RYAN BLANEY POST-RACE PRESS CONFERENCE
Q. How big is this victory for you not just as your first win as a member of Team Penske, but the timing of being able to pull this off today with the playoffs and knowing that you were in a precarious position coming into it?
RYAN BLANEY: Yeah, it was kind of one of the thoughts in the back of our head. Kind of the strategy for the race was really don’t give up stage points and try to maximize on that side of it, and we did a really good job of the strategy of being able to win that second stage and stretch it on fuel and win that stage. That was really big for us. That kind of set up our whole day, even though we had to go to the back and pit again.
We were able to kind of put ourselves in a spot to where towards the end of the day we were just racing the 88 and 14, and we were just right in front of or behind the 88 just because we didn’t want to let him out of our sight, so when he pitted towards the end of the race, we pitted, just to stay on the same strategy. Same with the 14. We put ourselves in a spot to capitalize on something happening, and we did.
But really big to be able to win for Roger. Obviously that’s not the way I’d want to do it. Obviously I want to go out and dominate the race. Whenever you win something like this, it’s a weird feeling. I don’t really want to call it an undeserved feeling, but it’s just kind of an odd feeling. But we put ourselves in a good spot, and it worked out for us. When I was running third, I was just thinking about points. We were good on points, and I was cool with just riding around in third. But then that situation happened, and we happened to be there.
Q. You’re a history buff; this race had shades of the last lap of the 1976 Daytona 500. Thoughts there from the driver’s seat, and what are you thinking as all of a sudden you see Truex and Jimmie start going every which way?
RYAN BLANEY: You know, when I got out of the Bus Stop, I could still see them through the oval 3 and 4, and they were really close to each other. Jimmie was almost pushing him. I was like, hmm, it might get physical here. I don’t know what happened. By the time I got to them or by the time I was able to see something, Jimmie was sideways, and I’m sure they just tried to out‑brake each other, which you can’t blame them. They’re going for the win, of course.
When I was thinking they were kind of sitting there, I almost wrecked trying to get through the chicane as fast as I could just because you’re trying to make up time and try to seize the moment. But it was kind of just disbelief. I didn’t know what ‑‑ you’re kind of shocked that something like that happens and that you’re lucky to be in that spot. Luck has not been on our side very often. Sometimes you find a nut.
But it was good to have happen. It’s ‑‑ not good that that happened, just luckily it worked out for us.
Q. We’ve heard a lot about this race the past few months, weeks leading up to it. Now that it’s over, regardless of the finish, how would you describe it overall and would you consider it a success?
RYAN BLANEY: Yeah, it was a tough race. I’m pretty worn out. The racetrack is really, really difficult. A lot of hard racing. I think the only thing ‑‑ there’s a few things I’d like to see changed as far as the speed bumps and stuff and the curbs. I’d like to see that be a little bit different as far as the way they shape them and mound them. It was really hard to pass. I thought there was very few passing zones, so that was pretty difficult. But I think you can tweak on it. Nothing is ever perfect, especially the first time you try something new.
I don’t want to ‑‑ I’m definitely not going to bash it. That’s not even ‑‑ if I wouldn’t have won the race, I wouldn’t bash it because I thought it had potential. I know a lot of people bashed it leading up to it, but it was definitely hectic at times, but a really tough racetrack. But you can tweak on it, made some changes, and I think keep progressing it, and it could get better and better.
Q. Were you curious how they were going to score you after the accident in Turn 1, and how pleased were you by where they put you?
RYAN BLANEY: Yeah, I was pretty confident they were going to put me back behind the 88 because that’s where we were. It was kind of right at the last scoring loop there when the caution came out, and I was pretty confident they were going to put me back to where we should be, and I thought they made the right call there.
I was more worried about the damage we got. I kind of clipped somebody with my right front tire, and it spun the wheel really fast out of my hands, and I was like, I broke something, and the toe was kind of out, so that worried me, and there was damage all the way down the right side of the door. I was worried about it rubbing. But you couldn’t pit. You pit and you go back to 25th and you’re out of the points.
But yeah, I figured they would put us back up there where we belonged because I was going back to the scoring loop, and that’s where we were at.
Q. You said you don’t blame Jimmie for going for it, but it cost him a playoff spot. Does it surprise you that somebody would go for a win when if he finishes second he’s still running for a championship?
