Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Friday, May 17, 2019
EVENT: Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race Media Availability
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Busch Beer Millenial Ford Mustang – CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE BUSCH ACTIVATION BEHIND THIS PAINT SCHEME? “Obviously, I think as you look at Busch and Mobil 1, but with the Busch brand team they’ve obviously done a great job of activating not only this program, but the Car to Can at Daytona was one of the biggest things they’ve ever done, and who’d have thought that something so ugly would be so popular? But it’s great interaction and it’s been a lot of fun to go through the whole thing and to really see it all rolled out just makes me proud to be a part of a great team of people that have done a great job. I’ve learned a few new words and still don’t really know exactly what they mean, but we’ve had a lot of fun with it and as you go through things like this to poke fun at yourself and not really know what’s going on is part of the fun, so it’s been a great promotion and I never thought looking at it on a piece of paper that it would be something that everybody talked about so much.”
DOES THE SPORT STILL NEED A 600-MILE RACE? “There are definitely traditions that need to stay and I think that’s one of them. I think as you look at the Coke 600 and you look at the Daytona 500 and the Southern 500, anything past that I would probably say you need to shorten your race.” WHY? “Honestly, it’s a crown jewel race. It’s close to home. Everybody puts a lot of effort into it. Mobil 1 puts a lot of effort into it because it is a 600-mile race and they want to prove that their parts and pieces look better than everybody else’s who doesn’t have Mobil 1 in them. There’s a lot of things to prove and everybody wants to win at Charlotte and the 600 is one of those races that every driver and team in that garage are going to say that they want to win. There’s only three or four races that everybody in the garage is gonna say those are three or four races we can agree on as being our crown jewel races.”
DO YOU LIKE THE ALL-STAR RACE BEING USED AS ALMOST AND R&D TYPE EVENT THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS? “It’s a race that you can try some things like that. I wish we had a little bit more on-track time with the parts and pieces that we had on the car to have a little bit of information on the things that are going on. We had a lot of questions that got answered today in practice. If you would have not told me that we had a different splitter and hood ducts on the car, I probably would not have known the difference. It didn’t really affect the handling problems that you have with the car. They still don’t handle as well as they need to behind each other, but it’s not any different than what it was with or without them.”
HAVE YOU HAD TO EXPLAIN TO KEELAN WHAT THE STUFF MEANS ON YOUR CAR THIS WEEK? “He hasn’t been past the fact that it’s pink. He has just asked me why I’m driving a pink car and why did I agree to that, so I haven’t really pushed it any further than that. He’s got a baseball game and a couple of things to do tomorrow, so he’s not gonna be hanging around all day. As long as we don’t get to a few of the initials on the hood we’ll be in good shape.”
WHAT IS THE POINT OF EXHAUSTION FOR A DRIVER IN THE 600 AND HAVE THE STAGES AFFECTED THAT? “I think as you look at it, my opinion of whether we should have stages or not is neither hear nor there. We have four stages of the race and there are 70 points on the line, so it’s important. I think as you look at the amount of points that you can gain from winning those stages, stages are important. You need to win stages and we did well last week in winning a stage and getting a bonus point and finishing second in the second stage. From there, whatever happens is kind of icing on the cake from a points standpoint just because of the fact that you’ve had a good part to the night. You add a third part to that with a third stage and it’s that much more important, so there are a lot of points on the line. Last year, we blew a tire and never even made it to the end of the first stage and Kyle won everything and gained 70 points on us in one night. That’s more than any other race by 10, so if you have a perfect night.”
