• Brad Keselowski’s win vaults the No. 2 into the Eliminator round of eight.
• The win is the sixth Cup win of the season for Keselowski and 16^th of his career.
• The victory marks the second in the 2014 Chase for the 2 team (Chicago).
• Ford Racing’s 14 wins this season is the most for the manufacturer since 2005 (16).
• The win is Ford’s 28^th Chase win and 632^nd all-time series victory.

BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Redd’s Wicked Apple Ale Ford Fusion (Finished 1st)
VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW – “I can’t believe it. Talladega is such a wild card and to be able to win here you have to catch breaks and make your own breaks, a little of both. I can’t believe we won at Talladega. This race is the scariest of the three in the bracket. To be able to win here is really a privilege, it really is.” 

TAKE US THROUGH THE LAST COUPLE OF LAPS. “It was about the restarts and getting clear and putting yourself in the right position and we were able to do that.” 

YOU BATTLED BACK FROM EARLY PROBLEMS, TALK US THROUGH WHAT YOU HAD TO DO TO PULL THIS OFF. “We just persevered. We didn’t give up. I got a lot of help from my teammate Joey Logano and wow, this is just special. Everything about today is special. I want to say thank you to everyone that supports our team.”

PAUL WOLFE, crew chief, No. 2 Redd’s Wicked Apple Ale Ford Fusion – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW

 – TALK ABOUT THIS WIN, WHAT IT MEANS AND WALK US THROUGH THAT LAST RESTART. “Obviously this win is huge. We feel like we have been one of the strongest teams all year here, especially the second half of the season. This team has worked hard and I feel like they deserve a shot at a championship. The issues we had at Kansas put us behind and having to fight all the way back, everyone executed and did their job today. We knew coming in there that we would have a shot at it but to actually do it with so many thing out of your control at this race track is huge. I am so proud of the guys. Brad’s driving there in the last few laps was just phenomenal. That is what it came down to. You saw the 48 on the restart before that it looked like he tried to make it three wide and ended up going way back. It is about being smart and understands this type of racing and Brad does a great job of that.” 

HOW ABOUT THAT LAST RESTART SPECIFICALLY? “It is so up and down. One minute we thought we had a shot and the next minute we didn’t and we were trying to manage all that and the emotions. It ranks right up there – it was very exciting with not knowing what was going to happen right down to the end. It was a great win and I and looking forward to the next round.”

JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – HOW DO YOU DESCRIBE THIS DAY AND THE WAY YOU CAME BACK BUT ALSO HELPED YOUR TEAMMATE WIN?  “It was amazing, actually.  We got crashed there and it wasn’t anyone’s fault, it was just one of those situations, but we were able to recover from that like we’ve been able to in the recent past.  The Shell/Pennzoil team did a great job helping us out there and then we worked our way slowly but surely up there and had a shot at it there at the end, but it didn’t work out.” 

WHAT ABOUT YOUR DAY?  “It was a crazy one.  I won’t say we got spun, but it happens and we ended up spinning through the grass and not much damage happened to our car.  We went down a lap making sure we didn’t blow the fenders off it getting down pit road and changing tires, so we were able to recover from that and slowly but surely worked our way back toward the front to a position where I thought we had a shot at winning it.  I was able to try and get a run here and there from other cars, but it just didn’t work out.” 

WHEN YOU LOST BRAD ON THE BACKSTRETCH WERE YOU WORRIED THAT HE MIGHT BE IN TROUBLE WITHOUT YOU THERE TO PUSH HIM?  “No, at that point I was kind of on my own.  He was in good shape, but I was in bad shape where I was and that’s why we lost a bunch of spots there at the end.” 

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THIS SEGMENT AND MOVING ON?  “I thought we did a great job – a win, a fourth and an 11th unfortunately here at Talladega, but we’re doing what we have to do to win this championship.  Martinsville, Texas and Phoenix are obviously gonna be very important and we have to do what we’ve been doing.  We can’t let anything get to us.  We’ve got to stay focused on what we’ve been doing.” 

