Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Daytona 500 – Daytona International Speedway
Monday, February 27, 2017
After winning Sunday’s Daytona 500, Kurt Busch and his No. 41 Haas Automation/Monster Energy Ford Fusion team participated in a breakfast ceremony at Daytona International Speedway. A press conference took place, featuring Busch, crew chief Tony Gibson and co-owner Gene Haas. A transcript of that Q&A session follows:
KURT BUSCH – No. 41 Haas Automation/Monster Energy Ford Fusion – WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THE WIN LAST NIGHT? “It’s surreal. The total team effort, to see the guys here this morning and the way that wins are hard to come by in this series, but to win a Daytona 500 is hard to put into words. It’s beyond belief, really. As a kid you watch this race on TV and you live the experiences with each of the drivers that win the race or lose the race, and after 16 years of having it go 16 different ways, when you win it one time it erases all of those memories and you now have this permanent memory of being able to drive into victory lane with a winning car, and a winning car is put together by a great group of guys, a talented group of guys, a committed group of guys and this year it’s even that much more special because we switched over to Ford in the off-season and that brought a lot of change to Stewart-Haas Racing. That change brought everybody together with a different comradery that we hadn’t had before. We’re a strong unit together at Stewart-Haas, but to switch over to Ford and put in all that extra time the chassis dyno, the wind tunnel, the massaging of this area of the car, or to build this new component, I felt coming to Speedweeks this year I had the most puzzle pieces in place and I just kept believing and here we are as a team as Daytona 500 champions. It’s a great feeling.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE JOURNEY YOU’VE BEEN ON THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS? “I had a moment last night in victory lane. There is the tradition of placing your feet and your hands and your signature in concrete, and as I was putting my hands in I looked up and said, ‘Did our car pass tech yet? This feels permanent.’ In the back of my mind there are those thoughts of something is gonna tell us that we didn’t win. There was that feeling down the back straightaway that the guys were gonna get assembled behind me and draft right on by me because I didn’t have the mirror to look. You can talk about the ups-and-downs of one’s career or personal life, and my wife said something in victory lane last night that she goes, ‘You know, it’s an omen that your mirror came apart because you’re not supposed to be looking in the rearview mirror, you’re supposed to be looking out front and what the future holds.’ That meant the most to me, more than anything in victory lane last night.”
TONY GIBSON, Crew Chief – No. 41 Haas Automation/Monster Energy Ford Fusion – HOW DOES IT FEEL TO WIN THIS RACE AFTER GROWING UP NEAR THIS FACILITY? “It means a lot to me, obviously, and all the guys know this – that I grew up here late model racing and short track racing. I’ve won a lot of races here and championships at local tracks and stuff, but everything from my dad. We built our own cars back then and dad built our engines. We didn’t have any money, so we built everything ourselves and when we won championships and races back then it was huge because we’d overcome the odds of guys like Gary Blue and Billy Harvey and those guys who had a lot of money, that we could beat them. So when we come through the tunnel for the Daytona 500 you think, ‘Is this gonna be the weekend or the time that we win?’ And we’ve been really close before. I’ve won the Daytona 500 and a lot of the guys have been part of a 500-winning team, but, for me, crew chiefing I’m getting old. I’m gonna be handing this off to old Johhny K there before too long, that it meant a lot to me to finally get this done and top it off and to be in my hometown is tremendous. I had a lot of friends at the race track and a lot of friends in the area that I saw on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday when we were off. It meant a lot to see those friends and a lot of them were in the grandstands and in the pits. Your phone is blowing up and they’re like, ‘You finally did it, buddy. You finally made it and you made it happen.’ As a little kid I always dreamed about being a crew chief and then winning the Daytona 500 as a crew chief and it took me 31 years I think to finally get it done, but the thing about it is it’s not just me. I’m just a very small part of getting that achieved. It’s all these guys out there that make it happen. They’re the backbone of everything and I just happen to be the one that gets to sit up here and hold the mic, but those are the guys that make it all happen and I’m just so proud of them and proud that I could do it with these guys because that means a lot.”