WHAT ABOUT THE PHYSICAL EXHAUSTION? “It just depends on how hot it is. If it’s gonna be as hot as they forecast it to be, it’ll be a long day. But you’re mentally programmed to go 500 miles, so your body kind of knows when you’ve done this for a long time it kind of knows that it’s like, ‘Hey, what are we doing here?’ And you mentally have to tell yourself that really when you look at the scoreboard and they tell you you’re halfway done, it’s really not that great of a sign because you know that you have a long ways to go and you already feel like you’ve gone a long ways. So for us it’s a little bit different mental preparation in order to keep yourself from being wore out 400 or 500 miles in and make sure that you’re ready for the last 100 miles that are extra.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE WAY NASCAR IS SO PATRIOTIC? “As a sport we do it better than any other sport. I think that’s one thing and for us we do, and Charlotte Motor Speedway does a great job on Memorial Day to showcase the military and how much appreciation we have for it, but this isn’t something that just happens one weekend a year for us. This happens every single week. The amount of support that is here for our military and the appreciation for our military and the things that they do shows up every single week at a NASCAR race. There isn’t a sport that does it as good.”
DID YOU FEEL LAST WEEK WAS THE BEST CAR YOU’VE HAD THIS SEASON? “It was the best weekend that we’ve had on a mile-and-a-half race track. I think as you look at the performance of the car, we lost a little bit of the handling at the end of Stage 2. I felt like we were better than we were at the end of the final stage to just take off and lead. I look at things as if you’re going to have a chance to win, you have to lead laps and you have to have speed. To me, that’s the first step and we’ll figure out how to make it handle better than it did there in the latter part of the race. Once we had the debris on the splitter, that was a great lesson for everybody. You hear us talk about the sensitivity to the front of the cars, but we went from 12 laps wide open to not being able to make the corner because of a piece of windshield tear off on the splitter and wrapped around the splitter. For us, at that point, we kind of were chasing out tail. We had to put a set of tires on, didn’t have any tires at the end, restarted on the bottom and just kind of treaded water there at the end once we got our lap back. But speed-wise and the way that the weekend went, we’ll figure the rest of it out. You have to be able to lead laps to consistently win these races.”
WHAT IS THE MOST DIFFICULT PART OF THIS TRACK TO NEGOTIATE AND WHERE DO YOU GET THROUGH IT THE BEST? “The only thing the same from the 1960s here is probably the grandstands and the snack bar up top, but I think as you look at this particular race track, this is a really tough race track to navigate from a handling standpoint because it’s very moody. The sun is as effective on this race track as it is any other race track that we go to. There’s a lot of little bumps that are in the wrong spots to keep your speed up through the corner that you have to navigate well, especially next week – it’s a tough race to handle because you start in the sun light, you go out of the sun light. There are just so many things that change throughout the night and then you add in the traction compound that they’ve put on the race track that wears out as you go through the night, so this is a tough race track to get the handling right on the car and keep it right.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Discount Tire Ford Mustang – WHY IS NIGHTTIME THE NEW DAYTIME WHEN IT COMES TO RACING? “I think with all the rules changes this year it has changed the way the cars race, where previously I think the daytime races were a little more hands-on for the drivers. You could probably do a little more with the cars because of the fact the track would get slick and you would have to work all the lanes. Then when we switched to the rules that we have today it’s kind of the opposite of that, where the cars when it’s daytime you can’t really do a lot with them. You’re kind of stuck in the groove that you’re in and at night it widens out and you can run all kinds of different lanes and take advantage of it. I think that’s lending itself for the nighttime races to be some of our best races in the sport.”
DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE FOR TOMORROW NIGHT IN THE ALL-STAR RACE? “No, not really. I’d like to think that we’ll be really good, but we don’t know.”
IS THE 600 AT THE TOP OF YOUR LIST NOW IN TERMS OF WINNING A CROWN JEWEL EVENT? “I’d say probably the Daytona 500 is, but the 600 is right behind it. Being able to win in my hometown in Michigan means a lot to me and all of these races I think the 600 the best I’ve finished is third or fourth, but all of them I’ve had an opportunity to win and it just hasn’t come together. And all I know how to do is keep showing up and put the effort in and it will happen for us when it’s time.”
