I don’t think there is anything owed to us. You’ve got to go out and work hard for every round win.

Being happy is very important. We won our second championship last season and we have our entire team coming back to try and defend our title again. I’m very proud of that.

I don’t think there is anything owed to us. You’ve got to go out and work hard for every round win.

The championship always goes to the team that wins the most rounds and is the most prepared. I think everybody on our team works hard towards keeping that goal. Time will tell if we’re prepared or not.

If two people were exactly alike, one of them would be unnecessary.

When you’ve been driving in the top category for 10 years, you’re obviously not a kid any more. You know, I’m married now and I’ve got two kids. That let’s you know you’re getting older.

You just try to absorb as much as you can from someone who has won as many races and championships as he has. Career wise, he’s been the greatest thing that’s happened to me.

But since we’ve been fighting for first or second place, it’s grabbed the media’s attention. I enjoy racing them. They are a good team and when you beat them it’s something to be proud of.

We’re going to test with the same car, but we have a new car ready.

The same things we’ve done the past couple of seasons. We’ve worked on the engine and clutch. We’ll try and pick up the performance and consistency of the car and go back out there.

I think it’s an extremely important factor to have your team together. It goes back to having distractions. When you all stay together for a period of time you’re not training people or feeling out different personalities.

You don’t have to find out what someone’s mechanical abilities are. All those factors are already a known commodity. I’ve seen teams win championships and have their entire team quit the next day because they weren’t happy.

Snake has been everything to me. Look at where I was when I started with the company in 1988 and where I’m at now. I mean, he’s shown me just about everything on and off the race track.

How important has Phil Jackson been to the success of the Lakers? He’s very important.

Winning teams have the least amount of distractions. They have a really tight group of people working towards the same common goal.

Time will tell how you rate against the rest of the competition. I’ll let everyone else worry about championships. I’m going to worry about qualifying at Pomona.

I don’t think I ever set my goals that high. As a kid growing up I just wanted an opportunity to race and to be able to make a living doing it. It just came together.

Because we’re sponsored by competing breweries there is always competition. When we were both fighting for ninth or 10th place, nobody really cared except the two companies.

I never thought I’d live this long. It sounds funny because I still think of myself as a kid.

The advantage is I have my family with me all the time. When your daughter takes her first steps or says her first words and your son is going through potty training, I’m not missing any of those things.