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Earnhardt on his year-to-date

Courtesy of Chevrolet Motorsports, Ray Cooper

Chevrolet NASCAR Winston Cup notes, quotes. Tuesday's Winston Teleconference featuring seven-time Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt and crew chief David Smith.

DALE EARNHARDT (No. 3 GM Goodwrench Service Monte Carlo)

"Daytona wasn't really disappointing. We finished second, and I've never won that race, so I don't know how that feels. It's sort of like having steak and peanut butter. Peanut butter is fine until you eat a steak. If we ever win Daytona, it might be disappointing to run second, but right now I'm pretty happy with it. We had a strong week and a strong race car down there, but we ended up second again. We went to Rockingham with a good attitude. David Smith and all the guys did a great lob. We qualified pretty good considering. We usually don't qualify too strong. We had a good strong qualifying run. We were still a little off from what other cars ran, but we ended up 18th. We're usually struggling for 22nd or 25th. We were pretty happy with our qualifying run and felt good about the car from the start. It was just a matter of getting the car fairly comfortable and fine-tuning there in Saturday's practice and then we were ready to race."

COMMENT ON INCIDENT WITH BOBBY HAMILTON AT ROCKINGHAM

"First of all, I hate that happened. We get in there side by side or get under somebody racing and we bump a little bit and things happen. That wasn't the only incident on Sunday. It happened to me. Dale Jarrett got into me twice coming off of four. I got away from him twice. It was lucky I didn't hit the wall. It was lucky I didn't go sideways or caught my car quicker or whatever. Several more incidents happened all day. The 18 and several cars got wrecked several times. If you went back and looked at every incident, what if this and what if that, I don't know what to say about it. We were racing. I definitely didn't do anything intentional. I'm sure Richard Petty has been in the same situation before and Bobby Hamilton himself. I think they've got a great team and are destined to win with the car they've got. They came along strong last year, and I think they've got a better race car to work with this year. It's lust a matter of time until they win. If they want to focus on worrying about what happened down there Sunday going into Richmond, it's going to take their focus off of Richmond. Knowing Bobby Hamilton and Richard Petty, they're smart enough to put that behind them and go on and try to win the race at Richmond and forget about it. If they don't, if they want to just ride around out there and knock the 3 out, that's their prerogative, but it sure takes the focus away from winning. Every fan has his own view. Watch the race. If you want to go back and talk about things that have happened in the past, I got took took out of a race at Talladega (1995 Winston 500) and got knocked out of a $100,000 (bonus for leading standings after 10 races). What do you do about it? I'm not rating this or that. You just can't cry over spilled milk. It happened. It wasn't intentional. Sorry about it, let's get on and go to the next race."

DISCUSS CHANGES WITH NEW CREW MEMBERS

"If you look at the team, you can see we haven't missed a beat from the last race of last year. A lot of people don't realize that David Smith has been with me in every race we 've won and lost over the years. He's been right there changing springs and adjusting along with every crew chief. He's been with me for 60 (of 69) of my wins. It wasn't a big adjustment for us. It was just an adjustment for people on the outside looking in more or less. The structure of Childress' team, he's got a lot of good people in place that support people on the front line. David and Bobby Hutchens (team manager and team engineer) are doing a great job working together. Ronny (Crooks) our new shock guy is tuning in with that same group. Ricky Viers backs up David now and is a big part of it. The team is just strong all the way through. Our qualifying package with Scott De Young and Spenny Clendenen is doing great. Our engines are strong. Childress racing is made up of a good group of people. It's not just one guy leading them all. It's a lot of guys leading and working together. It makes my job easier to go out and drive a good race car. I hope I put a part of that back in to the team, being able to read the car and relate to them and give them the information they need to make the car better. I think the structure is Richard Childress and the team itself."

"We gain information and strength with anything we do outside the Winston Cup car. We used Dave Marcis and Skinner this past winter in some tests. I'm sure that engine he (Skinner, 12th at Rockingham) used Sunday was one they wanted to race but they wanted to see how the durability was. That engine came through the R&D department. They're always looking to make the team stronger. Anything we can learn from that is good for us from the durability side to the proving side. They tested at Rockingham with Skinner and they came up with a shock combination that felt pretty good for qualifying. It really wasn't a combination for the race, so we went back to our combination. David Smith and I tuned in on a different combination. There's advantages to having that extra input. We're racing against three-car teams. We have to gain from our teams, and Skinner is a part of that. Also Jeff Green in the Busch Grand National car is helping us when they go test. They're in Atlanta testing the Busch car today, and they have some shock combinations that we wanted to see what the difference was and we sent them down with `em. We'll run that through the computer stuff on the car. We're gaining in a lot of areas that we don't have other Winston Cup teams to gain from. Also, we're planning to run a Winston Cup car some this year with Jeff Green driving and with (Ron) Hornaday driving. We'll also gain and pull some information from that."

