---

NASCAR WCUP: Bobby Labonte Quotes from Winston Preview

10 January 2001

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel

BOBBY LABONTE (No. 18) Interstate Batteries

Willis: Our next guest here today is your 2000 NASCAR Winston Cup Champion, Bobby Labonte, driver of the #18 Interstate Battery Pontiac owned by Joe Gibbs. Let's just go ahead and start in with the questions for Bobby.

Can you just talk about what the off-season's been like?

When we come back from New York, I didn't do a whole lot. Things started to settle down and didn't do much over the holidays. Took the kids on vacation in Boone - New Year's Eve thing. This week we've traveled to Brazil for a week of fishing. Just got back this morning.

Have you taken a look at the lists of the past champions on the trophy to see your name on that? What is your feeling when you finally saw that?

I haven't seen the trophy yet, but I'll take your word for it. I've seen pictures of it I guess you might say and it's definitely an honor. I just can't put into words what it means to me right now. I told them in Brazil that Saturday I was going to get back to reality. I guess I kind of came back to reality today, and I'm very excited about it. Very fortunate to be in it and it's still sinking in.

What fishing for in Brazil?

Bass.

Caught two 20 pounders.

Caught a piranha that was kind of nice.

Looking ahead toward the season, all Joe Gibbs teams seem to be in good shape. What are you looking for this year. Also, you're going to be in the Bud Shootout. What are your thoughts on both of these?

We're excited that we're starting off like we finished last year. Pontiac doesn't have any changes for us. We feel like we have everybody in tact. Our team is staying just like it was last year and we're just trying to make improvements over last year. I think our changes are like they were last year. We don't know what the competition's going to hold. But we feel like we've got a good shot at it. The Bud Shootout 70 laps no pit stops - you will get to practice your race setup, but you're down the for so many days I don't know why we have to practice again. They can get the same results out of 10 laps as they do 70 laps but we're going to run 70 and we'll see what we can do. Maybe we can learn something for Sunday's race but usually you race Thursday and practice in between that.

Are you thinking yet about trying to repeat or is that just race-by-race?

Let's say it's a really - it's probably going to be one of the toughest things to do is to repeat but that's definitely what we're going to try to do. I can't say that we want to take a year and say heck with it because that's not our philosophy. We know that - I guess all the fun that we had in New York and all the accolades that come with it, you definitely want to try to repeat because second is not that much fun when you've figured out how to do first. But we're not going to go out there and say, "Oh yeah this is what we're going to do." But I do know that we're all pretty well pumped into trying to do it again if all the cards fall right.

Can you talk about the tough competitors? Do you think Tony's a guy who's ready to be a major challenger or Gordon - just the ones that you think are right there, right now.

I think a lot of them are going to be. I made the comment in New York about Jeff Burton probably being one because you can just kind of look at his team and he's just kind of right there. He's got everything going for him; he's just had two or three bad breaks here and there. If they can ever get rid of those then they'll be definitely more competitive for a Winston Cup championship. But that doesn't count out any of those other guys. I'm not playing favorites because I think that Jeff Gordon had one of the better records at the end of the year; Tony Stewart had more wins and if he puts a few things together, they could be a championship contender. Darrell Jarrett, Dale Earnhardt, Ricky Rudd - so really it's ---usually you have to wait and see how half way through the season goes or a third way through the season and see what happens but right now it looks there's a bunch of guys who could - if the personnel is in the right place and their confidence level with the race track when they get there is in the right place, and if they have everything else to go with it - you know preparation and everything then it might work for them. It's hard to get everything together and some are better than others. I think there's going to be a lot of guys who are going to be competitive and I can't say that there's just one whether it's Jeff Burton or Tony Stewart or Dale Jarrett or Dale Earnhardt - they're the ones that are going to be hard to beat. They're going to be tough next year.

You mentioned a goal of trying to improve this season. Where do you want or where do you feel as a driver you need to improve at this point?

Well, I know that my short track racing is not as good as I want it to be. You figure Martinsville I had a top five, Bristol I think I might have had one. Richmond I think we've had a couple, Loudon had a couple. These racetracks - we didn't do well at Bristol. This year we did everything right in some areas, but we're still weak here - we beat Dale Earnhardt by X amount of points on super speed way races or speed way races but yet we were seventh or eighth in short track races. Whenever there is some type of book that you guys put out that has some type of standard in it you know that's just one of those things - like wow - cool and you know it just gets you to thinking about you need to be better at certain types of race tracks. And that's one thing that we'd like to do.

