Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Scores Fifth Top-Five Finish Of Season In Rain-Shortened
3M Performance 400

Four Monte Carlo Ss Drivers Claim Top-10 Finishes; Jimmie Johnson Maintains
Driver Point Standings Lead; Chevrolet Holds Lead In Manufacturers' Standings

Dale Earnhardt, Jr., No. 8 Budweiser Monte Carlo SS finished third in the
rain-shortened 3M Performance 400 at Michigan International Speedway. The
scheduled 200-lap race was declared an official finish at the conclusion of
the 129th lap when heavy rain hit the area.

The scheduled start of the race was delayed almost one hour due to rain and
the race was slowed by three cautions due to rain prior to the final downpour
that ended the race.

In addition to Earnhardt, Jr., Jimmie Johnson, No. 48 Lowe's Monte Carlo SS,
Jeff Gordon, No. 24 DuPont Monte Carlo SS and Kevin Harvick, No. 29
Reese's/GM Goodwrench Monte Carlo SS scored top-10s, finishing sixth, eighth
and 10th respectively.

Johnson remains firmly atop the NASCAR Nextel Cup driver standings, 74 points
ahead of second place Matt Kennseth (Ford).

***

DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 8 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO SS

Have you ever had a stranger third-place finish than today? "Yeah, I'm sure I
have. This really ain't all that strange. We had a great car. On that run
right there we weren't going to end up with a win but we had a car earlier
that was good enough to win. I asked them to tighten it up and they tightened
it up, but it is late and we got a lot of things to get done, get home and
get to doin so we'll take a third place. I'm real happy. I've never really
had a good car here, that good anyway, so I'm really excited about coming
back here."

Talk about your race:

"We had a real good car all weekend. I was real happy with how the car ran in
practice and when the race started it was not quite as good as it was in
practice, but really close. We were able to get in the lead a little bit and
race a little bit and have some fun with Jeff and pass each other a little
bit. Had fun with a bunch of guys out there. I never really had a car that
good here before so that was really a kind of personal victory for me and the
team and Tony Jr. especially. So we really look forward to coming back here
and going to Chicago and California and those places. We're sort of, maybe
this is a sign that we're sort of getting back into the ballpark in these
types of racetracks. It's really a great thing and aside from having a
third-place finish, that's really the one thing the one thing that stick out
for me."

Was this race the hurdle you had to get past?

"Yeah it was. Is this working? My ears are messed up. I got a sinus infection
so I can't hear. We've been trying to stay positive all throughout the last
18 to 20 months. You hope that you can turn things around when you turn
things around. It really feels good for me. It's a great little moral victory
for me and Jr. to have a good car here at a track like that we struggled on.
This track is very similar to lot of the tracks in the Nextel Cup. We
struggled on all of them. We had a good car the first three-quarters of what
we ran today, that last run right there I asked them to tighten it up too
much so I didn't have the best car there at the end. Carl (Edwards) had a
real good car. The No. 9 car (Kasey Kahne) was quick. It was really close
between them two. We were sort of in the mix there up until that last stop."

Did you feel like you could have got the car back to where it was?
"Absolutely. We were really, really fast at the start of the race. On the
scuff tires that we had to start the race on. We put on stickers and it freed
it up a little bit. I was just thinking you know, a small adjustment. We
added a half-pound (psi) in the right front and about a half a turn away in
the right rear and I wanted that back out. I was still a third-place car
right there; I could run, if I really hit it right I could run what those
guys in front of me were running. For the most part I was a tenth off. I just
needed to take that adjustment back out and just deal with the loose end and
loose off I had. Because we were pretty fast before I made that adjustment."

How did you improve so much this year?

"I think it just has a lot to do with just working with the team I've got
this year. We, as a company, improved on these tracks last year. I ran eighth
here and we won at Chicago. We started out this season sort of working around
those type of setups last year that worked really good. I think the
combination of me and Tony Jr. works really good and I think it's just
natural improvement throughout the team. We haven't really concentrated more
on these sort of tracks, we've just sort of been concentrating on whatever we
faced each date. I guess we just got a little bit overall better as a team."

Are you surprised we got as far as we did because of the weather?

"Yeah, I did."

What do you guys see out of Kahne in this type of track?

"Them and Mike Ford worked on that car with Bill Elliott; they sort of hit it
off on a lot of the tracks like this. They had a string there where Bill was
winning some races and I think the notes and technology they were using at
that time carried over. Cause they've won with basically three different
guys, crew chief and car. Kasey's gotta be really good but I think they got
sort of a good handle on what you need under the car for the setup at tracks
like this."

***

CHAD KNAUS, CREW CHIEF, NO. 48 LOWE'S MONTE CARLO SS

On Jimmie's car today:

"We definitely needed to make it a lot better for sure. We didn't have the
car we needed. But it is a brand new race car and we are still trying to
learn the tendencies of the vehicle. It was a good day for us, to come out of
here with a top-10, another feather in the cap from that standpoint. We still
didn't have the speed that we needed at this point in the season.

On what was learned with new car for future races:

"We may take this car to Chicago. Since we didn't get to run the full event
here, you have to kind of throw away what you thought you may have learned or
didn't learn or whatever and start over with an actual full blown race. So we
are going to go back home and get ready to go to Sonoma. We have a great car
going to Sonoma; I am really excited about it. We have Daytona coming up and
have the same race car we won with at Talladega so I am very very excited and
very optimistic about it."

On race strategy with impending bad weather:

"We knew there was rain coming and we knew it was going to be either broken
up or shortened, we weren't exactly sure how it was going to play out. We
were watching it. We took two tires on the second to last pit stop to try and
maintain some track position just in case the rain came at that stint. The
rain didn't show up then and fortunately, we went about 20 laps before the
next caution came out when everyone was going to have to come in for tires.
That really worked out ok for us to solidify our top-10 finish."

On how hard everyone raced one another from the drop of the green flag:

"Everyone knew the weather was coming, When it starts to rain an intermittent
rain like that, it becomes a series of sprint races combined and that is kind
of what it was."

TONY STEWART, NO. 20 HOME DEPOT CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO SS

What happened on the race track and how tough is this for you?
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