RYAN BLANEY: Yeah, I didn’t know where his spot was. I didn’t know his position in the race. He didn’t, either. Yeah, I didn’t know where he was sitting. But yeah, I can’t speak on it just because I’m not him. You make decisions every single second behind the race car, and sometimes really hard decisions, and sometimes the will to win kind of is too high to just sit there and run second.
I couldn’t really give you a good thought on that just because I’m not Jimmie Johnson.
Q. Ryan, coming to that restart where they crashed in Turn 1, did you have a feeling that that was going to happen at some point in time, and were you a little surprised that from your position you were able to get through there with little to no damage?
RYAN BLANEY: Yeah, so the restart is so tough because you don’t run the chicane on the front stretch, and you just run the normal restart zone, so by the time you’re going, you’re going so much faster than when you come out of that chicane when you do a restart. But from what I saw, everybody got in there as deep as the leaders did, the cars just followed them in there. Because when you’re restarting, you’re kind of just judging off of the cars in front of you of where to get on the brakes because when they’re all jumbled up, you can’t see markers, you don’t see where you are on the track, you’re just going by the guy in front of you.
I figured that was going to happen at some point, and that was kind of the ‑‑ getting down to crunch time and drivers trying really hard to win the race. I was actually at the top of 3 when this happened, and I could not believe I did not get more damage. I collected ‑‑ we barely, barely squeezed by ‑‑ we didn’t even squeeze by; we hit something. I know people were talking about that corner leading up to it. It’s just tight and it’s slippery getting into that corner, and just drivers racing hard, and stuff happens like that.
Q. Roger mentioned when he was in earlier that he had had a conversation with you in Victory Lane, and he seemed especially excited about your prospects for the second round of the playoffs. Can you assess how you think they’ve gone so far up until this win today, and what gets you excited about the next stage?
RYAN BLANEY: Yeah, leading into the playoffs, honestly, we were most nervous about round 1. There were some tracks in there that weren’t very good for us. Richmond we’ve struggled at, and here you just didn’t know what was going to happen, and we didn’t have the best day at Las Vegas, which is usually a good track for us. But yeah, this is the round I was worried about. We did a great job today before the last couple cautions of putting ourselves in a spot to move on to the second round, and the reason why he and I were talking about the second round if I think there’s some good tracks there for us. Dover we always run pretty decent at; Talladega, our speedway cars are pretty good; and then Kansas has been one of our best racetracks for sure, especially in the Cup Series. I’m looking forward to the second round.
In the third round there’s been some tracks that are good for us, too. Yeah, the first round we were worried about it just because some places we struggle and some of the unknowns. But second round, hopefully it goes well. Just good tracks for us. That’s really all we were talking about is places we have run decent at. Even though it’s a wild card like Talladega, I think our speedway stuff is okay, so hopefully we can just stay out of trouble there.
Q. Although there were unknowns going into this race, did anything surprise you about how it went or what you went through today?
RYAN BLANEY: Surprise me? Really the only thing that surprised me was the ending. I didn’t expect that to happen. But as far as the racing today or what the track kind of went to, not really. Nothing really shocked me as far as the racetrack went or how things raced. I thought it was pretty much of what we thought. Actually I thought it was calmer than what it was going to be. I thought there was going to be ‑‑ the first three quarters of this race was pretty calm. There wasn’t really any pile‑ups or big wrecks or anything like that. There was a couple cars going off here and there, and even towards the end there wasn’t massive wrecks or nothing like that. You really just had that one.
I think maybe that was something different. And I kind of got that feeling yesterday in the Xfinity race, there wasn’t really any of that. There wasn’t any big pile‑ups. I think everybody respected out there for sure, but at the same time had really hard racing. But nothing really surprised me too much as far as the racing went.
Q. Can you further just kind of explain when you talk about that you referenced you undeserving feeling ‑‑ I know every racer just wants to dominate the field, but I mean, I’m sure there’s still a lot of joy, or is it tempered, or can you give me a little better ‑‑ what you’re feeling in that sense?
RYAN BLANEY: Yeah, I’m actually happy you asked another question because I didn’t think I described it very good the first time. You know, you’re happy that it’s worked out for you. You’re happy you won the race. You’re happy for the team to do that. But me personally inside, there’s some of me, I’m happy, I’m like, all right, this is great, we put ourselves in a spot to do this. But you don’t want people to look at it and I don’t look at ‑‑ I don’t want people to look at it as, oh, you just won because the two guys wrecked. And that’s what it was, and you don’t want to be kind of overjoyed about it, I guess, you know, but you have to have some pride in it, I guess. It’s a weird feeling.
