MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
POCONO 400
POCONO RACEWAY
TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
MAY 31, 2019
TY DILLON, NO. 13 GEICO CAMARO ZL1 met with media and discussed his expectations at Pocono this weekend, his personal future idea changes to grow sport attendance, what the teams might be able to do to plan for the double-header at Pocono in 2020, and more. Full Transcript:
DO YOU EXPECT TO BE LIFTING THROUGH THE TUNNEL TURN, OR IS THAT A CORNER WHERE THE TEAMS MIGHT GO FLAT-OUT?
“We were so close to not lifting here with the old package through the Tunnel Turn, which was ridiculously fast. I think it’s going to be pretty wide-open. You can do it in a truck so I’d imagine you cab do it with these cars. I’ll let you know after lap 1. I’m curious to see if we’ll lift all the way out in Turn 3 and then what Turn 1 will be like if we lift all the way out there, too. There’s a possibility of not coming all the way out of the throttle all the way around here, which makes one minor slip or twist of the car have a huge impact over these long straight-aways. If you’re wide-open through any corner, you’re just taking whatever straightaways connect that corner and making them even longer, essentially. So, a mess-up in Turn 1, if you can hold the Tunnel Turn wide-open, gets quadruple-magnified down the straightaway. You’re just going to keep losing spots and keep losing spots. So, the more you’re wide-open, the more you take corners out of a race track.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT QUALIFYING? IT’S GOING TO BE REALLY ORCHESTRATED. AND IT’S LIKE 15 SECONDS APART FROM THE NEXT GROUP. DO YOU HAVE TO KIND OF GET YOUR MIND ABOUT HOW IT’S EXPECTED TO BE BECAUSE IT’S A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT HERE?
“I have no clue about that (laughs). You guys (media) are ahead of me. I guess when I go in and see Matt (Borland, crew chief) we’ll talk about it. But, I don’t know. They keep throwing new qualifying ways of approaching it at us. I really liked the beginning of the year. I know a lot of people complained about it, but we all had to do the same system. As a team, we were kind of ahead of it. I felt like as a driver and spotter and crew chief, we had figured out a formula to qualify well. And, our qualifying positions were the best they’d ever been with that old style. Now we went back to single file and we haven’t been performing as well. But, we’ve also been changing some stuff on our car to try to make sure our performance at 1.5-miles have been better. I think our performance at short tracks and super speedways were right up there. We’re a team to be talked about week-in and week-out at those tracks, but obviously we know as a team we have some improvement to make at 1.5-miles. And, the more of these bigger tracks that we go to, the more that we’re kind of honing into it. I think this year we’ve been more productive and more consistent. And that’s just because of a commitment to a driver, a crew chief, and a sponsor. And commitment means consistency. We’ve been able to grow through that. I guess your qualifying question turned into a big question. But, I don’t really know for qualifying. We’ll figure it out.”
THIS IS MORE OF A GENERAL QUESTION ON THE SPORT ITSELF. THE NUMBER OF FANS THAT YOU SEE AT THESE RACES HAVE KIND OF GONE DOWN IN RESENT YEARS. THERE HAS BEEN TALK ABOUT THAT. BUT, FROM A RACING STANDPOINT, YOU OBVIOUSLY WANT FULL STANDS EVERY WEEK. WHAT’S YOUR TAKE ON BEING A DRIVER IN THAT ATMOSPHERE AND MAYBE WHY THAT MIGHT BE?
“Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on it. Obviously it seems as if attendance has gone down; but I go to a lot of different sporting events and I’ve been to a lot of different sporting events in the past three or four years and it’s kind of going down everywhere across the board, not just our sport. I think if you look at Charlotte last week for the 600, we had a great attendance and an amazing race. And viewership has up most of the year this year for our sport. As technology grows, we’ve got to do things different. Sitting still in the stands is just not the way that the world is going to keep going. I think the fact that we’re taking out stands isn’t as bad of a thing as if we can find new ways to bring fans to the track in just a different way. I think we can take out stands and add entertainment decks and change the outlook. I think tracks are doing a good job of adding more motorhome parking for fans. That’s the high-end kind of side, but we need for the college kids to sit by the track, listen to a concert, and watch the race. We need multiple dimensions of entertainment at our sport. We’ve got to get them here, because once they get here, they love our sport. Our sport is incredible. It’s one of the best live sports there is.
