Seventeen of us are going to sit down and talk about different stuff and hopefully get to hang out with the President for five seconds or something.

This is behind us now. As a team, our focus is on the upcoming events and the future.

Tony was a little faster the first 20 or 25 laps of that run. Then we got equal and started reeling him in and just got battling with him. ... It was a good battle, a hard battle. He was doing all he could to hold us off, but at that point my car was turning better. I just waited until I got the opportunity and was able to set him up and make the pass.

It was really a pathetic year. Some of the things I did — some of the crashes I was in — I didn't need to be in. I forced the issue.

We started on the pole but by Lap 150 we were ninth or 10th and we were struggling. The car was sliding around a lot, but I did not get upset. I just said, 'Let's just keep working hard.' Last year, I would have been so upset about getting passed by those cars I would have been overly aggressive and would have worn our tires out. You can't do that in a 500-mile race if you want to be strong at the end.

Holes open up and guys jump in them. But that's something we should be doing on lap 150, not lap 10.