"The 88 car didn't have any help (at Daytona). I think if you build a strong enough car and you've got the right tools to do it with, I'm sure you can win a race without a teammate. I'd hate to think I'd have to have a teammate to win a race or to think two cars would gang up and fix a race for their teammate to win. You really want to be racing one on one out there. I'm racing every competitor. Even Mike Skinner at Rockingham last Sunday. I was racing him as a competitor. I don't know the advantages you'd have. I'm sure me and Kenny Schrader and Labonte or whoever, just using them as an example, when it came down to racing wire to wire, they'd race each other as hard to win as they would me. The team concept is a tough thing. It's a good concept in a way to gain and learn and have more opportunities. If you're a car owner, maybe more opportunities to win. Still, there's a lot more controversial in planning and putting together a team like that. I'm sure it you have a bad day, it doesn't make things any easier when you get back to the shop. With one race team, like Richard Childress has, it's pretty easy to go back and diagnose your problems or how your day went. You can fix `em a lot easier than to fix `em three ways. You've got capable people like Mike Skinner and Ron Hornaday and Jeff Green to pull from. They can go test and pull things out of that test. It doesn't always work. I'm sure Labonte and Gordon and Schrader run close to the same stuff, like cars and engine combinations. I'm sure when it comes to their chassis adjustments. they're somewhat different -- not totally, but fine-tuning is somewhat because every driver has a different feel.

"It's a combination of a lot of things, but surely it's part determination and willing to drive the car. We moved the car around on the track (at Rockingham) and it wasn't working on the bottom, so we moved it up the track. Spencer came along and we started racing and got to running in sequence and went right to the front. We adjusted to the track with the tires and then as we ran, we adjusted the air pressure and stagger somewhat and a little bit of wedge and made the car a little different. I was a little better at the end on the bottom and middle of the race track than I was at first. Our car sort of came to us at the end. Just like Labonte was real strong, but he had engine problems. The 23 was real strong, but he had engine problems. At that time of the race, it was just was who was the strongest. I would have liked for them to all be around at the end. It would have been a heck of a race. He (Dale Jarrett) has got a strong race car. I felt like I could race him one on one. He's tough racer. He runs good at the Rock. As we ran, we could get away from him. He jumped by me on that restart. He was pretty strong on those fresh tires, but as the tires wore, his combination wasn't quite as good."

"You want to come out and be good and continue the success we've had. That's played out so far, and we re very grateful for that. Our engine department is going to keep up on that (intake manifold controversy) and Richard is right on top of it. We certainly don't want to have a disadvantage on anything. I think we've got enough of that already with aerodynamics. We're certainly going to keep trying to improve our engine program and improve our cars as much as we can to make sure we don't lose any competitive edge.

"I've been so much involved with this team over the years, it kind of feels natural. Maybe that sounds strange, but I know how this Richard Childress organization works. I know the people real well, and I know what has to be done. I've been through six championship wins with this team. I think I've got a good understanding of what has to be done. Between myself and Bobby Hutchens, we 've been an integral part of this thing. It's been an easy transition I guess you could say. We came out of the gate with a first and a second and that's a great way to start. We're very comfortable with what we're doing, but we don't want to get too comfortable. If we do that, we'll get lackadaisical. We're going to keep coming out each week hopefully with a strong race car, one that Dale will be able to take to the front every week.

"We've got the Richmond car sitting here almost ready to go. We've got the Atlanta car ready. The Darlington car will be ready by next week, and the Bristol car will be ready. We've got cars lined up and ready, waiting on motors to do final setups. We've got everything really well prepared at the shop. The engine people, Spenny Clendenen and all his guys have got the motor program lined up real well. Except for any rule change or variations that NASCAR might come out with, we're ready for the season.

"You're probably hitting 150 or 160 mph range on straightaway speeds at Richmond. (Aerodynamics) will play. The Pontiacs will have better downforce and the Fords will have better now. We don't have the valence as low in the front, and we don't have as much real spoiler (as Pontiac and Ford). We were real good last November at Atlanta, but I know these other teams have worked real hard to come up with a better program for Atlanta this time. Hopefully, we'll be just as good or even better than we were. We're working in that direction, but I think they showed at Daytona that the Fords definitely have an aerodynamic equivalent to the Monte Carlo. I think that will play out at Atlanta and Michigan. I don't see the inequalities.

"The only time I might have felt a butterfly sensation at Daytona was the last practice session Saturday before the 500. A lot of guys were out there and the wind was up a little bit. You worried about getting in a crash or something. You knew you had a great car and the driver was really happy with it. We just wanted to get a good plug check and make sure everything was still good. I think that was the only time I felt butterflies."