NASCAR - THIS WEEK IN FORD RACING

• Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 Ameriquest Ford Fusion, is at Richmond International Raceway Tuesday and Wednesday for NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series testing. He took time out during the lunch hour to hold a Q&A session in the RIR infield media center. Read More

• Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 60 Scotts/World Financial Group Ford Fusion in the NASCAR Busch Series, heads to Nashville Superspeedway this weekend for the Pepsi 300. Edwards, who is coming off a victory during his last trip to the facility in June, leads the NBS standings by 197 points over second-place Kevin Harvick. Read More

• Marcos Ambrose, a rookie in NASCAR Busch Series competition, finds himself seventh in the driver point standings—the highest full-time Busch driver—heading into this weekend’s race in Nashville. Ambrose, who finished third last season in the truck series event in Nashville, talks about the start of his season and the transition his family has made since moving to the United States from Tasmania. Read More

• Bobby Hamilton, Jr., driver of the No. 35 Team Rensi Ford Fusion, climbed his way into the top 10 of the NASCAR Busch Series point standings following the race at Bristol Motor Speedway. Hamilton, who resides just outside Nashville in White House, Tenn., was a guest on today’s NASCAR teleconference. Read More

Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 Ameriquest Ford Fusion, is at Richmond International Raceway Tuesday and Wednesday for NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series testing. He took time out during the lunch hour to hold a Q&A session in the RIR infield media center.

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 Ameriquest Ford Fusion – HOW ARE THINGS GOING WITH THE COT AND THIS TEST? “I think it’s gonna go really well. We’ve learned a lot about the car in the last two races. Definitely there are some things we’ve picked up on and some scenarios that we’ve learned a little bit about and made changes to, and this is gonna be a good, good test for all the teams. Number one, this is a good race track to test at because the two corners are a little bit different. It’s a decent speed race track for the size of it and it just works really well for testing. I think this is gonna be one of the best tests for the COT car other than Bristol, which was the first time we were all together. This is gonna be an important test for guys for Phoenix and all over the place and especially when we come back here, so I think the car is going fairly decent right now. This is gonna be a big deal here to see how it turns. What we knew about the car a few years ago and what we learned last year and this year is that the car doesn’t turn as well as the old car. The car doesn’t have the front downforce and isn’t all sloped and kicked out like the regular car is, so it’s a little bit harder to get it turn around the corner. Because of that and the higher speeds here, this is gonna be a place where we’re gonna have to work on it and keep working toward getting that front grip to get the car to go around the corner here.”

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO RUN WELL HERE? “It’s kind of funny because this race track is fun to race at but it’s a tough race track as well. I’m not dreading coming here, but I’m kind of nervous because this place is hard. Some guys won’t say it is, they say it puts on good races and that, but it is a hard race track because both ends are totally different. They’re really different and this place is challenging as far as brakes and not overheating the front tires and arcing it into turn one – you’re on the edge every single lap going into turn one here – and to get the maximum amount of speed out of your race car and get it to go across turn one and two really good, that’s a lot of speed to be made up there. It’s kind of like Bristol in a way, you’ve got to be right on the edge and have your car balanced perfectly that you can arc it down in there and get it to go around the center. I’ve run really good here. I won a truck race here. I almost won a Busch race. I was really close. Some people said I should have given Kyle the bumper a little bit, but I elected not to, and, hopefully, I’ll get a Cup win one of these days.”

ANY CONCERN THAT THE CHEVYS SEEM TO BE AHEAD OF YOU WITH THE COT? “To be honest with you, Chevrolet has been ahead of us since 2005. In 2003 and 2004, the Chevys were a little bit ahead of us. We managed to win championships in those years as a manufacturer, but, really, competitive-wise, they were a little better than us. In 2005, we were better as a group. We were probably the best in 2005 as a manufacturer, and then in ’06 and ’07 Chevrolet is back up top where they’ve been most of the time. And it’s not really a surprise to us to see that they’re running as well as they are. They’ve got a bunch of great teams – Gibbs, Hendrick, Childress just off the top are very, very strong race teams. Technically, there’s one of us, if you will. We have Roush and Yates over in the Ford camp. If you were to say we had three Roush conglomerates all running Fords, then the tables might be balanced a little different, but they’ve got three strong, strong teams and three strong teams with good drivers driving Chevys. That’s something we know we have to battle. They’ve been a little bit better at it and, let’s face it, you take Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Denny Hamlin and all those guys and feeding a little bit of information back to Chevrolet, it’ll trickle around to those teams a little bit faster. But in our organization all we have is us – we have our five teams to gather that information and use it within ourselves. It’s tough to beat the odds. The odds are there are more Chevrolet teams and better cars.”

WHAT PROBLEMS HAVE YOU HAD WITH ANY FOAM SINCE BRISTOL AND WHAT CONCERNS DO YOU HAVE GOING FORWARD? “Certainly NASCAR has been receptive to us addressing problems with it. Last week I took the foam to the NASCAR Tech Center with me. NASCAR was in a fairly large meeting with all of their guys about the car and they looked at the foam. Steve Peterson came to our race shop and looked at the race car and felt like we could have an extra heat shield and then maybe notch the foam up a little bit more around the area where the exhaust is and felt like that would address the issue. What we talked about is does the foam have a toxicity to it as far as when it melts or it’s on fire. A lot of things that burn are bad to breathe in, no matter what it is almost it’s bad to breathe, so he reassured us that the foam was okay when it smoked or whatever happened to it, but, on the other hand, he said it was non-flammable. Now I don’t know what happened to Kevin’s exactly. There’s another layer of board that the foam is bolted to and holds it in place, so it’s perfectly possible that piece of board – and it’s not like wood, it’s some kind of material that I can’t answer – but it is an issue with the exhaust. The exhaust gets very hot on these race cars. It’s hot inside. Think about this for a minute, people say we aren’t athletes and how hot does it get inside that car. Well, that foam is inside the race car. If my arm was a foot longer, I could reach over and poke it with my finger, and that stuff is burning, so that’s how hot it is inside that race car for four to four-and-a-half hours. It’s hot inside there. Obviously, NASCAR is aggressively addressing it now because we have a week off with it and then we go to Phoenix, but they’re on it and we’re looking at what we can do as well, but keep in mind, it’s not even hot yet. We’re not at these hot race tracks where it’s gonna be hotter outside and that’s gonna play a factor as well when it’s 10-20 degrees hotter outside, it gets hotter inside, so there could be some things. The cars smoke outside the right side pipes going into the corner – just black smoke – and it must be the change in fuel from leaded to unleaded fuel, and we see flames coming out the right side pipes. I don’t know about the chemistry, but I think that’s unburned fuel typically is what ignites in the exhaust system when it’s hot, so there may be some issues with trying to science all of this out as we go forward.”

