It's an amazing confidence boost when you have that swagger of knowing when you pull on the racetrack, all eyes are on you because they know you're the best.

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.

It's an amazing confidence boost when you have that swagger of knowing when you pull on the racetrack, all eyes are on you because they know you're the best.

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.

I can spend the hour before the race cracking up with all my friends and joking around, but as soon as I get around that race car, I completely change. The focus changes. The competitive juices get flowing.

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.