Like I said, I hate using that “undeserved” word because they deserved it because we put ourselves in that spot. I don’t know if ‑‑ I don’t have the vocabulary to describe the feeling. But it’s just a different ‑‑ I’ve never won a race like that before. Any race I’ve ever been in, quarter midgets, late models, legends cars, I’ve never been running third and the two cars wreck each other and I win the race, so that’s kind of a weird feeling.
But you try to enjoy it. You try to be as humble as you can about it because you know you weren’t the best car today, so I think being humble is a very big part of it, but at the same time, celebrate because you’ve got to take them how you can get them.
We did our job in the points to move on to the next round even if we didn’t win the race, so that’s something you have to be very proud of, and I think just a bonus is winning the race and things work out for you that way. Hopefully I described it good. It’s kind of hard to describe.
Q. Being from High Point, talk about the significance of you winning at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
RYAN BLANEY: Yeah, High Point, about an hour up the road. We did that ‑‑ me and Rutledge did the Racing Roots thing from High Point, so that was really cool to go back home, see some great friends and family. A family I had on the show that kind of was my second family, their son, my best friend was here today, so that was pretty cool to have him out.
But yeah, it means a lot. I consider this a home racetrack for sure, like a lot of guys, but I came here all the time to watch my dad race. This is the first race my dad has been to in about six, seven weeks. He finally got a weekend off of racing the All‑Stars, and I told him he needs to come more often; he might be a good‑luck charm. But it was cool to have the whole family here. My mother was here, my six‑month pregnant sister was here, so that was good, and we were just missing one of them. But it was cool to have the family here, but yeah, High Point and being so close to this place, it brings back a lot of memories whenever I go back home.
JEREMY BULLINS AND ROGER PENSKE
JEREMY BULLINS: Yeah, for us the race keyed a lot off the stage points. Being what our situation was coming in, we needed to get every point we could today, so we made a play to win Stage 2, and I knew we had our work cut out for us to get back to the front because of that, but it just worked out. The play that we made panned out in the last stage. We had fresh tires at the end, and the cautions were working out for us to gain some track position, and we were in position when those guys got together on the last lap.
I think since everybody first saw the track map, we said, coming to the checker is going to be interesting, and it was, and it just worked out we were in the right place at the right time.
ROGER PENSKE: Well, I think everyone wondered what was really going to happen here with the Roval, and lots of the drivers, the teams were like, wow, it’s going to be something. But I think the fact that it was the cutoff for the next playoff made it more interesting. There was so much strategy going on, a lot of racing. And I think obviously the ending with Brad and certainly the 42 there at the end, it was a terrific show. And I think that as the fans start to understand the strategy, because you can pit early, you can pit late, there’s lots of things that once we get that communicated out to our fan base, I think it’s made a huge difference. Obviously we were very, very happy to see young Ryan win this race.
For me and for Marcus and the whole industry, I think change is important for us, and this is something I felt was good, and certainly I think at the end of the day people would vote that it was some race and some finish.
Q. In 1976 you fielded a No. 2 for Bobby Allison, and that year’s Daytona 500 had a little bit of a similar finish to what we saw. What were your thoughts there watching Ryan come through to take the checkered flag, and when that last lap started, did you believe there was a true hope it was going to happen like that?
ROGER PENSKE: Well, I think you should go out and look at the right front fender on the 12 car because when we had the mess down there in Turn 1, he got into the 21, quite honestly. We weren’t sure, there was some talk that we might have a tire rub, but we just needed to finish those three laps. He was in great shape to make the next stage for the playoffs. And that’s really what we were focusing on, getting those early points. I think Jeremy had a great call there, and then when we came in, we had plenty of fuel, so at the end of the day, just the clouds kind of parted.
I hate to see Jimmie not being in the playoffs. To me a champion like he is should be in, but on the other hand, I guess the 42, he’s one of the great young racers we have today. Overall it’s a great day, and Blaney is one of the superstars coming up. We’re just glad he’s on our team.
Q. You’ve been a track promoter, you’ve got the Detroit race, yet you talk about change is good. This was something unique. Is this something even with the new package coming up to help the ovals next year, is this something more tracks or the sport should look at is kind of creating this type of environment, or can there be ‑‑ did this show that these cars can run on a street course like your Detroit course at some point?
