It makes me very hard on myself when I don't achieve the goals I want to achieve. But I feel like that's what makes me as good as I am at times - I push myself to be better, constantly.

We need to capitalize on the tracks we're really, really good at. At Richmond and Martinsville, our performance and results have not been very good, even though I consider them to be among my two best racetracks.

The Showdown is a great way to bring attention to these historic Virginia tracks where many NASCAR drivers cut their teeth in stock car racing, including myself. Tracks like South Boston and Langley are the heart of the sport and draw a great crowd to our Showdown events.

I can assure you that most of the drivers have a lot of things they'd like to do, but racing keeps them from doing that. We're so restricted because of our long season. We have a one-and-a-half-month period where we get to do what we want - that's shorter than any other sport. It makes it tough, for sure.

It's just all about opportunities, knocking doors down and see who answers.

It makes me very hard on myself when I don't achieve the goals I want to achieve. But I feel like that's what makes me as good as I am at times - I push myself to be better, constantly.

Definitely the road to the championship gets much easier when those type of guys are eliminated early.