MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
PRE-SEASON MEDIA AVAILABILITY
CHARLOTTE MEDIA TOUR
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
JANUARY 24, 2018
CHRIS BUESCHER, NO. 37 CHEVROLET CAMARO ZL1, met with members of the media at the Charlotte media tour and discussed his outlook for the season, and his relationship with JTG. Full transcript:
DID YOU ENJOY WORKING WITH AJ (ALLMENDINGER)?
“I really enjoyed working with AJ. I had a blast last season and getting to know each other with fresh people. I think only two or three of our guys had worked with any of the others before. It was a tough start. Everybody has meshed really well. We have a good team and we’ve kept almost everybody in the off-season. We’re really excited about getting 2018 started with that group and I feel like we don’t have to go through the relationship building early on like we did last season. Overall, I think last season went decent. A little bit of a slow start. We had a lot of really good races, but we had a lot in between that was not something to brag about. I think the goal would be to get to a level where we could run what our good weeks were last year, make that our every week.”
WAS THE SLOW START BECAUSE YOU GUYS STARTED SO LATE?
“The slow start was a lot of being able to … a lot was non-compete stuff. Nobody could really start after Homestead; they had to start January. A lot of that is waiting for everybody to get back from vacations and get started. That was a month behind basically to start out. There’s always a period of getting to know each other. Trent being a new crew chief to me was trying to figure out how to adjust through the weekend. There’s always a matter of tuning that in, and I think we have a good understanding of that, too. When you put new personnel together, you have to work though things. Until you do that, you won’t be able to perform at your full potential. That’s out of the way for this season and we feel like some of the other changes that have happened through the off-season will not take near the amount of time to dial in.”
DID YOU GET IN THE CAMARO AT TEXAS?
“I did not. I’m running the Vegas test next week. I have not been in a car yet but looking forward to it. Everything that we see looks really good. The competitive nature of that Camaro body is very good; way closer to the direction that we need to be in. Excited to have the ZL1 Camaro in the Cup series. It’s big to have a muscle car back in the premier series. We’ll see how Vegas goes. A little bit of a learning curve there. It’s really nice to use a test instead of Atlanta basically. Daytona you’re not going to learn a whole lot. We can get this initial stuff out of the way and show up to Atlanta ready to go.”
HAVE YOU BEEN IN THE SHOP IN THE OFF-SEASON?
“Yeah, I just came from there this morning early. We’ve been trying to get some of the changes dialed in with just some new chassis components and trying to make sure everything is in place. Honestly, the heavy fab area is really busy getting everything built right now. Up in the finish fab is starting to gear up. It’s been a little quiet in half of the shop earlier. It’s getting to the point where we’re starting to feel the pressure of the 2018 season coming up and everyone is hustling to get a competitive car on the track for JTG this season.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE CAMARO?
“The Chevrolet body was due for an update. Looking back, the other manufacturers have had full updates or revisions done several years after the last Chevrolet one, so I think this is a complete redesign. A body that looks way closer to what we were competing against last season and at the same time maintains its own identity and carries over much of the characteristics of the actual production Camaro. That was the intention while at the same time making it competitive, and I think they accomplished everything that they set out to do. Now it’s a matter of fine-tuning everything. We’re starting fresh. Wind tunnel will only tell you so much. Until you get on a racetrack around other cars, we don’t know exactly where we need to be working. But we’ve ballparked everything in as close as we can and we’ll fine-tune from there. I think a lot of the wheel force testing and tire testing will be used to build a database for some of the simulation. I’m not sure how much of the wind tunnel data is able to apply to the simulation already or how that will affect the beginning of the season for all the Chevrolet teams. I’m sure there will be a constant learning period throughout the year. We’re always going to be learning something.”
DOES THE NEW CAR BODY RAISE EXCITEMENT AND EXPECTATIONS FOR THE SEASON?