CAN YOU GAIN ANYTHING BY RUNNING BUSCH AND CUP RACES NOW WITH THE NEW CAR? “You’re probably not gonna gain as much from it. They do drive differently and they have for the last year or so. They drove quite a bit different because of the downforce and the spoiler, and really what it is I think is it’s just a skill set you get from driving the car – just the extra practice and the awareness. I do it for a number of reasons. One, I love to race the Busch Series. Two, it’s kind of no pressure racing for me. We love to race as racers, it’s in our blood, and I can go out there on Friday night and really enjoy what I’m doing and have a lot of fun racing. Sunday and Saturday night, there’s so much pressure, that you can’t really have fun unless your car is awesome fast and then you’re having fun. But there’s so much pressure, so I enjoy that (racing Busch). It also gets me extra track time and keeps me in shape. It keeps you awake and alert with what you’re doing behind the wheel – your reflex action – I enjoy it for a lot of reasons. It’s not just to gain information for Sunday, but we’re still running predominantly on the same tire, so it’s gonna give you an idea of what kind of abuse the tire takes and how the race track rubbered up and where the groove started moving to. That kind of stuff is gonna be the same and that’s really what you get. You don’t get, ‘Oh, I had an inch-and-a-half swaybar in the Busch car, let’s try that in the Cup car.’ Those days were gone years ago and still are, so it’s not gonna be an issue, it’s all the other little things about it.”

CAN YOU IMPROVE ON THE TURNING OF THE CAR IN A TEST OR IS IT SOMETHING YOU’RE JUST GOING TO HAVE TO DEAL WITH? “A little of both. That’s a good question. We’re gonna work on getting our car to turn here the best we can – whatever we can do. Whether it’s changing the front roll center up and down because this car has a higher center of gravity, so this car wants to roll more because it’s boxier and it’s taller, so this car wants to roll a little bit more. So we’re gonna try and raise and lower the front roll centers. We’re gonna try to do different things to the front – try different front swaybars and try to do different things with rear springs. The other thing that we’re dealing with is we can only have four inches of front travel with that splitter, so we’ve got different bump stops, if you will, a different hardness of rubber with how much we cushion it or do we make it solid and just go down and hit and stop. So there are so many things that will give the front tires grip to the race track that we’re gonna be here for the next two days trying to figure out what the best scenario is, and what you’re gonna see is the cars that ran well at Martinsville are gonna run well here because that’s another race track that takes mechanical grip to get the car to turn. The guys that got their car to turn there will probably be successful here with trying to get it to turn. So aerodynamically, you can turn a car aerodynamically and this car doesn’t have that, so you can’t rely on that as much to get your car to go around the corner. The other car had a bunch of offsets. With the naked eye standing this far away, it’s hard to see, but if you really got to comparing one side to the other of the old car, they’re completely different from one fender shape from the headlight to the other, whereas this car is exactly the same. So we’ve lost that ability to put that in the car to get it to turn, so that’s one thing we’re gonna have to work around.”

YOUR THOUGHTS ON ISC SUSPENDING EFFORTS OF GETTING A TRACK IN WASHINGTON? “It’s a difficult situation for me because NASCAR is much more persistent than I would be. I applaud them for that. They’ve done a tremendous amount of work and effort put into trying to get a race track in the Northwest and, like we talked about, if there is any city or any state across the board that has an opportunity to get a race track and get a race date, they’re rolling out the red carpet and doing anything they can do to get a race day or a race track. Go talk to the people in Rockingham or anywhere else around – Iowa Speedway, Kentucky – they’re willing to chop off one arm to get a race date and we’re trying to go in and build a place and it seems like we’re getting a lot of resistance from that. I don’t know. I’m kind of close-minded, so when I got all that harassment in trying to go in and build a race track, I would have just turned around and walked away and said, ‘Your loss, not mine,’ but I’m from the state of Washington and it’s frustrating for me that we can’t get a race track there and we can’t get those people on board yet. I think there’s a ton of support and I think, like I’ve said before, there are a few bad apples in the basket that ruined the entire basket. There’s a bunch of great supporters up there and a bunch of great people, but there are a few people that are against it and because of that we’re having a tough time. I know that NASCAR, I’ve talked to them, and they’re not gonna give up for sure, but I think now the shoe is gonna have to be on the other foot. They’re gonna have to pursue us. We’ve tried to wine and dine you and sweet talk you and do all this and it hasn’t worked, so we’re gonna back off and now you’re gonna have to do that to get us to come build a race track. I think that’s what it’s gonna take to get a race track in the state of Washington. They’re gonna have to realize that this is something we’ve got to have going forward for the next however many years, and it’s the greatest thing for us up here revenue-wise, sports-wise and all that and to come to that realization. Until then, there won’t be a race track there.”

WHAT IMPACT HAS PAT TRYSON HAD WITH YOU AND THIS NEW TEAM? “I think it’s gone very well. I’m getting along so well with my guys. I kind of feel bad for them in a way because we’ve had great, great race cars and they’ve given me such good opportunities and we haven’t been able to capitalize on them as a group. A little bit of it my part – not really their part, just circumstantial. At Daytona, you can start the list right now, but Busch gets loose and takes us out. We were fourth and gonna be fifth or sixth at the worst, and at Atlanta we had a great race car and came on really strong at the end and got tangled up in some stuff. We didn’t run very good at California – our first race together on a big race track we didn’t run that good – but we went to Vegas and ran better. Then this weekend we had a brake failure running 12th, the best I’ve ever run at Martinsville and looking like we’re gonna stay on the lead lap with no problem at all. We were gonna have a good run all day, probably finish in the top 10 like Scott Riggs did. We were better than Scott Riggs for most of the race and right there in that general vicinity with him and, unfortunately, we had that brake failure. So we’ve run extremely, extremely well for a new team being all of us together, and I think we’ve got a lot of strength and I think it’s gonna come through quick. I think we’ll breakthrough in the next five or eight races and maybe win one of these things and be a threat to win a lot more coming up in the future.”

