NASCAR CUP SERIES
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
DAYTONA 500 MEDIA DAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTES
FEBRUARY 12, 2025
Ricky Stenhouse Jr., driver of the No. 47 Hyak Motorsports Chevrolet – DAYTONA 500 Media Day Quotes
Talk about your emotions coming into this week after winning in 2023…
“You definitely walk in with more confidence. I walked in in 2023 with confidence as well. In 2022, we took the lead with five or six to go, and Brad bump drafted us and spun us off of Turn 4 there. But we were battling for the lead. Obviously, we won in 2023, and then we took the lead with 14 to go in the race last year as well. I’ve got a lot of confidence coming to the (Daytona) 500, and it helps having a Harley J. Earl trophy at home that you walk by every day. Always good to be back.”
With the team rebrand, with the same people on the inside, does it help or feel any different with preparation in the offseason?
“No, our guys have been working really hard. Obviously, trying to switch logos on everything, order new apparel, all of that good stuff. We’ve actually added some additional competition guys that I think hopefully improve our performance. Mike and the guys have been working really hard on just trying to get our stuff better which has been nice. It’s not like we’ve had to shift everything that we’re doing. We’re not learning anything new. Everybody is working hard.”
How do you spend this lead up to Speedweeks?
“I came down about Tuesday of last week. My wife ran the half marathon in Naples. Since Stetson was born, she’s been training for that. Went down there and hung out there with her family and just enjoyed good weather. Ate a lot of food, enjoyed some friends, going out on the boat, then came over and went to Disney yesterday. Took the family there, so that was fun. I miss coming down here for The Clash. I miss coming and being down here for almost two weeks. Heck, I pulled into the motorhome lot on Monday and I felt like half the field was already here. I feel like we all share that same mindset of getting down here and enjoying the weather.”
With the car entering its fourth season, and you’ve driven the last two generation cars at Cup level, where do you stand by handling at Daytona?
“I think the handling, everybody’s handles pretty well. I do think some cars take bump drafts better than others. I feel really confident about ours. I feel like I can take a shot from just about anybody. I feel comfortable with that. That’s the biggest thing. We’re still fighting some of the things we fought with other cars as far as getting tight off of Turn 4 in the draft, especially late on the tires. But I think all of us will still take tires and take the track position.”
Your buddies (Christopher) Bell and (Kyle) Larson have already been down here for a week racing at Volusia. You own an Outlaws car that ran at Volusia with Sheldon (Haudenschild). Is there any consideration for you going back and racing there?
“Yeah, for sure. My dad and I have a car just like Sheldon. We just don’t have everything prepped. It’s just dad working on my car, so hopefully, within a month of two, we’ll get back out there and run some sprint car races.”
Do you think it keeps you sharp when you get to do that?
“Yeah, I think anytime you can be in the car, it doesn’t matter what car it is, I think you’re more prepared. Definitely was thankful to get in the car today and get a couple of practice sessions down here to get reacclimated.”
Was The Clash the best indicator in how the car will perform, especially at Daytona?
“I enjoyed having The Clash down here, and obviously, you had to qualify for it. Not everybody got to run it. That was something you always shot for throughout the season is qualifying for The Clash. Getting down here, watching the race, you would say “Hey, it could be more expensive,” but I saw a bit of tore up stuff last week at The Clash at Bowman Gray. I don’t know if it really saves much, but I’ve always enjoyed coming down here for the The Clash for sure.”
On winning in July…
“Obviously, that was on Fourth of July, and now that’s my son’s birthday and one of my favorite holidays. It definitely as a fun race to win. I had a massive team party after that at my house for Fourth of July. It was a really cool win.”
Does entering this year feel any different with the rebrand?
“It definitely does. Even though there’s not a lot that has changed in the shop and the guys I’m working with, but a rebrand is definitely different. You have totally different people in the front office going out, and people that I’ve dealt with on the Kroger side of things, now I’ve still got Sunny D and NOS Energy Drink, but we’re going out and actively getting new ones. We’ve got Martin’s Potato Rolls for Atlanta next week that I’m super excited about. It’s a family-owned company, and they’re excited about it. We’ve got some cool things coming down the pipeline later in the season with them. I’m sure for the front office, it’s stressful, like going out and selling sponsorship is always a difficult thing to do. I definitely don’t think I’d be very good at it, so I’m just going to drive the race car and worry about the competition side. Things are definitely different, but it’s a little more simplified right now because we are just a smaller team than we were then as far as head personnel and things like that. Everybody is working hard and trying to get our performance better and program better.”
Does that side of it worry you at all?
“No, it doesn’t worry me at all. Gordon Smith is very dedicated. He’s been in this sport for eight, nine, 10 years, and just super dedicated to this program, especially now that it has his name on it, right? He wants to see it succeed. He’s been a successful business guy his whole life and loves motorsports. Loves dirt bike riding. Loves just being involved. He’s made the commitment to me and our whole team that he’s committed to this thing for the long haul. We’ve got a great relationship with Hendrick Motorsports that goes for a while as well. I feel really good about where we’re at. Our guys are just working to make sure the sponsors that we do have fit our program and fit the vision of where we want to go as well.”
How different does it feel now a couple of years removed from your win at Daytona?
“Just like this Daytona 500 media day that we’ve always done, for 12 years I walked by that trophy without my name on it and now it’s there the last two years with it on there. Just looking at that trophy is very special. I feel like I’m more excited when I get here and like I’ve said before, you’re definitely more confident.”