KURT BUSCH CONTINUED – DO YOU FEEL A SENSE OF REDEMPTION, A SENSE OF FULFILLMENT? DO YOU FEEL MORE WHOLE AFTER LAST NIGHT? “It’s the Daytona 500. There are countless emotions leading up to the race and this race will wear you out emotionally. To me, I do my best every week to come to the race track and to find the speed in the car and to deliver the information that I can to the crew chief and to the lead engineer and make a lap time – go out there for a qualifying session, go out there for practices and find the speed in the race and here at Daytona you have to find the right drafting lane. It’s not any kind of redemption or anything, like Gene said last night in the media center, I’m a survivor just giving it my all. I know I’ve got a great team that I don’t want to let down and because of everybody’s commitment to making this 41 car so fast, it’s a win, it’s a championship, I mean we’re Daytona 500 champions and it feels the same as winning the overall title – to win the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup. I did it in 2004 and this is like a stamp. This is 2017 and let’s keep going.”
MARIO ANDRETTI WAS TALKING ABOUT OLD-SCHOOL RACERS AND HE MENTIONED YOUR NAME. HOW DOES IT FEEL TO WIN THIS MARQUEE RACE? “It seems spiritual in a way. I visualized winning this race when this season was starting and it was after the wedding. I said, ‘I want to win the big ones with the guys. I want to win the Daytona 500, the Coke 600, my hometown of Las Vegas, Darlington, Darlington, Darlington. I want to win Darlington this year. And then there is Indianapolis, of course. There are all these big races that are out there, yet winning at Pocono is special. Winning at New Hampshire and Martinsville, we won at Richmond a couple springs ago, each and every win is important and special in its own right, but there are the big marquee events and this is a championship and it feels that way. It’s a very prestigious and humbling win and I’m just happy that I was in position with a great team, great sponsors with Gene and Haas Automation and Monster Energy, their first race as the entitlement sponsor, you can’t script this stuff and that seems to be some of my moments. Things seem to be a bit Hollywood-esque, but, honestly, I just keep plugging away and giving it my best to go out there and try to bring home the trophies. When Gene hired me he said, ‘I hate points racing. That crap sucks. I want trophies.’ OK, I finally got a big one, but we’ll keep plugging away and I love it. I love this group of guys. There’s no quit and there’s no end. (Looking at Tony) – The way you talked it was like, ‘Are you done? Are you dropping the mic? Stick with me, man.”
TONY INTERJECTS – “I’m with you. The way they’ve been yanking parts out of me you never know (laughing).”
TONY GIBSON CONTINUED – WHEN THAT FIVE-MINUTE CLOCK WAS TICKING DOWN THE FINAL SECONDS HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT TO HAVE YOUR GUYS WORKING TOGETHER TO GET THAT FUSION BACK OUT THERE? “It means a lot. I watched the Truck race and XFINITY race and we talked about it in our truck with Johnny and Cook and everybody as a group and all my guys about, and I was even in the NASCAR hauler several times during the week because there were things that I saw in those races by watching them that I didn’t really understand about the rule, so I talked to Richard Buck last night and he said, ‘Man, all those trips to the truck paid off.’ But it’s really hard to manage all that, but we had meetings with our guys. All of our guys are pit crew guys on how we were gonna structure if this happened and who was gonna go over the wall, who was not gonna go over the wall, how we were gonna fix it, what was our goal and our goal was to make minimum speed. We knew that if we could make minimum speed, we’d get off the clock as quick as we could and then we were gonna be in good shape, so we talked about this in the truck multiple times, so we had a plan as a group. All the guys that come on the road every week had a plan on what they needed to do and the pit crew guys had a plan on what they needed to do and we just made sure that we were all on the same page so we didn’t make a mistake with a seventh man or somebody do the wrong thing. I thought it all went perfectly. You couldn’t have done it any better, and these guys really stuck to it and they kept coming and asking questions. ‘Man, where is that sheet again that says what we can replace and can’t replace?’ It’s really confusing, but as a whole the team performed perfectly and they studied well. It’s a big link and all the links stayed together on the chain and when that happens it’s pretty damn strong, it’s pretty hard to break. It’s pretty cool to see it all unfold that way and to win the way we won with having to fix damage, beat the clock, I think we had like one minute and 20 seconds left on our clock to make it back out, so everybody managed time perfectly and got it done.”
YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY FROM A HEALTH STANDPOINT. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THAT? “I don’t know what’s going on with me, to be honest with you. I just keep breaking down like an old car, I guess. I told Zippy the other day I said, ‘Man, we’re getting way too old for this.’ He’s hurting all the time. Everytime I go in Zippy’s office he’s popping Tums or something and he’s like, ‘Man, what do you feel like? What does it feel like when you feel like this?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, I feel like this when I got this going on.’ He’s like, ‘Well, I’ve got to go get this checked.’ I’m like, ‘Man, what is going on?’ My appendix last year and I have kidney stones all the time and now it’s my gall bladder. I had the flu at the same time my gall bladder went bad. I was finally in the hospital and I told the guy, ‘Look if there’s anything else in there that I don’t need, go on ahead and get it out now.’ And he said, ‘Well, you’ve got the spleen thing, but you kind of need it.” I was like, ‘Well, okay, if it’s 50-50 then leave it in. I’ll roll the dice.’ I don’t know. Kidney stones I’m gonna have the rest of my life. I can’t get away from them, but my wife, Beth, she’s right there with me, either she’s in the hospital – we’ve got a room over there we keep all the time. They just keep it open for us. I have no idea. It would be different if I drank a lot and it was self-inflicted, but I’ve only done that a couple times that it’s been self-inflicted out of work, but, like I said, when that happens to you and like me being out of work and there have been times before to where this team is so strong that they can go without me. They’re so good that they’re like a good football team that the quarterback gets hurt and they just put another one in and they go and they win and they run good. That’s what you want. You want a group of guys that can complete the goal without you and that’s what I have with these guys. I have all the faith in the world in them. If something happens to me, these guys right here can move right along and with this guy here and they back him and he’s got their back and they’ve got his and they can go win races and run good, so I’m just so proud of these guys out here to be able to accomplish what we’ve accomplished. I get suspended and thrown out and Johnny gets poked in and they win the race. That’s another thing, Johnny’s mom and dad, they show up at Pocono unannounced and Johnny is crew chiefing and wins the race. Well, they show up yesterday in the same clothes they wore at Pocono. They show up again unannounced and we win the race, so they’re gonna wear those clothes for Darlington (laughing), Vegas, and we’re taking their butts back to Darlington again and we’re going to Indy. Don’t even wash them. Just hang them up and you’re going. I hope that’s it on the health side of things and we can move on.”
GENE HAAS, Co-Owner – No. 41 Haas Automation/Monster Energy Ford Fusion – IT SEEMED ALL OF YOUR CARS WERE BEATEN UP AND YET YOU END WITH THE ULTIMATE HIGH OF WINNING THE RACE. “I think when I come to these races I hate to say it, but I’ve always thought of Daytona as just another race and, for me, it’s been a pretty disappointing race because every time you come here not only do you not win, usually your cars are just destroyed. I’d say half the time we come here the cars have to pushed back into the haulers, you can’t roll them. To me, Daytona is a race that I didn’t really like going to, but Joe Custer is always saying, ‘You have to come here because you never know if you’re gonna win.’ And I’ve been coming here for 15 years and we never win, so I was pretty much convinced that I was gonna be out of here early after that second caution. Not being, I guess, from the heart of the south and understanding NASCAR maybe as much as some of you do, I was always thinking that, ‘I don’t know why people get so excited about this race because it is just another race,’ but that kind of changed when we actually won it. And then I go into the media center and, my God, there are 100 people in there. I’ve never seen 100 people in the media center ever for a race, so there must be something special about this race and it starts to dawn on you that it really is an honor to win one of these races because it’s not just about having the best car or having the best team, you also have to kind of transcend that and get into a place of mental concentration. I think when Tony talks about how hard it is to do this and to some degree the reason his body is a wreck is because they just give so much of their lives to this sport. It’s a grueling sport day-in and day-out, week after week, and it probably really does physically affect you, but they all do that – the whole team does that and that’s really great. I know even for Kurt Busch, he’s a mental case (laughing). I can’t think about this stuff and his mirror falls off and it’s actually an advantage because now he’s not looking behind him, so he can focus on what’s in front of him. I had a feeling that when he was doing that last lap he’s going, ‘There’s nobody in front of me. I’ve never had this before (laughing). Is this good? So I think when you put all that together, I woke up this morning and saw the ring on my counter I was like, ‘Yes, I guess we did win this thing.’ It’s almost like living in some kind of a fantasy, but I never really expected this to come true. I was ready to go home last night and everything just got totally turned around and here we are.”