CAN YOU ADDRESS YOUR SPONSORSHIP SITUATION FOR NEXT YEAR? DOES IT MAKE YOU FEEL AWKWARD NOT KNOWING WHO YOUR SPONSOR MIGHT BE? “It does and it doesn’t. One thing is we’ve got lots and lots of interest in the sponsor section of the sport, so that makes you feel good in a way. I’m kind of happy about it because it gives you that reassuring feeling that you’re doing the right thing at the race track media-wise and all those things that sponsors want to be associated with you. ‘We want to be on his car,’ so that’s a positive out of the whole thing. Unfortunately, it’s not Ameriquest’s decision to go away. Unfortunately, their business has turned around and has changed. We all know it. The interest rates have gone up and the housing market has slowed down. A lot of people have adjustable – not to get into the technical part of it, but I feel the pressure and the heat a little bit because I have a lot of adjustable rate stuff with airplanes and houses and properties and that stuff is going up and up. People have overbought and can’t afford it, so, unfortunately, they’ve gotten in a bind. Certainly, it’s not bad business on their part. They did what they thought they should do and got backed in a corner, and now they’ve got to leave the sport that they love to be involved in, so I feel bad in a way for them that they got caught up in some of the market woes, but us going forward, we’ve got lots of great opportunities. There are lots of opportunities out there for us and for myself, so I’m really optimistic about the next contract for whatever it ends up being – three or four years – of getting a great sponsor.”

WHAT IS THE REASON FOR FOAM ON THE PASSENGER SIDE OF THE CAR? “The thing about it is most of our wrecks are on the right side of the car. If we plotted the black box of where all the impacts take place, a large percentage of the impacts are over in this category, if you will. The foam on that side is gonna help absorb some energy from that impact. The other thing is it’s so easy to get spun out at a Talladega, Daytona, Texas, even here, and be sitting on the race track and have somebody hit you right square in the smacker on the right-hand side. That possibility exists easily, or if they go down and hit the inside wall and come back across the race track, man, we can’t-bone them so easy. They’re trying to absorb some of that energy from that impact. Obviously, the left-side of the car is way more critical and we’re doing all we can, but we might as well do it on this side as well if we have the opportunity. Certainly they’re on the right track, we just have an issue with the heat and the type of foam. As soon as we isolate that, because my first question was this stuff is kind of melted into a whatever. I said, ‘What’s the properties of that foam at that temperature?’ And they said, ‘None. There isn’t any.’ So once that foam gets to that temperature, it would be like squeezing a household sponge. It’s hot and it’s melting, so we need to heat that foam to 150 degrees or whatever it’s typically gonna be over there once we get it heat shielded – and maybe they’ve already done that and tested the durability at that temperature – which I’m sure they’re way far ahead of me just thinking about it, but with it melting it’s not a good thing. What we can do is just isolate that around the entire exhaust area. Keep it 15 inches away from there and just forward, and don’t even worry about that area, so that’s probably what we’re gonna do. I think it’s an easier fix than what it’s been so far. I mean, we’re cutting a six-inch notch out of it. We need to cut a 16-inch notch out of it and just not even worry about it. I think it’s an easier fix than what’s presented right now.”

THE LAST TWO WEEKS THE GUY IN SECOND COULD HAVE WRECKED THE LEADER TO WIN. WHY DIDN’T THEY? “I have to go back and look at the history of the sport. I’ve been in that position a few times, but I’d have to go back and look at how many guys have wrecked somebody. I don’t know what etiquette is. If you can just get to his rear bumper do you just boot him and take the win? I don’t know what we’re supposed to do. I’ll do whatever. If you can bonsai it down in the corner and catch him and just wreck him and go, that’s what I’ll do, but there are gonna be a lot of people outraged about that, I think. I’m just guessing. Are you gonna spin Dale Jr. out for the win? Probably not. You’re not gonna spin your teammate out, but I tell you what, Jeff Gordon beat the daylights out of the back bumper of the 48. He didn’t just touch him, he rammed him. He did everything he could without literally spinning him out and wrecking him. Bristol is a lot faster and you can’t really bump a guy and get away with it at Bristol because you’re wrecking, so for Burton, he didn’t touch Busch but you couldn’t have slid a piece of paper in there. But, really, if he would have hit him like the 24 was hitting the 48 at Martinsville, that would be an instant crash. That’s a big controversy. That’s a big deal. I mean, it sounds cool, but after the fact it’s like, ‘That wasn’t good.’ That’s what happens. You’re right there, you’re right there, but the consequences of this is gonna be huge. And the other part about it is we’re all professional, we’re all race-car drivers, it doesn’t take any ability to crash the guy in front of you. That takes no skill whatsoever. You could wreck that guy in front of you no matter what. That’s easy. Anybody can do it. That’s not the thing to do. Now to bump him like the 24 did, heck yeah. Bump the daylights out of him. The rule I have is that he doesn’t spin out. If you run in there and give him a nudge and he’s up in the dirt trying to get a hold of it and gets back going again, more power to you. That’s still dirty, but that’s the way it is.”

WOULD YOU BE CONCERNED IF YOU LEARNED THE FOAM WAS COMBUSTIBLE AND MIGHT BE TOXIC, AND WOULD YOU SEE IT AS A DESIGN ERROR? “Well, logic tells me that if it was flammable and it was toxic, that would be bad. I wouldn’t put anybody in this room in that situation, but I’m sure all of their research has shown – there’s a difference between flammable – I think anything will melt, but as long as it doesn’t have flames. Flammables and combustibles, there’s a whole technology there of what will burn and what won’t burn. Is it gonna smoke like it did and leave melting? Yes, it may do that if it gets to a certain temperature. But is it gonna have open flames and fire? I don’t think, and I may be mistaken, I’ve watched the replay and whatever else and I didn’t see any flames in the 29 car. I saw a tremendous amount of smoke coming out of it, but I didn’t see any flames. There’s a difference between something flammable and something melting and smoke coming off of it. I think about any material you get hot enough it’s gonna smoke, but if it just started in flames and just started burning, then that’s different. Our firesuit will melt. If you throw it in a campfire, something is gonna happen to it and it’s probably gonna smoke, but that doesn’t mean that it actually caught on fire and has flames coming off of it. And, like I said, I don’t think anything is non-toxic. There’s a certain amount of toxicity to any kind of material burning.”