SHOULD THE ALL-STAR RACE MOVE FROM PLACE TO PLACE? “I don’t think it really matters what I think. I think it matters what the fans think. I think it matters what TV thinks because they’re paying a majority of the bill, so we’ll let those two figure it out.”
THREE WINS AT KENTUCKY. WHAT MAKES IT SO IMPRESSIVE TO YOU? “Kentucky has been a good place to me. My mom’s side of the family is from just north of there in Ohio and it seems like we always have a lot of family and relatives and cousins and step-cousins and outlaws and in-laws, but it’s good to race in front of them as well. I really enjoy that area and enjoy that track. It’s the first track I got to drive a Cup car at in testing and I’ve just always had an appreciation for it.”
DO YOU FEEL THE MILE-AND-A-HALF TRACKS ARE PART OF YOUR DNA? “I think to be an elite race car driver and win championships you have to be good at all the tracks. You look at the Playoffs and it consists of all the different track types and you can’t afford to have any weaknesses and the mile-and-a-halves make up the majority of the Playoffs, so you better have that right.”
HOW HAVE YOU KEPT YOUR TEAM CHALLENGED DURING THE YEAR? “The true answer to that will be on the race track. Everything else is just a guess. My intuition is that last week was a good race for us in a lot of ways. It was good because we kind of out-executed our speed that we had for the majority of the race, and I don’t want to say we stole a win, but we got one where we weren’t the fastest car through execution. With that in mind, I’m really proud of it, but it was really refreshing to hear my car owner, Roger Penske, say that we have to work really hard to not get complacent and to keep pushing because it really starts at the top and him being able to say that and the whole team rallying around the constant need for improvement is a good culture to have.”
IS THERE ANY DESIRE TO RACE THE INDY 500? “I had a lot of desire to do that a few years back and there was no real opportunity to do it, especially with the Ford, Chevrolet, Honda rivalry of sorts. Now I’ve gotten into a place where it doesn’t look like there’s any solution to that in the near future. I’ve accepted the fact or fate that I’ll just have to watch them on TV, but it would be nice to do and I have a lot of respect for those who have done it and tried to do it as well.”
WHAT INTRIGUES YOU ABOUT AN INDY CAR? “One hundred and sixty thousand fans and $2 million prize. At the end of the day, those people are there and the fans make the race big. It doesn’t have to be an Indy Car. It could be a Monster Truck. If there were 200,000 fans there, and a $2 million check to win in it, I want to go win it. So with that in mind the fans and the people in that community make it special along with the track and the purse that they put up.”
CAN YOU DEFINE THE AGGRESSIVENESS OF THE ALL-STAR RACE? “It’s been one of those races that we’ve seen a lot of aggression. The cars play a big role in that and I think we’ve seen that when the cars are a little less developed and the different rules create different incentives for being aggressive and not aggressive, so it’s hard to answer. I think this year if the conditions are right, it could be really a tremendous race where you’ll see a lot of that aggression, but you just never know.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK THE REASON FOR THAT IS THIS YEAR? “Racing is always changing and that’s maybe the good thing and maybe the bad thing. I could see this year being a fairly aggressive race, maybe more so than year’s past.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HOW NASCAR HANDLES PATRIOTISM? “I think if you look back to the history of the sport it was founded in the late forties, 1948, and World War II ended in 1945, so you do some quick math and you figure out the guys who formed the sport probably had a role in a lot of those things – natural thrill seekers, natural competitors in some way and connected to the military. To me, it’s only fitting that we have kept that connection for decades since that time period of NASCAR being founded. It’s part of our roots, part of our DNA, along with the moonshine. Patriotism and moonshine that’s a heck of a combination, but it’s one that I think we hold deeply with a lot of pride.”
