MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
DAYTONA 500 MEDIA DAY
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 22, 2017
JAMIE MCMURRAY, NO. 1 CESSNA/MCDONALD’S CHEVROLET SS, met with members of the media at the annual Daytona 500 media day at Daytona International Speedway. Full Transcript:
QUESTION REGARDING CARL EDWARDS
“Yeah, I was taken back by that only because it happened so late in the winter. He has another year left on his contract. I didn’t watch the press conference, but it didn’t seem like there was a light bulb that went off like oh, that’s the reason why. I think when everyone left the press conference, or at least as I talked to people, people are still a little baffled by it. So, yeah, I think the timing of it and the reasoning behind it just was hard to believe.”
INAUDIBLE
“We live in a society that always has a conspiracy thought, so yes, I think we are all thinking that right now.”
HOW MUCH MORE ADVANTAGEOUS IS IT FOR DRIVERS WHO ARE MEMBERS OF THESE SO-CALLED SUPER TEAMS? HOW MUCH MORE CHALLENGING IS IT IF YOU’RE NOT A MEMBER OF A SUPER TEAM? IS IT MAYBE A LITTLE BIT EASIER ON A SUPERSPEEDWAY FOR A NON-SUPER TEAM MEMBER?
“The Gibbs team is really the only team that, to me, is always together at speedway events. You look up and they’re always lined up. That doesn’t have as much to do with the team as it does with the drivers all working well together. You don’t see any other organization do that. So, that’s an advantage for them at plate tracks. But, as far as all the others, I don’t know that it really makes much of a difference at a plate track.”
WHAT ABOUT IN GENERAL? LAST YEAR THEY WON TWO-THIRDS OF THE RACES
“Well, there’s more of them. So, they’re going to win more races. But, I don’t know. I guess it depends on what you’re trying to compare it to. There certainly are maybe two or three teams, that if you were to make a list, they would be at the bottom of the list of funding and equipment that are at a disadvantage. But, I would say when you look at 25th and up in points, that regardless of whether you have two or four teammates, I don’t know that that matters.”
DO YOU THINK FROM A RESOURCE STANDPOINT, THERE ARE CERTAIN SITUATIONS WHERE THAT DOES MATTER LIKE A WRECKED CAR OR TWO CARS?
“I don’t know. I can’t answer that. I don’t know if it does or it doesn’t. You get a lot of help from manufacturers, whether you’re with two cars or four cars, you still get the same help from the manufacturers and their resources. But, I guess more cars, more money, more research it probably is somewhat of an advantage. But at some point, no matter how much money you have you can only learn so much. Once you get to x-amount of dollars spent, I don’t know that spending more really gains you that much.”
FROM AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE, DO YOU HAVE A SENSE OF WHAT JIMMIE JOHNSON IS ACCOMPLISHING?
“I’ve known Jimmie a long time. I actually came through the Busch Series with him and have been friends with him for a long time. I’ve said this forever, like to my wife or just in general, to me Jimmie is the greatest NASCAR of all time. Even though he was teammates with Jeff Gordon, to me he’s surpassed Jeff Gordon even as they were teammates. Obviously now Jeff is retired and Jimmie’s gone on to win another championship. But, it’s unbelievable. And maybe it seems a bigger deal to me because I am living it with him and racing with him every weekend; somewhat like maybe the golfers that are with Tiger Woods and watched him do that as they competed against him. I never raced against Dale Sr. or Richard Petty or any of those guys and I wasn’t around for those times. But I have been for Jimmie’s. And for one guy to do what he has done is unbelievable.”
DID YOU THINK THAT ABOUT HIM BEFORE HE WON NUMBER 7?
“Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You just look at Jimmie’s top 5 record and the amount of wins that he has is unbelievable. Not only that, but just some of the races that they didn’t really run that well in that they maybe came back to win or run in the top 5. It’s amazing. Unbelievable.”
CAN YOU EXPLAIN HOW PLATE RACING HAS EVOLVED IN THE SENSE OF TACTICS? CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHAT YOU’RE DOING IN THE CAR NOW THAT’S DIFFERENT?
