I woke up race morning with a headache and some pain - I didn't think I was going to be able to pull a full stint at the limit and do what I need to do, which is give Alex a car in contention to win. This was a tough race for us - but being in the top-10 in points even with all the problems we've had is something we can build on for the season.

This is only the beginning of a 14-race season for us, and the fact that we finished 13th in class means we'll go home with 18 championship points that we wouldn't have if we'd have just quit. Everyone, our engineer Kyle (Brannan) and the crew chief, Terry (Wilbert), the whole crew just dealt superbly with anything and everything that was thrown at them, and let me tell you, everything got thrown at them.

We tried to zero in on how to better market the educated work force.

Once the race gets going, the cars get going and things come loose on the car.

When the race gets hard to run. It means you just can't take the pace

We have the same team that we did before. But the race is getting tougher and tougher. It's only January, but we're already looking at scores after the game to see who's losing and who's winning.