MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
PRE-SEASON MEDIA AVAILABILITY
CHARLOTTE MEDIA TOUR
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
JANUARY 23, 2018
TY DILLON, NO. 13 GEICO CHEVROLET CAMARO ZL1, met with members of the media at the Charlotte media tour and discussed his outlook for the season, the life changes that come with being a father and how he plans to engage fans. Full transcript:
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT BRISTOL?
“Bristol has been a good track for me. In all my careers, I probably have one of the bets average finishes at that racetrack. I look forward going back. The second race in the Cup series wasn’t really strong for us but look forward to capitalizing on it as it is one of my favorite tracks to go to.”
WHAT HAS YOU SO EXCITED?
“Having my little girl in the off-season helped put some things in perspective in my life and I have been trying to change my approach on some things. I let the sport get me a little down, which sounds ridiculous in your rookie season because I never really struggled in any of my previous rookies seasons, whether it was trucks, Xfinity. I won races in my rookie season in both those series and was battling for championships all the way down to the end. Last year that wasn’t really the case. We had a couple of close calls to win a race. I feel relieved that at the end of my rookie season I really learned some things that are going to help me this year. Also, kind of changed my outlook. Everything is an opportunity.”
IS THAT HOW YOU SAW GOING TO GERMAIN AS AN OPPORTUNITY?
“I think the fact that I have my own identity at Germain Racing and the more we grow as a team, the more I grow as a driver, the more I grow as a person we feel comfortable.”
WHAT IS BUBBA WALLACE GOING TO FACE COMING INTO HIS ROOKIE YEAR IN THE CUP SERIES?
“Patience, and I didn’t realize in my rookie season how much I needed to soak in and evaluate every weekend the process of what I was doing wrong and right. It took me to this off-season to download all the information that I learned. Not that you’re not going to give it everything you’ve got every weekend, but once you download all that information you can really put it to good use.”
WHAT HAS BOB GERMAIN’S COMMITMENT TO YOU MEANT?
“The more that I grow and my family grows, I think you realize the opportunity just to drive a race car and I want to make the most of it and better myself. I think I learned to enjoy to loss of last year – not always finishing good – and I’m starting to enjoy the process of making myself better.”
WHAT ROLE DID YOU DAD’S RACING CAREER HAVE IN YOU DECIDING TO PURSUE THIS CAREER?
“I was so young during that time, but just sort of hearing his friends reminiscing about what he was so good at and hearing what he thought he was good at was cool. But I didn’t really get to download or learn some of the things he did in his career because I was so young. But now to talk to him and know what he’s gone through in his career and kind of bouncing those things off of each other is kind of nice to have a father and a brother and a grandfather who have gone through that.”
ARE THERE ANY PRE-RACE RITUALS THAT YOU DO TO KIND OF GET YOUR MIND RIGHT?
“Not really. We’re doing so much until the last five minutes of the race day, whether it’s a meet and greet two minutes before you put your helmet on, so it’s hard to get into a rhythm of doing that. When I put my helmet on is when my switch flips and that’s when I go into my zone.”
WAS IT EVER A CONSIDERATION FOR YOU GOING TO RCR OR DID YOU WANT AN OPPORTUNITY LIKE THIS TO MAKE YOUR OWN NAME AWAY FROM RCR?
“I think there was something inside of me that wanted to break out of that a little bit. As much as I love having a brother in the sport and my family in the sport and my grandfather is an owner and how much I would love to win races and championships for him, I think I needed to break out of that grandson-brother shadow that I had. Not that it was a negative shadow. I just want people to see me for me. Austin and I can do some great things together, and we do on and off the racetrack, but for me to grow as a person off the racetrack is just as important. So Bo taking the opportunity on me and Geico to bring me in, I can’t wait to make the most of this opportunity and grow with both of them.”
WHERE YOU DO SEE YOU NEED IMPROVEMENT?
“I think my patience. I get pissed when I’m not in the top 10 and that affected me a lot this past season. The last couple of races I just let that go and in practice let that emotion go and just focus on getting the race car to do what I need it to do and that’s go win races. When I put all my focus on just getting that race car driving right, I know I can get the job done. It took me the final two races to realize what I needed to do going into this next year that’s going to help me for sure.”
