CHAD KNAUS
"I have no idea about that. Look, Jimmie and I are great friends. We have a great time together. I don't know where that came from. Mr. H has put it out there that we're talking about a longer contract to keep me on this deal for a long time. I have never wanted to go anywhere else. I have never worked with a better driver or a better group of guys. I've been with this team since it was a baby and I feel like I've raised it from infancy. And just being away from it for the
Daytona 500 was painful enough. I can't imagine actually leaving this team and not being a part of it."
Q.
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH DARIAN GRUBB AND WHAT YOU SAW IN HIM WHEN HE FIRST JOINED HMS?
CHAD KNAUS
"Darian is great. He's a very intelligent guy. He has a Mechanical Engineering degree. That really doesn't mean a whole lot. That's just a piece of paper. But you've got more so is the fact that he's a racer. He's worked in the production world. He's built race cars. He's done stuff like that. He's an awesome guy. He sits right there with me on the pit box. He actually took on a new role this year of being the lead guy for the No. 24 and No. 48 shop as far as the engineering goes - overseeing both team individual engineers and then being a liaison between the No. 5 and the No. 25. He has stepped up and taken on that role. I still wanted to keep him on my pit box throughout the race to help me call the race and the fuel mileages and watch what's going on because he's a great extra set of eyes. I've won a lot of races with Darian on my side, and we're going to win a lot more."
Q.
DO YOU CONSIDER WHAT YOU DID TO BE CHEATING?
CHAD KNAUS
"Here's the deal. NASCAR put the car through the inspection process after qualifying. The car did not fit the template. We're going to accept what they saw and what they've described in their press release and we're going to go with it. That's really it."
Q.
WAS THERE SOMETHING ON THE CAR THAT YOU THOUGHT WAS WITHIN THE RULES OR WAS IT SOMETHING THAT YOU KNEW IF NASCAR SAW IT THAT IT WOULD BE WRONG?
CHAD KNAUS
"You just heard my comments from the last question and I'm standing by that one."
Q.
WOULD A LOT OF THESE PROBLEMS END IF NASCAR SAID THEY WOULD DISQUALIFY THE WHOLE TEAM AND NOT LET THEM RACE FOR A MAJOR INTENTIONAL VIOLATION DURING QUALIFYING?
CHAD KNAUS
"That's tough because there has got to be room for NASCAR to make a judgment call. They're in a tough situation. They've got to deal with a lot of creative people and a lot of guys who work in a lot of different areas, and then evolve as a sanctioning body also to put the best product out there for the fans to watch. For them to do something like that is very difficult. They've got to do what they feel is correct with the infraction. It's all got to work. The larger the penalty should goes with the larger problem. That's the way it should be."
Q.
COULD YOU SEE A PENALTY BEING THAT SEVERE IN SOME INSTANCES?
CHAD KNAUS
"That would have to depend on what it was and who it was. This sport has changed. You have to be respectful of the sport making the evolution to what it is. There were guys back in the day that are heroes today that did things that were far more serious than what anybody has done in the past eight years of motorsports. And they continued to work in the sport and to prosper. So things have changed. The penalties and the race cars and the sponsors have changed. Everything in this business has changed so much in such a short period of time that it's hard to grasp how much. When our salary budget for just our employees has gone up threefold in the last four years, that's pretty tough to grasp. We've all got to make adjustments."
