Watkins Glen: John Andretti preview

NASCAR Winston Cup veteran John Andretti is back behind the wheel of the No.0 NetZero HiSpeed Pontiac Grand Prix this weekend at Watkins Glen International for the second and final road course event of the season.

JOHN ANDRETTI ON RACING AT WATKINS GLEN..."It's a road course race, but it's a lot different than racing at Sonoma. We'll need every bit of horsepower we can possibly get our of our Hendrick engines. You can get away with not having the car set-up perfectly if you have the horsepower to get you down the straightaways. Of course, like with any road course race, track position is extremely important. There aren't that many places to pass at Watkins Glen, so you need to get in a good qualifying run and then depend a bit more than normal on your crew to get you in and out of the pits ahead of as many cars as possible. I think we've got a pretty good chance of really running well this weekend in the NetZero HiSpeed Pontiac. Our motors our strong and the pit crew gets better every week I run with them, so I'm looking forward to getting there.

"In the past couple of years the road courses have been unique in that there are usually more cars entered than on a normal oval-race weekend. That can lead to problems for a team like Haas CNC Racing sometimes. They're pretty far back in the points and can't really depend on knowing there is a provisional available for them if there were to be problems in qualifying. If a couple of these road course ringers have a good qualifying run and we have a problem, we'd be sweating it out for a while. I need to go out there and get in a good, solid qualifying lap, but at the same time I know in the back of my mind I have to be careful to keep all four wheels on the track. I know Tony Furr and the guys will give me everything I need to go out there and take care of business all weekend long."