Scott Riggs won the Nextel Open in the No. 10 Dodge last month. Credit: Autostock

Q&A: Scott Riggs

Scott Riggs recently won the Nextel Open and finished 10th in the Nextel All-Star Challenge. In addition, he won the Bud Pole for the Coca-Cola 600 and was 20th at Dover.

Riggs was the guest on the weekly NASCAR media conference call.

Scott, tough early go in the season. Things have really turned around for your team in the last few weeks. Maybe you could give us some of the reasons for that.

	Stats at a Glance Scott Riggs' 2006 season Race St. Fin. Status Fontana 14 19 running Las Vegas 22 28 running Atlanta 29 11 running Bristol 38 41 running Martinsville 11 10 running Fort Worth 22 7 running Phoenix 24 38 running Talladega 32 9 running Richmond 23 14 running Darlington 19 31 running Charlotte 1 13 running Dover 15 20 running

Riggs: Well, things have definitely started to come around. But this is the kind of way we anticipated the season to go. Definitely didn't expect to of course miss the first race.

We always had in our mind with a brand-new team starting a season off with no points there's always the chance of something like that happening. If you make mistakes or break or anything that happens in those qualifying races at Daytona, you take a chance of missing the race, nothing to fall back on points-wise. Unfortunately, that happened to us.

You know, actually it was a good thing in some weird way because it actually made all of our team and all of our guys focus on not just ourselves as a structure, but also just take one race at a time and concentrate just one rate at a time, not worry about points or last week or two weeks from now. We just worry about one race at a time.

You know, we've been doing a pretty good job. Everyone's doing a good job in the shop building the cars, everyone on the road, over the wall, have been making huge strides on their abilities and how fast they can make changes on the race car.

Myself and my team director, Rodney, my head engineer, team engineer, Kevin 6 kid. All of us have been really working together, really fine tuning and honing our skills of communication between each other and understanding exactly what I'm describing about the race car, what kind of changes, making a correlation between what changes I feel and what kind of changes we make.

You know, I knew this is what our team was capable of, is being competitive. We're still making mistakes. We're still not finishing where we need to. We thought we had the fastest car at Charlotte in the 600, put ourself in the right position to win that race, and just took ourself out.

Had a good car at places like Phoenix, I spun out. All the mistakes we're making as a team, including myself as a driver, and the guys over the wall and everything, we're all making mistakes because we're trying too hard. I think you don't want to make those mistakes.

I think those mistakes are going to be done away with as soon as we can get ourselves into Victory Lane. I think as soon as we win a race, that will bring everyone's confidence where it needs to be and we won't be trying to overcome and overachieve.

We'll be able to just feel confident in what our abilities are as a team and individuals, give a hundred percent and make calculated decisions to be able to continue to win races and continue to be competitive week after week, I hope.

What's the biggest change that you've seen in the early part of the season, switching over to Evernham Racing?

Riggs: The biggest change I've seen is just having so many people behind the scenes, so many engineers, so many different specialty teams that are really working, research and development with Pete there working hard to work on our cars, go out and test things we don't as a team have time to go work on. Just so many people behind the scenes that are trying to make our cars go faster.

Bud Pole WinnerScott Riggs runs the fastest lap to win the Bud Pole Front rowScott Riggs runs the fastest lap during Nextel Open qualifying Sign up for TrackPass now BUY THE NEXTEL i836

I have a huge engineering team, a lot of engineers that are put on specific and special problem solving, different problems, different tests that we want to find out answers and results from. A lot of guys.

I don't want to say their names not because I don't want to give them the definite credit they deserve, it's 'cause I don't want to lose them, I don't want them stolen, I don't want their name to get out there and some other team come over and try to steal them away.

The organization as a whole has done a great job of, one, putting the key people in those key places to make the entire organization function together and work well together. And for everyone on the team being able to look at each other as a true teammate, not a competitor.

It's so easy in this day and age, the competitive nature of all of us, the competition level being so high at this level, it's easy for us to start racing our own teammates and want to outrun each other.

Right now Evernham Motorsports, everyone is working to try to help each other. We're just as proud for the 9 team winning three races this year, Kasey, Kenny Francis doing such a good job over there, as we are about Jeremy and the way that team is really starting to come around and turn the corner. Everyone works together as one. I think that, along with the right people in the right places, that's the biggest difference between the last two years in Cup racing and this year.

Do you feel as though Pocono could be the track where you guys break out?

Riggs: I look forward to Pocono. Some of the things we learned between the Open and the 600, some things that we tested at Kentucky, are actually going to apply for us at Pocono. Dover this past weekend, I feel like we did a good job executing all the changes we made, but we really didn't have the kind of car we needed when we unloaded. We really were behind at first.

We worked hard, never got scrambled, just stayed focused on working on our car. We had a 20th place finish, but definitely not what we expected. We thought we'd have an easy top 10 finish there. We thought we had a good shot at a top 10, a track that I like, a track that our team director, Rodney, put a lot of thought into. He likes it, thought it would be something that suited our styles. Didn't have the kind of finish we needed, that we thought we could obtain.

Pocono, I've been pretty good there in the past. It's a place that I think is tough to learn because it's so unique. But I think we have a legitimate shot at running well and getting our first victory possibly this weekend.