HOW WERE YOU PERSONALLY INFLUENCED TO BE SUCH A CHAMPION FOR PATRIOTISM? “First off, I haven’t traveled the whole world, but I’ve seen enough places to know that we’ve got it pretty good here and not everyone else has the same things we have. It’s a great privilege to get to drive a race car for a living, to get to be a part of this sport, whether you’re driving in it or watching it. There are a lot of places in the world that they don’t get to do those things. They don’t have those opportunities and so for that I’m thankful for what our country is, what it stands for that allows us to enjoy these type of events and recognize that it isn’t everywhere and the people that make the sacrifices that are willing to protect our freedoms have helped to make it possible.”
WHEN YOU HAVE A SOLDIERS NAME ON THE WINDSHIELD HOW DO YOU INTERRACT WITH THOSE FAMILIES? “It’s really humbling. It’s really sad to talk to a wife or a mother or a husband or a father whose lost their spouse or son or daughter – sometimes even a child who has lost their father or mother. That’s very difficult to sometimes understand, so I have a lot of empathy for them and the sacrifice their family has been though and I just want to show them a good time and show them the respect that you would want if you were in their shoes.”
HOW DOES IT FEEL TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE FOR SOMEONE WITH THE RECOGNITION YOU PROVIDE? “I think that all the time, to be honest. It blows my mind when someone just wants an autograph because I don’t really understand autographs, but it must mean something to that person, but let alone that it means so much to those families for them to come all the way out and drop what they’re doing to see their family member be honored and that they appreciate so much that we do it. That is really cool.”
DO YOU HAVE A SAY IN WHAT MILITARY NAME GOES ON YOUR WINDSHIELD? “I was able to pick the family, so I think that was really special. I can’t really share the rationale behind it. Honestly, it’s classified, but with that in mind I’m thankful for the family that is there.”
YOU SAID KANSAS IS THE BELL WEATHER RACE. HOW DO YOU FEEL THINGS ARE RIGHT NOW? “Seeing the speed that I saw in the Hendrick cars I think that was an important development because I don’t think at least we saw that before Kansas. Maybe you could make an argument about a little bit so at Dover, but for them to be as strong as they were at Kansas, I think, was a bit of a moment for them and for our sport. It shows that they’re not gonna have a quiet season.”
PENSKE AND GIBBS HAVE BEEN ABLE TO EXECUTE. ARE YOU STILL A BIT AHEAD OF THE PACK? “In some ways yes. I would say our teams have the most experience in drivers, crew chiefs, pit crew members and that helps a lot when you have new rules and new things, but right now if I was being honest with you I’d say the Hendrick cars are the fastest cars.”
RYAN NEWMAN, No. 6 Acorns Ford Mustang – HOW DO YOU APPROACH THE 600? “It’s a totally different race, a totally different mentality. It’ll be a different package, so to speak, but not totally. We’ve been not as competitive as we need to be at mile-and-a-half race tracks, so we’ve got one shot to do some extra testing for the 600, so we need to put a lot of effort into that because it does parlay into a lot of points throughout the rest of the season on those mile-and-a-half style tracks.”
HOW MUCH IS RFR PREPARING FOR THE 600? “I don’t think we’re preparing for the 600, we’re preparing for what we need to do and do well here at Charlotte. I don’t think we’re thinking about the 600, but come Saturday night when the checkered flag drops we will be.”
PHYSICALLY IS THE 600 A TOUGH RACE FOR THE DRIVER? “It depends on how good of a job my crew guys do. If it handles well and drives good, then it’s not that big of a deal. One hundred extra miles isn’t the end of the world, but if it’s hot, miserable and you have an ill-handling race car, it is 10 times worse.”
DO YOU ASK FOR ANYTHING SPECIAL FOR THE 600 IN YOUR CAR? “More grip (laughing). No, you want to make sure you’ve got hydration and you’ve got good cooling, as much cooling as you possibly can. If it’s at all like this weekend it’s gonna be hot and that can distract you quite a bit.”
