Chevy Notes - Dale Jr. transcript, Aug. 7

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CHEVROLET NOTES & QUOTES

NASCAR NEXTEL CUP SERIES

BRICKYARD 400 ADVANCE

INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY

August 7, 2004

 

DALE EARNHARDT JR., NO. 8 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO - Note: Highlights of Junior's Q&A session with the media after qualifying his Chevy in 5th place.  

 

(TAKE US THROUGH YOUR QUALIFYING LAP) "We were working on race trim in practice yesterday. We got a brand new chassis and we wanted to get as much race trim practice as we could so we forfeited learning about the car in qualifying trim. So I was real happy we were able to run such a good lap. That was a 1.75 seconds faster than yesterday. I was real happy. We made some changes on the car to make it faster. I thought the draw was worth at least a half a second being able to go out early in the morning. That was a big help too. It just worked out for us. The car is better and I drove it harder and we got a better lap.  Obviously it's not the pole. We were excited to be on the pole for a little bit. But we're looking forward to being in the top 10 or 15 to start on Sunday."

 

(ANY REASON YOU DIDN'T RUN A SECOND LAP?) "Tony Eury Jr. called me off on the second lap. But I wasn't going to be able to beat the time anyway. The car was a little bit loose getting in the corner on the first lap, so the second lap was going to be a little slower."

 

(YOU SAID THE CAR WAS GOOD. IS THIS GOING TO BE THE CAR THAT YOU'LL FEEL THE MOST COMFORTABLE IN?) "I don't think I'd give it that much of a compliment yet. We have a lot to learn. It's a brand new chassis from a brand new chassis builder we haven't used before. Michael ran a car like this at Charlotte in The Winston and in the (Coca-Cola) 600 and at Chicago. And he's had pretty good success with it. I wouldn't say this is the reason we've turned our season around, but it's had a little bit to do with it. In an effort to put ourselves in a better position for the last 10 races, we wanted to try the car and see for ourselves whether it could help us. I like it a lot. I think it drives differently. It handles differently. You can take either one and win races with them, but there are just different characteristics about each car. We're working with it. I'm not totally sold on it but we're giving it a good shot this weekend. We didn't test it. We just brought it here. 

 

"That's why we were in race trim for the most of the time yesterday trying to learn as much as we can for Sunday. Whatever we gave up on a pit stall or whatever, we just wanted to be good on Sunday. 

 

"Our qualifying lap helps. We changed some things on the car and improved the speed. We'll pass those things over to our race trim package.  That was kind of the comment Michael had with his car that it was loose in - especially during qualifying. But that's a good problem to have when you're in race trim, especially late in the race when the track tightens up and everything and you're having trouble passing cars and passing people."

 

(WILL YOU ADDRESS YOUR MEDICAL SITUATION AND IS THERE ANY REASON THAT WILL CAUSE YOU TO GET OUT OF THE CAR DURING THE RACE?) "I wish I had some pictures so I could just hand them out to everybody so everybody would have a good idea of what they (his burns) look like. They kind of look like a bad sinus infection right now. But there's one on the upper left thigh that's about four inches by two inches. There's one on the back of my leg above the knee that's about five inches by five inches. There's one on the back of my leg below the knee that's about the size of a silver dollar. My neck is just about all healed up. The right leg had two blisters on it that have scabbed over that are 80 - 90 percent healed up. They don't bother you anymore. It's something a little four year old could run around with no problem. But the ones on my left leg that I discussed first are still soft. They haven't developed scabs. They haven't turned the corner yet. I expected by this point that they would have. The doctors initially stated it would be a two-week recovery. I had two nurses come from Raleigh this week (burn center in Raleigh, NC) and we're trying some new dressings and stuff like that to try and accelerate the healing. All that has helped a lot. As you can see this week I'm able to put my heel down and walk around half normal. But it still hurts a little bit. When you stand up with an open wound on your leg and you stand up you can feel the pressure when all the blood rushes down there to it and you feel the pressure. So it just hurts in those areas real bad. Walking around to and from the car and the bus and the crew is the worst part. 