“So, taking out stands doesn’t need to be seen as a negative. We’ve just got to find an approach to keep whether it’s standing room or a party deck or like at Indy where they have, I think it’s the ‘pit’ or something. We need to do that everywhere and not just confine our fans to sitting in the stands. As a young person myself, you go to concerts and parties and people want to move around. They want to see different angles and it’s the way that the mind is kind of growing with the younger ages. You’ve got to be able to entertain them at multiple levels so, if they can move around to different parts of the track and it’s more of an open atmosphere. If I were to rebuild a track, I’d build a short track or a mile-size track with no grandstands, but find a way where the track is viewable from all standing sections, and then find ways to make money in that way. And, I am no track promoter. And this is just a dream of a race car driver, but I think we’ve got to continue to find new ways to entertain. All the tracks are really doing that. Everybody is doing whatever they can within the confinements of contracts and agreements with sponsors and TV. But, I think our sport is being very progressive and we’re going to continue to adapt to that.”
YOU MENTIONED FINDING NEW WAYS. POCONO IS A PLACE THAT’S TAKING THAT APPROACH WITH NASCAR NEXT YEAR BY ADDING THAT SECOND RACE ON THE SAME WEEKEND. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT? DO YOU THINK THAT’S A POSITIVE FOR THE SPORT? WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT CHOOSING THIS VENUE TO DO THAT?
“I think it’s awesome. And, I applaud Pocono. I think this track has always been the first to say hey, we’ll take on something new. And, we’ll try something new for the sport. And it’s worked out. And, I think more tracks should be aggressive in approach as far as trying something new. It worked out for Charlotte last year with the Roval. It that was a great race. And, I was running this morning and I know we have a road course here. And that’s an interesting thought if we, way on down the road, did a triangle and then we did a road course the next day and how that would play out. I think the mind split that we have right now of how we’re going to race two days is good entertainment. It’s a good storyline. I think we’ve just got to keep finding new ways to entertain. Our sport doesn’t need to go to the same tracks the same weekends, I think, every weekend every year. I think we’ve got to give new opportunities. I know it’s a promotion thing, but I think we’ve just got to keep finding new ways and not be afraid to make some mistakes or take risks in developing our sport and growing it.”
WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT THE COLLEGE KIDS AND THE DECKS AND ALL THAT WAS VERY INTERESTING. AS A YOUNG DRIVER, DO YOU FEEL LIKE THAT’S SOMETHING YOU CAN CONTRIBUTE EVEN THOUGH IT’S NOT YOUR AREA OF MAKING DECISIONS. IT SEEMS LIKE YOU HAVE SOME GOOD THOUGHT PROCESSES GOING ON THERE
“Yeah, it’s been pretty cool. Last year I was on the driver council as a first three years in the series driver. And that was an honor for me to be voted in by my peers. I just try to add that perspective as much as possible. And, I don’t know all the contracts. I don’t know the exact behind-the-scenes things. But, I’m going to share my opinion. And, I think another thing that would be cool for the future of our sport is if we could live stream from inside of every single car. If we had an in-car camera in every single car and each driver could live-stream that view from their social account, I think that would be big. It creates that interaction driver fan instantly. Now we get back to our phones and we go through and see and we can answer questions that they might have seen and we could replay it and go back through it with them. I know that’s kind of a controversy with the TV companies, but that’s something we’ve got to look forward to and there is no reason why we shouldn’t have in-car cameras in every single car these days, and provide more specific information for the specific fan. You can stream every minute of every sport on your phone right now. And the more access we give to a younger crowd, the more we’re going to attract that younger crowd.
“I heard something the other about baseball. I was watching a Braves game. And their target audience is 50-60, who watch the actual channel on TV. But on their live-streaming app, their target age base has dropped 20 years. It’s 40. So, streaming on your phone has got to be big. You’ve got to use your platforms the way we can. I’m almost 30. I’m getting close to 30. I’m 27. But the younger the kids everyone gets, the more it’s on their phones. It’s AR/VR (technology) and we’ve got to adapt quicker than everybody else and get in these places. We have a sport that we can put people inside the car, and we’ve got to use it. We’ve got to use it to our advantage. We’ve got to use some kind of communication to put a driver communicating to a fan from inside the race car during the race. Whether everybody complains about it or not, it’s going to take us to another level as far as the future goes.”
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN DO THIS WEEKEND AND IN JULY TO PREPARE YOU FOR THE DOUBLE-HEADER NEXT YEAR? WE DON’T KNOW THE PARTICULARS, BUT CAN YOU TEST CERTAIN PARTS OR PIECES OR MAKE CHANGES QUICKER, JUST TO SEE OR PREPARE FOR WHAT IT COULD BE LIKE NEXT YEAR?
“I think there might be an amplified focus on well, I guess not Saturday or Sunday, but today until Sunday; day to day, what the car did from say another practice today until the start of the race on Sunday. Just day to day, weather to weather if probably going to be the biggest thing we can pick-up on. Less rubber, more rubber. Those are things that we’ll probably over-analyze this time around to try to prepare for next year.”
Team Chevy high-resolution racing photos are available for editorial use.
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