HOW MUCH EMPHASIS DOES RFR PUT ON THE 600? “It’s just another race, but it is the Coca-Cola 600. We’ve got a special soldier on the windshield, which means a lot to me personally and overall it’s a big race. It’s the Coke 600. It’s in our backyard. It’s just like for Ford when we go up to Michigan it’s their backyard and it means a little something more.”
AS A FORMER WINNER OF THE ALL-STAR RACE YOU CAN RUN IT FOR LIFE. DOES THAT TAKE SOME OF THE PRESSURE OFF? “No. It’s nice to be locked in, but it doesn’t make it so that you’re gonna be in victory lane because I’ve only done it once and it’s been a long time. My very first Cup win was the All-Star Race before I ever won a points race. That’s just the rules. They could change that next year.”
HAVE YOU HAD 600s WHERE YOU’VE STRUGGLED TO GET THROUGH IT? “If you look at 200 laps at any race track that’s an XFINITY race, so it’s two XFINITY races put together and our cars demand a little bit more out of us. They’re a little faster with a little less downforce it seems, so just in general a little bit more of a challenge, so you better have your A-game on.
WHAT DO THESE TWO WEEKENDS MEAN IN TERMS OF SHOWING PATRIOTISM? “I’ve always said that NASCAR does it better than any other sport. I’m partial, but I do believe that we pay tribute and give thanks and show appreciation and all the things that go into just being responsible as citizens to those soldiers who have done so much for us, giving us this freedom. You’ve heard it left and right, up and down, left and center, it’s all about us as a group just saying thanks on Memorial Day Weekend. To do what we love and have those people on our windshields, potentially their families in the grandstands and all the other members out there that have done so much for us after hundreds of years, it’s an honor to represent not just one but all of them.”
IS THERE ONE TIME THAT STOOD OUT TO YOU AS BEING MEANINGFUL? “I met a fellow who was a green beret. I was at the NASCAR Hall of Fame. His name is Greg Steube. He came up to me out of the blue in the hallway and he introduced himself and said, ‘Hey, listen, I just want you to know you’re who we fight for.’ I looked at him like, ‘What are you talking about? You’re crazy. You’re just a nut race fan,’ and he is, but he’s also a hero, he’s also a wounded veteran and he’s a hell of a guy. He made me understand that when you make that sacrifice to go across the pond, to go into battle, to take this team of people that you’re led by somebody and you sacrifice your life, you sacrifice all the things that mean something to you in your life that he thinks about somebody like me that he looks up to as a hero when he’s the real hero. He looks up to me and knows that when he’s going into battle he’s fighting for me as an American family member, a guy with a wife and two kids and that model. That’s who he is fighting for and that just hit home with me more than anything else, any other story, any other general or four-star this or 17-star that. He hit it home for me.”
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 BodyArmor Ford Mustang – DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU EVER HAVE A HANDLE ON THIS ALL-STAR RACE? “Yes and no. Kind of the only handle you feel like you have on it is kind of looking back on previous All-Star Races when we practiced here in the daytime when it’s hot and what it does at night. It kind of bounces one way you look at what you did and whether it worked or not for night time. That’s the tough part with these day practices and night races with the big temperature drops. It’s not gonna drop a ton, but just the sun getting off the race track is big. You just kind of guess and look back at your notes and hope you make the right decisions.”
DOES WHAT YOU HAD IN 2018 STILL WORK IN 2019? “Yeah, you can always look at what race track trends do even though the packages are way different. I think the biggest thing is the tires stay fairly similar and the track always does things fairly similar, no matter what the car is – whether in the daytime if you’re hot and slick and you’re loose, what does the track do when it cools down and gets tighter or maybe even gets freer. You just try to look back at your notes. Sometimes you miss it. Sometimes you guess wrong and it kind of throws you for a loop, but you can always kind of go back and just see track history with temperatures and track temp and sun versus night time and things like that.”
