National Hot Rod Association

How's it going, Cruz?

It's taken us nine races, but we're getting the car to be consistent again. What we did in 2007, the year before we won the championship, is exactly what we're doing right now: establishing consistency and keeping the car from blowing up all the time. I was a little impatient then and I am now – I want to win – but the reality is that new teams always go through this. We're sure not the only ones out here struggling.

It beats being stuck on the sidelines, which, late last year, was a distinct possibility, wasn't it?

Absolutely. In September and October, things weren't looking too good. We knew that we were losing Advance Auto Parts at the end of the year, and we didn't have anything lined up yet with Snap-On. These sponsorships are discussed a year in advance, and we didn't strike a deal with Snap-On until December. That's really late in the game. For a while, I thought I might have to sit out a year, but if I had it wouldn't have been the end of the world. It's a grind out here. The worst part was going from a championship year, finally pulling it together after years of trying, to having the bottom fall out and wondering if I was even going to be racing in 2010.

How challenging is it to have a rookie crew chief [Danny DeGennaro] after you've become accustomed to having one who's won championships [Rahn Tobler]?

It's part of the deal. Half the battle for a crew chief is being able to deal with all the disappointments and having the right attitude, being able to bounce back. He's young for the job, only 34, but I felt that we'd be better off long-term with him, a fresh, young guy not set in his ways, than we would have been with the experienced people who were available at the time. There was only a small group of them anyway. Crew chief is a pretty tough job for a rookie, but we didn't have a good year in 2009, either – this was an 11th-place car when Rahn was still here. I consider last year to be part of the slump we're in right now.

Can you still get in the Countdown to the Championship?

Sure. We've qualified at every event and haven't blown the body off the car. If we accumulate enough to make it in, great. If not, we'll take that frustration and turn it into a different kind of energy. Anytime you go from one major sponsor to another, there's a transition period. It cost me half my personnel – they had to move on when I couldn't guarantee them jobs for this year – but this is the same equipment that won a championship with two years ago, and I'm the same driver.

What's been the hardest part so far?

I never like to play the budget card, but we're up against teams that have a lot more money than we do. We can't go out and just hire whoever we want and buy whatever we want. It might take other teams half a season to get on track, and it might take us all year. You're going to get outrun occasionally – I can handle that. What's no good is when the car's smoking the tires all the time, and we're not doing that anymore. We have to be faster, no doubt about it, but we're more consistent than we were earlier in the year. For a while there, we were only going A to B on one run out of four in qualifying – the same problem we had last year. Two races ago, we made it down the track in two out of four qualifying sessions, and last week, in Topeka, it was three out of four. I've been in this game long enough to know that if you can get past the first round, you have a shot to win.

What do you expect from the team this season?

If we can continue the progress I've seen in the last few races, we might just surprise some people by midyear. We can still win our share of rounds and maybe even win a race or two before it's over. The car's trying to run better than it's showing. It's not like we're getting blown out. We're in the picture until half-track. There are so many obstacles, but you have to have optimism; you have to think you can. The goal at this point is to be in top 10 before [the Countdown to the Championship playoffs begin in] Charlotte. Two years ago we were in the top five late in the year and hadn't won a single race and people were asking me how bad it felt. I told 'em we might just sneak in there and win a few, and that's exactly what happened. We won the last three races of the year and won the championship, so who knows?