IS THERE A COLLECTIVE SIGH OF RELIEF THAT TALLADEGA IS DONE?  “Probably for a lot, but not me.  I was in good shape coming in here with that win, so I felt good about it.”

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Subway Ford Fusion – “We knew we couldn’t wreck and it ended up playing out exactly like we planned.  We stayed out of the wrecks and made it in, but that was nerve-wracking.  Congratulations to Brad for getting another Ford into the next round.  That’s awesome the way they stepped it up.  For us, it’s awesome.  We’ll just keep on trucking.  We’re back tied for the points lead.” 

YOU WERE CLOSE TO THAT LAST WRECK.  “I don’t think I could have been any closer.  That was crazy.” 

THOUGHTS ON MOVING FORWARD?  “I’m excited.  Martinsville is place we feel like we can go and do some good.  We’ve run really well there lately.  We had a test at Texas and Phoenix is a place where we know we can win, so I’m excited.” 

ANY NERVES BEFORE THE RACE?  “I felt a lot more confident before the race than I did on that last restart.  I just don’t know how you plan this race out.  We tried to outsmart everybody and it almost caught us, so it’s really down to pure chance.  I’m just glad it worked out for us.” 

DID YOU KNOW WHERE YOU WERE IN POINTS ON THE FINAL RESTART?  WERE YOU TRYING TO BE AGGRESSIVE TO GAIN SPOTS?  “I was trying to be aggressive on the last restart and get some positions and fortunately I was able to.  But Jason Hedlesky (spotter) and Jimmy Fennig kept me updated and that helped a lot.”

RYAN BLANEY – No. 12 SKF Ford Fusion – WHAT HAPPENED ON THE FINAL RESTART?  “The very, very top would go pretty good for maybe a lap and then it would kind of die down.  I thought we had a good run going until it almost got really hairy there for a second and we almost wrecked a bunch of cars and everyone had to back out and that kind of killed our momentum, but the car is in one piece and the 2 got to victory lane, so all in all it wasn’t a bad day.  My first experience at Talladega and I learned a lot about these cars and how they drive on these superspeedways, so that was a good part of it.”

ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion – “We were just all starting to shuffle around there and getting ready to pit, and I think it was the 83 in front of me, and I think he might have been trying to check up to get to the bottom.  I just barely started to push him and it hooked his car and we all wrecked.”

MICHAEL MCDOWELL – No. 95 K-LOVE Ford Fusion – “All of this really started in that first incident when the 1 came down the track and got the right-front.  We were just hanging on from there and trying to manage the race.  We had a lot of right-front damage from that, so we were trying to manage the tires and just work on it.  We had a right-front go down there, but you’ll have that at Talladega.  I’m happy with our team’s performance because we had great speed in qualifying, practice and were up front there before all of this happened.  I feel good about what our team is doing.  I’m proud to be a part of it and now we’ll just move on and finish out the year.”

POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE

PAUL WOLFE, Crew Chief – No. 2 Redd’s Wicked Ale Ford Fusion – “I told some of the guys afterwards this is pretty intense.  It ranked close up there with that race at Homestead in 2012 with just so much on the line today.  Coming into the weekend we were confident we were capable of winning.  We’ve had the speed in our race cars on the plate tracks this year and obviously Brad has shown his ability to get to victory lane, so we were confident from that standpoint, but there are so many things out of your control when you come to these kind of race tracks, so I tried not to get my hopes up too much and really just kind of figured we’d see what played out, but we had a fast car.  We had to start from the back and he slowly worked his way to the front and I think that showed the strength in our car.  Unfortunately, we got some damage with the 1 car when he had a tire issue, but nobody panicked, everybody stayed cool and we kept marching forward and doing our thing.  We got down towards the end and had him in position and then from there Brad just did an amazing job on those last couple of restarts and showed really what he’s all about.”