DO YOU FEEL THE TIRES ARE THE MOST CONSTANT FROM YEAR TO YEAR AT THIS POINT? “Tires are changing a lot, but I do feel like they do a good job of telling us if it’s a new compound or we’ve run it somewhere else or run it here before. I didn’t hear about it being any different this weekend, so you figure it’s the same and hope it’s the same we’ve run here in the past and just kind of go off of that. The tire stuff is just like the cars, they’re constantly changing and trying to improve them.”
DO YOU FEEL THE VHT WILL BE A BIG DIFFERENCE? “I thought it was pretty good in practice. We saw a lot of guys running the middle of one and two and you can feel the grip up there. Three and four it seemed like it didn’t work as good, but it was an option, so, yeah, that VHT stuff sometimes is unpredictable, but I feel like it’s good for us to kind of get up there and run it in practice and try to feel it out. I think it’ll be good. I think even the truckers were running it in practice. They were running the middle and I’m sure they’re gonna run it in the race a lot, whether it’s the middle or the very top even though it’s night time. You’re gonna be able to go up there and use it as a tool, which is what it’s there for.”
WHAT IS THE ETIQUETTE FOR A MILLION BUCKS? “There is no etiquette. That’s what this race is. It’s a no points race. You’re racing for a lot of money and you do what you have to do. That’s a kind of in the moment thing. You can ask about what would you do and drivers say they have their minds made up, but really until you’re in that situation it’s literally a split-second decision of what you’re gonna do if you’re in that spot. We spend most of our time thinking about things that don’t happen and just kind of imaging the future, but it’s very rare that things you think about days in advance are actually going to go to plan in anything let alone this sport, but you just race really hard. You want to win. Are you going to go out and completely dump a guy and try to hurt him? No, you don’t want to hurt anybody, but you’re gonna race people hard and move them out of the way if you have to, but, like I said, that’s just in the moment stuff.”
IS IT FAIR TO SAY YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE? “You have a million dollars to use, and, yeah, you have repercussions whenever you lay the bumper to somebody and rough somebody up. You know they’re not gonna be happy with that, but at the same time you have to look back and say would they have done the same thing to me if the positions were swapped and most likely they probably would, no matter who it is, especially in this race. You just kind of deal with that after, but there is stuff to lose. People work really hard on these All-Star Races. It’s a big opportunity for a lot of teams to do well and it’s a great title to have to say you’ve won the All-Star Race.”
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR FRUSTRATION THIS SEASON? “None right now. Yeah, you’re frustrated in moments that don’t go your way. To be honest with you, the last four races haven’t been very good for us from it’s just not running good, getting caught up in some stuff. Kansas last week was a really big letdown. That’s one of our best tracks and we were just really bad all throughout the race, so that’s frustrating, going to a place where you feel it’s one of your best places and run that bad. You’re like, ‘What the heck is going on? What do we have to do?’ But, you can’t really let that stuff get you down. You can be frustrated about it for that night or the next day, but at the end of the day that doesn’t mean anything to be frustrated days afterward or let it take focus off this weekend. The thing about the past you just kind of figure out what do you need to do different there the next time. You put that in your book and you pull it back out a week in advance of the next time you go there. Yeah, it’s frustrating at times, but you just can’t live being frustrated. That’s no fun way to be, so you have to look for the positives in any result whether they’re good or bad. We’ve had opportunities this year to win some races and it hasn’t worked, but you just try to figure out what you need to do differently.”
HOW HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO LET THIS STUFF GO? “Looking at the bigger picture, I guess. Yeah, it’s great what we do and I love my job and things like that, but at the end of the day you just can’t be mad all the time. That affects your life outside your job and that’s no fun, and then you’re no fun to be around anybody else if you’re a jerk all the time. I think growing up too, as you get older you kind of realize like what is important and things like that. You get fired up. Trust me, I’m probably one of the more firey guys when I put a helmet on and that’s how you should be, but you just can’t let it kind of bleed over into other things. I think just getting older. I used to hold grudges a lot when I was younger and you get a little bit wiser with age and learn to kind of let things go, just figure out solutions instead of dwelling on problems.”