“Absolutely. There was a big release. We had all the Chevy drivers to witness it and look at it for the first time. I feel like the only thing left to do is get it on track and be competitive. Everything we have to go off of and everything we have seen and done to this point in the year says that there are a lot of good things that are going to translate over to more competitive race cars.”
HOW IMPORTANT IS IT FOR YOU TO HAVE A TEAMMATE AT THIS POINT IN YOUR CAREER?
“Teammates in racing is always something that’s very important. It’s hard to be a single car with no information to lay out in front of you. I hope AJ feels the same way of going to two cars and having information to pass back and forth and verify some things that you change. It gives you a much more solid direction. It’s crucial at this level. You have to have that help.”
NASCAR IS SHARING DATA WITH ALL THE TEAMS. YOUR THOUGHTS?
“I didn’t get to vote on that. I think that’s what was so beneficial about having a teammate. For single-car teams and teams that don’t have all the telemetry, that’s bound to help. We were able to look at a lot of that stuff already and compare between Team Chevrolet drivers or within the team. It will be interesting to see how much will be shared and when and if it will be more of a live data or something after a weekend. They surprise us all the time.”
YOUR CAR WILL CHANGE SPONSORS OFTEN THIS YEAR.
“We have a ton of returning sponsors along with Kroger stepping up. We will have a lot of our one-to-three race deals covering all over the suit. We’re excited about the Kroger Quick List relationship and what we think that will build up and excited to have a lot of our key partners back on board.”
AS A CHAMPION OF THE XFINITY SERIES IS IT FRUSTRATING THAT YOU’RE NOT WITH A POWERHOUSE IN THE CUP SERIES?
“I feel like we’re making really good progress in the off-season with JTG. We’ve been in a place where we’ve made our alliance with Hendrick on the simulation and some of the aero development very promising. There’s a lot coming that will say we’ll get to that point. At times last season we didn’t have the performance that we wanted and that’s frustrating and where you want to be and when you win races in a different series. At the same time, I had the same idea going from ARCA to Xfinity that we should be run top five and win races right away and that’s just not the case. At the top level, there are people that are here and deserve to be all for very good reasons. It’s competitive but we feel like we’ve come a long way through 2017 and the off-season.”
YOU’RE SIGNED THROUGH NEXT YEAR?
“Yes, so we’ll be with JTG for a little while.”
DID YOU DO ANYTHING FUN IN THE OFF-SEASON?
“No. I had a boring off-season. We’ve been moving, planning a wedding and that’s where it all went. We didn’t do a whole lot. We hung around the house a lot trying to get situated. We went on a four-wheeling trip Thanksgiving weekend and that was about the last of it. I’ve just been working; more through the off-season than during the season. Moving is awful. The wedding planning I don’t have to make nearly as many decisions and it is not near the legwork.”
ARE YOU GOING TO BE MORE INVOLVED IN THE TEAM NOW THAT YOU’LL BE AROUND FOR A FEW YEARS?
“It was open book from the start. I was fully involved the entire year, and I don’t feel like that’s going to change any. We’re going to keep doing whatever we can to be as competitive we can each weekend. It’s great knowing that we have some security and things are in place. That gives us a chance to go out and focus on what’s important.”
ARE YOU CONTENT WITH THE WAY THINGS HAVE GONE WITH JTG?
“As things evolve, coming into the Cup series and having a good ride has gotten extremely hard right now and we’ve lost several very talented race car drivers just because there’s not a whole lot available. I’ve enjoyed every bit of it. AJ is a blast to be around and a great teammate. We’re just trying to get better each weekend, and we think we can do a lot of that this season. I’m excited about the roval. That’s not a track that three-quarters of the field has been to eight times when I’m going for the second time, so that evens out things. Then again, AJ is on track and we’ll have to chase him.”
WHAT HAS MADE JTG SUCH A GOOD FIT?
“From the beginning, it’s just been a family environment. We got invited to the Christmas party before we even finalized everything. It was nice to be welcomed in. They love racing and want to build this up.”
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