“I would have to spend 30 minutes talking to you about that to make it make sense. I feel like a lot of people always put me in a category of a really good plate racer. But I went home on Sunday night and Monday and watched five house of in-car video from the Clash, of the cars that I thought were getting the best runs; or could push the best. Who got the best restarts and trying to figure it and see what they do. It’s amazing at 6 o’clock Monday morning how many in-car cameras from the race on Sunday are already on You Tube. I didn’t realize that as I was kind of searching for videos. But to get to sit in one of those cars and listen to the motor and the throttle and kind of watch the runs they get and how they’re able to get them, I’m trying to get better for Thursday. It’s easy to complain and say oh, we don’t have this or we need something else, but speedway races go in swings. I think at one point I ran four races in first or second in a plate race, right? And everyone is asking me what I am doing and I don’t know. It just happens. But that was a little bit of a different time of plate racing where you could get on someone’s bumper. One thing that I always used to do is that I wasn’t selfish. I really didn’t care if I lead. I would just push whoever was in front of me to the lead. And that worked really well for me. It doesn’t really work that way now. When we get hooked together now, since the tandem…. When we had tandem, with the really big spoiler, and I think at one time we had a lip on the spoiler; when you would get locked together, it was maybe a second a lap faster than not being locked together. Well now, even if you could get locked together, which it’s hard to, there’s just not a big advantage. There’s maybe two-tenths of a second a lap faster being locked together versus not. And it’s just not an advantage.
“We ran 46.6 lap times all by ourselves in qualifying. In the draft the other day, we were only running like 46.2, with is four-tenths, right? And you’re talking about one car versus 20 cars being together. I don’t know. We used to qualify at 190 mph and race at 205 mph, average. There’s just not the advantage of the big packs. At one point, we were even doing what we called slam-drafting; like they said bump, but you’d get these massive runs. You’d hit the guy in front of you as hard as you could and try to push him out. I don’t know if that was ever good, but we did do that for a while. But now, you don’t because there’s not as big of an advantage to do it. I don’t feel like anyone is really friends anymore. I feel like you used to look in your mirror and we all have different relationships with different people in this garage. And if I looked in my mirror and saw Matt Kenseth or Elliott Sadler or somebody who I knew I’d worked with well at plate races, I knew they would help me. Well now, if somebody gets a run on you, you just know they’re going to pass you. And nobody really helps anyone. When you get a run, you just go for the pass and you see if it works out. And maybe the guy behind them will help them. It’s just a lot different. It changes every three or four years I feel, like the style and what you have to do to be successful at it.”
IS IT MORE AGGRESSIVE?
“I don’t know. I think it’s the same. It’s just different. It’s not more aggressive and it doesn’t require more thinking. To me, when I look at guys who are really successful at plate races, they’re people that you talk to who can finish your sentence for you because they’re constantly thinking. The guy who you feel like talk really slow, I don’t feel they do well at plate races. I think it’s the same, but different. It’s the same mentality, it’s just different style.”
HAVING SAID ALL THAT, HOW DIFFICULT IS IT FOR SOMEBODY TO WIN BACK-TO-BACK 500 RACES? DO YOU SEE THAT HAPPENING ANY TIME SOON? IT’S BEEN A WHILE
“When is the last time that happened? In 1993 or ’94? Yeah, that was a long time ago. Well, gosh, I think just to win two plate races in the same year is a big feat. You have to be so lucky to finish. And then, like I watched the Clash and how Denny Hamlin didn’t win, I don’t know. Like he led the whole race and then all of a sudden with one lap to go, it was weird and the whole pack spread out and he was really vulnerable because he got pushed out. And he didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just that something happened three rows back that changed the outcome of that race. And Joey Logano was 10th with one lap to go. I watched the race and I’m like, how did that happen? It just did. Joey is an awesome plate racer, but things worked out for him, right? Whenever the winner on Sunday gets to Victory Lane, it’s going to have worked out for him. And it’s not necessarily because they did everything perfectly, but it’s because people around them that changed the outcome of the race.”
THERE’S SO MUCH BUILD-UP TO THIS RACE, A LOT OF PEOPLE SAY THE REAL SEASON STARTS NEXT WEEK AT ATLANTA. DO YOU FEEL THAT WAY?
“Yeah, 100 percent.”
DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE GOING INTO ATLANTA?
