The best example of how we have grown as a team might be the race at Martinsville. We had been fast all day, and we were up front on a late restart. A lapped car had a problem and almost ran me into the wall. There was some colorful language on the radio, but Tony Jr. kept telling all of us to think of the big picture. We all kind of calmed each other down, and we recovered enough to finish third. It wasn't the win we thought we deserved, but it was a strong day in the points for us. In the past, I might have bit through the steering wheel trying to fight back to the front, and I drove my butt off to get back to third place, but it was a successful day in the end.
On second thought, maybe an even better example is the win at Talladega. We were at the back of the field when the big crash happened, and I managed to avoid most of it, but I smashed the nose of the car somewhere among the smoke and mayhem. We made 17 pit stops that day to fix and repair that nose-and we ended up winning the race. Now, that's the attitude we take into every race. Whatever it takes, we'll do it. I know a lot of people still bitch about the yellow-line thing-but even if we would have been penalized, I would have still been proud of my team, my driving, and how we overcame some serious problems early on to have a shot at winning it at the end.
My View So FarThe season has been fun for me for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest is because I have become a team owner in the Busch Series. I love being behind the wheel-and winning two Busch Series races so far as a driver for my own team was pretty cool-but I have really enjoyed being on the pit box while someone else drives that Chance2 car. I used to tease Tony Jr. that when something bad happened in the race, I had to go back out there in that hot car and fight back, while he got to relax with a cold drink in the pits.
Now I know how far that is from the truth. It has helped me understand things as a driver to see a race from the point of view of the crew. I think it will continue to be fun for me to learn about the business of running a team, but mostly I think it will help me become a better driver in the long run.
While this is being written, I'm in second place in Winston Cup points behind Matt Kenseth. I get asked a lot about racing with Matt, and it is always a blast to race against him. Matt has a knack of getting as much as possible out of what his car can provide that day. He has a great crew, so that means he is almost always in the Top 5 or Top 10 when the day is done. He and I have been friends since our Busch Series days, and it seems like even though we're rivals right now for the No. 1 position, we've become closer than we have been in years past. Our careers have been kind of parallel since 1998, and it's almost like old times now. We talk quite a bit because we are going through the same things. "What's your car doing?" or "How do you handle this or that?" seem to be what we're always asking each other.