COREY LAJOIE, No. 32 Go FAS Racing Ford Mustang – THIS IS YOUR FIRST YEAR AS A FATHER, SO WITH FATHER’S DAY ON SUNDAY HOW ARE YOU FEELING? “As anybody that has a kid would know it is a lot of work, and you don’t really know what you sign up for. You think you kind of know, but you don’t really know. It’s a lot of work, but it’s also so fulfilling just by seeing my little guy get older and start to recognize you, recognize his mom and start to interact with you. That’s when it gets really fun.”
YOU POSTED YOUR STATEMENT ABOUT DENNY ON TWITTER. HAVE YOU HEARD ANYTHING FROM DENNY? IF NOT, ARE YOU COMFORTABLE WITH WHERE THINGS STAND FOR NOW? “I can sleep at night. I think that it didn’t even get to a point where I still felt like I was in the wrong, per se, but it got to a point where I would listen to it back and I felt convicted about how I was handling it, whether or not it was tit-for-tat or whatever, and it just got to a point where I listened to myself back on what I was saying and how I was saying things that I was questioning who that guy was because that person that has been on the podcast the last week wasn’t who I was. That wasn’t how I treat people. That wasn’t what I call people. That wasn’t how I deal with issues, and I guess because I felt threatened or offended in a certain way, I felt like I had to act a certain way. Regardless of what was said by both sides, I finally got to a point where I was convicted to just stop it on my end. We didn’t come to a mutual agreement by any means. It was just a point where me personally I was over it. I was over carrying that burden of wanting to stick up for myself because I just want to drive a race car at the end of the day. When it changed from me sticking up for myself, when somebody else sub-tweeted all my stuff, when it morphed into me picking up stones and throwing them back, that’s when I had to listen to it back and I had to stop it.”
WHY APOLOGIZE? “The thing that I really wanted to apologize for was calling the guy names. I don’t want anybody calling me names and I think that was childish, whether people can listen to the podcast and hear what I said, whether it be I called him two different things that I was disappointed in myself. I wasn’t apologizing for anything else. (Remainder of comments had audio issues)”
NASCAR IS ALLOWING TO HAVE ONE SIGNIFICANT OTHER AT THE TRACK THIS WEEKEND. IS THAT IMPORTANT TO YOU? “I know it’s important for drivers as a whole. For me in particular, my wife is just gonna stay home with the kid because he’s three months and it’s a little bit of a hassle to lug the motorhome down to wherever the race is. It’s really just easy to fly in and fly out the day of for me. Do I miss them there? Yeah, but they’ll be there when I get home, but I know with guys that have younger kids that like being at the racetrack and seeing the other kids hanging out in the driver/owner lot, I know it’ll be well-received being able to bring your spouse or wife or kids to the track for sure.”
HOW DO YOU THINK THE NEW RULES WILL CHANGE THE RACING AND HOW DO YOU THINK THE MEMORY OF THE ACCIDENT AT DAYTONA WILL ALTER THE WAY DRIVERS RACE, IF AT ALL? “It won’t. In some cases drivers are like elephants and they don’t forget, and in some instances drivers can forget what they had for lunch. When it comes to an incident like what happened at Daytona, you don’t let that change any move you’re gonna make, especially when you’re getting down to it and you’re racing for the win. You kind of leave the safety of the cars up to NASCAR and John Patalak and those guys, Probst, do a great job with evaluating the data they have at hand and making our cars safer as well as the competition as close as they reasonably can. I think looking at it with a little bit less horsepower, a little bit less drag with the nose ducts, I think the closing rates will be less, the ability to push somebody will probably be less because that bubble that everybody talks about will be between the cars a little bit more relative to it had been with the nose ducts that could escape that pocket. And I think when you get down to it and have to start positioning yourself in different gaps it’s gonna be a little bit more technical because you won’t have that horsepower to overcome any sort of misjudgment, I guess. So guys that are gonna be racing for wins, hopefully it doesn’t get to where the leader can control the lines as easy as he was before this previous package because I do like the fact that the lanes can have big momentum runs without the leader controlling back and forth the top and the bottom. I think you might be able to do that a little bit easier, but I think with the big spoiler and the cars poking such a big hole in the ground the lines are still gonna build momentum and it will be tough for those leaders to control it.”
IS TALLADEGA A RACE YOU CAN’T OVERTHINK? “That’s a good question. You don’t have really time to overthink it. You can try to play out different scenarios in your head and, granted, I’ve never been in a situation where – I’ve been close to the front on the speedways. I’ve been to where coming out to the white of the 500 I was running third and then things shake up, so every situation is different and you can try to play something through your head, but it is split-second decisions and your outcome, really, is related to other guys’ decisions around you a lot of the times, where somebody in front of you makes a move and you choose to go with him or you choose not to and there are thousands of moves throughout the course of the race that you can position your car. You can choose one or the other, or there are one of three options you can do usually and you hope that the combination of all those choices throughout the race can position you and you made enough friends throughout the race or you show what your car is able to do and somebody will work with you on the last lap or two to push you to the win or push you to a good finish. You don’t get to the front without some help and you also don’t stay in the front for a long period of time without somebody working with you.”