IS THE FOAM TOO CLOSE TO THE TAILPIPES? “I’m sure most of their testing was done on the energy-absorbing properties of the foam, and then there was probably a flammable test. I don’t know. I’m just speculating. I’m in an area I don’t even know. I think that it has thermal couples over in that side of the race car to know what the temperature is also, so they’ve got all the proper information. Now, did the 29 car not have the heat shield in there? Did the 29 have the foam right on top of the exhaust pipes? Did the exhaust pipes break on the 29 car? Ours broke the week before and we used heavier pipes. Did he brush the wall and knock them loose? There are a lot of things unanswered here that we’re pointing at that foam, but there could be other contributing factors to it that we don’t have all the information. I wouldn’t say it was a design error on NASCAR’s part until we do a scientific analysis of exactly what happened. Did they have the proper amount of distance air gap? Did they have the heat shields in place? All those things because we experienced the same exact thing the week before and we fixed it and we didn’t have any problems.”

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE STATE OF NASCAR TODAY? IS IT AT A HIGH POINT? “I think so. I pay attention a little bit to what goes on with our sport and it appears that it’s still on the up trend or it’s kind of leveled off. Certainly you’re always gonna level at times throughout history and maybe go down a little bit, but I would say the health of it is very good right now. We’ve got lots of people watching. This COT car has created some buzz and some excitement; of course it’s going to because there are a lot of unknowns. It would be like watching the space shuttle launch for the very first time. I mean, everybody is gonna be looking at that thing, so nobody knows what’s gonna happen with this new car, so a lot of people are interested in watching, so that’s created some buzz, and, certainly, we’re advertising to a broader audience. We’re in front of a lot more people and it’s exciting racing. I go home and watch it on my DVR and it’s exciting to watch.”

KNOWING WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT THE NEW CAR NOW, WOULD YOU SAY THIS CAR IS NOT READY FOR A 1.5 MILE TRACK AT THIS POINT? “Well, you have to remember that NASCAR has a motive for some of the things that they’re doing. The car not turning as good is, by design, their objective. They want to slow the cars down. They want to take some downforce away from the cars. They want to control some of those things, so, by design, that’s a math problem, if you will, that NASCAR has put in front of all the teams and it’s our job to figure out. They’ve given us the procedure we have to follow and now we’ve got to figure it out. In their eyes, they’re trying to make the cars more equal and make them more equal behind other cars, which you’re only gonna do that to a certain point. I don’t care who you are, what you are, or what you have, unless you take the body off the car in front completely, the car behind is still gonna have some dirty air of some kind. That car is gonna make some kind of wake in the air. You’re never gonna make them equal, so I think, by design, NASCAR has given us what they’ve given us. Is the car not ready for that? I don’t think so. I like the progression and the way they’ve done it. We’re gonna test it here. We’re gonna race it at Phoenix. We’re gonna race it here and we’re gonna race it at Dover. Are we gonna have a lot figured out by the time we start testing the mile-and-a-halves and race them there? Yes, we are. So I think it’s a good introduction to the way they’ve done it.”

DID YOU JUST DECIDE TO GO TO THE R&D CENTER WITH THE FOAM? “I didn’t make an appointment, I just gathered the stuff up under my arm and got in my car and went over there.”

KNOCKED ON THE DOOR? “Knocked on the door and said, ‘Is Robin Pemberton in?’ They said, ‘He’s in a meeting.’ He came out and talked to me for a few minutes and said, ‘Why don’t you come in here,’ and I came in and there was a conference room this big (the size of the RIR infield media center) with like 25 people in it. They were having their regular meeting – the truck series, Busch Series, the whole thing. It wasn’t to be in front of all those people so we had a place we could discuss what happened. Part of the reason why I went over there was to talk about my car being low and figure out what they had found, if they found anything with the car. They know we didn’t adjust any jack bolts. They know all these other things and I was addressing some issues with the car. I think we have more things to address and work on than a quarterpanel being a quarter-inch low. That doesn’t matter. Now, if it’s high, certainly it wouldn’t matter. I wish it would have been high. I wish it would have been the height it was supposed to be, I may have won the race. It may have given me enough advantage that I could win, so I just went over there to address all the things with this car and I had never been over there before. I think it was Tuesday, but it was the day I was down at our shop in our meetings and we were talking about the car and what to do and we were like, ‘We’ve got to do something with this foam.’ So I just said, ‘I’m gonna go over and see if anybody is over there and if they can look at this and make some suggestions because obviously they’ve done a lot of work on it.’ And NASCAR was so receptive to that. They said, ‘Thanks for coming over. We’re glad you came over.’ Steve Peterson came over to our shop and looked at the car and looked at where it melted from and all that, so I think they enjoyed that interaction with us as helping them resolve some issues with the car. We want to see it do well. I mean, we’re racing it.”

WHAT OTHER ISSUES BEYOND THE HEIGHT AND FOAM NEED TO BE ADDRESSED AFTER COMING OUT OF THAT MEETING? “There is a lot more technical stuff. There’s stuff in the exhaust called a boom tube or something and I think it’s a pipe that equalized the exhaust or something. They put that in years ago because it takes some vibration out of exhaust pipes and I think exhaust pipes were breaking on these cars. The 20 had a problem and then some other cars, and Matt’s. I think it’s the vibration or something like that, and they said that this would fix it and that’s why they did it in the past. What to do about the pipes? Make them heavier so that they don’t come apart or don’t have the vibration problem, which is kind of just on our end, but that’s it – just the foam and whatever else. I think there were a couple of other things. A bead blower for the front beads for Martinsville. That was one of our concerns in our team meeting. We said, ‘Hey, we really need a bead blower for the right-front, along with the three brake hoses to the caliper to keep the brakes cool.’ We’re gonna be going slower around the corner, so we’re gonna have to slow them down more. They want to keep the fans out from under the hood, but they allowed us a brake blower – a bead blower at the race track for safety and I think that was smart on their part. So they’re being paying attention and being receptive to what the teams think of this car as we work forward.”

SO YOU DIDN’T HAVE ANY FOAM PROBLEMS AT MARTINSVILLE? “None at all. None of our teams did.”

