Copyright ©2010. The Associated Press. Produced by NewsOK.com All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.   You were within striking distance in The Chase for the Cup standings, then crashed early at Talladega last week. Does that change your plans for the final month of the season? It’s just tough because you realize that when you have that bad race in The Chase, such as Talladega where you’re biting your nails the whole time because you know something can happen and then it does, it’s like, “Wow, really?” Your season can be gone just that quick. We want to recognize that we had a successful season, but we lost our chance at the championship. We really can’t make up that many points in that short a time. But overall, I’m happy with where we are with four races to go, and a teammate is still in contention for the championship. Does that change your approach? Do you tend toward helping Brad (Keselowski)?I told them just as a pact, “We’re not out it, but it’s long shot for us, so whatever we can do to help them? For sure.” We want to do what we can to help our team.What happened in that crash?Just with the two-car draft, one guy that doesn’t race with us a lot now, Michael Waltrip, spun out one of his Toyota guys right in front of us. We had nowhere to go. His car went high, went low. It hit the apron, came back up. And by the time I said, “Go low. Oh, no, I need to go high,” if you think that much, you’re already in the wreck because of how fast we travel.After you crash like that, does it affect your mindset the next time behind the wheel?Not really. It’s part of the deal, and you know you’re going to find wrecks here or there, whether it’s your own fault or it’s a mistake on others. You never really think about the fear side of it. You’re always out there trying to make that car go as fast as you can.One of the tracks you grew up on, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, has become known as the place where Dan Wheldon crashed. What did you think when that happened?It’s just a moment of, “We’ve lost one of our brothers” and the feeling of, “What can we do to make sure this doesn’t happen in the future?” What can be done?Everything is a lesson, whether it’s a race where it’s a successful race with no wrecks. Or like this year at Watkins Glen, we had that horrific crash that David Reutimann went through, how the car rolled over, didn’t hit a safer barrier. All those moments, we learn things.Isn’t NASCAR safer now than it was, say, five or 10 years ago?We’ve come leaps and bounds from where we were 10 years ago. You hate when one of those moments happens, but that’s what happened in our sport with Dale Sr. We were proactive in some areas but very reactive in others. Indy Car has been very proactive with their own safety crew, their own group of nurses and doctors that follow them to all the events. That’s something that we don’t have. You have your regional doctors that are at the tracks. Lots of things can be done. I think Mario Andretti said it best. Back in the day, Indy Car drivers had a 50-50 chance if they were going to live through their career. Now you have a 99.9.You’ve won at Texas, performed well here. What is it about this track?It’s just the speed. It’s fast here. The pace correlates with the weather. I know it sounds weird, but if it’s 50 or 60 degrees and it’s into the night, this place is fast every lap. If it’s 80, 85 degrees, it’ll be fast for 10 laps, and then, boom, the pace really drops off because you’re sliding all around. Sports Photo Galleriesview all