HAS THERE EVER BEEN A FEELING IN THE GARAGE WHERE THE GUYS ON TOP OF THE SPORT FEEL THOSE THAT ARE LOWER IN THE FIELD SHOULDN’T SPEAK UP? “I do think there’s a little bit of that, but I don’t want to assume. I don’t want to assume what people think. The only person I control is me and I made some decisions over the past 10 days that I didn’t like. It was like this realization where what I thought was tit-for-tat going upwards, it was tit-for-tat digging each other into a hole. For me, I don’t speak for anybody else, but, for me, the only way that I saw ending the deal with any sort of integrity left or character that I would like to uphold myself to was to issue that and apologize for things that I was truly sorry for. I wasn’t sorry for sticking up for myself and I wasn’t sorry for saying some of the things I said in my podcast, but there were a couple things with names that I called him that I truly was sorry about because I don’t like calling people names. I was raised not to do that. I got caught up in the emotion and, like I said in the statement, it was the energy of the fans. You kind of feel like you’re pumped up a little bit and when it morphed from being sub-tweeted at sticking up for myself per fact, then when your other competitors are texting you, ‘Stick up for yourself. Show him. Post those things. Say those things.’ All of a sudden you think you’re fighting this fight for everybody else and that’s not my fight, and once I realized that I was like, ‘You know what? I’m done.’ He might not be done. He might not consider it done. He might consider I’ve got to pay for things that I’ve done or whatever, which might be the case, but as far as I’m concerned I’m worried about Talladega and I’m worried about trying to get a good result going forward.”
DENNY SAID “I THINK WE’RE OKAY NOW.” ARE YOU AT A POINT NOW WHERE YOU AND HE WILL OR SHOULD GET TOGETHER BEFORE THE RACE AND TALK IT OUT IN PERSON? “I don’t know. Did I run my mouth a little bit more than what I probably should have? Yes. Did he do things that he probably regretted. Yes. That’s how we got into this situation. We are both grown-ups. We both have kids. We both have jobs and livelihoods that are bigger than this little tiff we have going on. We might think it’s bigger because there’s pride and ego involved, but at the end of the day he’s got his people he’s got to answer to and he’s got his mission of trying to win races and championships and I’ve got my mission of trying to do a good job for my team and eventually hopefully get a more competitive car and keep working my way up the ladder and everybody is on that same page. I personally learned a lot through what I went through. I learned a lot about myself. I’ve never been in this situation. I’ve never really had to stick up for myself at a level like this. When I realized I was using the platforms that MRN and NASCAR in a sense, since they own MRN, they afford me the opportunity to have a podcast, which I love and I love to talk about this sport. I love talking about the ins-and-outs of it, the business of it, because I’ve grown up in it and I love it, but when I realized, and whether or not some people on my side can say I still have the right to say my side, but it turned into something where I didn’t feel like I was using my platform for positivity. There’s enough negativity in the world going on as we all can agree on, I certainly don’t want to aid any negativity, especially on my platforms, whether it be social media or SiriusXM radio or my podcast because that’s not who I am. I’m a fierce competitor. I stick up for what I believe in. I’m a friend to people who want to be friends with me and I’m trying to be a good dad and a good husband. That’s just what it is.”
HAS NASCAR STEPPED IN AND TALKED TO YOU ABOUT THIS AT ALL? “Yes. Last week we had a meeting when there was some things that came to a head that they had to address. Should I have let it die after that meeting? Probably so, but I didn’t. I felt like I was trying to breeze over it, trying to say there were some private messages exchanged, NASCAR had to get in the middle of it, we talked about it and moved on, and that’s kind of how I was trying to frame it up in my podcast, but then I, for whatever reason I elaborated more on it than I should have and it ended up making a story. I think Denny and I can both agree that we were both in the wrong and I finally just had to eat it, whether or not I still had a leg to stand on in the argument. We moved on from what the original points of the argument was and that’s when I was like, ‘What in the hell are we doing here?’ But it’s easy to get caught up in it. It’s easy to get caught up in the emotion. It’s easy to get from one point to the next point and not know how you got there in-between and be like, ‘Oh, shoot. Now I’m in a hole I can’t really get out of.’ NASCAR doesn’t patrol Twitter and they don’t call meetings because two people are beefing in their sub-tweets section. Stuff has to escalate to a point where if they were worried about it bleeding over onto the racetrack, and let’s hope it doesn’t. I’m probably talking about it more than I would be recommended to, but I just wanted to say my peace with it because as far as I’m concerned I said what I’ve said. I’ve apologized for what I feel bad for and now I just want to go to the racetrack and go racing.”
WHAT DIFFERENCE IS THERE IN A RACE AT TALLADEGA COMPARED TO DAYTONA? “It’s crazy to think that the extra .16 miles that Talladega is versus Daytona might as well be an extra half-mile because it’s so much more wide than Daytona is. It’s not quite as temperature sensitive because the banking, I think, is a little bit more at Talladega. The overall racing groove is wider at Talladega, so it feels like there’s more weight in actual drafting strategy as opposed to mechanical handling like we see at Daytona sometimes. So that’s why it is so unique. Daytona sometimes when it’s hot and greasy and it’s slick like we had in the July race, now in August or September, whenever it is, handling comes into play and guys will start lifting, but the only time you’re lifting really at Talladega is because you’re trying to create some momentum, trying to create a run, trying to back yourself up from the guy in front of you and trying to get your line moving. Daytona and Talladega are relatively similar to the eye test on TV, but in terms of driving, in terms of strategy it is a little bit different.”