WHAT DID THE FOAM LOOK LIKE AND WHAT WAS IT LIKE INSIDE WHEN IT WAS BURNING? “My foam wasn’t as distorted as bad as Matt’s foam was. Matt’s foam, and I say distorted because it’s a square block and it was dished out in the middle where it had melted and when it melted it kind of condenses, I guess. It gets kind of smaller because it sucks together or whatever it does, but Matt’s pipes were broken. Matt’s pipes were too thin. It had a hole in it. It was blowing exhaust up inside the car or against the bottom of the pin, and that’s what got the foam so hot and I’m sure that’s what happened to the 29. I’ve got to think that’s what happened to their car, so I think with the proper heat shield and the pipes not failing that the foam is gonna be okay. That’s what we made sure of going to Martinsville, that it wasn’t gonna be a problem. The other thing is there’s also a deal about being on the edge or having a little safety built in. Let’s say you do have a problem, you don’t have disaster. If you do have a pipe failure or something like that, you don’t want your car to catch not on fire, but have to come in and douse the thing down to cool that section off. I think there’s still some work to be done, maybe some safety be built in an extra layer so that doesn’t happen, but I’m sure that’s been handled now. The thing you have to remember is that there’s so many smells inside the car already. There’s burning rubber. There’s burning paint. There’s sweat. There’s so much to smell and your brain is focused on not crashing. I can’t explain what it smells like; you can just smell a little bit because you don’t have a right side window. In fact, I didn’t, I switched my air intake on that car from that side window to behind my head over on this side of the car because I felt like I could smell a little bit of exhaust when we tested that car, and I said, ‘Hey guys, switch my vent hose from over here to behind my head because I feel like I can smell a little bit of exhaust.’ Maybe it was because I was sitting there running when I’m getting ready to go out on the track or when I slow down, and you see all that black smoke come out when we lift on the gas? That stuff could be doing something over there with the air and be coming in that front duct and in through the cool box, so I moved mine. So, to be honest with you, I probably didn’t even smell that foam really.”

Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 60 Scotts/World Financial Group Ford Fusion in the NASCAR Busch Series, heads to Nashville Superspeedway this weekend for the Pepsi 300. Edwards, who is coming off a victory during his last trip to the facility in June, leads the NBS standings by 197 points over second-place Kevin Harvick.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT GOING TO NASHVILLE? “I’m really looking forward to going to Nashville. I’ve gotten to the point where I really kind of enjoy the stand-alone events. It has a little different feel. You kind of go in there and it almost feels like going up to 311 (Speedway) or something, it’s not quite as big of a production, but it’s really fun. I think the fans that are gonna be there in Nashville, it’s just kind of a different set of fans and it’s not that one is better than the other, it’s just kind of different and I’m looking forward to it. Last year was so awesome. We raced with Clint [Bowyer] and had a heck of a race and ended up winning it. That was cool.”

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT BEING THE HUNTED AS THE POINTS LEADER? “Yeah, it’s fun. It really is fun to lead the points. I haven’t had that feeling since racing at my local dirt track, where you’re just going in there every week as the points leader. That’s pretty cool. I like it.”

CAN YOU HAVE A YEAR LIKE HARVICK DID IN ’06? “I don’t know. Kevin did a heck of a job last year. If we can repeat his performance, that would be spectacular. I don’t know if anybody will do that again in history, but I’d like to try.”

WHAT POSSESSED YOU TO BUZZ YOUR HAIR? “I always wanted to buzz my hair. We were walking through the mall in Martinsville and Bob Osborne said he was gonna do it and I said, ‘Well, if you do it, I’ll do it.’ When he showed up, he had his hair buzzed and I was like, ‘Man, I’ve got to do it now.’ But it feels good. My mom is gonna be upset when she sees it, but it feels good.”

WILL IT HELP YOUR AERO PACKAGE? “I wear a Bell helmet and they’ve got real nice air vents and it feels great. When I was out there, it really felt good.”

DO YOU WORRY ABOUT WHAT THE REACTION WILL BE? “I didn’t think about it. If it looks terrible, I’ll get a little grief, but it’s my head. I can always wear a hat. In fact, sometimes they get mad at me because I don’t wear hats enough, so maybe I’ll wear a hat more often.”

Marcos Ambrose, a rookie in NASCAR Busch Series competition, finds himself seventh in the driver point standings—the highest full-time Busch driver—heading into this weekend’s seventh race of the season. Ambrose, who finished third last season in the truck series event in Nashville, talks about the start of his season and the transition his family has made since moving to the United States from Tasmania.

MARCOS AMBROSE—59—Kingsford/Bush’s/Matchlight Ford Fusion – YOU POSTED A THIRD-PLACE FINISH LAST YEAR AT NASHVILLE IN THE TRUCK SERIES RACE. DOES THAT GIVE YOU ADDED CONFIDENCE GOING INTO THIS WEEKEND’S BUSCH SERIES RACES AT THE 1.33-MILE SPEEDWAY? “I’m really excited. For some reason, those concrete tracks, I get a good feel on them. I ran well at Dover, and I just feel like I can feel the car advancing on the concrete tracks. Nashville being slightly smaller than a one-and-a-half-mile speedway – like Lowe’s or Texas – I think is good for me, too, because the speed is slightly slower and you can be more aggressive behind the wheel. I’m really looking forward to Nashville, and I hope to duplicate what I did there last year in the truck series this weekend.”

IS THERE A LOT OF CARRYOVER BETWEEN THE TRUCKS AND CARS? “Not a lot. I think the trucks drive very differently from the Busch car. One of the main factors, too, is the competition is pretty steep in the Busch Series. You’ve got a lot of great drivers from Cup competing, so it’s pretty tricky. I hope to keep growing as a driver in the NASCAR series and my focus this season has to be on just finishing the race, if I can, on the lead lap. If we can do that, we’ll have a good run – a top-15 finish – which has to be our goal, and a top-10 would be great.”

EVEN WITH THIS BEING AN OFF-WEEKEND FOR THE CUP SERIES, THERE SEEMS TO BE FEWER CUP DRIVERS COMPETING IN THIS WEEKEND’S RACE THAN USUAL. DO YOU FEEL THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR A NON-CUP DRIVER TO WIN A RACE? “I hope so. If we just do our own job and don’t worry about the other people around us and just race the track ourselves and get the best out of the car that we can, we should be fine. That’s really what I’m focused on. It doesn’t matter if there are less Cup drivers or not because there are still very good drivers in the field anyway that replace those Cup guys. We’ve just got to focus on our own job, and I feel that if we do our job properly we can run a strong top-10.”

