Last May, Casey Mears was on top of the world – the World 600 that is. Although the annual 600-miler at Lowe’s Motor Speedway is now called the Coca-Cola 600, the prestige and the honor of winning has the same meaning it always had.

To earn a victory in this race puts you amongst some of the most famous names in all of NASCAR history – Petty, Yarborough, Pearson and Earnhardt.

Mears was able to use pit strategy and fuel mileage to surprise everyone, earning his first career victory. Driving the National Guard sponsored-car, Mears was able to celebrate Memorial Day in fashion by saluting the troops with a win. This week’s test session at Lowe’s gave Mears the chance to talk a bit about defending his Coca-Cola 600 title, his incident with Michael Waltrip and his thoughts on the current car.

For Mears, being the defending race champion has not put more pressure of the Hendrick Motorsports driver.

“I feel pressure to win every weekend,” Mears explained. “That’s our job and that’s what we focus on. I won’t feel any differently going into the [Coca-Cola] 600. It feels good to come back to a race that we won last year and getting the recognition for that. But our job is to do that again. I don’t really feel any additional pressure, but it definitely makes you want to win it maybe a little more.”

So far in 2008, Mears sits 23rd in the series standings with only two top-10 finishes and three DNF’s.

Last week at Richmond International Raceway, Mears was involved in an incident with Michael Waltrip that ended both of their nights. After the initial contact, Waltrip continued to deliberately push Mears down the track and the driver of the No. 55 NAPA Toyota was parked for the evening by NASCAR.

“I think initially it was our fault,” Mears said at LMS. “I mean, I wasn’t aware that he was on the outside of me. I don’t know if we just had a radio problem or what happened there, but we were kind of running by ourselves there for quite a while, and I think the 55 came out on new tires and was running us down and I just wasn’t aware of it, and I came off [Turn] 4 and hit him and I had no idea he was there.”

As the teams took a break from testing Tuesday evening, Mears went to Waltrip’s hauler to speak with him about the incident, however Waltrip was not around.

“I can understand why he’d be upset,” Mears explained, “because it definitely wasn’t really his doing. But obviously afterwards what he did wasn’t right. I can understand the emotion and being upset, but you definitely don’t want to do something like that. Obviously he realizes that too, and we’ll all move on.”

Teams throughout the garage have continued to struggle with the current car and Mears has been no different. Although he admits there are areas NASCAR could improve on the car, overall Mears is happy with the product.

“It’s a great car…it’s a safe product,” Mears said. “We put on some good races with it and some good shows, but is there room for improvement, absolutely, and obviously I think that [NASCAR is] considering that and all the teams are looking at it, as well. Hopefully we can come up with a few things that make it a little bit better going into next season. Not that it’s a bad car, but definitely we can make some improvements.”

With testing over it is off to Darlington Raceway before heading back to Charlotte for two weeks. The defending Coca-Cola 600 champion is currently 220 points outside the top-12 in points and has to turn the heat up on the competition if he wants to secure his spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

“Alan [Gustafson] and I were just talking the other day how we feel like we’re just now kind of starting to feel like we’re getting on the same page, and I think with the things that we’ve been learning lately and the way that we’ve been moving up in points, we’ve just got to continue to do that, focus on having a good year, hopefully win some races before the year is out and have something good and strong to build on for next season.”