 

"Sitting in the seat is not a problem. I just told Tony Jr. to put an extra large spring on the brake pedal so I wouldn't be dragging the brake. Sitting in the car and driving the car is....even last week I wasn't bothered by the heat. I don't normally even feel the burns. 

 

"Even on that long straightaway at Pocono, you'd think it would bother you or come to your attention at least somewhere down that straightaway. But I really haven't had any problem with it. I think more than anything, I got out of the car last week out of frustration of how bad the car was and how far off we were from the start of the race. We were already a lap down. We had parts and pieces falling off the car even when John (Andretti) was in the car. We're not pointing fingers or anything; we've just got to get better.

 

"I was telling somebody yesterday that it's kind of tough and difficult right now because we have two problems. We have a driver that's trying to get right. And we have a team that's not right. And we've got to get our cars better. So we're working really hard. We talked. And we tried not to get crazy and move people and change things and make rash decisions because Teresa and I both believe you don't change partners in the middle of the dance. So we talked and we're really focused. We've had these slumps - we've always had them. If you look back in our Busch Series years or we've had something in the middle of the year where we had a span of eight or 10 weeks where we just couldn't do anything much. But in the Busch Series you could get behind and make it up. We started out our rookie season kind of the way we did this year winning races and then the rest of the year we floundered. But I feel like they'll feel it out. I'm confident with that. They get so frustrated that they find out someway, somehow to figure it out. It may not start this week, but being in a different car and knowing we're trying to do things to be better is maybe a little more positive."

 

(DO YOU SOMETIMES WISH YOU HAD A CREW CHIEF LIKE CHAD KNAUS OR MATT BORLAND?) "I don't really know what it would be like to go to the race track with anybody but Tony Jr. and Tony Sr. I don't know if I'd want to really. They're family. It's hard for a lot of people in this business to understand, but how much I care about them overrides even the worst season you can have. That's more important to me. It's more important to me that me and Tony Jr. and me and Tony Sr. have a good relationship. That's way more important than any championship. I've always felt like I would race with them forever. It's kind of how I feel. There's never a day that I look over at Jimmie's car (Johnson, No. 48) and wish I was driving it instead of my own. I wish I knew what he has underneath it. But as much as Chad is a great crew chief, but as long as I've been working with these guys, I don't know if could (switch to somebody else). 

 

"You could put me with Chad, but you might not have the same results. Aside from that, my relationship with them is too important to go away over trying to win a championship."

 

(WERE YOU KNOCKED UNCONSCIOUS DURING THE CORVETTE CRASH?) "No. But I was surprised too at my own reaction. Maybe 'disoriented' might be a good word for it. I went to Dr. Petty and everything checked out (neurological exam). I didn't have any headaches. That's really the first time I'd ever been through something like that. Everything was good. So I even assured myself if I had any questions or doubts if I'd been knocked out or stunned. One of the things that often happens when a driver wrecks a car is you find yourself being disappointed over the wreck. A lot of times in stock cars - maybe not so much in sports cars - we hit the wall and we don't move as fast as jumping out of the car and running across the grass as if we were on fire. So I didn't expect the car to burst into flames like it did. And so I was sitting there at that point, because that practice was just before the race, disappointed because I had just ruined the whole weekend for everybody. Boris (Said) and everybody who was enjoying themselves so much, I just flushed it all down the toilet. So I was disappointed and maybe pouting a little bit about that. When the car burst into flames, it was kind of a surreal moment. I couldn't believe I was sitting in a ball of fire. So there was about three seconds of, 'what the hell do I do now?' So I was kind of unfamiliar with my surroundings and disoriented with exactly where I was on the race track or how to exactly get out of the car. One of the unfortunate things about it was is that the car had a stock door handle on it and I don't drive a Corvette every day so it's not like I know how to reach for that. And the window net too was unfamiliar as far as the latching device that we have in these cars. So all of that was knocked out of the car. Luckily that was not in the way when I was trying to get out."

