Jamie McMurray and Jeremy Mayfield quotes from Martinsville

Friday, April 8, 2005
Martinsville Speedway
Advance Auto Parts 500 Advance Stuff.

                

JAMIE McMURRAY (No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger)

NOTE:  McMurray scored a career-best runner-up finish in last fall's Cup
race at Martinsville and won the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race here
last fall.

 

COMMENT ON BRISTOL PENALTIES "Bristol frustrates everybody and every
driver has his own side of the story when something happens. NASCAR has
put a standard on penalties whether it's giving the finger or whatever
it is. They give the same penalty to everybody. I don't have an in-car
camera every week, but guys who do will have to be a little more
careful. Every situation is different, but you can't penalize one guy
for something and not penalize the next. If something happens to me at
Martinsville this weekend and I get penalized, I'm not going to get
upset because they've done the same for everybody. NASCAR has been real
good for that."

 

IS IT TOUGH RUNNING BACK-TO-BACK SHORT TRACK RACES? "Some guys got upset
last week, and I'd say this is probably a pretty good place to pay 'em
back. I think you're better off at a place like this rubbing on somebody
because the speeds aren't as fast as going to Texas right after Bristol.
You can't get away with stuff like that at Texas and if you try you
could really hurt somebody. Here, you can do a little bit of that and
it's not that big of a deal. You can wreck hard here, but if you tear up
a guy's car here you have to go on because he can run as fast as he
could before. If you tear up your car at Texas, you're done. I love
coming to Bristol and Martinsville. These are two really great
racetracks, and we can put on a good show, plus I run well at both of
them."

 

YOU FELL OUT OF THE TOP 10 LAST WEEK. IS THAT A BIG DEAL RIGHT NOW? "We
ran third to seventh last week for the majority of the race and some of
the guys ahead of us in the points fell out. We could have gone up as
high as sixth if we could have finished in the top five, but we fell to
15th. It's really frustrating because Bristol and Martinsville are two
races we really felt like we could gain a lot of points."

 

DO YOU HAVE THE SAME DODGE YOU FINISHED SECOND WITH HERE LAST FALL? "No,
we've got a brand new car. We tested this car at Phoenix. We actually
took the car I ran second with here last year to Phoenix and tested it
against this car. I told them I wanted to bring the new car back, so we
did. Qualifying is very important here, but last year I was running
second or third and I missed the commitment line and I went all the way
back to the end of the longest line. When you do that, you have to do
your pit strategy opposite of the leaders and pit when they don't and
stay out when they pit. Last year we went from 31st to second on one pit
stop because we stayed out. Fortunately pit stops came again 50 laps
later and it worked out perfectly. If you have a good car it's not a big
deal to get in the back at a place like this or even at Bristol but if
you don't have a good car it can be huge."

 

YOU'RE WEARING A MASTERS CAP. WHAT'S THAT ALL ABOUT? "Top-Flite is my
sponsor on my Busch car, so I'm into golf. Chevron-Texaco was nice
enough to take me to the Masters on Monday and Tuesday. I went and hung
out and got to watch Tiger and Phil Mickelson and all these guys play
some golf. They have this thing called The Tree, and it's where all the
golfers and agents and companies hang out and make all their deals. We
hung out under the tree and talked with everybody. I had a wonderful
time. I'm trying to make some deals, yeah. I'm a weekend golfer. Rusty
enjoys playing, and I've played with him a few times. Casey lives on a
golf course. I'm not an avid golfer, but I'm a Monday and Tuesday
golfer. For me, golf is not a serious sport. It's something I go and
relax and have fun at. If the day doesn't go right, I throw another ball
down and hit again. I'm average. I'm not great, but I'm not terrible.
Actually I worked at a driving range when I was 14 for a couple of
years. I hit a lot of golf balls the two years I worked there. I got
into golf a lot at that time, but racing keeps me so busy that golf is
something I don't get to do as much as I like."

 

ARE YOU A BETTER DRIVER IN A CAR OR ON THE GOLF COURSE? "I'm a better
driver in a car, for sure. I don't know how far I can drive a golf ball.
I can drive it a long way. It just doesn't go straight. I played with
Rusty at Dover last year. I can beat Rusty. I'm just kidding. We're
probably close. The cool part about playing with Rusty is that he's so
competitive I was worried about him getting serious and if things didn't
go well he was going to get mad. He's just like me. He went and enjoyed
himself, and if he didn't hit a good shot instead of getting mad he just
threw another ball down and hit it. That's what I'm all about."

 

JEREMY MAYFIELD (No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Chargers)

 

COMMENT ON THE SEASON SO FAR "We haven't found any one thing, but we're
just trying to work hard and make ourselves better. We're massaging what
we've got and learning about the changes with the new spoiler rule and
new nose piece. We're just getting better as a team. I can't say we've
found one thing, but we've been testing every week. We've been in the
wind tunnel. We've got a lot of stuff going on. Really, I think starting
off slow like this it's going to help us through the year. If you start
out too good, you think you're good and you just maintain that. We knew
we had to go back to work, and we did. I can't say enough about how hard
this team has worked to turn the corner."

 

COMMENT ON THE RESOURCES YOU HAVE AT YOUR DISPOSAL "You can test all you
want to, but if you don't have the resources to know what you're testing
or learning you've got to do something different. That's something we're
very fortunate to have with Dodge and Ray and everybody at Evernham
Motorsports. We have the resources and smart enough people to know if
we're on the wrong track we're able to stop and turn around and do
something different. A lot of teams don't have the resources to let them
know what they're doing wrong. We have a competition meeting on Tuesday
and we sit down and talk about what happened the best week, what we need
to do to get better. We go over every little detail of the last race and
we'll sit down and Ray will delegate different areas to work on. It's a
pretty neat process what Ray's developed there. It's something I see
that's going to pay off for us in the future. We should be in good
shape."

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT BACK-TO-BACK SHORT TRACK RACES? "It's not a big
deal. I don't mind it. I go every week and I don't look any further than
that week. I take it a week at a time and a race at a time. Do I like
coming here? Would I like to be somewhere else? Yeah, I would. It's not
a short track issue. This is one of those places you don't know what's
going to happen, and that's the way Bristol was last week. You do the
best you can and hopefully you make all the right decisions. Just about
everybody will tell you if you come out of here with a top 10 or top
five, you're pretty happy with that. I was fortunate last week. I stayed
out of trouble, and I'm ready to go this week. You come in this week and
put everything behind you. We've got to race each other every week, and
we've got to do the best we can."

 

WHAT'S YOUR OUTLOOK FOR THIS WEEKEND? "I feel good about it. We've got a
good car this week. We had a good car last week. It just didn't show
because we had a little bit of battery trouble. It got us a few laps
down, but we ran good, so we should be in good shape this weekend."