Q&A: David Stremme

Q: David, you're from South Bend, an Indiana native. Have to imagine getting the opportunity to race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway must mean a lot. What's it like to have that chance?

Stremme: Well, it was pretty neat last year. Everybody's always, you know, talking about going to Indianapolis and watching the 500 or watching the Brickyard. I was never able to really participate in a lot of that because I was doing a lot of local races and stuff. Any time I got to the Indianapolis area, I'd go by the track. Being right in the town, there's so much history there, it's just cool.

But probably a neat thing for me was last year during the driver introductions, we're riding around in the vehicles, I had seen a lot of people that I had raced with growing up or people had watched me growing up, and it was pretty emotional. It was cool.

Q: Could you elaborate on the emotions you felt a year ago when you got to the track and you were going to be participating in that event, what that meant?

Stremme: When you're in the garage area and you got so much going on, at that time we had to qualify for the race, we were outside the top 35 in points, it was pretty stressful. But we made it in on time, actually had a pretty good race all day.

Before the race, we were riding around. It was just different, you know, seeing faces in the crowd that were familiar to me, again, I've known for quite a while. It was really cool. Kind of got me a little more pumped up. Again, I think any time anybody goes close to their hometown, there's always a little extra boost in your step.

You know, it's just fun. I mean, I've raced at IRP [Indianapolis Raceway Park] a lot, or ORP [O'Reilly Raceway Park], won out there. It would be cool, you know, to watch and try to win at the Brickyard. I think when I was watching Tony [Stewart], and he won there, it was neat because obviously he didn't grow up too far from there.

Just the history part of it. When I go there, I think about when they built that track, how long it took to get around in the cars back in the early 1900s there. Now we're flying around there at around 200 [mph], not like IndyCars, but still for stock cars, it's really fast.

Q: What was it like making your first lap on that track, given the historic nature of it?

Stremme: Well, it's kind of funny because when we went and tested there, it was after the Chicago race last year. You know, I really enjoyed the first couple laps, but then I found out how much the tires fall off and I ended up right-siding the car in one of the short chutes there in the corner. It was kind of an adventurous first time on the track.

You know, we went back there last year and, like I said, we were real competitive in the race, so I'm looking forward to going there this year.

Q: Ever since you left Talladega, you have struggled a little bit. You were up to 14th in the standings when you left Talladega. What is it going to take to get things turned around for your team?

Stremme: A lot of it was the COT car was a big struggle for us. The organization wasn't ready. I shouldn't say they weren't ready. They were ready, but we weren't as prepared as we should have been. It was pretty plain and simple.

On the other hand, we had some bad luck. We had a good run going at Richmond; we got wrecked there. You know, we've had some engine problems for whatever reason. Our engine program has been pretty good. It's just been tough.

The last five races, especially, we've had really good cars at least at four of 'em, and we haven't been able to get the results that we need out of it.

Some of it's luck, I think. For the most part, you know, since Talladega, when we hit some of the COT races, we weren't as prepared. But the company's really stepped up. They got the cars working better. At Loudon [New Hampshire] we had a really good car. That was one of them deals, we had an alternator go bad right at the beginning of the race, we had to change a battery late in the race, and we ended up getting wrecked. (Continued)