Toyota Racing – Matt Tifft
NASCAR XFINITY Series (NXS)
Bristol Motor Speedway – August 17, 2017
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Matt Tifft was made available to the media at Bristol Motor Speedway:
MATT TIFFT, No. 19 MSC Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
You had a career-best at Mid-Ohio last weekend, how has that built momentum for you?
“Yeah I mean it was obviously a huge confidence booster for our team. We needed that momentum on our side. I’m excited getting back to Bristol like you said, it’s a totally different place than we had at Mid-Ohio last week, but I think the good things was at the end of the race in the spring I felt like we finally hit on some things with our car that got me pretty happy with where we were at. It just kind of took a while to get there, but luckily we got the notes of that and going off of some of the 20 (Erik Jones) when he was able to win here in the spring, so hopefully we can pull that all together and go get ourselves a really good run too.”
How do you approach the last few races when you’re very close to securing a spot in the playoffs – play it safe and be aggressive and go for a win?
“Well I think there’s a balance. I think you have to be aggressive with calls and get yourself in good situations. That being said, you know last week was an example of we were in the top three there at the end and I knew that we needed a good finish to build that momentum to be able to carry us going forward for the rest of the season, so you know not that we’ve had a good run like that I think we can be more aggressive and being able to go and maybe try different strategy calls to be able to go pick up a win. The biggest thing is you don’t want to – you don’t want to get the attitude of the team to being disappointed in weekends. You want every weekend to be a positive from here on out. I feel like we’ve done a good job of that the last month and things have finally started to come together so the more we can keep that up and keep on building that momentum and getting closer to running consistency in the top five every weekend is really going to help us come September.”
How have you been able to build momentum here in the last few months?
“Well the first part, my last Bristol press conference was announcing coming back to racing so I’m glad to be sitting here being able to talk about going into the playoffs this year. I’m much happier to be on this side of it. Beyond that I think it – being a rookie team and having new people in place at JGR, you know we’re all very capable people and very experienced people and we have great resources and cars over there, but you have to be able to tie it all together. I think we started to hit on some things when we got to the halfway point of the season and then you know you can get speed and get speed to be there but you have to be able to put your cards in the right situation to play the right card and get yourself in a good strategy position to where you’re in the front at the end of these races. The big thing is just being able to make sure we’re there at the end, minimizing mistakes has been a big one for sure. The more we’ve gone along I feel like we’ve gotten better and better each weekend to where weekends before Mid-Ohio I thought we were getting really close to having a great run so it was cool to be able to pull that together last weekend and hopefully keep it going.”
Do you remember when you were younger where you race fans, were you fans of any particular drivers and did you have any interactions as race fans with those drivers?
“For me I remember I was probably the same age as Daniel (Hemric) is talking about – six or seven years old – and I still had a bed time back then, so my one – I wasn’t allowed to watch any night races except for Bristol. I was allowed to watch until halfway and if I was good that day I was allowed to watch the end of the race. That was a big one in the summer for me because I would always be real excited about that and then the next week you’d be starting school which I hated, so this was like that big celebration one of the summer. I was always a big Jeff Gordon fan back then. I remember all the battles with him and Rusty Wallace, so this was always the highlight of my summer just cause I actually got to stay up late one night.”
You’re the next wave of young drivers coming in, what do you do to interact with fans and what can NASCAR do better to help bring the fans closer to you guys?
“You know for me I think the unique thing, like Cole (Custer) says is that you do have fans being able to come up and talk to us. Obviously you’re not going to go to a football game and go on the sidelines and say ‘hey, can I get your autograph,’ they’re just going to get mad at you. I think that’s the one really unique thing about NASCAR. Obviously there’s a different where we’re at now with social media then we were back in the day. I think you had the superstars of NASCAR that were way up here, but now you get to see inside the lives of those people in social media. That’s a huge part of what we have to do now to be able to interact with fans and do Q&As on there or just stop by and say hi to fans. I think it’s – like Daniel (Hemric) said, we want to see NASCAR turn around. Obviously we all got involved and were fans of it when it was at its peak and saw how great it can be and I think we still see it as that. The competition is great and we all want to be able to have long careers where we can be successful in the Cup Series for a long way to come and have the fan base back with that. We’re always open to ideas if we can help too. It’s part us and part making sure we’re just putting on a great show for the fans and interacting with them. Hopefully we do that well and I’m sure there’s always ways to do that better, but obviously we all want to bring it back.”
Three months down, two to go on the season. How do you feel like you’ve performed as a driver and how has your team performed?
“I’d definitely echo what Daniel (Hemric) said there. I think it’s well known that our crew guys don’t get enough credibility for what they have to do and what they have to sacrifice for their families to be able to make our race teams go and to be able to do what we do. To answer your question, Chris, in the beginning of the summer stretch I thought we started off alright. We kind of hit a few rough patches and like I’ve said I’ve thought since then we’ve kind of been on an upswing with speed and I think we struggle with that at the beginning part of the summer. I think the interesting part for me was the beginning part of the 21, 22 week stretch, whatever it is. You go ‘holy crap you have this many more to go’ and then you get into week 3 of it and you get in a routine. You get in the routine of going to the shop, getting a debrief of the weekend, how you’re going to plan to get better for the next week and how you get better as a team and rally and keep the energy up with the team. That’s been cool for me to see. I’ve never been part of a full-time season to see how that works – just the psychological part with that that comes along with that. It’s been fun for me. It’s been challenging, but I’m obviously excited to get a week off in a few weeks, but shoot I’m having a heck of a time racing every weekend. I love racing.”