ROGER PENSKE: Well, I think that ‑‑ I say change is good. As we come back to some of these locations, maybe the second event or the first event is different, and you could say you could almost run on the road course at Daytona. Think about it. There’s plenty of places to try to utilize their facility for more than just one major event. I think this will put a lot of the promoters’ thinking caps on to determine what they can do, and I think change is good, and there’s no question as you saw the race build up and as the drivers started to get better on the racetrack, the racing was very tough.
I think the fact ‑‑ it was a little bit like our Cleveland race many years ago, you could see everything. A fan in the stand could see the cars, and that’s really important. Most road races you don’t get to see that, so I think that’s a bonus that we had here in Charlotte.
I guess if we get big enough barriers, if we had a full street course, I think it might be interesting. But no, I think that we’ve got to look at that. I think if somebody wanted to do that and put that on, it would be very interesting.
But the difficult thing on a tight street course is the size of the pit lane running 22 or 23 cars; you start getting 40 out there and the size of the pits and what we have to do might be a little bit of a problem, but look, I think we try anything.
Q. Roger, what is the significance of getting the 12 car into Victory Lane this year in its first full season?
ROGER PENSKE: Well, listen, when you think about it, seven out of the 12 cars that are in the next stage are all Fords, and to see that Stewart‑Haas has four and we have our three guys is pretty exciting. We’re sitting there on the edge with both the 22 and 12. We’ve had good cars, good racing, and again, this is what it’s all about. But for Blaney, it will just propel him to be that much tougher as we go into the next stage.
Q. Roger, how big do you think it is for Blaney to make this next round and get a win? Everybody has been looking for the young guys to kind of win and be a little stronger.
ROGER PENSKE: Well, that’s what I thought when you think about Chase and you think about Blaney. They run well, but they got wins this year. For him to get in the playoffs, this next stage, is monumental for his career, and I think his confidence ‑‑ in fact, he said to me in Victory Lane, he said, look, I can really go in this stage, because he likes those tracks. But I think overall, we’ve got to give him the credit and certainly Jeremy, and Andrea Mueller is our engineer on that car, too, should give her a lot of credit for what she’s done, bringing that car to where it is; right, Jeremy?
JEREMY BULLINS: Absolutely.
Q. On a separate topic, Dover is going to have a kiosk in their fan zone next week where people can bet on the race, they’ll be able to bet on NFL games and anything you can bet on in the casino inside; are you in favor of that?
ROGER PENSKE: Well, I might be in favor of going to Las Vegas and betting, but I’m not sure I’m ready to bet on a NASCAR race personally. It’s not something I’ve focused on at all. Obviously they have the capability in Delaware because they’ve got the track, they have betting. I think maybe for there it might work well. Some states will allow it, some states won’t, so I think that’s something that the industry really has to focus on and determine whether it’s something we should do. At this point I don’t really have a position on it, and I don’t know that it’s an option for us in the longer term.
Q. Roger, a few weeks ago on my radio show I talked about the Penske organization maybe peaking at the right time, and this was when Brad Keselowski finally got a win, Joey had gotten his, and then of course Blaney was starting to look stronger. Can you talk about some of the efforts that have gone into this season for you all to get where you are at this point for 2018?
ROGER PENSKE: Well, I think you work these entire 28 weeks with equipment that you’ve worked on, there’s been some rule changes in between, we’ve done some things, but the focus in building the cars for this playoff period was something we focused on. Our R&D guys should get a big piece of credit for that because they’ve been working on evolutions of the cars we have for every week. In fact, we’ll have new cars every week with something new on it, we hope as we go forward over the next several weeks.
It’s a focus. I think all the teams continue to bring better stuff. I don’t think we’ve been to a track lately that we didn’t have something different than the previous week. I think that’s the industry right now.
Q. When you say your cars were worked on, was it specifically getting your cars better and helping them propel (indiscernible)?
ROGER PENSKE: Well, I think from a road racing perspective, we’ve got lots of information and things. The way we set our cars up on Indy, some of it doesn’t transfer, but I think there’s a cross‑pollination that’s really happened over the last several months, and certainly as we’ve focused on these cars, a lot of that’s certainly paying off; don’t you think, Jeremy?
JEREMY BULLINS: Yeah, absolutely. Everybody at the shop has worked really hard the last few weeks, and to Roger’s point, the cars that we had here, there was a lot of effort that went into making these the best road course cars we could have being that it’s the playoffs and everything we’ve got coming down the pipeline, speedway cars, intermediate cars, short track cars. We’re working really hard to make sure we’re bringing the best stuff every week.