 

(ON QUALFIYING ON FLAT TRACKS LIKE THIS OR BEING ON THE ABSOLUTE EDGE LIKE TEXAS OR ATLANTA WHEN YOU HOLD YOUR BREATH THE WHOLE TIME) "Qualifying on the banked tracks is a lot more fun and enjoyable for me. When we qualify at the flatter tracks here, you just worry about grip getting into the corner and exiting the corner. So I was pretty nervous today about qualifying - especially being the first guy out - whether that was going to be good or bad for me. We hadn't had the best car. We only made two runs in qualifying trim and the car wasn't fast at all. The car wasn't comfortable. So I had a lot of concerns. It's not always that I'm going to qualify so I'm nervous. 

 

"You have a lot of things that go into that as far as how the car was and what it drove like and what the problems were with the car and whether they're fixed and whether you can drive through that. The car was really loose getting into the corner yesterday. Basically you have to get it all in there and hope you don't spin out. I learned a lot yesterday too."

 

(WITH THE POINT SYSTEM AND YOUR INJURIES, DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU'RE IN THE DEFENSIVE MODE NOW AS FAR AS PROTECTING, OR DO YOU WANT TO TRY BEING AGGRESSIVE?) "I want to get aggressive. But it's really hard for me to get aggressive now being a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest (laughs). It's kind of tough to win those fights. We really had to rationalize about the situation. I told everybody that regardless of what anybody else's opinion was, that I wanted to get my leg right. I want to be able to get out of here and not do anything that's going to put myself in jeopardy or get it (burns) infected or have long-lasting issues with it later. So, whatever the cost, I want to get my leg right. That was the number one thing. I wanted everybody on the team and in the organization aware of that. I don't want to have any issues with this that would give me any problems. I don't know what that would be, but I don't want to have any problems with this in exchange for winning the championship. What the hell good is that? I think we're still in a good position. We've got a chance just like everybody else. We've got a shot. We'll just keep digging in the next two or three weeks. I feel like by the time the last 10 races start, I won't have any problem. I should be rid of this and hopefully it'll be all cleaned up and gone and I can really focus all my effort on that. But I've still got to stop whatever I'm doing in the middle of the day every day and unwrap and wrap these things up and lay in the bathtub for 45 minutes and do other various things that aren't my nature of what I've been doing in the past. So it's still in the back of your mind. Whether that has any affect on your performance - I don't believe it does - but until it's gone or until it's right, I don't feel like I'm 100 percent focused. I can get in the car and I can drive it just as fast every lap as I did six months ago. But focus is important. The level I need to be focusing is not quite there yet. I'm sitting out there before qualifying trying to get off my leg and sit down somewhere and keep comfortable instead of thinking about where I'm at in the car and the changes we made. I'm trying to do all those things and worry about it at the same time is kind of difficult."

 

(AS A COMPETITOR THE LAST COUPLE OF WEEKS, HOW DIFFICULT WAS IT TO GET OUT OF THE CAR AND TURN THE WHEEL OVER TO A RELIEF DRIVER AND WATCH FROM THE SIDELINES?) "Well, I really wasn't in a lot of pain. I really wasn't bothered that bad by the injuries. The car was terrible. We had a relief driver. I had burns on my legs that I didn't want to bother - say I went three-quarters into the race and they started bothering me - who knows? Let's put it that way. But I doubt it. I really seriously thought I could have ran that race. But I didn't have to. And we had John (Andretti) sitting there. Personally, I wanted to see what John thought about the race car. I wasn't too happy about it. We kind of mixed the drivers around there and had about the same results."

