Darlington Teleconference Transcript

This weekend, Bobby Labonte and the #43 Cheerios/Betty Crocker Dodge team head to the 1.366-mile Darlington (S.C.) Raceway for Saturday night’s Dodge Charger 500.

Below is an edited transcript of the NASCAR Teleconference that Bobby Labonte participated heading into Darlington:

Q. Bobby I know that you and your new crew chief had some good runs so far this season, what's the progress after ten events together?

BOBBY LABONTE: Well, we're really excited about the way things have gone as far as our performance has been. We said at the beginning of the year we're going to have our up and downs, and I think we've had that. But overall, I mean, I think competitive wise, I think we're probably further ahead than we might have thought after the first couple of races because we've really turned it up since then, and, you know, we've been running in the Top 5, Top 10, mainly Top 10, Top 5 in Bristol and running in the Top 5 Saturday night at Richmond. But we're still fighting little things and little gremlins here and there that keep you finishing as good as we'd like to. That's part of it. It's hard, but you've just got to understand it. It's not easy but I think everybody has done a great job and Todd especially has worked real hard to get everything going as good as possible.

Q. Bobby, several years ago when the engineering flood hit and all of the young drivers are sitting down and shutting up in the seat and doing what the engineers said, you were one of the veterans that got caught up where you were used to having input in the setup of the car, and the younger ones were just kind of doing what they were told. Has this situation brought you back, and are you having more input into the situation of the car than you have in recent years, or have you just kind of adapted to the engineering way of doing things?

BOBBY LABONTE: I think the basic thing here is the chemistry. You know, Todd is more like I was growing up where he wanted the driver's input. He wanted that stuff. You know, when I was -- when Jimmy and I were at our best, we would always sit there and talk about things a lot more than rely on anybody else deciding for us or any computer deciding for us.

Then I went through some years of not being part of it as much, so, yes, coming to Petty Enterprises has definitely brought me back to where I used to be as far as talking about it, thinking about it, having information in front of me, looking at it, understanding it.

So I think it's the chemistry that you have in the organization, too, that makes it better for me with the accessibility that I have. If I don't want to look at it, I don't have to, and if I want to look at it and understand something differently, if that helps me think and talk to Todd differently into what I knew years ago, then hopefully that makes our chemistry better.

Q. Is going to Darlington with today's configuration of cars tougher than it was, say, ten years ago?

BOBBY LABONTE: Yes and no, looking at ten years ago, it was repaved, so that helped out a lot. I think the paving job has just deteriorating so much, that I don't care what you go with, it's going to be a handful after about ten laps anyway. But I'd say with what we have now, I mean, I'm more excited about it now than I guess I would have been before they repaved it last time with the cars that we had then. You know, these cars are going to probably for me drive better than those did back then, I would think. So I don't think there's anything wrong with going with what we've got today.

Q. Beyond Darlington you have the two week stretch in Charlotte. Is it really like going back home or is it just another race for everybody?

BOBBY LABONTE: You look at the schedule and it's like, okay, we're going to Charlotte, we're going to the same racetrack two weeks in a row. We don't do that anywhere else. Pocono, we race a month apart and the track changes a ton from that month apart. So you go to a track two weeks in a row, so it kind of gets you back to where you run short tracks where you used to run the same racetrack every weekend and you know what it does week in and week out; where like last weekend, we won't go back to Richmond till September and the track is going to be different, the track will change a little bit and the weather will be different.

To go two races in a row, two weekends in a row at the same racetrack, it should help you, you would think, but obviously it helps everybody else. It's a neat place, good time of year, and you are close to home. Like Kyle said, and you have a lot of stuff to do, but at least you're not getting on an airplane every two Thursdays there that you've got to fly to somewhere across country to race to.

Q. Do you feel NASCAR champions have common traits and abilities, and if so, can you identify a few.

BOBBY LABONTE: Yeah, I think that -- you know, I think it's a deal where, you know, I think you just, when you win a championship, you just -- it clicks in you what it took to get there and the amount of patience that it took, the amount of pressure that it took, and the amount of, I mean, you know, by gosh, you'd better have it in you, or you're not going to get one, you know, type of deal. You know, I think that goes true from even way back then to now. The guys have that won championships always -- the thing has always been said, you've got to lose one before you win one, and it really is true. I know I finished second in the championship in '99 to Dale Jarrett. 2000, I won it. Man, I mean, it was like what an experience '99 was to get to 2000. And it took so much more and so much -- it wasn't the same thought process. It wasn't the same type of deal.

So I think the fact that, know, when you look at the whole deal of it, there's only X amount of champions that there are going to be. There's a lot of drivers that are going to try but there's only a few that are going to be there and there's guys that, you know, can win multiple championships, they keep repeating, keep being up there to have a chance at it. You know, it's like Kyle said, you've got that little extra left in you, and you've got -- you're running at 110 percent all the time, and so is the guy beside you, and you don't know it, but you've still got a little bit left over; and that gets you that ten points today and 15 points tomorrow and 30 points the next week to add up at end of the year. It's definitely a different drive trying to win it than just, you know -- or winning it, it's a different drive wing it than it is trying to win it. And once you win it, it's like, boy, I tell you what, that took these things to do instead of those things to do, I didn't realize when I was trying.

Q. Bobby, a question for you, and that is about the tires and the mix up on the car. It was amazing to see Jeff Gordon's guys struggle to find out what was wrong, sparkplug problem for someone else, small things are so important, can you talk about how that could happen?

BOBBY LABONTE: I think it's just a pressure packed sport and there's guys that are doing everything they can do. I've been on that side of it before. Man, I left a water hose off from Jerry's drink bottle one time and he drained all the water out and he had no water, and I'm like, that bad move on my part, won't happen again.

You know, that was way back when it probably wasn't as huge of a deal as it is today because there's more competition. But that's why there is, you know -- that's why mistakes can be made just because there's more competition out there, so you're at a zero tolerance mistake level. We're in a zero tolerance sport. We cannot make mistakes, because there's 40 other teams that if they don't make mistakes, they pounce on you, you know what I mean.

So it's going to happen. It happens last Saturday night, it will happen again this Saturday night, I bet you, you know what I mean, somebody is going to make a mistake. That's just some of the things that you have to swallow and try not to do.

Q. Has there been any ramping up with your team, getting used to the players; like Jeff Burton said, he's still getting used to his team so when they have the calls coming into pit road and the red light is on, it's part of getting acclimated to a new team, are you running into that or are you comfortable with the communication?

BOBBY LABONTE: Saturday night I thought our communication was the best race we've had all year between Todd and I. Obviously from that point on he communicates down to the rest of them. I thought our communication was great. I know his is getting bet we are those guys. It's just a comfort factor, we talked about it earlier on this deal here about, you know, we thought it would take us a little longer, like to go back to the races for the second time, we would be, okay, what did we do last time, we're going to get better. We have a chance to improve more hopefully than maybe some other guys because they are already there. We've already gotten better than we've anticipated probably to start with, and we keep building on that. So I think that the communication between everybody is clicking right now. It's the little things nowadays that are big. It's not the big things that are big.