All I saw was an opportunity to try to pass him but it was the white-flag lap and if I had passed him it wouldn't have mattered because of the caution freezing the field,

You could have given me 100 starts, and I don't think I would have caught him.

I just got blind-sided. That was the biggest thing. Nobody really had an inclination of it shutting down. Everything looked to be in order. The timing was wrong and the way it was handled was wrong. You just pick the pieces up and you run with them.

I'm excited to not have to drive seven hours to race at Birmingham or Montgomery. The tracks that we're going to be running are short enough that it's not going to be all about horsepower. I'm excited to go to these tracks that are close to home and not have to travel all over the place.

That's OK, ... When we get to Homestead, we just need to stay close to him and wrap it up. The thing is, just don't put yourself in jeopardy.

It just goes to show you that nobody's superman. I know what he's going to be going through, to some extent, and I feel for him. It's a shame he can't run while he's receiving treatment like I did, because sometimes the best medicine is getting to do what you love. But there are so many different types of cancer, and the treatments are all different, and evidently he's not able to do both.

It's one of the strangest things I've ever been involved in.

It was really weird. You win the championship, and you're all happy. Your team is put together. Everything you've worked for is finally in place. Then to kind of have that thrown away and have everyone scatter ... it's more or less like you died and someone went into your house and ransacked it.

There were times we had each other about sideways. But I had to be careful because I had guys coming up from behind me. I just could not out-run (Starr) today.

The way Toyotas were running away with everything, we couldn't catch them hardly at all.