Considering what Kyle Busch [eight wins] and Carl Edwards [six at the time] have done this year I would have hated to have 30 points
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Considering what Kyle Busch [eight wins] and Carl Edwards [six at the time] have done this year I would have hated to have 30 points
Frankly, if you take Kyle Busch out of the equation, our success ratio is just about where everybody would have thought it should have been: win a couple of races, have a shot in more and, hopefully, two or three guys in the Chase ... Not to take anything away from any of our drivers or any of our teams — certainly not taking anything away from Tony or Denny, they’re great drivers and everybody has great futures — but Kyle has had an extraordinary year.
I'm glad that we won the race so that we can go into the offseason knowing that we won more races than anyone else in this series ... I think that's a big accomplishment, especially considering how well Jimmie and Kyle [Busch, an eight-race winner] ran all season. So that feels good. And knowing how well we ran it gives me a lot of confidence for next season.
In Cale's day, there were five or six teams that were financially capable of winning the championship ... Today, even though Jimmie and Carl and Kyle Busch won most of the races this year, there are still a lot of other teams that were capable of winning the championship.
They said they wanted to put this in the hands of the drivers ... and I think you have to be careful what you're wishing for ... You give Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch and Jimmie Johnson ... cars that are more than difficult to drive, their talent is going to override that and they're going to separate themselves.
You have seasons like I've had where you would have won the championship under the old format, and you have seasons like this where Kyle Busch gets penalized because of it, but yet it helps other guys
If you have to pick off performance, you have to throw three guys in the category -- Jimmie [Johnson], Kyle [Busch] and Carl [Edwards]. Those three have had unbelievable seasons
A lot falls on Mike's shoulders, and I'm behind him ... I think he's one of the best out there with the things he has to work with. We are not performing the way we did earlier, but neither is the 18 [teammate Kyle Busch]. They aren't where they were earlier this year. To do that, everyone in the race shop needs to be a little more open-minded.