 

(ON GOOD RESULTS DURING THE SPRING AND THEN GOING INTO A SLUMP WHEN HE GOT HURT) "I don't think our slump started two weeks ago. It's been longer than that. It's been eight or 10 weeks ago for us.   I can't pinpoint it. That's the frustration about. You can't say all right, we're setting the cars up differently. Tony Sr. looks through every set-up and tries to find a pattern and maybe a change or a place where we may have gotten off the path a little bit. We were running good at the start of the year. The first seven races, we were really fast and we were winning races. And then we had a span up until the middle of the season where we weren't the best car but we somehow managed to get a top 10 finish out of a 15th place car. And now we've got a 20th place car and it's difficult to get a top 10 finish with a 20th or 25th place race car. So, we fell off - not all at once - but I think from the start of the year until now it's been a slow progression to our demise. But we'll just have to figure it out. All you can do is try to figure it out. There are other guys in the garage who are trying to figure it out. Sometimes you just wish everybody would just look the other way and wait for you to figure it out, but that's not going to happen. We just want to get it right. If we do, we do. If we don't, this ain't our farewell tour. We'll be back next year and try again."

 

(WHAT IS THE GAMEPLAN FOR THIS WEEKEND?) "I feel real good. I had those two nurses show up for a couple of hours this week. I feel like that day I skipped three days of healing just being around them and having them do some things. They had this stuff called Xeroform (Petrolatum Gauze), which is like a yellow tissue they put on the burns the first day I was in the hospital. They expected those to form scabs and skin and a combination of stuff to accelerate the healing but it didn't. And it kind of all bunched up and moved around and my hairs grew up through it and it was really a big pain. 

 

"So they came over there and put me in the tub for a couple of hours and let that stuff soak real good and they pulled it right off. It didn't even hurt. So we're trying new dressings and stuff instead of the old style. And that's some stuff that Tony Stewart, when he got burned real badly one time, said it was awesome. We wrote (the name of it) down and we go home and two days later the nurse brings it to me. I feel pretty good about what we're doing now. It just depends on how you wrap the leg really, on how good it feels and how good you can walk. Sometimes you wrap it right and sometimes you wrap it wrong. It's hard to tell. There's one spot where it's really tender right close to the bend, so when you bend you knee it's like pulling that all the time. That's really the only part that hurts. If I get it wrapped just right, I can ease that a little bit. Later, when it dries up a little bit, it starts to hut a little bit. Right now, it's probably the worst time. About three hours from now, it'll be about the best it's been."

 

(DO YOU PLAN TO STAY IN THE CAR FOR THE WHOLE RACE?) "When I sit in the car, I get way off of it. It feels better. Plus, we have a brand new car that I want to be in and I want to know what's going on - regardless of whether the sway bar falls of it or whatever - I want to stick it out this weekend. So it's not that I'm disappointed or expecting anything more, but to continue to use relief drivers isn't a progression. John (Andretti) did a great job. Martin (Truex, Jr.) did an awesome job. I really felt worse about putting those guys in the cars then getting out of them. I kind of threw John to the wolves. He didn't even have a lap all weekend. To climb into that car without a hesitation at all - I was more impressed with that than anything I'd seen in a while. It took a lot of guys for him to do that. For Martin to be there under that pressure of wearing that Bud uniform and everybody on his back says a lot about him. I was dragging with that. But I'm ready to get going. I'm ready to be driving the car all the time. I want to get back on the path again."

 

(WILL YOU HAVE A RELIEF DRIVER STANDING BY?) "In an emergency situation, I think we can find somebody, I'm sure."

 

(WITH THE POINT SYSTEM, YOU COULD HAVE MISSED NEW HAMPSHIRE.  WHAT WAS YOUR MOTIVATION FOR GETTING IN THE CAR THEN?) "I didn't want to have to miss it. We talked about it. I don't think I'd be any better now if I had (sat out the race). So what's the point? I could climb in the car and start the motor and run a few laps. 

 

"I could even compete with some of those guys and wait for the caution. If I could gain only 80 points or whatever, I wanted it. So the points were the motivation for me. I don't know if I could have sat at home."

