#90-Casey Mears met with members of the media recently and discussed his new team and expectations, a few tidbits fromt the transcript:
HOW DOES IT FEEL TO COME DOWN HERE IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SITUATION THIS YEAR THAN LAST? “It’s hard to tell yet to be honest, until we get on the track and really see what we have we know we have a car that’s a couple years old. Sometimes that doesn’t matter a whole lot on the superspeedways. The good thing is we’re able to secure an ECR engine [Earnhardt Childress Racing] and obviously they’ve been competitive over the last few years. As far as buying, they bought the cars through DEI so we’re able to get a transmission, drive line, rear-end through them so we got a lot of good parts and pieces on the car, the only question in our minds at all is if the car is a little old and how’s that gonna affect it when it comes to speed. When we get on the track and we run I’ll have a better opinion on how I feel about being here. I haven’t been in this position, not having points coming into Daytona, since the first time I came here with Ganassi and we raced our way in fortunately and obviously the stuff was right and working real good and I didn’t know what I was doing. Now I know what I’m doing and it’s gonna be curious to see whether or not we get the car handling properly and get it good enough to race in.”
WHAT’S YOUR PROGRAM FOR THE YEAR, WHAT DO YOU HAVE GOING? “Right now the only thing that’s locked in, there’s a lot of talk about some Nationwide stuff, truck stuff, hit and miss Cup things, but the only thing that is locked in right now for sure is the six-race deal with Key-Up Motorsports.”
DO YOU RACE WITH AN ATTITUDE OF ‘NOTHING TO LOOSE’? “Absolutely, the whole thing here is to qualify one, we get in the show then we are able to approach the race and I think that obviously if we do make the race we got to have realistic goals and I think a big accomplishment for us would be to make all the races and be inside the top-35 when the music stops at the end five races and be able to get into Martinsville regardless would be good.”
YOU ARE WITH KEY-UP MOTORSPORTS FOR THE FIRST SIX RACES, HAVE YOU TALKED TO ANYBODY ABOUT RIDES AFTER THAT? “I’ve talked to probably just about everybody to be honest, there are some possibilities of some things for 2011 for sure. There may be some things that open up mid-season; there may be some new teams that start up six or eight races into, there still some guys trying to put programs together for 2010 and just couldn’t get it quite done in time so there are a lot of little things happening. I’ve talked to Richard a lot and I know he was really wanting to continue running that fourth program and they’re continually searching for sponsorship and if something was to come together maybe there’s five, six, eight, ten races still there so I’m pretty much talking to everybody. I’m hoping that a lot of guys view me after these six races that if I don’t get to continue with Keyed-Up Motorsports hopefully I’m that first guy on the bench that can get the job done if something opens up I’ll be there.”(GM Racing)(2-11-2010)