TALK ABOUT THE TRANSITION FROM THE 25-RACE TRUCK SCHEDULE TO THE 35-RACE BUSCH SCHEDULE, AND HOW’VE YOU ADAPTED TO RACING ALMOST EVERY WEEK. “Yeah, it’s fantastic. That’s what I came to the U.S. for. I wanted to try and race as much as I could and as often as I could, and that’s exactly what we’re doing right now. We’re in a nice stretch, and I feel like I need to run every week. I’ve moved myself and my family right across the other side of the world, and there’s no point in being here if I’m not racing cars. I think it’s great.”

TALK ABOUT THE TRANSITION OF MOVING FROM TASMANIA TO THE UNITED STATES. “We’re having a great time. We’re treating it just like a holiday as much as anything. We’re getting to see places of America that you never dream of getting to. We’re having a great experience and that’s what it’s about. It’s just one of these life experiences that you get along the way. We’re lucky enough to be able to travel with a young family, and I’ve a great wife in Sonja to support me doing what I love to do. I have absolutely no regrets and I think everything we’ve done in the last 12 months and into the future is going to be fantastic for us.”

Bobby Hamilton, Jr., driver of the No. 35 Team Rensi Ford Fusion, climbed his way into the top 10 of the NASCAR Busch Series point standings following the race at Bristol Motor Speedway. Hamilton, who resides just outside Nashville in White House, Tenn., was a guest on today’s NASCAR teleconference.

BOBBY HAMILTON, JR.—35—McDonald’s Ford Fusion – GIVE AN OVERVIEW OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT LED TO YOUR REUNION WITH ED RENSI AND TEAM RENSI. “It was actually funny. We saw them at a Red Lobster and we got to talking. It was in Daytona – I think it was last year – and he just came bee-bopping by and we just happened to catch eyes and we just started talking. He asked me something about still wanting me to drive his race car, and I told him, ‘Anytime you’ve got a seat I’m there.’ It kinda went on from there. Him and my wife ran into each other at Bristol and she was over there begging him to see if we can come back over there because they were talking about having a third car if they could find a sponsor. It just all happened to work out. He said, ‘Are you really wanting to come back?’ I told him, ‘Yes sir. If there’s a seat I’m there.’ There was no question. I said before, I had a couple of different opportunities with another Cup car and a couple of other trucks, and when that seat came available, it was like it was no question. It’s one of those that you just felt real comfortable. I knew everybody that was there. I knew management. I knew the owner. Everything that makes you feel at ease when you walk in a shop, I already knew, so that really helped a lot.”

HOW WOULD YOU SUM UP YOUR SEASON TO DATE? YOU’RE 10TH IN POINTS, BUT I HAVE A FEELING YOU’RE PROBABLY NOT REAL SATISFIED YET. “No, by no means we’re not. Right now we should be the best Busch car by far. What I mean by that, we should be the best full-time Busch guy, and anything less than that is not acceptable. It’s really hard to deal with some of the Cup guys because those guys are tough. But, they can be beat. We’ve done it before, but I think the biggest letdown is right now that we’re not the leading Busch guy. Give me two or three weeks and I will be. That’s just what I expect out of the team and that’s what the team expects. Once we get to that part where we’re the best Busch guy then we can go to the next part as far as being the best guy that’s capable of beating those Cup guys. So, it’s an A-B step and you have to crawl before you walk, and it’s all new stuff. A bunch of new crew guys and new crew chiefs, so we’re learning the language and all that stuff. Other than that, where we’re sitting in 10th is not because of great, great runs, it’s because of being consistent and surviving races. But, we need to be a little bit better than that. We tested Richmond this past week and we were the quickest car there, so that’s a step forward. There’s a lot going on, but we’ll get it that way.”

HOW IS THE SERIES DIFFERENT FROM WHEN YOU LAST COMPETED IN 2004? “Well, a lot of the difference is instead of having four, five or six Cup cars, they have 20. That takes a big impact. Those guys are bringing tons of experience and they’re taking their Cup stuff and running their Busch stuff, and it’s really hard. That’s the biggest change. And also, it seems like there’s a whole lot more younger guys in the division that hadn’t been there that a lot of Cup drivers have been to these race tracks. But the cars still drive the same and the tires are a little different, but that’s the biggest thing – the Cup stuff. If you were to eliminate some of the Cup stuff, I think it would be about the same Busch Series. It concerns me a little a bit because if you take away some of the Cup guys, for instance if 20 of them decided not to run this week, where are we going to get those cars to fill up the show? That’s been one of the big downfalls of the deal. I think all of these Cup teams coming in with Busch cars send a lot of the real Busch teams home, and they run out of sponsor money and run out of sponsors, period. Like I said, if it’s a no-show as far as some of these Cup guys, then you’re going to have a short field or you’ll just have a bunch of junk show up and it doesn’t look good, which makes it easier on me; I’ll take it any way I can get it. There’s a bunch of concerns, but at the same time, NASCAR, they’re aware of what’s going on and I’m sure they’ll fix it in time.”

WITH LESS CUP DRIVERS IN THIS WEEK’S BUSCH RACE, WHAT DO YOU THINK THAT’S GOING TO DO TO YOUR CHANCES THIS WEEK AT NASHVILLE? “I think it will help a lot, and I hate to even sit here and think that you’ve just to go to somewhere where they’re not, to be competitive, but the sad thing in the Busch Series right now is it is. Like I said before, they’re bringing so much experience, they’re bringing top-dollar stuff in and they’re really not on a budget and really a lot of us guys are. But, that’s the bitter truth. If there’s only 10 of those guys here then we need to unload being right there with them – the 11th- or 10th-place guy and then work from there. It just betters your chances. It’s sad to say that, but that’s just the truth right now. But at the same time, there’s not a part in my body that says, ‘Why can’t we do what we did in ’04, which was beat those guys?’ We beat Matt Kenseth and Kevin Harvick. There’s no doubt that I’ve got the same skills as they do and I can drive as good as they can. I think my guys have got the same skills as their guys do, and also the capability of making the cars turns and do everything that they can do it. The simple fact of the stuff right now is that whoever has the most money has the most toys. But, we’ll get there, and I think this weekend will be a little bit easier because – nothing towards the Busch field – but I think it will ease the competition because you don’t have 20 guys there that are Cup guys. The biggest thing is that they don’t get to have the two hours of practice right before our race and the two hours on Friday. If you add that up, that’s four hours of their practice compared to our two hours of practice. They get a lot of time on the race track, so this almost levels it up. I’m sure a Cup guy will still be really, really fast, if not win the race, but it kinda lets you be within striking distance of them, being where they’re on the same schedule you are and they don’t get no extra practice or anything like that.”

WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO YOU TO WIN AT NASHVILLE? “I’ve been so close there. We’ve done everything but win there. We’ve finished second, third, we’ve done everything but win there. I’m come close to winning in the truck series. Every series that’s been there, I’ve come close to winning. We dominated all day, and the cool thing about it, I got beat by my dad, which was frustrating but at the same time was a pretty special day. It’s your home track. Your family is there and people who have watched you run at local races come there to watch you. It’s a home track. I think that if you could win there it would be bigger than winning Daytona or something like that. It would be one of the biggest wins of my career that would stick out forever because, it’s just like I said, a home track and your family is there and your friends. It’s all kinds of things. I guarantee you it would be bigger than any win I’ve won so far and probably one of the biggest ones you can win in your career.”

IS THERE ANY ONE REASON WHY YOU HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO WIN AT NASHVILLE? “I think we’ve done everything but close the deal. We’ve had fast race cars and we’ve led all day. We’ve been the fastest car at the end of the night, whether it be a pit stop malfunction or I got into somebody on the race track and cut a tire down. I can go back and name several things. I think what it was is mainly we didn’t close the deal. Whether it be in the driver’s seat or on pit road or maybe a small parts failure. We’ve had some of the craziest stuff happen to us at that place. The stuff is a whole lot easier to swallow when you run really good. If you leave there and you have a parts failure, but you were running in the top five or leading all night, it’s easier to swallow. But then when you look back at the wins that you gave away there, I know two of them off of the top of my head that we could have won hands down if the driver would have been a little bit smarter and we would not have had a lug nut fall off. I’m not sugarcoating nothing. If we could have closed the deal on two of those things, we’d done have two guitars right now.”

IT’S ALMOST LIKE THAT 20-POUND BASS THAT YOU FOUGHT THREE OR FOUR TIMES, AND YOU GET HIM TO THE SIDE OF THE BOAT AND YOU CAN’T GET A NET ON HIM. “That’s it. That’s exactly what it is. You do everything you need to do to get in that position and something will hold you from it. But, the way I look at it, and I think the way this racing business is, if you keep putting yourself in position to win those races, one day you will get that call. It would be great to be this one or the next time that we come here, but either way, I’ll take it no matter how we get it. Right now, I’ll take it whether it was rained out and I was leading, or however; I wouldn’t care as long as I could get it. And that’s what it’s about. If we run top-five and top-three, top-four – somewhere in that area every time we go down there like we do – eventually we’re going to get one of those things.”

TALK ABOUT YOUR TEAMMATE RICHARD JOHN’S FIRST BUSCH START THIS WEEKEND. “We went to Richmond and tested, and David Gilliland ran the first day and then he got to run the second day. He started out real conservative and then all of a sudden he went up there and bounced off the wall, and then all of a sudden he picked up almost half a second. We were kinda joking with him about it. It’s going to be cool to see him get in there. He’s run ARCA stuff before. He’s run really, really well, and we went down there and tested with him at Lakeland and he followed behind me. Believe it or not, that’s why I keep telling him, if we can just get this thing to do what he needs it do, he’s going to be fast. Sure enough, once they got it where he was comfortable with the car at Richmond and everything, he was running 22.30s right along with all those guys in the middle of the pack up. I’m a firm believer that if you give somebody good equipment and they’re a pretty decent little ol’ driver, they’re going to run good and have a shot a winning races. They’re going to bring a new car for him and I think he went down there and tested some ARCA stuff, so it’s going to be interesting, but I can’t wait. I think he’s going to be OK.”

WHAT IS HE LIKE? “He’s an engineer on our team, and he has a ton of knowledge as far as what the race car is asking for. For instance, he’s real good at following up as far as the car is really needing right-rear spring or right-front spring or whatever. He’s real good at that. He’ll come to the window net even when we’re running somewhere and he sees that on the throttle this and that, and I can explain it to him, and him and Chris (Wright , crew chief) go over there and they figure it out and we get a little bit better. He’s going to be fine. I think once he gets behind the wheel and he gets the feel of the place as far as a speedway then I think they’re going to be fine. Like I said, he’s real quiet, but at the same time that you get to know him, you can’t get him to hush; he’s all over the place. He’s real fun to be around and he really fits into our group well. I can’t wait. I’m kinda excited to see how he’s going to do there.”

HAVE YOU MADE ANY PROGRESS ON YOUR PLANS TO SELL YOUR PORTION OF BOBBY HAMILTON RACING? “Everything is kinda at a standstill right now. I haven’t heard a whole lot out of it. I really haven’t even heard anything out of it or even brought it up. I’m just kinda been busy doing my own deal. We’re still going through all of the personal stuff with my dad. Like today, I took an off day and I was working on all Late Model stuff trying to run a couple of races at the end of the year. I really hadn’t heard what’s going on, and to be perfectly honest, with everything else in my mind I really don’t care at this point. It’ll work itself out, whatever is going to happen. Worst-case scenario, I’m stuck with a truck team if nothing happens to it. But, whatever is going to happen is going to happen, I guess.”

