The final day of the Sprint Media Tour was Toyota day. Michael Waltrip Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing were featured at the Charlotte Convention Center on Thursday.
Michael Waltrip Racing lived through tough times at the end of the 2013 season with the penalties assessed after Richmond and the loss of driver Brian Vickers due to recurring blood clots. It was nice to hear that Vickers will be back and Clint Bowyer is ready to roll in 2014.
Vickers looked the picture of health and was looking forward to the new season, as well as managing his health so that more hiatuses don’t happen.
“I’m cleared. I’m ready, off blood thinners. I’ve never been more ready in my entire life to get back in a race car,” he said.
Vickers’ latest three-month hiatus provided him the opportunity to take his wife on a honeymoon and relax a little, but also served as a reminder of how much he misses racing.
Moving forward, Vickers said, managing his health is just a matter of being aware of warning signs and making sure proper treatment is taken.
“That’s really all you can do,” Vickers said. “My last incident was a provoked incident. I had to wear a boot for a month. In those situations, we’ve got to be more mindful of it, but that’s really all you can do.”
Vickers is a fan of the new qualifying procedure that NASCAR recently announced and said, “I’m good with it. I don’t know that a lot is going to change. I think it’s going to create a little bit more excitement, for sure. It’s kind of that knockout style qualifying, but it’s not like we’re going to go out there and run six laps. You’re still going to go out there and you’re going to tape up and you’re going to go as hard and fast as you can for a lap. I think it’s going to be very similar for us, but I think it’s going to create more excitement for the fans. That’s a win-win in my book.”
Clint Bowyer also likes the new qualifying format.
“That (the old system) had become stale and it needed help,” Bowyer commented. “There’s no way getting around it. I think our Fridays were somewhat stale and I think it’s going to add a new element of excitement — who knows what’s going to happen. I really think that you’re going to see that. I think moving through those segments you’re going to see people make a quick adjustment and tune themselves right into the game or more importantly tune themselves right out of the game. There’s going to be a lot of moving parts and it’s going to be something that’s going to be interesting to follow on qualifying day. I don’t think you’ve ever really said that before. It’s going to be cool.”
Bowyer is ready to put 2013 behind him and go to Daytona with a fresh start.
“It always feels good to hit the reset button. I’ve got a great team — we have fast race cars, I have a great crew chief (Brian Pattie) and great engineers and smart people behind me,” Bowyer said. “It’s always been that way from day one at MWR (Michael Waltrip Racing). As far as the 15 team goes, we’re exactly the way we’ve been since 2012. That’s the key to success in this sport is people and when you can keep all those people together, that’s how you maintain the level of success that we’re capable of accomplishing. We’re as prepared as we’ve ever been.”
Joe Gibbs Racing paraded their drivers out (Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth, and Denny Hamlin) and gave those present a rosy picture of the new season.
Kyle Busch was first asked how or if the new qualifying format will help his No. 18 M&M’s Toyota.
“I don’t know that it really does,” Busch commented. “I hate to be ‘Debbie Downer’ but I think there’s going to be a lot of down time. You might see a car or two out on the race track here or there, but it’s not going to be like 15 cars out on the race track making something exciting is what people are assuming. Restrictor plate races you’ll see that. When you’ve got 30 minutes let’s say at Martinsville — you go out and make a lap and then you’re going to sit there for 30 minutes because you’re not going to go out and make another lap on your tires. You’re not going to heat up your motor again. You’re going to hope that you’re in the top-25 or whatever the round is in order to move you forward.”
He’s not very enthusiastic about the new Chase format, either.
“Essentially your best way of going throughout the Chase is to win a race in every three races — that obviously gets you locked into the next round,” Busch said. “Being able to do that is key. Separating those three races out into each one — can you go test at those tracks? Are there tracks like it you can go test at without wasting a test at those tracks? Those are the things that everybody is going to be looking at and trying to figure out their best strategy and best way of getting to and achieving the ultimate goal of winning races in those races.”
After an up and down season, Denny Hamlin is back. After winning the Ford 400, the last race of 2013, Hamlin is confident about the coming season.
“My back is really good. It’s better than it’s been since I really can remember,” Hamlin beamed. “It’s taken a lot of hard work to get to this point, but I can assure you I’ve put in my hours. The season has been over roughly 60 days and I’ve put over 140-some hours in the gym. I’ve done everything I can to do my part to make sure we’re back in contention this year. There’s nothing lingering — everything is good. I’ve gotten scanned and everything looks great. It’s all in the past for me and obviously 2013 is going to be a year that will be forgotten as soon as we get to the race track at Daytona.”
Does Hamlin like the new qualifying rules?
“I think the knockout qualifying is going to be a good thing,” Hamlin said “Definitely if you didn’t have that, you would see track records break all over the series all over again. Just through the testing we’ve seen so far, the cars are at least a half-a-second faster than the cars were last year, and last year’s cars were record-breaking fast. I think whether you happen to use the same set of tires each one, there’s going to be strategy played. I think there could possibly be some gamesmanship on making sure a guy doesn’t have a good lap if there’s things like that going on. It’s going to be tough because you only have a certain amount of time to get one of those fast laps and everyone is going to be fighting to get on the race track as soon as they can because the race track is better cold. I think it’s going to be a game-changer, for sure, but it’s going to be exciting for the fans.”
Matt Kenseth came off his career best season, winning seven races and finishing second in the championship. It’s a new season and Kenseth says the cars feel fine and maybe even a little more together than last year. He just wants to take some things away from 2013 into the 2014 championship run.
“You always try to improve. You always try to make everything better,” Kenseth said. Certainly last year was a great year for us. You always hope to go and try to top that and try to do better the following year. I’m really looking forward to our second year together. I was really excited last year going into the season and there were a lot of unknowns. I was probably kind of nervous, not 100 percent comfortable, all that stuff. This year, I have a year to build on and kind of understand a little bit more what JGR (Joe Gibbs Racing) is all about, how they operate and all those kind of things. I’m hoping that we’ll be better. I think that’s what everybody’s hope is, but we’re hoping we can improve on the things we did last year.”
Kenseth says the new qualifying procedure is “going to be different. I think it will be neat to watch. I think it’s going to make a great program session, whatever you want to call it. I think it’s going to be pretty cool to see how that works. Get rid of half the cars and I think there’s going to be a lot of varying strategies out there — how you do that, how you get that clean lap, but still try to keep your tires as fresh as possible and your engine as cold as possible. There’s going to be a lot going on — I think it’s going to be really interesting.”