ROGER PENSKE, Car Owner – No. 2 Redd’s Wicked Ale Ford Fusion – “I think when you look at the statistics we’ve won four out of the six races in this bracket, but I think today really showed the teamwork with Joey.  We were about 16th or 17th and Joey pushed Brad up to the front.  We talked before the race that it was gonna be a team effort and certainly the moves at the end there and Brad’s tremendous driving gave us the win, so, to me, Paul called a great race.  Brad was cool all day long.  I think he asked one question to us at the end, ‘Should I take the bottom or the top?’  We had a vote of Paul and myself and we said, ‘Top,’ and it certainly paid off when we went green with the 22 behind us, but, for me, we’ve been in NASCAR a long time.  This is 11 races we’ve won and we only had won 10 was our best season with Rusty, so we set a record today for the team and obviously put us in a position to go forward in the next bracket.  You don’t like to see anybody knocked out, but when you see the caliber – the drivers that won’t be there for the next four races – certainly we feel good about having at least two going into this next bracket.”

ROGER PENSKE CONTINUED – HOW BIZARRE WAS IT TO SEE MATT KENSETH PUSH BRAD AFTER WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK?  “Obviously, I told Brad, ‘Don’t look in the rearview mirror’ because we didn’t like what happened last weekend.  I said, ‘Look out the windshield.’  Certainly I think after a week everybody cools off and this is a place you can’t retaliate, obviously.  Matt was behind him some of the time and he was behind the 48, so there was a little give-and-take there, but at the end I think the big push came with the 22.  Kenseth is a world-class driver as they all are and Newman was in position to make it happen, but fortunately he didn’t have a pusher like we had.”

COMING OFF THIS LAST WEEK WHAT IS HIS RESILIENCY LIKE TO DO WHAT HE DID TODAY?  “I think some of the emotion last weekend, I’d stand up for him anywhere.  I watched the whole race last week.  There was certainly some banging which was maybe not called for, but we went testing this week and spent a couple days testing.  He knew what he had to do here, so we were focusing on the next couple of races.  I told him, ‘It’s over.  It’s over.  Let’s move on.’  Look, I like him.  He’s a great driver.   We’ve got a long-term relationship with him and if he wants to get a little upset sometimes, that’s OK with me.  We’ll let NASCAR figure out whether he’s over the line or not, and I guess it cost us $50,000, but I’ll take the $50,000 and the win this week, wouldn’t you?”

PAUL WOLFE CONTINUED – “I don’t think this is the first time we’ve seen Brad step up to the plate.  It seems like everyone is against him and it seems like that fires him up more.  I’ve got his back 100 percent.  I didn’t see anything that he did out of line last weekend and I told him that.  He does a great job and races hard, and that’s why we like him driving our car.  He sets his mind to something and he’s gonna make it happen.  He made the comments this week before we got here that he was gonna come down here and win, so I’m glad everyone back at the shop and all the guys on this 2 team were able to give him a car that was capable of that and put it in his hands and he did what he said he was gonna do.  I’m just proud of the effort and he’s very deserving of it.”

ROGER PENSKE CONTINUED – HOW INTENSE DID IT GET FOR YOU THOSE LAST TWO CAUTIONS?  “I think you watch the race and you’re waiting to get to those last 10 laps quite honestly and just stay out of trouble, but you’ve got to run up front.  I think Brad fooled around in the back for a couple laps and then said, ‘Look, I’ve got to go.’  He knew what he had with his car, but when we had the green-white-checker and we were up front I knew that we could win and at that point it was up to him and his teammate.  We’ve been in that position before.  I was in Indianapolis and we lost by six-hundredths of a second, so it goes either way.”

PAUL WOLFE CONTINUED – “I agree and the thing about these type of races is so much can happen in just one lap.  Our typical race that we see every week, when you come down to this point in the race you kind of know who is strong and who is capable of what, but here you come down to that green-white-checker and the guy in 12th could really win the race.  I agree that it was very intense, very exciting.  Obviously, Brad did a great job and I’m happy we were able to be the one getting to victory lane.”

