Q&A: Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Q: As defending champion of the upcoming race here at Richmond, let's just revisit that race quickly last year. Most everyone was chasing the 29 car [Kevin Harvick] but the end of the race turned out to be a pretty good finish between you and the local guy here Denny Hamlin. Can you just take us back to that race?

Earnhardt: Yeah, it was fun. We had a good car. The 29 was fast all night, and they had some troubles, some bad pit strategy or whatever, made some mistakes, not pitting when they should have. That seems to be what the short track race is all about.

All the cars are so easily matched that are running toward the front, it's more about pit strategy and who can get out first on that last stop and try and maintain position, and that's what we were able to do.

Q: It seemed like you had a lot of fun with the burnout at the end, even turned it into a TV commercial for you. Can you rate on a scale from 1 to 10 that burnout that you did last year at the end of the race?

NASCAR making changes to COT

After Kevin Harvick's foam fire at Martinsville, along with several issues at Bristol, NASCAR has ordered changes to the COT which will create more airflow from the exhaust on the right side.

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Earnhardt: I don't know, my daddy never liked them too much so I'm not a big fan of them, but people have come to expect them so you don't want to disappoint anybody. It's a lot of fun. When you win, you're pretty excited and it's a great feeling. It's one I'd like to experience a whole lot more often, but we're working really hard to get there.

Q: Could you talk about the mandated changes for the COT and the foam -- what kind of affect you think that will have and your concerns about safety inside the car?

Earnhardt: Well, they had the fire this past weekend in the 29 and they made some changes and cut the foam out around the exhaust pipe or put in some kind of a fabricated piece, a square, to keep the foam if it did get hot not to move down or change its form, and get down near the pipe.

I think that the COT, we'll learn a lot of little nuances and things like that within the car and make changes as we go with NASCAR. They've done a great job up to this point. They're being real lenient in a lot of areas with the car. As we start to understand it, they'll start to tighten the grip a little bit on the technical inspection and whatnot.

I'm pretty pleased so far, but we've only run some short tracks with it. I'm sure it'll be a new ballgame when we go to the bigger racetracks and it'll be a whole other puzzle to figure out. (Continued)