NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
FIREKEEPERS CASINO 400
MICHIGAN INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
JUNE 10, 2016
AJ ALLMENDINGER, NO. 47 KROGER/HUNGRY JACK/CRISCO CHEVROLET SS, met with members of the media and discussed the off weekend, his outlook for the first road course race of the season at Sonoma, the 2016 season thus far and many other topics. Full Transcript:
HOW ARE YOU FEELING RIGHT NOW ABOUT THE TEAM AND HOW YOU ARE DRIVING WITH A GOOD STRETCH OF RACES COMING UP FOR YOU?
“I think it’s going fairly well. We have been bouncing kind of right in that cut-off right now, bouncing back and forth between in the Chase and out of the Chase. Still a lot of weeks ahead of us, but just the way the team is progressing we’ve got pretty good speed in the car kind of everywhere we go. The places like Charlotte, Pocono, last week and Michigan are tracks that the last couple of years we have really struggled at and I feel like although we are not quite where we want to be, we have definitely improved. Everything kind of looking ahead we are heading the right direction, it’s just right where we are at in points right now you have a bad week and it’s a big hit. You have a good week and you are back inside the Chase. It’s the way it’s going to be. Just try and go out every weekend and put our best foot forward and try to minimize our mistakes and get everything that we can, maximize the finishes no matter whether we have a great race car or not a good race car and just try to get everything we can out of it.”
YOU ARE ON A SMALLER TEAM, BUT YOU ARE A GOOD DRIVER, WHAT SORT OF GAINS DO YOU LOOK FOR AGAINST THE BIGGER GUYS? HOW DO YOU GET THERE? CAN YOU GET THERE ON A TEAM LIKE YOURS?
“Yeah, I think we can get there. It’s a lot harder to get there for sure. With 50 people on our race team we all have to kind of work together, which makes this race team a lot of fun. Tad and Jodi (Geschickter) really go out there and make this team a family. This is my third year with the team and I really feel like as a team gelling together with the additions of Randall Burnett, which is my crew chief and Ernie Cope, the competition director, guys like Brian Burns and Tony Palmer which had been the crew chief and lead engineer. They kind of stepped down and went to the engineering side of it. Everything is gelling well. You would like everything overnight. You would love to show up and just say ‘alright our cars are the fastest car there’ and we got out there and have a chance to win every weekend. It’s not that easy. But, if you look at a team like the No. 78 (Martin Truex, Jr.) it’s taken a lot of years to get where they are at right now for sure. This is what their 11th, 12th year maybe in NASCAR? Over the last two years has by far been their best season. It definitely takes time, but they also show if you go out there and you work hard together, work in the right areas and you have the people that are smart enough to know which directions we have to head as NASCAR always keeps developing and working on new packages like we have this weekend. We can get there. It just takes a lot of hard work and a lot of sticking together. I see that in our race team. We are not quite there yet, but we are definitely, as I said heading in the right direction to where we can continually compete inside the top 15, then the top 10, then contend for wins at any given racetrack.”
DOES YOUR HUMOR HELP WHEN THINGS ARE DOWN?
“I try to have fun with it, but you know I will be the first person to admit… you will see it on my face if it’s not going well or if I’m hard on myself. That is the biggest thing I’m really hard on myself. I appreciate and understand how hard my guys work every weekend. I really do appreciate and I try to show how much I appreciate it. I try to thank them every chance that I get. But, I’m hard on myself. I feel like even if we are not great that weekend that somehow I can strap it to my back and go out there and get more out of it. It’s harder to do it on a place like Michigan. You have to have a car that is set-up right. That is why I enjoy the road courses, which has always been my background. I feel like as a driver you can make just a little bit more of a difference, but in the end I think and I hope that my guys know, even if I’m down, that I’m giving everything I’ve got. I’m down because I want to get more for them. It’s just like everything else, its ups and downs. I’m trying to learn how to be better about kind of staying middle of the road. I’m definitely not there yet, for sure, but that is the biggest thing. I just try to make sure my guys know how much I care and how much I want it for them and for us.”
YOU ARE GOING HOME NEXT WEEKEND WHEN WE GET TO SONOMA WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO WIN IN FRONT OF YOUR HOME CROWD?
“You try and go out there and I try and have the mindset that it’s just another weekend, but we know it’s not. There are a lot of great things. It’s my home race. It’s a race that I grew up going to and I always enjoy. I think it’s one of the best racetracks that we have in the US when it comes to road course racing. It’s a home race for our sponsors Kingford and Clorox. We have a lot of people that show up from the corporation that is based in Oakland (California) only an hour or so down the road. We are going to have Ralph’s on the car, which is a Kroger company, but it’s a home company, a store that I went to a lot growing up. There is a lot of stuff that comes down to why it would be special to win. In the end, it would be special because it gets you into the Chase. You go out there and it makes the rest of the season just a little bit easier to prepare for the Chase. Everybody has got that home race that stand out. We know the biggest races in our sport, the Daytona 500, Brickyard, Darlington, but for me, Sonoma is on top of the list, because that is a race that I have loved. I have family and friends and it would be a special moment to go out there and be able to share that and spend that in Victory Lane. You can’t get ahead of yourself. It’s such a tough and difficult race. Although we have been fast there, if you look at my stats they are not very good just because there is a lot of bad luck. There are a lot of ups and downs during the race whether it comes with cautions or the way the tires are used there, the strategy. It’s a long ways to get there, but I know when we show up we are going to have a good car and we are going to have a good shot to win it.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU WENT THROUGH LAST WEEK NOT HAVING YOUR CREW CHIEF ON THE BOX?
