At Homestead, we were really one of the faster cars after 30 laps. But for the first 10 or 15, we were one of the worst cars. So that's like an air pressure issue, there's a lot of, Goodyear has several different types of tyres that they run at each track, and each tyre, each configuration, sidewalk configuration compound has its little tricks and you have to figure those out for whichever track and whichever tyre to be able to get that speed right off the bat.
You'll see guys like Martin and them guys go out and run in the 31-second bracket, you know, the first couple laps of a run here today. As they fall off typically like everyone else, they have found a good 4/10ths to half a second over the field and to start the run. So for ten or so laps, they are gaining that much time on you, it's really hard to come back and be able to run them back down.
So we just have to figure out a few things to gain that kind of speed. We tested at Texas, like I said, a couple of days ago and we were really, really fast. I know that the weather and the track conditions were as good as they could possibly be, as good as you could ask for. So we understand that that would improve our speeds a little bit. But as far as the times, we're really happy with that.
As you go to these tracks with probably half the banking, we definitely struggled over the last two or three years. We made some gains last year, and I was working with Steve Hmiel when I felt good about how I ran at those tracks. We never really ran too many of them the last ten races when I was working with Tony (Eury) Junior. But he's got his stuff together, so I feel confident that we'll come out of here after two days with a good idea of how we need to be when we come back.
Q.
NASCAR is different from other sports in that their marquis race is run at the beginning of the year. How do you feel about where
Daytona falls right up front and are there ever times when you wish it were somewhere different in the schedule?
DALE EARNHARDT, JR.
Not really. Personally I haven't been around the sport as a lot of the guys. But I've been around it long enough to understand the history of the sport and that's how the sport was built and it's always been that way. It feels just as natural to me as everything else I do.