ROGER PENSKE CONTINUED – WHAT IS BRAD’S POTENTIAL? “I think we see what his potential is and he certainly has been the asset we needed after Rusty and Newman moved on.  We went through kind of a choppy period there, but he came to the shop and said he could help us build a world-class team and he’s not only done that personally with the way he drivers, but also the way his intensity is at the shop.  He and Paul got together in Nationwide and he’s a real leader, not only on the race track, but also at the shop.  To me, putting his arm around Joey and getting him to come on the team, he’s gonna be someone which I would call the key asset of the team right now.  He’s a good team player with Joey.  I guess Joey put a lot of money in the bank today for Brad.  I guess he’s got some credit too, so I guess we’ll find out when he can pay it back to Brad.”

THE FOUR GUYS IN THE MOST TROUBLE ALL RAN UP FRONT.  HOW MUCH OF THAT WAS A PRODUCT OF THE SYSTEM?  “I think format put us in that position.  You don’t carry any benefit of winning other than getting in the next bracket when you haven’t won.  Obviously, it puts us on the bubble.  Johnson had a great car.  I thought he would be the guy to beat, there’s no question, and he got shuffled a little bit there I think on the first green-white-checker and never was able to get back.  It was anybody’s race and there’s just no question that the format makes it exciting for the fans, but the pressure it puts on us at the shop and after you’ve had the number of wins that Brad had and not to make it would have been devastating to us.”

PAUL WOLFE CONTINUED – HOW WILL JOEY AND BRAD WORK TOGETHER FROM THIS POINT?  “Both teams right from the beginning of the season have worked well together and we feed off each other.  We’ve continued to do that since the Chase started back at Chicago.  They knew there was a lot on the line for us this weekend seeing as how they had their win early in this round.  I don’t expect that to change.  At the end of the day the goal is to get another championship for Penske Racing and we’re gonna do whatever it takes.”

BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Redd’s Wicked Ale Ford Fusion – “I was just feeling my face while you were talking and they say when you have a lot of adrenaline your facial hair grows faster and your finger nails grow faster.  I’ve got a shadow and my nails need to be trimmed.  What a day.  I’m not really sure where to start, but I guess I can just recap the day for you guys.  We knew we had to win obviously coming into this day.  When the weekend started I thought we had the opportunity to do that.  We had very, very fast cars at Daytona and Talladega here the past three restrictor plate races and didn’t really get any of the results we thought we were capable of.  I restarted second in the 500 on the last restart and whiffed on winning the Daytona 500.  I still have some nightmares about that one and then Talladega I just kind of fell into every bit of chaos possible in the spring, and then the Daytona race in July I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  In the back of my mind, those three races that we had so much speed at and no results to show for it made me feel like we were due.  I told Roger and Ford and guys like Paul and my spotter Joey Meier that I felt we were gonna win today because of that.  I felt like those mistakes, whether it was Daytona on the last restart, the bad luck we faced, it couldn’t continue to go that way and sure enough it did.  We certainly didn’t just get handed this race today.  We had the incident early in the race where I think the 1 car blew a tire out.  He half-spun and kind of got in our door and tore that up.  It was a pretty hard hit.  I thought the car was torn up pretty good, but I still haven’t seen it but Paul says it was good.  We maybe lost just a touch of speed, but not enough to overcome the will to win that we had today.  From there it was about finding the track position, making the right moves, finding the right lanes and I thought we were in good shape having run top-five, top-10 most of the race.  Sure enough, on that green flag pit cycle the yellow came out and trapped us behind a lot of cars we were gonna be in front of and we ended up restarting 16th or something like that with 10 to go.  That felt like a death sentence in itself, but we kept our composure.  I worked really well with my teammates Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney.  I made kind of the perfect move that nobody ever sees when they think about these races.  We made kind of the perfect move together to go from 16th to second in three or four laps that.  That put us in position to really capitalize on the last two yellows.  From there we did just that, so we positioned ourselves well with great teamwork, executed the restarts kind of off the lessons learned from Daytona and from there it was all about that last lap and choosing the lanes wide to be able to block the cars that had runs and all that came together perfectly.  I kind of feel like Hannibal here, I love when a plan comes together.  Everything just felt right today and we’re here as winners because of that.”

HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO WIN MULTIPLE CHAMPIONSHIPS?  “There are 29 champions in general and 14 of them are single champions?  It’s very important to me because I think probably one of the things I look to the most in life, it’s kind of self judgment in a way, is making the most of opportunities – whether that’s when I first got started and was in a back marker car and at that point the opportunity was to learn and to survive the day and get a decent finish.  As my career grew from there to having better cars, better opportunities, you try to maximize that and take a 10th-place car and run fifth with it or things like that.  Today I sit before you guys with what I consider to be a championship-caliber effort at Team Penske.  My own expectations or goals is to make the most of that opportunity and win races and win championships.  We’ve done that with race wins and we’ve done it with a championship, but our opportunity and our capabilities as a group are so much higher than that and I don’t want to miss out on it, so it’s very, very important to me personally to be able to win multiple championships and to live up to that opportunity that I’m so fortunate to have and that guys like Paul and Roger have provided.”

PAUL WOLFE CONTINUED – HOW MUCH OF AN ADVANTAGE IS IT FOR YOU TO HAVE BOTH CARS IN?  “Like I said, both teams work so well together whether we’re in or not.  I think as you look through the garage our two cars continually every week you see them with the strength and that’s just because of how well we work together.  I see that to continue here over the next four races.  At the end of the day, as long as we have a Penske car in victory lane at Homestead that’s our goal.”

ROGER PENSKE CONTINUED – HOW DID YOU TELL JOEY TO APPROACH THIS RACE?  “It’s pretty simple.  With the structure of the Chase he was already committed into the next round, so we sat down with he and Brad and Blaney and said, ‘Whatever you can do today to help the 2 car get in the winner’s circle that’s what you have to do.’  And I think he obeyed orders pretty well.”

PAUL WOLFE CONTINUED – DO YOU FEEL THE TEAM BONDED AFTER LAST WEEK’S INCIDENT?  “Yeah, this team – for the most part – has been together since we moved to Cup in 2011 and we work really well together.  I guess maybe I showed a little side of me that I surprised some people last week, but I’ve told others this week that at the end of the day I’d stand up for anyone on this team, including the driver, and I believe in every one of them, so I guess maybe looking at it from that standpoint it definitely didn’t hurt and showed we’re gonna stick together as a team no matter what happens.”

BRAD KESELOWSKI CONTINUED – WHAT WERE YOUR THOUGHTS SEEING THE 20 CAR BEHIND YOU AT THE END?  “You can’t drive Talladega without looking in the mirror.  I think I more just kind of laughed in an ironic way and appreciating the irony that was there.  It’s a coincidence.  There’s something there, I don’t know what.  To me it was funny how this racing world works out.  I don’t know why it is that way.  I don’t know why it seems every week where there’s either a fight in the garage or a mishap or something like that happens that those two cars and people end up together, whether it was our cars were parked together in the garage area or on the race track for the win in the closing laps at Talladega.  I don’t know why that happens, so I got a chuckle out of that personally, but I didn’t feel uncomfortable in the least bit.  The cars and the way they work it was just a matter for me personally to kind of manage the three lanes with car movements and keep your eyes ahead and in the mirror.  Your eyes get tired from all that, but trying to manage all three lanes.  It just so happened to be that Matt was leading his lane and his lane had the best run at the end.  I came down and blocked it and that was enough to seal our fate as a winner and seal his fate as second, but it’s just funny to me personally how all that stuff works out.  I’m sure we’ll race each other some more and maybe something bad will happen and maybe it won’t, but that’s part of it.  For today, we’re happy with the result and we’ll move on.”

COULD YOU HAVE WON WITH THE HELP FROM KENSETH?  “I don’t know, I’d have to replay the film to see all the variables.  I don’t know.  Probably not, but it’s hard to say.”

