A great race car driver in a bad car doesn't make great results. A great car and a bad race car driver doesn't make great results. You have to have both. It's the combination of driver and car.

I think we're our biggest competition. I think the racetrack's the biggest competition. If we go and race the racetrack and try to go around the racetrack faster than our competition, then that's the goal. I look at it as a competition between us and the racetrack because it's all about lap time.

We lost three very young, very talented drivers in a really short time and that had a lot of influence, too. Certainly Dale's death was a huge smack in the face to everybody, but all those deaths in such a short period of time was awful. It forced people to look at it and say, 'Hey, this isn't a coincidence. There's something going on'.

You can go from having all your stuff together and really feeling good about yourself to really figuring you can't run a lick.