Dale Jr. and somebody got together and shot up in front of me and I got into the back of them. My brakes locked up and the impact crunched the nose in. The Army car never drove the same after that. It was a pretty frustrating deal to have a car drive that good and then all of a sudden get wounded. For a while we had an easy top-10 car.

We're going to kill somebody from Wednesday to Sunday. It could be me or Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. or anybody out there. This isn't a new topic.

I buy, buy, buy. I buy just about anything I can find — anything that has to do with Dale Jr.

It's definitely a long shot. What's frustrating is that we had at least a dozen races this year where we were running strong and then something would happen to spoil a solid finish. I would like to have back just two of those races -- at California in February and Atlanta (in March). Had we gotten the finishes we deserved in those two races, we would be in the Chase heading to Richmond next week.

We need to put it together and get on a streak. But whatever happens you can be assured that we will follow the soldiers' creed of never giving up.

I was looking to get back to the front on the next (green-flag) run, but the car got loose -- it was a struggle just to maintain our position.