NASCAR CUP SERIES
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
DAYTONA 500
TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 2, 2020
RYAN PREECE, NO. 37 JTG DAUGHERTY RACING CAMARO ZL1 1LE, Daytona 500 Media Availability Transcript:
HOW STRESSED ARE YOU ENTERING SPEEDWEEKS NOT BEING LOCKED INTO THE RACE?
“I’m not stressed at all. We’re going to go down, and if everything works out the way I think it’s laid out, we should qualify on speed. So, I feel pretty confident with it.”
DOES YOUR TEAM NOT HAVING A CHARTER CHANGE YOUR APPROACH TO EACH WEEKEND?
“I think… you show up every single week trying to get the most out of your equipment. So that doesn’t change anything about what I’m doing. Our approach for Daytona is the same as it has been every year, except I think we’ll be a little more aggressive than we have been in years past when it comes to stages. We’ve typically tried to lay back and make sure we are there at the end. But I think stage points are so important now that you have to race every single lap.”
WHAT YOU HAVE YOU BEEN TOLD IN TERMS OF SPONSORSHIP AND A FULL SEASON?
“I think you guys know as much as we all know. We’re going to continue week after week and hopefully everything is there, we’re having a solid season and everything comes together.”
WHICH NEW TRACK ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO MOST IN 2021?
“I’m looking more forward to our typical short tracks, which are the most exciting to me. I’m looking forward to Bristol dirt. That’s something new. The road courses are exciting also. I’m a racer… if there’s a trophy involved then I’m excited about it.”
WITH QUALIFYING AT NIGHT, DO YOU HAVE A BASELINE OR WHERE YOU EXPECT TO BE?
“I expect to be wide-open and holding the bottom. Everything from there on out… it’s still Daytona. There’s going to be no draft so it’s really going to come down to preparation and not having a strong headwind or anything like that. I guess we’ll have to find out.”
WHAT’S ON YOUR MOTORSPORTS BUCKET LIST?
“It would probably be an asphalt sprint car or Silver Crown. Those are things that I’ve always enjoyed watching through the years. I wasn’t from that part of the country so it was a lot more difficult for me to do that type of racing. So, if there’s something that I would love to do, it would probably be in one of those cars or even the night before the 500 in a midget. Those are some pretty sweet race cars.”
YOU’VE BEEN THROUGH A LOT IN YOUR CAREER, SO IS THE DRAMA OF NOT KNOWING IF YOU ARE OR AREN’T GOING TO HAVE A CHARTER OR NEED TO QUALIFY OR NOT QUALIFYING EASY TO HANDLE?
“I think you nailed it. It’s just another hurdle. I think we’re going to be just fine. To be honest with you, it’s not like I haven’t had obstacles in my career. It’s not easy and it’s not like you’re guaranteed (getting) in. Working with Trent (Owens, crew chief) and through some of the things that have been going on throughout the offseason, I feel confident that we should have plenty of speed and we can get in on time, which will make the Duals that much less difficult. No matter what plan you come up with when it comes to Daytona, you can be as prepared as possible but you never know what’s going to happen. We’ll see… hopefully we qualify in on time and everything becomes easier throughout the weekend. If we don’t then it will come down to executing, making sure everything goes right and get ourselves in.”
WOULD THIS MAKE THE TEAM TAKE A CHANCE AT A WIN ON STRATEGY?
“I think it’s going to push us to race more for stage points when it comes to the first two stages at Daytona. Usually if you look at years past, we’ve kind of just hung around purposefully to make sure we got to the end. But it seems like all these wrecks have been happening in the last 10 laps. So, you’re just giving away stage points. If you look at last year, we were negative-three points after three races due to not going after stage points, wrecking in the final laps at Daytona, a blown motor, not a good weekend at California and some penalties. We’re going try to get as many points as we can, and if we’re in position to be aggressive then we will be aggressive. That’s what it comes down to.”
WHERE DO YOU WANT TO BE AT DAYTONA TO AVOID THE BIG ONE?
“I 100 percent agree with Chris (Buescher). There is no right answer. I think we saw wrecks at the tail of the pack last year, we saw them at the front of the pack and the middle of the pack. It just comes down to the opportunity to get stage points, you have to run up front. If you’re going to elect to run at the back then you need to be about a straightaway back. There’s really no safe place at Daytona.”
CHEVROLET IS STARTING A NEW PARTNERSHIP WITH HENDRICK AND ECR ON THE ENGINE SIDE. HOW MUCH OF A HELP WILL THAT BE THIS YEAR?
“It’s important to have really good motors, especially with the 550 package because that makes all the difference. I feel confident we won’t have any engine failures and that we’ll have good horsepower.”
YOU SPOKE LAST YEAR ABOUT THE BAD LUCK THAT HAD HAPPENED. HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO RESET THIS OFFSEASON?
“If you look back at a lot of things that happened, for the most part they were beyond our control… We had a few motor failures and a transmission break. The superspeedways killed us a couple of times. There’s not much you can do when it comes to that, but we can focus forward and try to start the year off on a strong note. That’s what it’s going to come down to. The first thing we have to do is show our speed and see where we stack up there.”
THERE’S BEEN SOME BAD LUCK AND MISFORTUNE. WHAT ARE SOME THINGS YOU’VE DONE WELL AND WHAT ARE SOME THINGS TO DO BETTER WITH ALL THE UNCERTAINTY TO HAVE A LONG CUP CAREER?
“I think consistency is the first part of that. This is the second year I get to work with Trent, so I have the same crew chief again and I’m excited about that. That helps. I know Trent had a lot of success with Chris in 2019, and moving over to 2020 there were so many different variables and changes. Not having practices really affected how quickly we could speed the process up. I felt like toward the end of the year we showed that. We were able to lead laps at the ROVAL. We were able to get a couple of top-10s late in the season and have some solid runs. I look forward to the rest of 2021 and hopefully starting off hopefully where we left in 2020 and moving forward. That’s all you can do. The 2019 and 2020 seasons were essentially really long building years. I look forward to this year, focusing on what we need to do to make sure we get a good start to the season. Hopefully all the things we learned last year – what I do and don’t like – will help us start races a lot better and continue to try and keep gaining track position throughout the races.”
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