DO YOU FEEL YOU’RE CAPABLE OF WINNING LIKE BRAD AND JOEY? “Yeah, I think so. You have bad weeks. Kansas was just a bad weekend for us. We were just off, so that part stinks, but I feel like obviously our whole organization is good enough to win races. Brad put on a great show last weekend and was able to win that race, so the speed is still there it’s just about kind of cleaning things up, like I’ve said all year. Our group is great. Our group is fine and they do such a great job, whether it’s the road crew or the over-the-wall guys, they have it all together and it’s just a matter of everything coming together for you, whether it’s throughout 400 miles, 500 miles or 600 miles. That part I’m not worried about, it’s just a matter of me doing my job and just piecing things together.”
WHAT’S IT BEEN LIKE WITH THIS BOTTLE OF YOUR LIKENESS ON IT? “That’s been cool. That’s neat deal that BodyArmor did around the Charlotte area, giving out some of the Ryan Blaney bottles. I think they produced only like 2000 of them and I got a lot of things on social media last week saying people went in and bought the whole load of them. And more people have gone on social media this week and said they can’t find them because they’re all gone, so that’s neat. Actually, I didn’t know this but I was the first athlete with a specific bottle that BodyArmor has done that was sold to the public, so that made me feel special. They’re such a great company and it’s been cool to grow with them for the past three years and for them to be on the car again this weekend I think it’s very cool that they are getting very involved in the sport and they’re still growing. They’re pretty young. They started up in like 2011 or 2012 and they’re on pace to really give challenges to the other big sports drink companies, so that part is good, but the bottle thing has been really neat and I love to see fans have them.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE PATRIOTISM NASCAR SHOWS? “I think it’s second-to-none. I’ve seen it growing up around this sport, coming here for the 600 weekend with dad and you kind of learn more and more about, ‘OK, what are we doing here,’ and you learn the appreciation for everyone who has served and who are currently serving. It really makes you think about how grateful you should be and you get to meet great people along the way, whether it’s the families or things like that. That part is very special to me and whatever we can do to show them a good time and our appreciation for what they’ve done and continue to do that really means a lot for us and hopefully them too. It’s nice to watch it form afar as a kid and now to be a part of it I feel like is even more special.”
DOES ALL OF TEAM PENSKE AND WOOD BROTHERS RACING COME INTO EACH WEEKEND WITH THE SAME APPROACH OR DIFFERENT AGENDAS? “The same approach. The Penske group and the Wood Brothers car, we all have the same stuff. No one is getting prioritized over there. We all have equal opportunities to run well and win races. I think that’s how it should be. You shouldn’t prioritize a team or a car, but it’s all just hard work that goes into it. We’re all just working together and trying to figure out what’s best for the whole company. We want to run first through fourth every week, so that part has been nice. Honestly, I want to have three wins like Brad does, but you have to figure out how to get there. It’s not because he’s getting something special that I’m not, it’s just they’re doing a really good job and they’re figuring out how to win races. That’s what we’ve got to do.”
WILL THOSE TEAMS SWITCH TO R&D FOR THE PLAYOFFS? “I don’t think you really see much of that anymore with the benefit of winning now and it helps you throughout the Playoffs. That’s why it was invented. It used to be win and you’re in, but you wouldn’t get any extra bonus points towards the Playoffs so teams would just go into R&D mode. Now, you get so much benefit from winning after your first one throughout the year that it helps you throughout every round of the Playoffs, so you don’t see teams doing that. I’m not saying the R&D is not your best stuff, but you just don’t really see that anymore. No, I don’t really think that’s the case. Even us without a win we’ve kind of tried, I wouldn’t even call it R&D, just kind of new pieces. You choose if you want to run them or not and that’s just a decision by crew chiefs and teams. I know our group doesn’t do that very much. Some others might, but I just think with how great it is to continue to win throughout the year you don’t really see teams going into that mode.”
