Q&A: Dale Earnhardt Jr. (cont'd)

Q: As you mentioned, the Hendrick team is very hot right now with the COT. Do you think it's fair that this year's champion very easily could be decided by whoever gets the handle on the COT first?

Earnhardt: I think it's fair. I mean, everybody is in the same boat. We all have to learn it together.

We've ran better than I anticipated we would at the first two races already. We didn't test as early and as often, and going into those races without that much data and knowledge about the car, I was really pleased with how we did.

I was really worried that it was going to be trouble for us because I didn't think we would pick up on it, and we still may run into some roadblocks when we go to the bigger tracks. But with the way my team has been working, with their confidence level, I feel like we're getting that chance, we can make a challenge.

We've had some great opportunities and near misses at points in the last couple of Chases that we've been in. We saw where we've had some opportunities to win a championship, and we just have to put ourselves in that position again and try not to make those same mistakes.

Q: I wanted to ask about coming to Texas. Texas Motor Speedway said they repaired the dip. Are you eager to see if they have? I noticed that you are going to be involved in a roundtable discussion before the movie Dale is shown at the track. Can you talk about that and why it was important for you to be a part of that as they show this on the big screen for the first time in the Dallas area?

Earnhardt: Yeah, I'm excited that they've repaired the dip. What happens is at every racetrack where they put a tunnel in, over the year's water and rain and whatnot settles the ground over the top of the tunnel and creates a dip in the track and a bump in the track.

I used the media, but I told Gossage and those guys at Texas how the track was coming into its own and creating a second and third groove, but the dip was so bad at the top of the corner on [Turn] 1 and 2 that it was hard for us to run through there. We were running on cold bound springs and stuff like that. And when you go over a big old bump like that with a cold bound spring it throws the car in the air, so I told them if they could fix that they'd have a better racetrack. He was upset that I used the media to tell him, but sometimes you guys have the loudest microphone.

As far as the Dale movie, I was really thrilled with how that turned out, very proud of the whole project and just want to give it the best opportunity to be seen by as many people as possible. I'm just trying to help that.

Q: There have been some people complaining that Doug Johnson and Jeff Burton didn't dump Kyle Busch at Bristol. They all cited the way your dad raced, how he didn't care who it was or what it was, he was going to win a race no matter what. Talk about the evolution of racing etiquette and who has it changed?

Earnhardt: I think different guys race differently. You have to understand that Jeff and Jimmie are teammates and they're friends and they know each other really well, and believe it or not, in that situation, it's easier for Jeff to go in there and give Jimmie the bumper. If it were another competitor like Tony Stewart or Jeff Burton, maybe that wouldn't have happened, Jeff would have drove totally different.

But being close friends as long as they have, they can lean on each other harder. It's like me and Tony [Eury] Jr., being able to cuss at each other in the garage area and being able to walk it off, and other crew chiefs and drivers don't have that style of relationship.

I think that the circumstances come down to which two drivers are involved and how they've raced each other in the past. Every situation is going to have a different outcome. I thought it was good to see. I didn't think any driver really had anything to complain about.

If anybody had anything to complain about -- if anybody who was having a bad day it was the guys that missed the race who were sitting home watching it on TV. I was very happy to be running up front with a first shot at the win, and I think that's the way those guys probably felt, too.

Q: Your team really came together through the challenges. There was a sense of panic about you getting to the front where you wouldn't make the races or something like that, and I think Eury, Jr. said that he even went to see the preacher man or he was going to church more often or something, but your team didn't fall apart. What does that say about the fact that you guys did not panic through that time, and now you're 11th in points?

Earnhardt: You can be in this sport or any form of sport, anything you do, and you're going to have a lot of things thrown at you. You just kind of -- you see it through the other side, and normally things work themselves out.

Like I said, it was way early in the season and there was no point to really get too concerned with how things were going, and I've always been the kind of person that you give your best effort and the result is the result and that's what you've got to live with, and like it or not that's what you have.

If I wasn't running as hard as I could we would probably be panicking. But we were giving everything we had, things just weren't working out. We just had to wait until it would.