KURT BUSCH CONTINUED – WHAT WAS THE CONVERSATION LIKE WHEN YOU TALKED TO YOUR PARENTS LAST NIGHT AND DID YOU GET ANY MEANINGFUL MESSAGES? “I made one phone call last night and it was to my parents. My mom answered and he was crying. My dad had gone to bed (laughter), but for years my mom has always had a displeasure for Daytona and Talladega because of the plate racing and that you’re a victim of circumstances a lot of times when somebody has an issue and it wipes out a bunch of different cars, and then here nightmare came true with Kyle getting hurt here a couple of years ago. She just always thought that Daytona and Talladega were the toughest on her boys and she just wanted us to come home safe, so when I called her I felt like I had placed the sword in the stone. I said, ‘We’ve conquered it. We’ve conquered Daytona.’ She was crying, of course, and just so happy that I was safe and I can’t wait to see her. I think they’re going to drive to Atlanta now. They’ve been on the circuit a long time. My mom and dad have sacrificed so much for Kyle and I to be in this position that they’ve put their time in on the road and they only drive to the close races around the Charlotte area, so I hope to see them in Atlanta. My phone is still blowing up. There are over 500 texts sitting there. I’m glad I didn’t set up my voicemail on this new phone, but just thumbing through it. I checked in with Mitch Covington with Monster Energy to find out where the after party was last night, and as I was scrolling through there this guy named Mario Andretti sent me a text and that meant the world to me because I got to spend a little bit of time with him up in Indianapolis a few years ago, and then for him to be the Grand Marshal this weekend is really neat to just see his name pop up on there, and just scrolled further down and there’s Michael and there’s Marco. It’s really neat to see the Andretti’s reach out from the Indy Car world.”
DOES YOUR MOM WATCH THE RACES OR NOT? “She watches them all. I don’t know what she does for Daytona and Talladega. Maybe she does the DVR and that fast forward thing, but she still has that displeasure for the plate racing and she just wants her boys to come home safe.”
AT WHAT POINT ON THE LAST LAP DID YOU REALIZE YOU HAD THE RACE WON? “Driving down into turn one I knew I had one move to make on Kyle Larson and it worked out beautifully to be able to make the move I did. I came off turn two and I just expected a land rush of guys behind me to draft right on by because I didn’t know which way to block, and when the spotter said – which this was our first big race working together – Tony Raines, a great racer from the Truck Series that I raced against back in 2000 – he said, ‘You’re four ahead.’ And I went, ‘Please, don’t say three.’ And he said, ‘Five ahead.’ And I went, ‘Ooooooh.’ That means we’re going this way and the guys aren’t catching us. It was surreal to not have a mirror to watch what was going on behind me and going through three and four once the car hit the banking and I’m driving through there, I’m full throttle and it just felt like seven cylinders, six cylinders, five cylinders. I mean, the start-finish line could not come quick enough and then I literally put my head against the headrest and said, ‘Please, don’t hit me too hard when you come zooming by.’ And then I crossed the line and you see all the flash bulbs going off in the grandstands heading down into the short chute, and that’s the moment that I knew. I don’t remember anything over the radio.”
TONY INTERJECTS – “I may have flung mine off, to be honest with you.”
KURT CONTINUES – “The emotions take over and it’s hard to put it all into words again, but it’s a great feeling to win for Stewart-Haas and bring that trophy home to our race shop. It’s there probably now. I put it on the hauler, so that the truck driver could take it back and so all the crew guys could take pictures with it.”
TONY INTERJECTS – “It’s still here (laughter)”
KURT CONTINUES – “It’ll get there eventually. I’m glad you’re here.”
TONY CONTINUES – “I told Rocky to take the night off.”
KURT CONTINUES – “So the trophy is on the way back.”