The only places that I look to that I actually go to the racetrack before I even unload, think about, okay, we need to just have this kind of finish, are really the road courses. That's the only place I feel like I have such little experience at that I think we just need to go there and survive and get out the best we can.

It's like if we can have a top 15 finish at those races, we'll be in good shape. Everywhere else, we look to go to try to sit on the pole and lead laps and win races.

What sort of challenge is it for a new team to bring along a pit crew? How is that process going for you?

Riggs: It's definitely hard. I'll tell you that for sure. That was one of the tougher challenges that we had as a new team, was to try to find new talent and then guys that maybe haven't had any experience but maybe we saw something in them that could get it done over the wall or things like that.

The guys that do the pit stops, the guys over the wall, they're athletes. They're guys that have to be physically in shape and physically capable of doing the job and doing it fast, smart, quick and making sure that they do their job correctly.

The hard part of that is finding those guys that also can handle the different circumstances in which we pit. You have guys that can do a great job in practice, but then can't handle the pressure.

Scott Riggs

I'm really proud of my guys because they not only do great pit stops when they're practicing at the shop, but they're also able to come in and give me the same pit stop no matter if we're 25th or if we're leading. That is what is hard. I think that's the challenging part, is to find those guys.

We've had to make a couple of changes since the beginning of the season, but they've been very small. I think the guys have done a great job of continuing to get better and better every week, feeling the pressure at different levels, been able to continue to do their job the same no matter what the circumstances may be. That's a hard thing to do. That's the hardest.

Also you have to find the guys that work in the shop, work on the race cars, go on the road, keep their focus on the race car. When you're away from their family as long as these guys are every week, make sure a strong family life and home life means a lot into how they can focus at their job at hand every weekend.

Do you think NASCAR should institute a situation where you could have a replacement rather than relief driver?

Riggs: You know, I don't know. That's a hard decision there. You're racing for points. Something like that, an injury like Tony has with his scapula being broken, Dover would be, man, one of the toughest places to go with an injury like that because you have so much banking, so much grip with the concrete surface, you carry so much speed in these high-banked corners, there's a lot of forces pushing down and against your body through the corners. I think you would definitely need someone to step in.

Now, if you're asking me do I think NASCAR should change the rules where Ricky Rudd could have started the race and Tony got the points? I think the team definitely deserves the points. They're the ones that put the car out there, did all the effort.

But I think if the driver can battle through getting in the car, starting the event, then having to get pulled out of the car, make that change, which takes a really high risk of getting laps down to do it, I don't see any other way it could be any different.

Could you talk about some of the things you do from a physical fitness standpoint to stay in shape so you don't get too worn down in the car?

Riggs: There's definitely a physical demand on your body during the course of the race and a mental also. The biggest thing I do, I just try to work out. I try to exercise, you know, all my basic muscle groups.

Scott Riggs

I try to have some kind of cardio involved as far as running, just making sure that I get that heart rate going. I try to do it all in the heat that we're in right now, 80, 90 degree weather. I try to work out in that kind of conditions.

In the race car, the temperatures are a lot higher than 90 degrees. They're up to 120 to 160 degrees air temperatures in the car. It's almost like being in an oven. I think working along with my trainer that I have that works with me when I'm home, making sure I have a good diet, making sure that I have a healthy diet, and also to make sure that I'm physically in shape.

Also we work with making sure that I can endure the kind of heat that we go through for those four or so hours we're in the race car. The biggest way to do that, if you do work out and train in the heat, you actually teach your body how to sweat more efficiently.

What I mean by that is you actually can still sweat, but your body won't sweat out as many electrolytes as, say, someone who is not sweating and trying to train your body to do so.

Just try to endure that I think helps you by far physically. I think the stronger you are physically in the race car, the race, when it starts to take wear and tear on your body, the stronger you are mentally to be able to stay focused on your job at hand.

How does Pocono rank among the tracks as far as physically demanding? I've heard some drivers say it's more of a mentally demanding track.

Scott Riggs

Riggs: I would just say it's par as far as saying it's more average ranked as far as physically demanding. As far as the mental part, that's pretty tough because you're running such a high speed at these long straightaways, then we're in these slack corners, you really have to be sharp on your sense of depth perception the entire race and know if you have someone around you, the air's going to affect you even more because we're running at such high speeds.

If we come in and get tires, how much deeper you can drive into these corners, how much more speed you can carry, how much earlier you can pick the throttle up depending on your car's condition and tire wear.

I think it's more higher on the mental side with the high speeds, slack corners that we run. Par on the physical side.

Obviously you're far enough in points where there's no concern about getting in the show. With what happened at Daytona, is there still conscious thought about that? Is that something we talk about more every week? Do you look at it still?

Riggs: No, to be honest with you, we don't. I think that's something you guys talk about. We definitely put it behind us, try to stay focused one week at a time. We go to this weekend, we're not thinking about, Man, we need to qualify good because we don't want to have a poor qualifying effort or have a bad race.

We think about, "this is what we need to do, this is where we need to qualify, this is what our car needs to feel like to be able to win this race." That's the kind of thoughts that go through our minds these days.