Dave: Hey John
John: Hey Dave.
Dave: how are you doing?
John: Great.
Dave: Good to speak with you, of course Big Joe and Matt are here along with the sunshine in the morning Teri Stacy .
John: Oh great, working some long hours.
Teri: I am working some long hours, but you had some long hours to kill the other day, didn’t you?
John: Yea we had the 20 some hours of Atlanta, which is pretty typical for us when we go there. It is always raining there. There is nothing better than seeing rain drops on your windshield when you are going into the corner at 200 mph on slick tires.
Teri: So what do you do to waste time when you are waiting for the weather?
John: You walk around and do nothing pretty much. You cannot go anywhere or do anything and every time it stopped raining I went back to my truck. They said at 5 o’clock we will get started, then you would be sitting in the truck and it would rain and they would say 6 o’clock then at 6 it down poured. It’s what we do. The sad part is for the fans at least we have some idea of what we are going to do. Although it may be a small idea, we have been doing it every weekend so we know where it is going to head. NASCAR does a great job at just trying to do what ever they can so the fans can see a race they want to see it. Unfortunately the weather that whole week was telling us… I cannot believe we got it started.
Dave: I guess you got caught out on a yellow flag and got caught off and ended up a lap down. We took off on Sunday and the car was not very good. It was killer for ten laps, but the problem was we got about 60. We were struggling a little bit at about 17th and so we made some changes to the car. It was really good at the start of the run, OK in the middle and really good at the end. It just never slowed down. I felt like we had a pretty good car, we pitted and were running strong. There was an accident trying to get to pit road some guys collided. In doing so a caution came out and I think it put about 16 cars on the lead lap. Then they let Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick get their lap back. I think there were some issues in scoring and how it all worked out. NASCAR did the right thing there, but then from there it was to get into position to be the lucky dog to get your lap back. We have a great pit crew with 13 second stops. When you come in and go out and are 4th or 5th in line it is really hard to get back into that position. We just never got the lucky dog. There at the end I was really happy to see the caution. Not because it was Ryan Newman, it didn’t matter who it was I was just glad it wasn’t me because we had a really bad vibration. I don’t know if I was going to last the last 5 laps without pitting. The whole last part of the run was really tough, I think we could have picked up a few more positions, but I am glad we came back in one piece.
Dave: John Andretti is our guest the driver of the… number one, ummm Pennzoil Monte Carlo.
John: Don’t worry it is hard for me to remember to.
Dave: We started off with the 37 Kmart Little Ceasars….
John: You are going way back. Oh wait since I have been on this show?
Dave: Yea, when you started in Winston Cup you were in the 14…..
John: Actually I was in the 72 car the first time I drove.
Dave: Really? Whose car was that?
John: It was a car that Billy Haegen ran, it was actually one he was crew chief on. That was my first few races.
Dave: Then you drove the 14 and the 43 for awhile.
John: Yep.
Dave: Then there was the 37 Little Caesar’s K-Mart Ford.
John: The 98
Dave: The 98 RCA Ford… then you went back to the 43. It was the STP Pontiac when you first got into it.
John: It turned into a Dodge.
Dave: The Cheerios Dodge. And now…
John: Then I went to the 0.
Dave: Right the Pontiac.
John: Then I was in the 81.
Dave: The Kraft Foods, I forgot about that one. Then the # 90 AOL Chevy.
John: Yes and now the #1 Pennzoil Chevy. And one point I got to drive Tony Stewart’s car too.
Dave: At a road course when he was ill or did not feel well.
Matt: Gee you have a tough time keeping a job! My goodness!
Dave: Go ahead John…
John: Naaa…..
Matt: (mocking) The plane is still warming…. The engines are still running….
John: Lucky that glass is bullet proof in front of ya.
Dave: You better hurry up and win a race, because I tell you, your boy here has been bad mouthing this local wrestling group. He has been calling him Nancy Boys, and Sissys and stuff.
Matt: The new era wrestlers.
Dave: They want a piece of him first, so I do not know if there will be enough left of them to attach to a parachute to throw out of a plane.
John: Can we get video of it? I know we are on radio, we already know what he sounds like screaming, because he did that driving the go-karts. Getting beat up by all those guys, may be better than throwing him out of a air plane.
Dave: Have the wrestlers take care of him?
John: Yea, because it would be a lot slower and a lot more painful. I like this better.
Dave: Maybe we will have the wrestlers take care of him for you then.
John: Yea, out in the parking lot!
Matt: No no no! I am not going to do that without witnesses.
John: Does he have insurance?
Dave: Well, his wife has it on him
Joe: It’s a veterinary policy.
Dave: Which you would not want for yourself…
John: I didn’t know they could give it to people that have a (intelligible and laughing)
Dave: Where are you guys off to this weekend John?
John: Phoenix.
Dave: Oh yea, they said they made some changes to that track.
John: They did, they moved the wall back off of one. And you remember the gaps they had in the wall, well they have made it into one wall to make it safer. Then they have taken down the pedestrian bridge down off of turn four and they put in a tunnel. There is a large patch of pavement going across the race track where the tunnel is. Then the track is a little wider coming off of turn two. I hope they did not change it too much, I liked it the way it was. We will see how it goes. We have qualified well there in the past and have raced decent. I know we will do really good. We are taking our short track car out there that we did good with.
Joe: The one you had three flat tires on?
John: Yea, We got that figured out now… we are going to buy new tires. (laughing) Those re-treads just do not work.
Dave: You guys go out there at the end of the year, but with the Indy Car Series we go out there at the beginning of the year. In March I enjoy going out there for that. I remember when Butch and I use to go out there, I think it was in 78… Because your uncle was the Formula One World Champion. He came back for the last race of the year. And Busch was running the Indy Lights, the support race for the Indy car race. We got there at like 7:30 in the morning and they would not let us in the infield, because they had not finished sweeping the infield for rattle snakes.
John: I think Phoenix is so cool. I like going out there it is a great city. I guess San Anita is running. I never had much luck there, but the junk yard is off 3 and 4. You never want to get upside down off of there. I did one night there and I was real fortunate they had 4 feet of fence. It kept me inside the race track. When I landed I was just praying I was on the race track. It was better to get hit by another car than to have the junk yard dogs chase you. (laughing)
Dave: well Good luck in Phoenix, it will be fun watching you. And we will look forward to talking to you next week.
John: I will too.
Dave: Thanks John.
John: Thank you.
THE END