Toyota Racing – Stewart Friesen
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Quotes
WATKINS GLEN, NY (August 3, 2021) – Halmar Friesen Racing driver Stewart Friesen was made available to media prior to the Watkins Glen race weekend today:
STEWART FRIESEN, No. 52 Halmar International Toyota Tundra, Halmar Friesen Racing
How do you go into this weekend with it being the Playoff cutoff?
“I think everybody’s kind of been up on it these last few weeks with how Knoxville went. Hopefully, we have a little bit of a smoother event, and we can use some of our road race speed that we had with the Halmar team at COTA and at Daytona and kind of showcase that and run in the top-10 and top-five. We need to have a good run and not get knocked out early. We will see what happens. The last couple of truck races have been pretty wild, pretty exciting, especially on road courses, so we will see how that goes.”
How do you look at the battle this weekend to clinch your spot in the Playoff field?
“We wish we had a win to be sitting on right now to guarantee a spot in. We have a little bit of a buffer zone points wise unless we have a bad day and a new winner behind us in points can jump up there and knock us out. We need to have a good and use the road course speed that we had at Daytona. I think we had the third-fastest lap time back at COTA a couple of months ago. We have speed in the truck. It’s the same piece that we ran at the last two or three road races. Hopefully, we can use that, stay up in the hunt and have a good day and a good finish. Then the points will take care of themselves after that.”
Is going to the simulator different when you go to a track for the first time versus to a track that you have notes for?
“I think I was a little more keyed into it, dialed into the simulator. That is our practice, so we try to treat it like a practice session. We went through some shock changes, some stuff to try to find some rear grip. I feel like that’s what we lacked at the other two road courses – Daytona and COTA. I think we found some, so whether that applies to real life, that’s kind of the thing with simulators, sometimes you find stuff on there that’s dead notes on, and sometimes it’s kind of off. Hopefully all of that work we did last week on the simulator and the sim program’s 1-to-1 – and it applies.”
Do you have to play it conservatively with your points position?
“No, we just need to go and race and run well. Whether we try some short pit strategy or this or that or try to get up front, I believe running up front at the end of the race will kind of seal our fate as far as Playoffs go. That being said, if we can score some stage points, somehow, someway, we will try to do that too. We just need to have a clean race, a good race. Have something that has fenders and a rear tailgate at the end that we can finish up with.”
How great has it been to see Jessica (Friesen, Stewart’s wife) get back on track?
“Absolutely, and the results have followed. She’s got two wins on the season. One at Utica (Utica-Rome Speedway), another one at Fonda a couple of weeks ago, which was the day after we drove back from Knoxville. It’s been pretty cool. Parker (Jessica and Stewart’s son) has been doing great. He will start Kindergarten in a few weeks here and we are excited for that. It will be a little bit of a change to our schedule being racers and being up all the time. We are going to have to turn around and start getting to bed earlier for school nights. That’s something he’s looking forward too, and Jess and I are as well.”
What was your feedback from your time on the simulator?
“Kind of getting the lay of the land, some shift points. It’s a little bit different than just an iRacing simulator as the power and gear ratios are pretty much 1-to-1 on what we run in real life. That was something that I took away from it. It is a very high-speed road course. A lot different than Daytona or COTA – you have a lot of real stop and go turns. That and trying to dial in the forward-bite as best we could with some shock changes. Hopefully it all pays off for us.”
Do you wish there was practice this weekend?
“Absolutely. I wish there was practice every week. Nashville, we had practice and we were able to turn that into a really good run, dial our truck in for race trim. Hopefully, we can get back to a regular race schedule. On the flop side of that, it’s allowed me to run a lot more modified races than I had planned on running this year because we are not away the day before doing practices. Yeah, for sure. I wish we had a set to back up our simulator stuff on and see what we’ve got, but I guess it will make it all that more exciting when they drop the green flag on Saturday afternoon.”
How important is a strong run this weekend after a long break in the schedule?
“That’s the tough thing. The break was kind of needed. We had to fix some stuff. I wrecked a truck at Pocono and then obviously our dirt stuff got tore up pretty good at Knoxville. We got some work done in the shop and the guys got to it and got things straightened out. That’s the thing with the Truck Series. It’s tough. It’s kind of hard to build momentum and keep that momentum rolling when you’re not racing week to week. This break can hopefully erase some of those bad runs that we had, and we can get back to it at Watkins and have a good run and hopefully get ourselves in the Playoffs and hopefully regain some of that lost momentum.”
How important has been to see your progression with Toyota this past two seasons?
“We’ve had a lot of speed. We’ve had some races that didn’t really play in our favor. We’ve had some ones that we’ve run in the top-five, which at this point last year, we were maybe a top-10 to top-15 team at best. When we do everything right and check all of the boxes, we are competitive and that’s been really rewarding for myself, Chris Larsen (team owner), everybody at Halmar International, and all of our other partners. The guys at TRD and Toyota included. They have been instrumental in getting us up to speed and find the right people and put them in the right places. Jon Leonard being crew chief now was one of those. It’s been awesome. Hopefully we can get into the Playoffs. Hopefully we can get a win here and with everything going the right way, we could have a side shot at competing for a championship. I don’t think that is out of the question by any means. It’s just executing with the equipment that we have and getting the job done.”
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