Event: Built Ford Tough 225
Location: Kentucky Speedway
Qualifying: July 9th 6:00 PM EDT
Race Start: July 10th 8:00 PM EDT Live on Speed

Late Race Cautions: “What we’ve typically seen this year is cautions happening later in the race.  Then those cautions breed more cautions.  I figure once the race starts if you are not fast enough to drive by them and they catch you, there is no use getting the tail knocked off your truck and spun out.  These guys are pretty impatient out there, so just let them have their real estate; they bought their pit pass too.  What happens at the end of the race is you have so many trucks one lap down, and then they line up beside the leaders for the restarts on a slick race track.  The beauty part about coming to a race track like Kansas or Kentucky is that it is fast for everybody.  You don’t generally line up 15 trucks on the inside for a restart; it might be four or five, plus the lucky dog.  So it helps make fewer cautions.”

Keep up with Races: “I don’t keep up with where we are going several weeks in advance.  If we go to Kentucky this weekend and run bad it won’t surprise me any, or if we go out and win the race it doesn’t surprise me either.  I’ve been doing this stuff so long that I have confidence in my people.  We feel like we can win any weekend, so we approach it that way.”

Following the Leader: “It’s not frustrating following someone who is in front of you for the win.  You show me a driver that has won more than he has lost and I will kiss him.  So it is a part of the business.  I’m happy to finish second and collect the points.  Of course you want to win, but knowing that my truck is competitive and maybe led several laps tells me we are on the right track.  If not we will evaluate it and get better.  You have to keep up the pace or you are left behind.”

Fleet of Trucks: “I hear all these drivers talking about their fleet of trucks this year.  Well I only have two trucks and Chad Chaffin only has two trucks from our shop.  We decided to go with quality and not quantity.  It seems to have worked so far, so we’ll keep it up.”

Notes:

• The truck Hamilton is racing in Kentucky is Slim Shady.  Four of five races he has finished in the top 10 driving this particular Dodge.
• Once again he is a great pick on speedway races.  He has finished in the top 10 four times (Atlanta, 1, Charlotte, 10, Texas, 7, Kansas, 2).
• Both Hamilton and his teammate Chad Chaffin have finished in the top 10 in the last four races.

Dodges Strong as Ram: “Dodge really steps up to the plate.  They gave us 24 wind tunnel dates last year.  There are probably only three Nextel Cup teams that had that.  We decided to design our own chassis so we were given an in-house engineer from Detroit.  Ted Musgrave was struggling a little at the beginning of this year and Dodge gave him three engineers from Detroit to live with him every week now.  As a matter of fact, I got a call last year saying they were going to cut the budget.  They told me so I didn’t get worried as an owner.  As it turns out, they just thought they were wasting a lot of money.  So they cut the budget severely, trimmed all the fat and got rid of the waste.  Now we have a better engineering team than we’ve ever had.  Dodge has actually saved money this year, probably more than any other manufacturer has.  Our four factory Dodge teams are better than they were, the results show it.  That is me speaking though, it might not mean a whole lot, but it does make for a good story.”