Monday

This Week in Ford Racing (Feb. 22n 2010) with NSCS Driver, A.J. Allmendinger

2010 NSCS AJ Allmendinger - Photo Credit: Sam Greenwood/Getty Images for NASCAR

AJ ALLMENDINGER – No. 43 Best Buy Ford Fusion –

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT LAS VEGAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY?  “I’ve never had good luck at Vegas.  I missed two races there my first two years and then last year we made the show and just struggled.  Vegas is a tough place because you’re obviously out in the middle of the desert.  The track doesn’t widen out like a lot of the mile-and-a-halfs, where you can run two or three lanes.  It gets almost like just about one-and-a-half grooves from what you see.  It’s got a lot of grip on the race track and it’s really fast, but, to me, it’s one of the places where obviously handling is key everywhere, but you really have to be on top of the handling because if you’re not, and you’re just a little bit out of the throttle, the track is so fast that everybody is digging really hard for the throttle.  It makes it tough and it makes track position really critical at that place because being only one to one-and-a-half grooves wide, it is hard to pass because you get real aero sensitive behind other cars.”

ARE YOU A GAMBLER? “I gamble.  I’m definitely not a winner.  I do like my money.  I don’t make as much as some of these guys in the pits.  We’re working on that, so I like to keep it as much as I can, but I enjoy Texas Hold ‘Em.  I guess it works for being a race car driver, but I’m too impatient for tournaments.  I can only sit at a table for two or three hours and then it’s like, ‘I’m all in.  I don’t care.’  Even though I might only have a seven and a two, I’ll still do it and see how it works out.  So I enjoy it.  I went with a friend last year and I never played craps before, so I got into craps, so I’ll probably play a little bit of that.”

- PCGCampbell for Ford Racing, Press Release