Adding to that, even before you were a Daytona 500 winner, was it cool coming to these superspeedway tracks?
“I look back at my career and when I was in the Xfinity Series, I hated coming to the superspeedways because I felt like, for one I wasn’t confident. I had never won on a superspeedway. I had some good runs, but I wouldn’t say I was ever spectacular. We always had way better opportunities to win at mile-and-a-halfs and short tracks. I felt like mile-and-a-halfs in 2012, we won six mile-and-a-half racetracks and loved them. But until I won in 2017, I was never very confident coming to a superspeedway, but now it is our best opportunity to win until we get our cars to where we need them to be at other racetracks. There are other racetracks we’ve circled outside of superspeedways that we can win, but we do put a lot of emphasis on winning one of these superspeedway races. Luckily, we’ve done that the last two years. First time for me and the team to win in back-to-back seasons. Looking to add a third.”
What is it to save fuel and the science in that and trying to run up front?
“Saving fuel at the superspeedways has been very difficult. I think running my street vehicle low on gas my whole life since I was a kid and saving fuel trying to make it to the gas station may have helped a little bit on that. It’s frustrating at points, but it’s still an art. I think we saved the second most fuel last year in Talladega which still kept our track position, gave our guys more wiggle room to not have to nail that last pit stop because we didn’t have to have as much gas. So, it’s a full team effort. Your guys are doing the calculations, you’re saving the most you can, you’re trying to get that track position. It definitely makes it more dimensional trying to win these races. There’s way more factors that come into it versus just ‘hey, I’m just going to go out here and try to lead the race, win the race,’ right? So now, you’ve got to think about that last pit stop, you’ve got to think about that fuel and try and keep your track position all at the same time. It can be frustrating at times. You want to go up and lead, but ultimately to win the race, that’s not the best move.”
Talk about the potential of having more Toyotas and cars in the field…
“Us being a single-car team, I found myself kind of in the mix with Denny (Hamlin) and those guys, and working with some of them just because sometimes we’re the odd man out, right? We’re kind of sometimes on our own island as far as teammates go, and sometimes they needed more numbers. Like you said, when it was the (Daytona) 500 last year when the crash when they pitted, they tend to do their own thing and tend to come up with their own strategy. The more cars you have, the better off your strategy can work. I definitely see them being stronger. You’ve got your Fords, you’ve got your Chevys who we generally have two groups because we have so many. So, if you lose some, you kind of restack them and they’ll have that opportunity now. It’ll be interesting to see how they all play together. I’m sure they’ll have their ducks aligned for sure.”
Has Gordon or anyone at the team outlined a trajectory for what the year will be?
“We just take it week by week. Obviously, this season is odd. We start off with two superspeedways and then a road course, then finally we hit Vegas and Phoenix. We’ve hired some people to try and help us in that department, so time will tell. It’s all about this car hasn’t changed a ton. We’ve been fast on a lot of racetracks since we’ve gone to this car. We were really good at Gateway, we’ve been good at Indy, we’ve been good at Charlotte and Kansas, and you name it. We’ve ran top-10 at Martinsville a couple of times with this car. There’s been highlights of us being competitive with it, we just have got to figure out how to recreate that week in and week out. Hopefully, we’ll do that. We look more about where we are in points at the end of the season. Last year, obviously was nothing that we had planned after 2023. Obviously, we won the (Daytona) 500 to make the Playoffs, but we ran good enough and our average finish was good enough to make the Playoffs whether we had that win or not. We just didn’t have that performance last year week in and week out. We still had some highlighted moments where we had a good run, or our car was doing what we needed it to there. It’s just trying to do that week in and week out is very difficult in this sport. Even though the car is not changing year after year, these other teams are getting better at their setups and they’re constantly working on that. We’ve got to do the same, it’s just we have one data point every weekend. We don’t have multiple data points every weekend, and that can be difficult.”
You’ve had several fastest laps, so how excited are you about the Xfinity Fastest Lap bonus?
“I think it was maybe Talladega, (Carson) Hocevar and I were in the back, and we qualified back there, so we were trying to see who could get the fastest lap. He would lay back a little bit and try to get a run. It’s a point out there for the taking. Definitely will be paying attention to that, but you don’t want to risk too much and lose the draft for a point. If we get into a position to try and lay down a fastest lap, we’ll definitely do that at the superspeedways. I definitely know what I need to do that.”
Have you gone out to look at your footprint and handprint in the concrete at Daytona?
“I have. I went and looked at it last year, then had some friends here last week. Their kids had some stuff down here, and he sent me a picture of his son doing a handstand with his hands in my handprint out there. That was pretty cool. That’s part of winning the Daytona 500, right? It’s all the cool things that come along with it, and that’s definitely one of them.”
Do you feel late in the race physically things change in the cockpit?
“Oh yeah. It gets intense. The blocks are later. The pushes are harder. The side drafting is more aggressive. Working your way to the front is more difficult. You have to pick a lap to say ‘Hey, I want to be in top-10, top-five. I want to take the lead around this number.’ We did that in 2022, we took the lead within 10 to go. Got spun by the No. 6 there with five laps to go, I think it was, battling for the lead. We won in 2023. Last year, we took the lead with 14 to go, I made a bad move that got me out of the lead and shuffled me back a little bit because of big runs and big moves. I thought I could make a move and it still be a little bit calm enough to make that move, and it wasn’t, right? I got shuffled out. I would say within 20 to go, it’s pretty intense.”
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