Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
NASCAR Zoom Media Availability | Wednesday, April 14, 2021
JEREMY BULLINS, Crew Chief, No. 2 Discount Tire Ford Mustang — WHAT MAKES RICHMOND UNIQUE? “Richmond is just a super technical track. It gets really slick. Cars fall off a lot. You lose a lot of forward drive over the run. You lose a lot of center turn. You get really loose in on the brakes. It’s a heavy braking track, so there are just a lot of challenges from the driver side and from the setup side to try to be really balanced over the course of a run.”
HOW HAS THE DYNAMIC CHANGED WITH THE TEAM IN THE COVID ERA? “It certainly is a much more challenging environment to try to be a leader, try to participate or get everybody together at once. I think we used to have a lot of team meetings that we don’t have now with the whole group. You’re just very cautious about gathering big groups of people like that, so there’s a lot more individual phone calls and texts and individual meetings with certain folks throughout the team and try to meet with the pit crew guys when you can at a distance and try to do the right things, but still have as much face time with all of your team members as you can. You just have to find different ways to do it, but it’s certainly changed the game in that regard.”
NASCAR IS LOOKING AT OPENING GARAGE ACCESS NEXT MONTH WHERE ARE THINGS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM IN TERMS OF VACCINATIONS? “I’ll be honest, I’m not really sure who has gotten the shot and who hasn’t. I have an appointment. I don’t have it yet, but I do have an appointment scheduled. It’s one of those things where it’s encouraged. It seems like it’s going OK and there’s no reason not to get it, so it’s something we’re encouraging everybody to do, but it’s a choice and I understand if somebody doesn’t want to get it. I don’t really know who has it and who doesn’t, but I read this weekend they’re gonna start letting fans back in. From that regard, I think our sport is not sustainable without fans, and I think the level of access that we’ve always provided is second to none compared to other sports. The ability to potentially be on the sidelines throughout a weekend is something that’s pretty cool about what we do, so I think it’s exciting to see some of that come back for the fans, and I think it’ll be good for the sport.”
SHOULD WE EXPECT TEAMS TO PIT TWICE IN THE FINAL STAGE AT RICHMOND THIS TIME OR ARE THERE THINGS THAT COULD IMPACT THAT STRATEGY? “I think the day race, I almost expect a little bit more fall off. It doesn’t look like it’s gonna be really hot. It looks like a fairly overcast prediction, so that may affect it some, but I think most of the teams will look at the fall off from the first two stages and come up with a strategy that mathematically makes the most sense for that last stage. I’d say there’s a good chance of that for sure.”
WHERE ARE YOU IN YOUR PREPARATION FOR THE NEXT GEN CAR COMPARED TO YOUR DAY-TO-DAY STUFF? “It’s on the radar. I keep up with what’s going on with it, but it’s not a primary focus right now. Our focus is getting this 2 car in victory lane and getting our spot in the playoffs locked up, and start making another run at Phoenix and trying to get back in the final four. We’ve got to put a lot of effort into this year and allocate some time to work on next year and beyond as well, so it’s on the radar, but it’s a blip on the radar for me right now. We’re trying to get this 2 car back in victory lane and hopefully we can do that this weekend.”
WHAT ARE YOU MOST EXCITED ABOUT WITH THIS NEXT GEN CAR? “Anytime you have something that’s brand new there’s an opportunity there to be the fastest out of the gate and that’s something that Team Penske takes a lot of pride in. HIstorically, through some of the rule changes, we feel like we’ve done a good job of adapting quickly and hopefully that’s something we can do again.”
HOW WOULD YOU RATE YOUR SEASON SO FAR? “I think we’ve had a lot of speed a lot of weeks and circumstances have prevented us from getting some of the finishes we wanted. I felt like we were in a good spot in Daytona and that didn’t work out. I felt like we had a couple other races — Phoenix, we were just a little bit off. We were so close, but come home fourth, and had a power-steering issue this weekend that kind of put us in a bad spot. We just had little things that have crept up that bit us and that’s part of it and that’s part of racing. I’d rather get that stuff out of the way now, but I feel like we’ve had times where we’ve had cars that were fast enough to compete and I feel like we’ve got some great racetracks coming up for us in the next few weeks and no reason we can’t turn our season into a really good season with a couple of wins.”
HOW DO BRAD AND RYAN COMPARE AND CONTRAST AS DRIVERS? “I’ve been fortunate enough all the way back to the XFINITY days to work with all of our drivers, with Joey as well. I always try to explain to people that they all have pretty much equal buckets of talent. If they had a bucket of experience, obviously Brad’s is more full than Ryan’s. I think the thing about working with Brad is he’s a veteran in the sport. He’s been to all these places so many times and he has a lot of knowledge about what happens on a race weekend and how the tracks change throughout the weekend and how the races play out — all those things that these veteran guys are able to leverage. In Ryan, you see that as he’s continued to progress and you see that every year he gets better and better, and all that is is a matter of combining the talent these guys have with the experience of knowing how your car’s got to drive during practice or how the race is gonna change throughout the weekend — from start to finish through a race of how you need to stay ahead on adjustments. The things that Ryan has learned over the years to have him where he’s at now to where he’s a lot more competitive than he was when he first started and it’s just a matter of experience. He’s always had the talent and all these guys that drive here at Team Penske are really talented.”