HOW TOUGH IS IT FOR THE INDEPENDENT BUSCH TEAMS RIGHT NOW? “I tried to explain it. A lot of fans, you get a lot of heat when you say the wrong thing. For instance, in an interview where you say that it’s not fair with those Cup guys, a lot of the fans really buck up as far as saying you just need to drive harder. What they don’t realize, there’s no doubt in my mind that if you put Ken Schrader in the 24 DuPont car, either one would have won four championships by now. You’re only as good as your equipment. And, we have great equipment. Ed Rensi and McDonald’s and everybody has given us everything that we need. And so does Roush. They give Carl Edwards and those guys everything that they need. But the biggest thing is where our budget kinda limits right here is what we can spend and survive. Those guys are dumping money and saying, ‘Well, we need this.’ ‘OK, we’ll get it.’ ‘Well, we need this.’ ‘Well, we’ll get it.’ ‘Well, we need this.’ ‘Well, go ahead and get it.’ Before you know it, they’ve kinda out-dollared you a little bit. It’s really, really hard nowadays. On top of that, we’re fortunate that we expanded to two teams to give us some more data, but we’re not real, real big on engineer help, like a lot of these guys are. It’s just really hard to compete with those guys. Like I said before, they get four or five hours of practice a weekend, and we only get two. Those guys are the same guys that practice right up to the point of our race, get out there driver’s suits on the Cup side and run right over there and put on their Busch driver suit and go to driver introductions and jump in a race car, and they already know the track and they know what to expect for that day. We haven’t been on it for 24 to 36 hours. It’s a big disadvantage on several things, but you’ve got what you’ve got, and all that you can do is be the top running Busch car every week, as far as a normal Busch guy. If you are that then you can start working on other stuff as far as learning how to beat those guys. It’s not the intimidation factor. I don’t care who they are. In that race car we’re all the same size and weigh the same. It’s like we used to be in ’04. We got to being where we were the best Busch car every week, and then all of a sudden we went to being, ‘Okay, what do we need to do to start kicking Kevin Harvick’s butt?’ ‘What do we need to do to start kicking Carl Edward’s butt or Greg Biffle’s butt?’ That’s what we’re doing now. We’re slowly but surely trying to be the best Busch car, and when we do that we’ll progress to B and go after those guys from there.”

IS THERE ANY SECRET TO GETTING AND CARRYING MOMENTUM RACE TO RACE? “Yeah, it’s real big. Your mental attitude, my dad was a big, firm believer in that. What I went through when I drove the 32 car and had a horrible year, I just kinda had it where I was almost frustrated to even go to the race track because you knew you were going to run bad. I kinda lost that fire in your eyes and that burn in your gut; I kinda lost it for a bit. My dad just sat me down one day and he told me, ‘Dude, all this stuff is mental. You walk into that race track with your chest stuck out like you used to and that’s two- or three-tenths.’ And, it is. When you leave that race track and you really perform well, your guys perform well, you moved up in points or you really closed the gap up on people, your guys get pumped up. Your driver’s pumped up. Your team owner is pumped up. Your sponsors are excited whenever they see the TV rundown and you’re in the top 10; they get to see that. There’s all kinds of benefits to being in that top 10. That’s why it’s so important to be there. Once you get in there and kinda space it out from 10th to 11th, where it’s going to take a little bit for those guys to get you if you have a bad week, then you can start chipping away on that top five. That’s how you get to point of being where you’re contending for a championship. Every week you’re racing as hard as you can, and if you cannot, it’s not your day today and you’ve got to figure out how to get a top-five or a top-10. If you’re not that good, you have to figure out how to be a top-15 car, whether it’s just surviving or whatever. When those guys see that and they see the rhythm that you’re getting into, they get excited and they get comfortable with it, and you wouldn’t believe how much easier it is to roll through tech. They’re at the shop, they’re prepared more, and they roll through tech and not a single thing will go wrong with the car and you’re the first ones on the race track. It’s just a snowball effect, and if you can get that snowball rolling down that hill pretty fast, you’re going to be hard to beat.”

YOU SOUND LIKE EVERYTHING IS GOING WELL FOR BOBBY HAMILTON, JR. “Well, I haven’t won any races yet this year, so everything is not going as well as I’d like it to be. I think we’re heading in the right direction, and I when walk into that race track I know that I’m as good as Carl Edwards. I know I’m as good as Greg Biffle. I know I’m as good as that next rookie. I think that with the equipment that I’ve got, and I work on my communication with Chris every week making sure he understands what I’m talking about in the race car. Instead of jumping out of the race car now and running to the bus and watching TV, I make sure I sit there and really think about my race car for a little bit, just making sure every little bit, I may try to squeeze another tenth out of that thing. I’m enjoying myself. I’m away from the pressure of BHR. I’m away from anything like that, and all I can do is concentrate on my Busch car and do what I used to do, and that was win races and walk in there. I know I get criticized a lot of times for being cocky or whatever, but it’s nice. It’s just a mental thing as far as being confident. I know I’m good at what I do, I have good equipment behind me and I want to win races, and I’m going to win races. I’m sorry if a lot of people don’t like that, but I think that’s just how somebody get focused, and I’m on that mission. I know what’s ahead of me and right now – nothing towards nobody in front of me – but it’s easy pickings right now, and I want them. I want the spot they’re in, I want to take their trophies, I want to take their wins and I want to do everything that we used to do. I’ve done it before and I’m a smarter driver. I think our team is better than it used to be before I even left. All kinds of things are pointing in the direction of good, so I might as well jump on the pony and make it work for me. Man, I’m having fun. I’m having fun as far as being back with Ed Rensi and Ronnie Russell and all of those guys and back in the Busch Series. A lot of people want to be back in the there and that’s where I want to be. Like I said, when I walk in the race track, I make sure my chest is stuck out and I make sure that they know that I’m there, and I’m there to do one thing and that’s win that race.”

DO YOU THINK YOU’VE MATURED AS WELL? “Oh yeah. I’m a whole lot smarter in every aspect as far a race car driver, and as a businessman and a family man. It’s funny, my dad would say, ‘You’ll get that with age.’ Every year I feel like I’m getting smarter on the race track and I’m learning more things. I’m paying more attention to different things off the race track that carries on the race track. I’m a really firm believer that I have a really good team at home, which is my wife and family, and that’s one part of it. When I go to the race track and have a really good team on the race track, that’s another aspect of it as far as my life. The biggest part about that is that I’m a major part of both of those. I’m really focused on being happy. I’ve learned from a couple of past deals, one of my best friends a long time ago, Adam Petty, was killed driving these things and we all know he was too young, and my dad passed away at 49 years old, which everybody knows was too young. So, I’m going to have fun. I’m going to have fun with everything that I do. I’m not going to worry about problems. I’m going to go to bed with my blues and not lose sleep about it because they’re going to be there in the morning. I’m going to go to the race track and do what I was told to do and that’s win the races. If it takes tearing up race cars to do that, I’m going to win my share of races and win my championships, and I’m going to have fun doing it. It’s almost like a big refreshing breath of air. I’m enjoying it and I’m having fun.”