Hamilton Jr. confident about upcoming season

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- No one was hotter at the end of the season than Bobby Hamilton Jr., so if you're looking for a favorite in the race for the 2004 Busch Series championship, look to him.

Please.

	The No. 25 team visited Victory Lane four times in 2003.

"If anything I've learned being in this sport in the last two years, it's all mind game stuff," Hamilton Jr. said. "When the reporters keeping talking about, 'The 25's going to be one to beat,' half of those guys are already beat before they walk in the gate. They're like, 'What about us?' They're already doubting themselves.

"Any time you can get in the position we're in now, you definitely want to take advantage of it. Plus, the momentum we had -- if we can just carry half of that through the first half of the season and pick up where we left off, we'll be fine."

So let's do the math. In the last 10 races, Hamilton Jr. won twice, finished second once, finished third four times, finished fourth once and finished seventh once. His worst finish was a 19th.

Yeah, half of that would be a pretty good start.

"There's so much more that we can do," Hamilton Jr. said. "Now, we know we can do it, so there's no satisfaction with four wins. We know we can do four at the end of the season, so why can't we do four at the beginning?"

The four victories, which led the series, all came after crew chief Harold Holly joined Team Rensi. Holly energized Hamilton Jr. like a bolt of lightning, and the No. 25 team came from way behind to finish a competitive fourth in the Busch Series championship standings, only 49 points away from the champion Brian Vickers.

Holly is back, and his relationship with Hamilton Jr. is solid.

"It's almost like alcohol," Hamilton Jr. said. "The longer it sits, the better it gets."

That puts Hamilton Jr. in a good position in the starting gate for 2004. And he knows it.

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"You don't ever picture yourself in the position that I'm in because you're almost the No. 1 contender everywhere you go, and that's a great feeling to have," Hamilton Jr. said. "The guys feed up on it. When they get to the racetrack, they talk the same smack as I do. They tell all the other pit crews that they're going to stick their face in the mud.

"Everybody's really pumped up, and we have to be. The minute you walk through the gate hoping to get a top-10, you're beat. We walk in the gate, we're here to win, and nothing else."

Confident? Sure, he is. Why wouldn't he be? Overconfident? Don't count on it. Hamilton Jr. has plenty of family history to know the up-and-down nature of NASCAR. His father, Bobby Hamilton Sr., is a wily ol' veteran who has seen just about everything.

So don't expect Bobby Jr. to get too cocky.

"It's so easy to walk out of here with your head so blown up that you can't fit out the door," Hamilton Jr. said. "These guys that you race against are like rattlesnakes. You hear them and you see them, but you don't know where they're going to come from.

"You have to be prepared the whole time and keep your game face on and walk out of here knowing that at any time, you can get put in your place."

Team Rensi should be prepared for the season, adding a few new employees to help shore up some of the areas in which they were weak. But the way Hamilton Jr. finished 2003, there wasn't much that needed to be done.

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"It was all so pumped up and so good, we didn't want to fool with too many changes," Hamilton Jr. said. "We just went and hired some extra help to kind of lean on each other if we need to. ... We got some more ammo for the ammo boxes.

"We didn't make any changes as far as letting anybody go, no changes up in the offices - everything is the same, and that was our goal. Everybody's happy, everybody's ready to win races. If you've got that, 50 percent of your problems are already solved."

About that other 50 percent, well, if confidence and enthusiasm mean anything, that's solved, too.