 

(BECAUSE OF ALL THIS, HAS YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON A CHAMPIONSHIP CHANGED?) "I wouldn't say it was a different way. My priorities have never changed. I would never put personal goals or personal achievements above friendships and relationships I have with certain people or above my own well being. So to get my leg better is what matters to me right now. I can try my best once that's done. I'm giving it everything I've got. To get in the car I felt like was a good show to my team that I was dedicated to our cause. I didn't want the guys to feel like I stepped out and wherever we ended up was where we ended up. I don't think my determination is in question. I think my priorities are where they're supposed to be. It's to get myself better, and that I don't foul up a relationship with a cousin that I've had forever and that Tony Jr. and Tony Sr., an uncle I've had forever, over disagreements and poor runs and finishes and a loss of a championship. I still feel like we've got a shot at it. We're not a championship winning team right now and I think everybody knows that. Jimmie (Johnson) and those guys are dominating. They're on their way - unless we can stop them or anybody else - to winning that championship. We've saved a lot of tests. We're going to be testing more. We're going to Michigan right after this to go testing for two days. That's all we can do it work and try to get it right. But I'm not here to amuse everybody. I want to win a race. I've felt a lot of pressure to do a lot more than I could. When I got hurt, felt a lot of pressure from some people and that kind of disappointed me a little bit (when they'd ask) why can't you do this or why can't you do that when I was obviously in a lot of comfort. If I didn't trust anybody before, it's really tough now because you can kind of narrow it down to who is right for you and who's not. People are trying to achieve things just for themselves at my expense --- even though your legs are burned up.  There are just a few things that upset me. I got hurt. It's really simple. My leg is still not done bleeding and being gross. But when it gets better I won't have to worry about it anymore and I'll be 100 percent. But I've got to go get it re-wrapped in a minute and deal with that. That's not a lot of fun. But I've got to do it every day. I wish I didn't, but until I get better that's number one for me."

 

(PEOPLE HAVE BEEN WHISPERING ABOUT WHAT PLANES YOU ARE FLYING ON AND SAYING THINGS ABOUT TERESA EARNHARDT. CAN YOU CLARIFY THAT?)

"That's all totally crap. I really hate that that happened. We tried to back off a little bit about doing interviews because we felt like we were really over saturating the market. I was on way too many covers and in way too many articles. There was nothing new to talk about me. We just kind of were using everything up. I thought maybe if we backed off a little bit and cooled off and took a break from doing interviews that we wouldn't wear everybody out about Dale Jr. The last thing I want is for everybody to be sick of my name and my face. So I hadn't addressed the media too much. There was speculation about my injuries and everything and one of the things was the airplane thing. One of the things that's amazing to me was everybody stepping up when I got hurt. People offered airplane rides, jet rides, and said I could leave later or earlier. I rode with Matt (Kenseth) to Pocono and Richard Childress offered. I rode with Tony Stewart home (from Pocono) last weekend. Everybody was just really being great about everything and that's just one of those things that you don't really know what to expect. What started that, I believe, was that I was supposed to fly with the team to New Hampshire. I got called into see Dr. Petty and the neurology deal. So we missed that plane and I had to find a way to get there. Everybody thought that for some reason that my stepmother didn't want my mother flying on the company plane. Teresa (Earnhardt) totally wouldn't be like that. She knows that I needed my mom to help me with my wraps and stuff. That kind of bummed me out that people would say those things. But I hope I cleared it up. That wasn't the case."

 

(WITH THE CHASE FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP BEGINNING IN SEPTEMBER, DO YOU FEEL KIND OF GLAD ALL THIS HAPPENED WHEN IT DID?) "Yeah, I felt really lucky that I the situation is that I can kind of let a few points go askew and still be able to have a chance at it."

 

(ON DALE EARNHARDT SR. BEING INJURED AND GOING TO WATKINS GLEN) "I recall that situation where he had that sternum injured. But you know, I didn't have any problem getting out of the car at New Hampshire because I didn't feel good and I hurt a lot. I had a problem getting out last week because personally I got out for different reasons. I didn't get out because I couldn't keep going. I got out because I could. Things just weren't going right for us all weekend. The car was terrible. It was out of control. Parts were falling off it. And so whether that was a wake-up call or another kick in the groin to us, we need to get better. It's bad enough to be injured - much less be out there in a car that's that damn far off. That's just terrible."