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY

DUEL AT DAYTONA NOTES AND QUOTES – DUEL NO. 1

February 17, 2011

REGAN SMITH, NO. 78 FURNITURE ROW/DENVER MATTRESS CHEVROLET: FINISHED 2ND :

“The Furniture Row Chevy was really good today. You can have a good pushing car, but if you don’t have anybody willing to work with you it doesn’t mean anything. Kurt (Busch) and I worked good all day and we had good cars hooked up together. He worked with me down here last week and taught me the switch and everything like that. I hope we can find each other and do the same thing on Sunday. We work good together. We had two cars that hooked up well together, and we had two spotters working real hard together. I knew if I could push and we got away, I’d have a chance to make a move on him. I didn’t make the right move, so it’s my fault. You learn stuff for Sunday. I’m real excited for Sunday. I’ve got a real good pit selection now and we’re starting toward the front. And, I’ve got that 22 car sitting right in front of me. I learned that I’ve got a good pushing race car, and a car that can be pushed really well. We worked hard on this thing. We weren’t fast when we got here, but the guys on the Front Row Chevrolet kept digging and digging, and got it where it needed to be. We have a good starting spot for Sunday.”

“I thought the racing was pretty good myself. When you have two by two and three by three and two sets of cars pushing each other.we’ve never seen anything like that. It’s different. I’m sure the guys who finished bad don’t feel that way, but I finished well. If I finish bad on Sunday, I’m sure I’ll say it’s bad then (laughter). Kurt didn’t have anybody out there either. As soon as I saw him, I thought, ‘we’re going to have a good day. It was close. I made the wrong move coming off four. Unfortunately, I watched the end of the Shootout because of one of those deals, but I’ll take the good starting spot for Sunday.”

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, NO. 42 TARGET CHEVROLET, FINISHED 6TH: WAS THAT A ENTIRELY NEW KIND OF RACING OUT THERE? “It is fun. It is different but it is fun. I think people are used to restrictor plate racing, it is going to be a very different restrictor plate. It is a helluva lot of fun restrictor plate racing. Our Target Chevy was really strong all day. I thought we had a shot at the win, the last restart we tried our best. Being the lead pair with a lap and a half to go isn’t a good thing.”

ANY TROUBLE WITH THE TEMPERATURE? “Hot”

MARK MARTIN, NO. 5 GODADDY.COM CHEVROLET, FINISHED 8TH: ON THE RACE: “It was fun and we have a really fast race car and it is still in one piece. We located a number of things we need to work on in different areas. We have a few days to get. Before today we really didn’t know what we really needed to zero-in on. I am tickled to death. The GoDaddy.com Chevy can win this race but we are going to have to make those areas better and we know where to work.”

DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 88 AMP ENERGY/NATIONAL GUARD CHEVROLET, FINISHED 13TH: WHAT DID YOU GUYS LEARN FROM DUEL ONE? “I feel like we had a pretty good little opportunity there right before we pitted. When the pitting started to happen I found myself to be the odd man out without a partner and we needed to come on pit road but we ran about two or three more laps trying to figure out what to do. I was trying to find a partner until they called me to pit road and I was just loosing a lot of time to the leaders. We learned something there. After that we just tried to race as hard as we could. Trying to win that race on a green/white/checkered wasn’t very good. You know there wasn’t nothing else we could do. The car, we need to find more speed on the car. Guys are able to run a little bit longer than we are without swapping. We need to find a little bit better deal on the cooling. We’ve got some homework to do but we’ve been working really hard. I got these guys so far behind with them two wrecks this week but we’re coming back.”

BILL ELLIOTT, NO. 09 PHOENIX CONSTRUCTION CHEVROLET – Races his way into the Daytona 500 with a 15TH place finish: CONGRATULATIONS ON RACING YOUR WAY INTO THE DAYTONA 500 TODAY: “Well, I’m just proud of the guys. You know James (Finch) kind of said we’d make this deal work this year and we’ve got some good sponsors on the car and we just need to make this Chevrolet go to the front come Sunday. Right now is a good test and we brought it back in one piece. We have a couple of more days of practice to work through. Hopefully we learned a lot today. The hardest part of this deal is the guys that’s been doing it when they did it in testing a month or so ago and continues to work on their technique as far as swapping and how they do it and how quick they can do it. They can make that leap and get to you and keep going. And that’s where we’ve got to work. Ryan (Newman) and I worked really good together and there was times we got separated and we had to get back together. But that’s what it’s all about. I think we did a good job and I learned a lot even for an old dog like me.”

JJ YELEY, 46 RED LINE OIL CHEVROLET, FINISHED 17TH – Races his way into the Daytona 500 with a 15TH place finish: RACED YOUR WAY INTO THE DAYTONA 500, HOW BIG OF A DEAL IS THIS? “This is huge. Obviously for the sponsor International, Red-Line Oil, Chevrolet. It wasn’t as good obviously as we had hoped when we came down here but I wouldn’t be standing here if it wasn’t for Marcos Ambrose, DeWalt and whoever he has for his sponsors because he was a heck of a pusher. He stuck with me the entire race. I learned from the start on a restart it didn’t matter where it was, you were better to be by yourself on a restart and it took almost two laps before the train race would take off and I just had to keep the No. 97 and No. 87 separated there as we were comin to the green. I had to fight Nemechek off and we were beating on each other down the back straightaway but it was enough that it cost them almost a half lap before they got locked in there. This is a relief off my shoulders and the entire team. We got that speedway engine about two weeks ago and its been a mad thrash but to put it in the biggest race of the year, that’s awesome.”

Note: Team Chevy press releases, high-resolution images, and media kit can be downloaded from the Team Chevy media website:

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