COREY LAJOIE, No. 32 Go FAS Racing Ford Mustang – HOW MUCH HAS YOUR DAD HELPED IN TERMS OF ADVICE ON THE TRACK? “Dad has always made me kind of go learn it for myself and form relationships with guys because he’s always gonna be there, and I can always rely on him for advice. His advice is usually just don’t wreck or don’t hit anything, which is the obvious, right? But drafting and racing has changed a lot since the late nineties when he did it, so he’s aware of that as well. He is certainly the first to give me any criticism, I can promise you that.”
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU LEARNED FROM WATCHING THE CLASH ON SUNDAY? “I think if anything it’s just gonna make those guys that ran the Clash and the guys who watched it, I think, be a little bit more conservative because you can’t race like that for 500 miles and have any cars left. So I think you’re gonna see guys single-file out pretty quick and you’re gonna see manufacturers jump in groups and work together for three-quarters of the race, and then however many cars are left with 40 to go it’s gonna get really crazy.”
YOU HAVE A NICE SUIT THIS YEAR? HOW MUCH INFLUENCE DO YOU HAVE ON THIS FLAME PAINT SCHEME? “I had a lot of input on it. There are some bad flame schemes, like Kevin Harvick’s flame scheme is not a good flame scheme. Our Schluter flame scheme for Vegas next week is sweet. It’s a fine line. Flames can be really corny or they can be pretty cool, and I think we jumped over the line of corny and we made it cool.”
BLACK AND ORANGE LOOKS GOOD TO. “Yeah, it’s like Halloween.”
YOU’RE GETTING SOME EQUIPMENT FROM SHR THIS YEAR, BUT YOU ONLY EXPECT TO IMPROVE A COUPLE OF SPOTS? “If you look at the grid, we finished behind one Front Row car and then I think maybe JTG, so those guys even with Front Row they’re budget is probably double ours and they’re on the A motor program and we’re not. We might have a little bit nicer cars, a little bit lighter cars, but at the end of the day we’re wide-open at 28 of the 36 tracks that we go to, so it’s gonna be a struggle to really leapfrog anybody solidly. I think we’re gonna be closer to the Front Row cars and I think we’ll be closer to some of the guys that are having bad days, but I don’t think it’s gonna be any more than two or three spots. We’ll need some help, but I think if we execute and do what we do well, and not make mistakes, we might be able to point some people by the end of the year if they make mistakes. It’s gonna be better, but it’s not gonna be five spots.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR PROFILE IN THIS SPORT AND YOUR OUTSPOKENNESS? HOW DO YOU WALK THAT LINE? “That’s what I deal with every week or every interview. I certainly want to be respectful to Archie and the opportunity he has given me. It’s a tryout for me every week, so he makes out because I’m giving him my best effort and my full attention to make his car run good, so we both collectively run good. Ultimately, manufacturer support and sponsors and all that is what makes these race cars go fast and it’s hard to compete and show your worth on the track when you don’t have some of those things. I’m looking at 2020 as a tryout year. That’s what it is. I’ve always looked at it like that because there are some guys obviously leaving. There are some good seats going to become available. I’m cheap relatively speaking to some of the other guys that are kind of sitting in seats that haven’t really had a lot of production over the last couple years, so I like to think my value is pretty high when it comes to what teams are looking for to fill their cars for 2021 and beyond.”
WHEN DID YOU START TALKING ABOUT 2021? IS IT NOW OR THE SPRING? “Three years ago. You’ve got to play chess. It’s not clear-cut. Everybody’s path is different. You’ve got to make sure you keep your sponsors happy like Schluter Systems and everybody who has supported me the past couple of years and put them in a situation where it works for them too because if it doesn’t work for them, it doesn’t work for me. Schluter has been a great supporter. They’re the easiest sponsor of all time and they like to have fun, so they’re really what kind of kept me in the fold, but now I feel like I’ve got enough value off the track as well as on track with the experience I’ve gained. I feel like I’m ready to go win races. I couldn’t jump in a race-winning car and win races the first probably 12-16 races of the year because you’ve got to figure out the tricks of the trade and the late-race restarts and all the games those guys play, but I feel like I’m not the limiting factor when it comes to making the race car go fast anymore.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE 2021 SCHEDULE? “It doesn’t really matter to me. If they tell me we’re racing at Disneyland, I’ll be at Disneyland. It doesn’t matter. If there’s a one-race schedule, I’ll be there. If it’s a 50-race schedule, I’ll be there. I love racing and I love paying my bills and providing for my wife and now my kid coming here in April, and NASCAR gives me a great opportunity to do that.”
IS THIS THE MOST PROACTIVE YOU’VE BEEN IN YOUR CAREER? “No, I’ve been proactive my whole life because I’ve had to be. If I wasn’t proactive, I would be welding seats or crew chiefing a K&N car, but proactive is what I’ve had to be out of necessity. I don’t think it’s talked a lot about because people just assume my dad is a two-time champion and the road was paved. If anything, the road was rockier than a lot of guys that had a direct path here, so I’m not gonna sit up here and tell you my whole life story, but anybody who cares to dig in knows.”