ARE THERE BAD HABITS THAT YOU PICK UP DIRT RACING THAT YOU BRING OVER HERE?
“I’m sure there is. If you do anything for too long on the way up to the NASCAR series, if that’s your goal, you can get a little torn into certain ways. I still to this day want to do more dirt races when I have time to get back in a dirt car and that skill because it’s so unique. I think the quickest of the whole weekend, whether it’s four-lap hot lap sessions, one-lap qualifying sessions, six-lap heat race and a 20-lap feature what you take out of that is you process things a lot quicker. So when you get to a NASCAR race it’s an hourlong practice and two more hourlong practices and a four-hour race, you’re thinking at such a higher level when you come out of a dirt car to a Cup car. That really helps.”
IS THERE A POSSIBILITY OF YOU FINDING A DIRT CAR TO JUMP IN?
“I’m sure I could if I wanted to do it the right way. But it’s also a work-life balance thing, too. I did 68 races last year and not one dirt race, and that was just NASCAR stuff. That was a little much. I think I need to back myself down a little bit and I’m looking forward to finding that happy medium. Maybe after this year I’ll find that I have time to do some dirt racing and make sure I get the right schedule.”
WHEN DID YOU COME TO THE REALIZATION THAT YOU WANTED TO BREAK AWAY AND BE YOUR OWN PERSON?
“I think it was always kind of there. Starting racing, I needed the help. It’s like a business where you need the backing. You have to have the backing of someone who believes in you to get you started. Then, when you’re a person that knows you need to have their own image or you feel like you’re a leader, you eventually break back off and do your own thing because you know that’s what you like to do. That’s what happened for me is when I had the opportunity – and first off there wasn’t really an opportunity at RCR at the time – I knew I was ready and also I knew I had so much more to tell the fans and show the fans and show a lot of people in the sport about who I am. I think it all kind of came together in the right time. I put it out there enough and my grandfather knew that it was the right time for me, too, and under his blessing he was fine with me leaving. I think that was just the right thing for me. After my rookie season is over and I kind of feel comfortable in the sport and what it takes to drive and I know that I can do this, I can grow as a person. And over the next couple of years people are going to get to know me better and start liking me a little more.”
IS THAT SOMETHING YOU WANT TO STICK WITH?
“I want to be my own self, but I think there are a lot of things my brother and I can do that are great and I still want to work with my grandfather. But I want people to know me for me and know my life and know who I am. At the young parts of my career and the beginning stages we needed to be grouped together to get the full impact and now that I feel like I’m at this top level I can start branching off and let people know me. I want to race for Germain Racing and Geico my whole career and win races and championships and build my own brand like Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.”
HOW HAS BEING A FATHER AFFECTED YOU AS A PERSON?
“As a father, just seeing my little girl when she’s crying at 1 o’clock in the morning and 3 o’clock in the morning and you’re sitting there holding her and trying to get her to go back to sleep, and just looking as what life starts as gives you such a perspective on living and realizing what life is truly about. So I hope to take what I’ve learned from being her father for just two months and kind of adapt it to every aspect of my life and the appreciation for what I have and what I am and who I am.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT RICHMOND, ANOTHER SHORT TRACK, BEING IN THE CHASE?
“I like it. I think the world is changing in such as way that every aspect of life is day trading now. You have to be in the forefront of the next media, the next social media and you have to be catching people’s eyes different every single day in a different way. The fact that we had such a set schedule for so many years you’re going to lose eyes because eventually – and I think (Kevin) Harvick put it in such a good way yesterday – we have to change things up and we have to make some excitement by making changes, especially with the move to getting younger. Controversial or not, it gets eyeballs and more eyeballs are more opportunities in the sport. We just have to continue to change things for what we think is the best and the negative shadow that gets cast on NASCAR for making changes should be lifted and some of the drivers should take ownership of that. There are always a couple drivers who hate change and I think the younger generation is going to help that – to embrace more change.”
YOU SAID YOU WANT PEOPLE TO GET TO KNOW YOU IN A DIFFERENT WAY. WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT?
