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.

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'.

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.

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