Fed Ex Racing Express Facts - Fontana, CA

RACE INFO:

Event: Auto Club 500

Date/Time: Feb.22, 2009/6 p.m.

2008 winner: Carl Edwards

2008 pole winner: Rain

Distance: 250 laps/500 miles

Track Length: 2.0 miles

Banking: 14 degrees

Track Shape: D-Shaped Oval

EXPRESS NOTES:

Hamlin, FedEx Racing 26th at Daytona: In a typical Daytona moment, Denny Hamlin and the #11 FedEx Racing team went from challenging for a Daytona 500 win to being one of many teams simply trying to repair their cars enough to return to the track. For the first 115 laps Hamlin ran near the front and, along with teammate Kyle Busch, had one of the more dominant cars in the field. Despite showing he had a car capable of winning the 500, and doing his best to avoid the incidents that mark superspeedway racing, Hamlin was caught up in a lap 124 accident and suffered significant damage to the #11 Toyota. The FedEx team made repairs to the car on pit road and kept Hamlin on the lead lap but any hopes of big improvement to his running position were undone by the rain that ended the race on lap 152. The result marks the continuation of what has been an unfortunate trend at Daytona for the #11 team – running well, but not posting the results to match the performance.

Hamlin at Auto Club Speedway: This weekend will mark Hamlin's seventh career Cup start at the two-mile track in Fontana. Last fall, Hamlin and the #11 FedEx Racing team registered a best- ever third-place finish at Auto Club to propel them into the 2008 Chase. In the spring of 2008 Hamlin was forced from the rain delayed Monday-afternoon race early when he hit water seeping through the track on lap 15 of the event and was sent sailing into the turn two wall. Despite making considerable repairs, the damage was done and Hamlin was scored in 41st place. In the fall 2007 race a cut tire under caution late in the race spoiled what was otherwise a promising day for the FedEx team and led to a 19th-place finish. In the spring of 2006, Hamlin had a very competitive car and ran as high as third place before handling issues caused him to fade late in the race and take the checkered in 11th. During his rookie campaign, Hamlin has posted finishes of sixth and 12th and led 29 laps in the fall edition – the only laps he has led at Auto Club Speedway to date.

AUTO CLUB 500 CHASSIS – JGR 220 & 222: The FedEx team will unload Chassis JGR 220 for the weekend in California. JGR 220 last raced at Richmond in Sept. of 2008, posting a third-place finish. At Michigan, the 2.0-mile track that shares many of the same characteristics as Auto Club, this car had Hamlin in contention for much of the day until late-race engine trouble relegated him to a 37th-place finish. JGR 222 will serve in backup at Auto Club. This car posted third-place finishes at both Auto Club and Indy during the 2008 season.

HAMLIN CONVERSATION – AUTO CLUB SPEEDWAY:

This race is often referred to as the real start of the season – is that how you approach it?: “For the most part that’s true. Daytona takes on a life of its own – it’s just such a big race – and you are there for so long going through the Shootout, the qualifying process and then the 500 that it’s hard to think about the rest of the season. Now that Daytona is behind us we are really focused on getting back to what we do best and that is running consistently. We had some struggles doing that last season, but I know we are more determined than ever. We know it’s important to come to California and run well and really see where we are with our cars as we start going to the intermediates. That’s where we need to be really good if we want to be a championship contender.”

You head to California sitting 27th in points, does that affect how you approach races moving forward?: “That always seems to be the case for us leaving Daytona. We are usually way down the list in terms of points so we start the process of getting into that normal routine and that starts in California – then the points tend to work themselves out. The points right now don’t reflect how we ran at Daytona or even how good we are as a team – it’s just what happens with superspeedway races and it just so happens that Daytona is the first race. We’ve been down this road before and we know it’s way too early to be worrying about points. Things tend to even out after you leave Daytona so we’ll try to get to where we want to be on the track and the points will hopefully reflect that.”

You scored a personal best third-place finish at Auto Club last fall - can you point to areas of improvement? “We had a great race here last fall. We had a top-five car from start to finish and the pit crew was really fast all day so we’d love to have a similar race this week. We feel we should always run well at these tracks. I do think it’s a combination of my getting to know all of these tracks better and the continual improvement in our cars. These tracks maybe haven’t been our strongest since the move to the new car but we’re always getting better and we hope we can pick up where we left off last fall.”