“I have such a platform and I don’t think a lot of people realize what we have. I’m not the top of the top of the sport right now, but I do have 150,000 followers on Twitter and have almost 50,000 on Instagram and that’s such a great platform to start exploding off of. Some people have to work 10, 15, 20 years to grow a platform like that and really grind it out. And all I really have done is driver race cars, something I’m really good at, to get to that point. My focus is to expand that and, like I said, the more eyeballs I get the more opportunities I’ll get not only to grow myself and the passions I want to try to achieve outside of racing. Just like everyone else, there are a lot of things I wasn’t to be good at. I want to use that as a springboard to launch myself, and who knows where this career is going to go. I think I’m a great race car driver. I know I can win races and battle for championships, but people are retiring at 40 in this sport and that’s 40 percent of your life. I expect to life to 100. I want to use this for the next 60 percent of my life to go out and do some more things that I want to do. I want to own a major sports team one day, and I love tech and I think the e-sports are going to be huge. I feel like I have a pretty good business mind, so I just want to use this platform to achieve things in my life. Who knows what I could become. I have such a great platform at 25 years old. Not that it’s going to distract me from racing, but I’m going to be the best I can be and use it. I think that everybody in the world can do that because we have the internet and we can connect so well. So one of my big focuses this off-season – to use that platform. I’ve been putting videos up and getting a lot of great responses from fans. I’m going to take that to the next level and video blog my whole year. I’ve hired somebody who is going to not all 36 races but 36 events with me and kind of catch the behind-the-scenes person that I am. I think something that has bothered me about our sport in the ‘90s and 2000s everybody said they could relate so well to Dale Earnhardt. That’s why they loved him. He’s obviously the top level of fandom in our sport. He did such a great job of making people feel they are just like Dale Earnhardt even though he’s a race car driver. I feel like I can do that. I just have to give them a better platform, so I’m going to do that and it’s the fans’ opportunity this year to get to know me. I’m just as passionate as every single person, whether you have nothing or have everything. Everybody is passionate about something. I want people to see what fuels me, whether it’s my family, whether it’s sports, whether it’s racing. I’m going to open up and see me for who I am and that they can relate to me, too, as a human. I have a blessed situation in the fact that I’m a race car driver and the chance of being that in the world today is very small, but the chance of being a human being is like one in four-hundred trillion, so we’re all pretty lucky to have opportunities.”
DO YOU HAVE TO BE AWARE THAT SOME OF THE THINGS YOU LIKE OR SHARE ARE NOT GOING TO BE LIKED BY SOME?
“I already get enough blow-back without even saying anything on Twitter from people. Haters are going to hate; that’s all they do. That doesn’t bother me; that’s not going to affect me because I’m not a person that hates. I’m also a person that doesn’t talk before they know something. I kind of have gotten the persona of the quiet, kind of reserved person. But it’s more or less of as I’ve been in this sport I watch and I listen, I see what people are doing right and I see what people are doing wrong. And when I feel confident in myself and know what I’m going to do, I’m going to explode. I’m going to take it let me be my personality and let people see it. I’m not a flash in the pan. I plan on building a legacy and what I want to do and who I want to be. I only talk when I put myself in situations that I know I’m comfortable in. You’re going to get haters, but you just look past that and see them as motivation.”
DO YOU FEEL YOUR CUP CAREER IS PROGRESSING THE WAY YOU WANT IT?
“If you would have asked me three-quarters of the way through last year I would have been negative and said no. The last two races of the year really opened my eyes to some things and some processes that I realized that if I focus on that and focus on making sure the race car is driving the right way and driving the way that I can drive the car as hard as I can possibly go — because I feel like I’m one of the best restarters and one of the best guys at being aggressive at the right times and the right ways in this sport – and I think if you look at some of the statistics from last year I was one of the hardest chargers every week, whether we started 20th or 30th or 15th it didn’t matter. We always went forward. I know I have the ability to do it. It’s just making sure I stay in my process, stay in my lane and we’re going to grow at Germain. Our cars are going to get better and I know some things that I’m going to do better that are going to be better than last year. I’m excited for the growth of this year, and now I feel like I’m finally getting a grasp on what it takes to have an opportunity at the top level.”
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