Yeley turning last year's pitfalls into 2007 success

HAMPTON, Ga. -- J.J. Yeley became the forgotten man at Joe Gibbs Racing in 2006. Tony Stewart was the reigning Cup champion. Denny Hamlin was busy making history as the first rookie to make the Chase.

But Yeley, tabbed to replace former champion Bobby Labonte in the No 18 Chevy, struggled. His best finish last year was eighth, which accounted for two of his three top-10s.

St. Patrick's Day

J.J. Yeley, who has the green on his side this weekend in the Interstate Batteries Chevy, believes in making his own luck. "For me, I can only do what I can control," Yeley said. "I don't have a lot of superstitions, wearing the same underwear or the same sock on one foot. If I go out and do my job, we will win races."

He started his rookie season with a 41st-place finish at Daytona. It ended with him running out of gas three laps from the finish at Homestead. In between, six crashes resulted in DNFs.

"Last year was a big disappointment," said Yeley, who admitted Hamlin's success at times took its toll mentally. "There was a certain amount of pressure because Denny did so well last season. But at the same time I was happy for him doing good. They had a lot of things go their way last year, they did an awesome job and they are to be congratulated for that."

As well as things went for Hamlin, they went the opposite for Yeley.

"It is by far the worst season I have ever had in my racing career," Yeley said. "You get in a position where you want to try to do something big, like a big Hail Mary pass for a touchdown, but unfortunately, it seemed like every time we tried to do something like that, things went bad."

"At the same time, there were a lot of good things that happened last year; we [just] started out bad."

Yeley followed the downer in his Daytona 500 debut with an eighth-place finish at California, and consecutive top-20 runs at Las Vegas and Atlanta that put him a season-best 18th in points. Yeley starts Sunday's Kobalt Tools 500 in ninth place.

"This year, we are able to do things on a more conservative level and because of that we don't have the pressure," said Yeley, now in his third consecutive week in the top 10. "The cars have been good, we are working well together, it is probably the approach I needed to do last year, but you get in a panic mode and it is hard to get out of it."

Yeley finished 29th in points last year; his average finish was 25.0. This year he has an average finish of 14.3 and has completed all but one lap.

"It just shows what the potential of this team should have been last year," Yeley said. "We had a lot of really good runs, were fast a lot of the time but weren't able to close the deal. Sometimes that was my fault and I am the first to blame myself. But there were times that as a team we just didn't do the right thing."

Those issues were addressed in the offseason.

"We were fast, we were competitive, we just weren't consistent enough," Yeley said. "Consistency is an easy thing to fix compared to trying to find speed in a racecar and a race team."

Yeley's best stretch of the season came in July, when he finished 10th, 12th and 11th in consecutive weeks from Chicagoland to Pocono. But that was preceded by three runs of 33rd or worse and followed with four consecutive weeks of finishing no better than 31st.

"We changed our approach to a couple of different things, made a couple of changes on our race team and I think we found the right chemistry. So far things have worked pretty good."

But they could be better.

"We lost a couple of spots in the closing laps in California. Then we had a bad pit stop under green that cost us track position in Las Vegas," Yeley surmised. "I think we have given up 40 points that we should have, but at the same time, we are still in the top 10 so we can't complain too much."

Yeley will start 20th on Sunday after posting a speed of 189.850 mph. That was more than 3 mph slower than Ryan Newman's top qualifying speed, but faster than other notable Chevys such as Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Burton, Kevin Harvick and Hamlin.

"Last year we were satisfied," Yeley said of his 15th-place Atlanta finish, "but at the same time, we have almost had [some] top-10s this year, so it would be nice to have that or a top-five so we can go on and start winning races."