“Yeah, I think winning the Daytona 500 makes your season. That’s a popular media question, like what would be a successful year? Win the Daytona 500 and it’s a successful year, right? It is. But, we only run four of these. There’s only three more after the Daytona 500. And there’s a lot of luck involved in plate races. When you get to Atlanta is when you look at the top 10 qualifying and then the top 5 from the race and you kind of know what everyone has for the year. There will be a couple of teams that will get worse and a couple that get better. But for the most part, when we get there you see what team has what and that’s when your season starts.”
DID IT SURPRISE YOU WHEN YOU WERE LOOKING AT THOSE VIDEOS?
“Yeah, but I’m not going to tell you.”
SO YOU DID SEE THINGS?
‘Yeah, I just saw different techniques on restarts that people did. I mean, the reality is what makes a great plate racer is a really fast car. And when I look at the plate races I won, at that time, the ECR engines were the best plate motors, right? And I think we won all the plate races in 2010, or ECR did. When I watch the video, I’m like man, I would love to be able to do what he did but I don’t know that you can. But I watch those because almost every time what I see in the car during a race, when I go back and watch a video, it doesn’t look the same. I feel like watching on video you can kind of watch what happened before that instigated the reason the pass happened. So to me, when I watch those, I watch the outcome and then I rewind it a 60 seconds and I’m like how did they get to that? So a lot of times at plate races, you can pull out of line and try to make a quick pass, but the goal is to not move one car. It’s to move two or three cars. Sometimes that happens a minute before it actually happens.”
INAUDIBLE
“I remember winning the 500 here in 2010 and someone said something about the move I made in Turn 2 and I didn’t know what they were talking about because I’m like, that happened 40 second before the run I had is what made that look like it did. So, I think sometimes what people see on TV, they don’t realize that that maybe isn’t even something that the guy that made the great move did. It could be that the row beside him did something else that bogged them down that made you have the run. There’s a lot of factors that play into the runs that you see people get.”
DO YOU FEEL LIKE THE FAVORITES ARE ESTABLISHED BEFORE YOU GUYS EVEN HIT THE TRACK? I ASKED DALE EARNHARDT JR. IF HE FELT LIKE HE WAS A FAVORITE TO WIN THE 500 AND HE SAID THE FAVORITES ARE ALREADY KIND OF ESTABLISHED. IT’S NOT WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO DO WHEN YOU ARRIVE HERE.
“Yeah, it’s probably true. I think like certainly the No. 22 (Joey Logano) winning the Clash, you put him in a different category. But, the two Penske cars were already there because they have run well for the last two years at every plate race. They’ve been fast. So, before we got here, we knew they were going to be fast. And then they win. So, you’re like you know in the Duels and in the 500 that those two cars will be up front. The Gibbs cars have really fast cars and they also work together as a team better than any other group.”
INAUDIBLE
“I don’t know. I think you have to let that play out. I feel like anytime there’s change, there’s always something that someone hasn’t thought of. So, I guess you have to let that play out and see. I think that the structure of the races being different is going to be the most exciting at plate tracks because the end of the plate races are always awesome. And we’re going to get to have three of those every single plate race ow instead of just one. So, I think that’s going to be fun to watch.”
WHAT’S YOUR TAKE ON THE NEW CONCUSSION PROTOCOL & THE TRAVELING SAFETY TEAM AND OTHER RULES LIKE THAT?
“I think all of it is good stuff. Concussions are such a touchy subject because there’s really no way to measure that. It’s a doctor’s opinion. I wish they would leave that up to us. Only you know how you feel. And I think what Dale Jr. did was big. And if anyone were in his shoes, maybe they would have done the same thing because obviously he knew something was wrong. I think that all of us would race with hurt parts, right? Your head is something that you can’t have hurt. So, I don’t know. It hasn’t happened in our series yet I don’t believe, but when I look at what happened to Will Power at the IndyCar race in St. Petersburg last year, that’s a really horrible position for a driver to be put in and for a decision for a doctor to have to make.”
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO WHEN YOUR RACING DAYS ARE OVER AND YOU RETIRE?
“I don’t know. Hang out with my family, I guess.”
YOU DON’T WANT TO WORK?
“It’s not that I don’t want to work. I don’t know. I know that every off-season, when the season gets here, I still have stuff that I’d like to do. So, I don’t know. What scares me is when I see a lot of the guys that race until they were 45 or 50 retire and then it seems like a year later they’re going crazy and racing random things and doing really random things. And I don’t want to be that guy.”
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