THE FOUR OF YOU WHO NEEDED TO WIN WERE ALL UP FRONT TODAY.  WAS THAT A COINCIDENCE OR PRODUCT OF THE SYSTEM?  “First off I’d say that Dale Jr. is a phenomenal plate racer, one of the best ever, so for him to lead a bunch of laps and be up front would probably be the case no matter what the system is.  I would say in a very similar nature that Matt is a really good plate racer as well, so under any system you expect those two guys to lead laps and be up front barring accidents.  I felt like Jimmie found another level today, for sure, and ran a really, really great race.  That’s probably the best plate race I’ve seen him run, so he probably found another level that was most impressive to me.  Maybe it was the system for him that made him put a lot of focus on it, I don’t know.  I’d hate to answer for them, but for us we didn’t really approach this weekend any differently that we would have had we been running second or third in the points and had a 30 or 40-point lead.  I felt we had an opportunity to win and that’s what we came here to do.  Under any system that’s what we needed to do or wanted to do at the very least but didn’t necessarily want to need to do it.  But we were able to pull it off and I think this system, probably more than anything else, makes the win today that much sweeter more than anything.”

BRAD KESELOWSKI CONTINUED – HOW DO YOU SEEM TO BE ABLE TO GET YOURSELF OUT OF TROUBLE THE WAY YOU DO?  “First off, racing is kind of funny to me like that.  The trophy, they’ll put a plaque on it and it will say Brad Keselowski and that means something to me -- don’t get me wrong – this is not a one-person sport.  A  lot of people think of it that way, but I personally don’t.  On some days it’s mildly insulting to me that it’s considered that.  The trophy should say Team Penske on it because we’re surrounded by great people, whether that’s the Captain sitting next to me, my crew chief Paul Wolfe, my spotter Joey Meier, and I hate comparing ourselves to other sports, but if you took a football team and said Peyton Manning won the Super Bowl he would probably think that wasn’t right because everybody had a role in today.  When things go bad, maybe I have more of a role when things go bad and the other guys have more of a role when they go good that they don’t get enough credit for, but everybody plays a part in our success.  I’m very hesitant to sit here before you and say, ‘I did this one thing and that’s why we’re here in victory lane,’ and kind of pat myself on the back because it’s really not about that.  It’s about us working as a collective group to persevere over countless obstacles and adversity that this sport puts up every week.  For whatever reason I seem to have to climb over bigger ones than a lot of other people do and if I could figure out that reason I’d try to get rid of it, but it’s certainly not something we want to have to do, but it does make winning that much sweeter.”

YOU WERE UNDER ATTACK THROUGHOUT THE GARAGE.  HOW DO YOU NOT LET THAT GET YOU DOWN OR DEFEATED?  “It’s not something I enjoy.  I don’t look to go out there and have to fight those battles.  That just makes life a lot harder, but there’s a part of me that has come to accept that this isn’t gonna be easy.  I didn’t come into this sport in an era where it was gonna work out any other way.  Look at the drivers that came through my era.  I came into this sport, my first win here was in 2009 and my first full season was in 2010.  Besides my teammate, Joey Logano, what other drivers came from that era and are successful?  There isn’t one.  There is not one that came through those four or five years and that’s for good reason, they’ve been run out of this sport and I’m not gonna let that happen.  For me, that  means that sometimes there are gonna be some uncomfortable moments and certainly there were some uncomfortable moments this week, there have been some uncomfortable moments in the past.  I hope that there aren’t any more uncomfortable moments in the future, but there probably will be and until that cycles – in my own eyes – and the drivers that kind of have the old guard feel from the late nineties and early 2000s aren’t around, then that will probably continue to be the case and I take in someways solace upon that.”

ROGER PENSKE CONTINUED – “I can’t leave without saying number one, these guys are jealous of the job he’s done this year.  He’s won six races.  He’s had poles.  He’s been up front and nobody likes to see a guy win like that and the fact that he has a little edge on him and he’s continually delivering, obviously, I think makes a difference.  If everybody understood what happened on the race track last week, when you get your rear fender knocked off on a restart and you get your front fender knocked off on a pass by, I want him to get mad, I don’t want him to take it.  To me, coming back we talked about it Sunday night and I said, ‘Let’s just go on to our test during the week and move on here.’  I said, ‘Brad, put it in the rearview mirror.’”