“I would say it’s a difficult rule for sure. When you have a lugnut off a tire at the end of the race and now your crew chief is suspended and things like that it’s a difficult rule. We have kind of put ourselves in that box. It was a certain challenge, but Ernie Cope he was there as the crew chief as our competition director. Randall (Burnett, crew chief) and I and Ernie and all of us have all worked together. I wouldn’t say it was that big of a challenge. It was just a different voice on the radio. We didn’t really go about the weekend any different. I did think we learned some stuff. Ernie wanted to try a couple of things and I think it helped us. In the end, I hope it makes us a little bit better. Overall, that is what is good about our… I would say if this happened last year we would have been in real big trouble. This year we’ve got the depth and we have all the people working together. In the end, it was just a different voice on the radio.”
BEFORE ALL THE ROAD COURSE RACES YOU KEEP TELLING US THAT YOU ARE TRYING NOT TO PUT TOO MUCH PRESSURE ON YOURSELVES. HOW SUCCESSFUL ARE YOU AT DOING THAT? ALSO, THE FACT THAT YOU ARE KIND OF ON THE BUBBLE VERSUS MAYBE IF YOU WERE 22ND OR 23RD IN POINTS DOES THAT CHANGE THE PRESSURE AS FAR AS HOW YOU APPROACH SONOMA?
“Yeah, like I said, we know when we show up we are going to have an opportunity to win the race if we go do the right things. The biggest differences this year is being kind of on the bubble. Hopefully, we have a good weekend here and we are in the cut-off line at the end of this weekend. The biggest deal is it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing scenario, which is has been the last two years. We go there and have a good weekend and finish second the last two years it’s great, but it doesn’t do anything for us because we are so far out of the top 16 in points it was win or bust at Sonoma or Watkins Glen. No matter how you try to look at it there is more pressure doing that. I drove like it knowing that I had to win the race to make any kind of difference for our season. This year, of course the ultimate goal is still to win, but we go finish in the top five it’s a good day. It’s going to be good in points. It’s going to help us out a lot. That is kind of the mentality that we’ve got to have to have. In the end you see how Friday goes and see how Saturday goes, see what kind of race car you have and what kind of expectations you have for Sunday.”
HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH LOOKING FORWARD TO SONOMA DURING VACATION NEXT WEEK?
“It will always be on my mind. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about the upcoming race, especially Sonoma. It will be good on the off weekend more for our guys to get away. They work so hard, especially our crew guys that are here because we don’t have a lot of people. They have to be here all weekend and then go home on Monday and start tearing apart the car and getting the next car ready and so on. It’s good for everybody to get a break and be able to spend some time with their family or just get away. For me, I’m going to go play some golf in Pebble (Beach, California) and have a good time. There won’t be a moment that I’m on the golf course that it’s at least not on the back of my mind. The struggle is not to make it on the front of my mind. That is what I have to be better about is doing the right things whether it’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday leading up going into Sonoma making sure I’m still taking care of myself and focused on the prize, which is going there and being the best that I can be when I get to the racetrack. That is the biggest thing. It will be there on my mind, it’s just how good am I about not making it on the front of my mind until I pull into Sonoma on Friday. I guess we will wait and see about that. We will see what the golf scores are.”
IT WAS ANNOUNCED THIS WEEK YOU ARE GOING TO BE ONE OF THE FOUR DRIVERS THAT RCR HAS ADDED TO THEIR XFINITY SERIES LINE-UP. WHAT PROMOTED THAT? HOW MUCH ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO THE OPPORTUNITY?
“What promoted it was RC (Richard Childress) coming to me and asking me if I would want to do the road course race at Mid-Ohio on our off-weekend. For sure, Mid-Ohio was a special victory that I had back in 2013 when I was with Team Penske. I love the racetrack. I love the atmosphere there. They always have a big crowd. More importantly I know that I can get in that racecar and have a chance to win. That was the easiest decision on that was the fact that especially the No. 2 car, but all of RCR and their program whether it is the Cup or the Xfinity Series it is strong and they show up and have a chance to win the race. Any chance that you have to go win in a race in a NASCAR Series it makes it a lot easier to make the decision and say yes. I look forward to it. I’m thankful that RC thought of me. I think we are going to have Rheem on the car for that race. To have Rheem to say that they want me in their racecar is a big deal. It will be a lot of fun and when we get to that point I will be definitely excited to get in that racecar and go have a shot to win at Mid-Ohio again.”
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