HOW DO YOU PLAN FOR A TRACK LIKE PHOENIX WHEN YOU HAVE NOTES FROM THREE DIFFERENT TEAMS TO LOOK THROUGH? “It’s funny, I was looking back this morning at notes from one of the last day races with Brad and the setup is very similar to what we’re gonna run and what we won with in the fall, so we’ve always tried to have a very open book policy here and everybody knows what everybody is running. You’re able to use all of that information to try to build from history, and as you look towards the short track package, I feel like that was one of the Team Penske strengths last year. We all ran really well at the short tracks and we have to try to play off that and the playoffs are still very heavily biased to short tracks, so we had speed at Martinsville. We didn’t have as much as we wanted. We had speed at Phoenix, and didn’t have as much as we wanted but we were close, and I think if we can continue to learn from that and apply the things that we know and have learned, there’s no reason we can’t go and compete this weekend. We get really excited about going to Richmond. We get really excited about going to Phoenix and Martinsville because those are all playoff races, so it should be fun and looking forward to trying to win again.”
HAVE YOU DIAGNOSED WHAT CAUSED BRAD’S PROBLEM AT MARTINSVILLE? “It was a power-steering issue. That investigation is ongoing. We’ve gone through the process that you go through, tearing parts apart and trying to figure out what happened and trying not to let it happen again. We made some changes and adjustments this weekend to try to keep it from happening again and hopefully we made the right ones.”
YOU OBVIOUSLY TRY TO ELIMINATE ALL OF THOSE GREMLINS BY THE TIME YOU GET TO THE PLAYOFFS. “Yeah, absolutely. It’s one of those things where it’s parts we’ve used before. It wasn’t anything new or different. It’s just that we had an issue, so our engineering group will take a deep dive into what happened and try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
WHEN YOU GO TO RICHMOND DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS STRETCH OF SHORT TRACKS AND HOW THE INTENSITY SEEMS TO PICK UP? “It’s not something I really think about. I’m sure it exists and I’m sure it’s a real thing. There tends to be some hurt feelings whenever you leave Martinsville, but I feel like it’s not something that I’m gonna dwell on. I’ll leave that up to the drivers to work that out amongst themselves and we’re gonna stay focused on trying to make this Discount Tire Ford go fast in a circle this weekend.”
DO YOU FEEL WITH THE NEXT GEN CAR COMING AND WITH ALL EVERYONE HAS BEEN THROUGH WITH COVID THAT YOU HAVE TO WORK TO KEEP EMPLOYEES MOTIVATED SINCE THEY’VE LIKELY HAD MORE TIME AT HOME? “I think it’s just a different environment. The work is still there. The work has still got to be done. We still have to do the same things to be able to race and race at a high level. It’s just a matter of how we adapted to how we do it, and that’s gonna change again. That’s gonna evolve. We got so institutionalized is what I call it. If anybody has seen the Shawshank Redemption, I talk about we’re institutionalized to what we do, but we did it the same way for so long that it was a huge change at first. We had to come up with new processes and new plans and new ways to be organized in a different way and now that’s normal, so now we’re institutionalized to that. Hopefully, at some point, it kind of gets back to the old normal and we get back to a different way again, and it’s just a matter of I think it shows the resiliency of the race teams and it shows their adaptability and their willingness to overcome whatever obstacles get put in front of us to do what we have to do and that’s just kind of the racer’s mentality.”
DOES SOME OF THAT STUFF YOU LEARNED STAY WHEN THINGS GET BACK? “Yeah, I think so. I think the way we wound up on shifts we were able to be more efficient with some things and get things done in a short amount of time here and there, so I think some of that we’re gonna learn from and carry forward.”
TEAM PENSKE HAS ONLY ONE PLAYOFF POINT RIGHT NOW. HOW MUCH OF A CONCERN IS THAT? “There’s 18 races left and there’s a lot of good racetracks for us through the summer. I feel like some of these tracks that we’re gonna go to are great racetracks for us. I’m looking forward to Darlington, Kansas and Talladega. These are great racetracks for Brad and great racetracks for us as a team, so we’ve got to get that first win. I think once you get the first one, you see it with the 19, they got the first one and then it wasn’t long before they got the second one. I think that we’ve had a lot of winners early in the season, but I think once the summer gets rolling you’ll start to see some repeat winners and our goal is to be one of them and get some playoff points before it starts. You have to win multiple races to get to the end of this thing and we know that. These things are hard to win and a lot of things can happen beyond your control and once we get to where we can control a little more I think we’ll be in good shape.”
CAN YOU STILL FIND DOWNFORCE IN THE WHEEL WELL AREA NOW THAT THEY’RE USING THE TEMPLATE OR IS IT A LOST CAUSE? “It can never be a lost cause. That’s what we do is try to keep searching. Whenever you get a template like that, that’s pretty encompassing and holds you pretty tightly in an area, it’s hard to work there. I mean, when you’re given a template that has to fit water tight, there’s not a lot of wiggle room there. It does kind of force you to look around in other places and other areas, but I think there’s always the opportunity to find something new and we’re not gonna stop looking. It’s what we have to do to get better, but I think the cool thing is it’s the same for everybody, so I think it has seemed to level the playing field a little bit. That’s not a bad thing. That allows us to try to be the next ones to find the next thing and everybody looks at it from that perspective, so it certainly made working in that area a challenge and I think that was the goal.”
WILL THERE BE A TIME YOU GIVE UP LOOKING FOR THAT NEXT THING ON THIS CAR TO START FOCUSING ON NEXT GEN? “November 9th or whatever the date is after Phoenix. There’s still a lot to be gained this year. There’s still a championship to be won. The manufacturers and the teams are gonna work on the Next Gen stuff and we’ll talk through how to be better and how to be as prepared as we can be with it, but we still have wind tunnel tests scheduled out throughout the year to try to learn as much as we can and be as prepared for the playoffs as we can be.”
