The old track was so abrasive, it wore the tires out within a few laps, and you'd have multiple grooves. The way it is now, it's like a new paving job. It's so fast and there's no drop-off.

It's hard to do those last three or four laps. It's like the track films over or the tires glaze over. We were using everything we had. Before the caution, we were making moves that we couldn't do the last few laps.

The air temperature dropping and the track cooling down helps. Also the air that runs through the engine is a lot cooler so it builds more power and more speed. There definitely was some advantage to going later. It's hard to really tell how much. We were 8th or 9th on the board during practice, and then qualified 3rd. So I think it helped some.

I mean, you can?t spot a guy like that a second around this track with only a few laps to go. That was my own fault,

Somebody was laying something down on the track. I knew the tires were getting bad. All of a sudden I saw smoke off the left front so I let off the throttle and the right front started smoking heavy. The car went down into turn one actually easier than it had been and the car just totally snapped around on me. Somebody must have been putting something down on the track. That's what they were saying.

Chad hounded me for while out there and I was just sticking to my lines. As the track wore out it just got harder and I knew that it would be harder for Chad to get by me. We got our back against the wall and I'm going to try to win every race from here on out.