When you mention short tracks - is that an area you're trying to control?

Just sometimes like no difference in a side-track program we might have worked on a few years ago or road course program. You go take a day or two of testing and you just approach it a little differently. Sometimes when you get to the racetrack you only have time to do certain things and you kind of get in a rut. Well sometime you might be able to try something different and it might open your eyes, which opens your eyes to something else and so on and so forth. So sometimes you got to go with an open or different frame of mind instead of being set on this is basically what we did last time so we've got to make it a little bit better. Maybe we need to set the weight back and start all over again.

So Bobby eluding one more time to Joe Gibbs racing teams, when you look at what Tony did last year and what you did, that's a great happening and you've got to feel very, very comfortable as to where the team is as a whole. Naturally, he's competitive and you're competitive but I presume that throughout all you'll share anything that each team should find that's going to help each other. Plus with fewer Pontiac drivers, do you anticipate more support or help from Pontiac to remain on top?

I know that between the 2 race teams its always been open book policy and we always try to help each other out when it's - whoever is having a good day or a bad day trying to make sure that both teams are running up front so that's not going to change any there. And then with these Pontiac teams I don't run the business to know if we're going to get any extra money or extra support - I haven't heard that yet. You would think with less teams there's more money available and without going into details, I'm sure that's going to happen somehow, someway, but I don't know which way and how it could happen. But if it does, it will be better for us.

You got two of the biggest gems in the sport last year by winning the Brickyard and the Winston Cup championship. One of the few gems that's missing is the Daytona 500 victory so how focused are you, how much --- are you putting any more emphasis to try to add that to the collection?

Well, we know that the last Winston Cup champions went down there and won the Daytona 500 the next race, so I don't see that we have to put a whole lot of more emphasis on it do we? I thought that was just a given. Maybe not. We're going to test next week and a lot of times when we do that we think we're as prepared as can be and you get down there and you don't have anything. So you go to Talladega. We've done that - thought we had everything - got down there and didn't have squat. Went down there and were better off than we thought and didn't have to go to Talladega, so it's just so temperamental. The rules that they have with the piece on the roof and the gurney lip on the spoiler and the degree that it's at, I'm not sure that qualifying is so important any more, so you just work on your race setup. I mean in 13 laps in Talladega, Gordon was leading the race, starting in last and I'm like well he had a half second slower race car and was leading the race in 13 laps so maybe the qualifying really didn't mean that much.

You have not had very many personnel changes. I think this is something like your fifth year with your over the wall crew. How much does that play a part in your success?

Well that plays a big part of it and I know that over the course of time some of these guys are going to have to be off the road or do something different because you know they just can't be doing it all the time because either their age and they are getting to the point where they need to retire or step back and so something in the shop. You know I think that the main part about it is that we've got guys who are always there working and getting better and if somebody does - if there's one person who says hey I need to step away because my knees are hurting or you know I can't do this anymore or whatever then I think that we usually have one person who can fill in because we've been practicing that for years - it's not like the whole pit crew's leaving to go somewhere else or something like that. We're going to have little odds and ends things happen here and there but hopefully that will be minor compared to what things could happen.

I'm sure this off-season has been awfully busy. How has this off-season been different for you from previous years?

It really wasn't - other than going to New York. I usually go to New York about Wednesday and usually stay in my room until about Saturday, when I leave. This year I didn't get to do that so that was different. That was real different. I did order a lot of room service. But really after that I went to Los Angeles for a couple of days just to Fox Studios out there and I went back to New York just for Letterman. I did everything that was the coolest thing that you could probably ever wish you could do and especially during the first time it was like you know I might not ever get to do this again so really in a way it really wasn't much different that any other year, but in a way it was with a few other things.

But then like I say after I got back from New York two days afterwards it was really back to normal pretty quick. I signed autographs for my brother at his dealership during a weekend off, which I told him I'd never do but he convinced me to do it any way. Before the season's over, I told Rick Hendrick this is going to be the last time I sign autographs for my brother for free this year - the day before New Years. It's really been fun. The trip we just took to Brazil was probably the most exciting thing. I've just been hanging out.

Text Provided By Marie Mason

Editors Note: To view hundreds of hot racing photos and art, visit The Racing Photo Museum and the Visions of Speed Art Gallery.