Feb. 17, 2007

MICHAEL WALTRIP, No. 55 NAPA Toyota Camry, Michael Waltrip Racing:

How has your attitude been since Thursday?

“I think you have to look at Thursday as the day that the healing began at least for me. We still have a lot of questions internally to ask ourselves to try to get to the bottom of what happened. I just appreciate how people have treated me. As a race car driver, when you are in this garage for 20 plus years, when somebody gets in trouble, it’s kind of fun, but then you want them to get through it. There’s been a few people that want to pile on me and say ‘he ought to be gone’ or ‘he knew they were doing all this’. They don’t know and that’s disappointing, but then there’s guys like Tony Stewart who say ‘man, that’s just part of it’, Kyle Petty, ‘man, its part of it, just keep digging’. I’m better, but I’m just looking forward to getting answers to questions that we’ve all had.”

Would you classify Thursday as your lowest day at Daytona in your career?

“I’ve had a lot of low ones. It was pretty disappointing because I was so proud of my organization. I was so proud of all my cars with their rims on them and Toyota all over them and great, great guys working and driving. And I felt like I had three kids and I was real proud of them. And one of my kids let me down and you know how bad that hurts. In return I let a lot of people down because ultimately I’m responsible. What I would ask is that you guys would give me some time to figure out what happened and when I figure that out, I’ll let you know and we’ll just try to go on from there.”

Have you been able to narrow in on who on your team was responsible?

“We just keep digging, digging, digging. Toyota’s going to help us and a lot of people are going to help us so we can figure out what happened.”

Has anyone stepped forward yet to accept responsibility?

“I’ve looked for that to happen ever since Sunday and that hasn’t happened yet. We have a lot of circumstantial evidence that implicates a couple folks, but we don’t have any proof so we’ll just keep digging until we find out what happened. When I was a kid and did something wrong, I would sort of see the writing on the wall and I’d say things are getting tight around here and you’d fess up, but no one’s elected to do that.”

Is David Hyder still employed by MWR?

“Right now everybody’s working for us until we determine what happened.”

How has the team been able to deal with everything that needs to be done to get the car ready?

“I’ve got a lot of good people. We’ve hired more than 200 people and obviously somebody didn’t get the company philosophy which was we’re going to win by working hard and working smart, not by cheating. But if you just knew the pedigree of some of these guys that are working on my cars, you wouldn’t be surprised that we could be so competitive even in the face of what they’ve had to deal with.”

What do you think your team is capable of?

“Time will tell what we’re capable of. I like my team, I like the shop, and I like the TRD support. I’ve done this with the haves and I’ve done this with the have-nots, our team feels a whole lot like the haves and that makes me feel good.”

How do you think this car will perform tomorrow?

“Well I just got to practice for the first time since October in the draft so hopefully that will prove dividends for us tomorrow. I picked a mildly different set up and we’re just going to hammer it and see what happens.”

DAVE BLANEY, No. 22 Caterpillar Toyota Camry, Bill Davis Racing:

On the final practice session:

"The practice was all right. We tried a couple of things with our race motor and I think we're in good shape. Weather plays a big role in how the track is and how the car handles, so tomorrow, we'll have to watch and make adjustments. We've only gone about 15 laps at a time, and we still need to get some work done on it. After Thursday, we were pretty happy with it, and things haven't changed much. I wanted to make sure our race engine was good today. I'm just looking forward to starting the race tomorrow."

DAVID REUTIMANN, No. 00 Domino’s Pizza Toyota Camry, Michael Waltrip Racing:

On the end of practice and working on final touch-ups:

“We spent some time after practice was over working on moving the mirror around. I think sometimes you spend as much time looking out the back of these things as you do looking out the front. That was our final chance to make sure it was all right. The car’s not bad, it drives pretty good. We changed motors this morning and went out there just to make sure everything’s alright. We kind of did a little shake down run and it seemed to be okay so we should be pretty good for tomorrow.”

On where the car runs better; pushing or being pushed:

“It seems to be okay pretty much everywhere. It’s not really super great in any certain scenario, but it seems to be okay in all those. Hopefully it will be good enough.”

On starting your first Daytona 500:

“It’s going to be pretty amazing. I’m still not sure that it has had its full affect and it may not until we get the command to start engines. That’ll be it I think.”

On the affect of the cold weather on the car this morning:

“Our car was just a little bit free than it was yesterday, but all in all it still drove about the same. We changed motors and the motor ran good. It felt pretty much the same. I didn’t think there was a real big change.”

On learning from today’s NASCAR Busch Series race:

“I’m hoping I can, I don’t know if we will or not. But just getting laps out there with some of the guys that I’ll be racing with, that should help me a little bit.”