BRAD KESELOWSKI CONTINUED – HOW DO YOU FILTER ALL THAT OUT? “I got a lot of help with that by having a test scheduled in Martinsville, so Paul put me to work.  That’s the easiest way.  Beyond that, it’s having the support structure behind you.  I guess in specific terms that’s knowing you listen to your team guys and I guess that test was important because it was a chance for us to bond together.  I feel like I have a great group of people around me that are willing to tell me the inconvenient truth sometimes and in this case the inconvenient truth would be if they felt I was wrong, and the people around me weren’t saying that and in that way and in that feeling, those guys giving me the support that they did helps me turn the page.”

WHAT CONFIDENCE DOES THIS GIVE YOU GOING FORWARD TO SAY YOU WERE GOING TO WIN THIS WEEK AND THEN DOING IT?  “I might have said to my team, but I’m not trying to be Babe Ruth or anything like that.  I felt like we had the opportunity.  Like I said when I walked in here, I felt almost like a gambler – if you counted the cards the cards were in our favor.  Talladega is not a place where I think anyone if they were gonna call their shot would call it, but I felt like the odds were maybe not for us in the championship, but they were for us in the sense of Talladega and plate racing and certainly it played out today.  As far as what that means going forward, I don’t know.  We all hit the reset button as soon as we leave this track.  The six wins we have mean nothing.  Everyone has zero points within the top eight.  We still have to go out and perform over these next four weeks, especially Homestead.  We have to get to Homestead first.  We have to get in the top four and we have to get to Homestead and really deliver.  That’s gonna be a huge challenge and we know that, but as far as what today says for that, it says that we’re capable of a lot but nothing more.”

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS FOR THE NEXT THREE TRACKS?  “I think we’re in a really good spot for these next four races, but we still have to execute.  We’re gonna have tested at three out of the next four races – two in the next bracket with Texas and Martinsville – and we have a Homestead test in two weeks or a week-and-a-half, something like that.  We’re in a very good position.  It would be nice to go to Martinsville and win a grandfather clock and have three weeks to really think about Homestead and that’s my mentality going forward, but if that doesn’t happen we still have any one of these four tracks which I think are good tracks for us.”

WHAT HAVE YOUR EMOTIONS BEEN LIKE SINCE SATURDAY TO TODAY?  “I don’t know if devasted is the right word but certainly frustrated is.  We entered today 19 points back and that’s not good at all.  Entering the race 19 points to the good wouldn’t have been where we wanted to be, but it is what it is and we had to move on.  The great thing about this type of format is that at any given point we knew that if we came here and won it didn’t matter what happened at Charlotte, it didn’t matter what happened at Kansas with a blown tire.  None of that stuff mattered, so there is always a way out with this format which is something I can personally take as a point of pride and a method for justifying the mental capacity to move on and look forward.”

DOES HAVING THREE HENDRICK CARS ELIMINATED MAKE IT ANY EASIER FOR YOU GUYS?  “There’s a lot of racing to do and a lot of great teams.  I think it’s a mistake to focus on one thing.  The 4 car has been so strong.  It’s not gonna be easy is probably the short answer.  No matter who gets eliminated it’s not gonna be easy.”

WOULD THIS TITLE BE HIGHER ON YOUR LIST THAN THE FIRST ONE?  “I don’t know.  I think it would probably soak in a lot more.  The first one still feels like a dream.  I think any racer would tell you one win is great, but it doesn’t really sink in, whether it’s a race or a championship.  It’s when you get to multiple wins or multiple championships that you really almost appreciate where you’re at and understand the significance and think about it that way.  For me, I’m very, very proud of our 2012 championship, but I know the opportunities that are in front of us I want to make the most of them and beyond that it’s hard to say how I would feel if I won another one, but I sure would like to find out.”

ROGER PENSKE CONTINUED – “The first one took many years to get there and to do it with Dodge was pretty important to us as they left the sport after that.  To me, once you win one here you set your sights higher.  The caliber of people we were able to pull together for that first championship are the same people we’ve galvanized now around us and then adding Joey and having two cars that can run for the championship gives us – looking at basic statistics – a better chance and certainly if we can get two cars into the final it would be amazing.  As I said to both of these guys, ‘One of you might win, but if one does the team wins,’ and that’s how we try to run the business.”

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