IS THERE ANY CONCERN ON YOUR END OF RACING TO TRY TO GET A RIDE VERSUS RACING TO GET THE BEST FINISH POSSIBLE – POTENTIALLY MAKE MISTAKES BECAUSE YOU’RE TRYING TO IMPRESS PEOPLE? “Yes and no. If I do a bad job, I’ve already been through the stage of trying too hard to impress. I did that when I was at Petty in that Biagi car that wasn’t capable of running 15th, trying to make it an eighth-place car and would stuff it in the fence every week, so I’ve learned from that. I think Archie and I can both benefit from me driving my heart out and trying to land somewhere on a decent contract that can set me up and a team can build around me for the next five to 10 years. It makes his team look good because he’s building a great team, a great group of guys. He’s got Ryan Sparks on board. He’s got the Stewart-Haas cars and he’s building it the right way, and it’s been fun to be a small part of that.”
MATT DIBENEDETTO, No. 21 Motorcraft Ford Mustang – HOW COOL IS IT BEING AT DAYTONA WITH THE WOOD BROTHERS? “It feels pretty dang good. It’s been hard for me, my wife, my family to even sum up into words. It’s good. It feels good wearing it and it feels good being at the Daytona 500 driving a car that I’ve been a huge fan of since I was literally five.”
WHAT HAS THE FIRST FEW DAYS BEEN LIKE? “Really comfortable, I think just because I’ve known them for quite some time. I’ve known Len, Nancy and Keven Wood since I raced at Hickory Motor Speedway against Keven when I was a teenager, so I’ve known them and gone to the Wood Brothers for advice many times. They’re such good people, so the fact I’m driving for them is probably one of the most comfortable transitions I’ve ever made just because they’re such great people.”
WHAT IS AN ACCEPTABLE BLOCK ON A SUPERSPEEDWAY? “I don’t even know, I really don’t. You know what’s hard is with the rules package the way it is now with the 280-inch spoilers or whatever they are, you get such huge runs that it’s hard to even judge the closing rate and it makes the blocks tougher, makes it harder to manage lanes because people get such big runs. I don’t know what’s acceptable. I guess you just have to play it by ear depending on the point in the race. I mean, white flag pretty much anything is acceptable I guess. That’s why everybody gets wiped out of these things, and everyone feels so safe behind the wheel of these race cars because the safety is so great, so nobody really cares. It’s just whatever you’ve got to do to win and don’t really care about the consequences.”
WHO WILL YOU WORK WITH IN YOUR DUEL WITH THE OTHER PENSKE CARS IN RACE ONE? “There are some good Fords in the second Duel, so I’m sure we’ll try to line up with them and do the best that we can. We’ll have to see how it works out because the hard thing is you can only have so much planned going into these things because there are a lot of little things that can disrupt those plans throughout the race, so I try and not get too caught up in it.”
DO YOU KEEP A MENTAL NOTE OF THE DRIVER CHANGES THIS YEAR? “Honestly, I’ve been looking at that and trying to study and remember because it’s tough. There are so many different guys in the race cars that you’re so accustomed to seeing. I’ve been so accustomed to seeing Ricky Stenhouse in the 17 for example, and that’s changing to Buescher, and there are so many of those situations and you really are biased toward who you want to work with and who is good, who you think makes good decisions, so it’s actually gonna be hard trying to remember on the track. It’s like a dang quiz.”
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE ON NEXT YEAR’S SCHEDULE? “Short tracks and road courses – as many of them as we could possibly ever have – ever. Fifty sounds good – short tracks, road courses, that is all we need. Love it.”
TWO A WEEK? “Seven a week. I don’t care. If it’s a short track or a road course I want to go to it as much as possible.”
IS A STREET COURSE FEASIBLE? “Yeah, I think it would be cool. That falls in the road course criteria, so I’m cool with is, but I think it would be neat. There’s a cool aspect to it and it’s cool that there’s been talk of that. There has been a lot of really neat things happening for the future of this sport like those kind of talks, like road courses, trying to get more short tracks, I’ve heard street course talk. Any of those things get us all so fired up as drivers because we love it and the fans, obviously, will love it.”
ONE WIN WILL BE THE 100TH FOR THE WOOD BROTHERS. “Yeah, it’s pretty special on top of just being able to drive for them. There is some pretty cool stuff that’s on the cusp of happening, and that 100th win hopefully we can get that and many more. It’s just an honor to be in the position of trying to get that. I’m not big on chasing certain things or chasing wins. I’m just big on doing my job to the best of my ability, but if hopefully that does happen, that’s the plan, it would be pretty special.”
HAS THERE BEEN ONE MOMENT THAT STICKS OUT TO YOU ABOUT THE WOOD FAMILY? “Yeah, there’s one thing that stuck out. When I went to Stuart, Virginia and visited the race shop and museum it was cool getting to meet Bernece and hang out and spend a little bit of time with her and the family, but the one thing that stood out over everything, over all the amazing accomplishments, achievements, all that was the pride and passion that the Wood Brothers have for every single one of those stories and the way that they tell it, that’s something that I could never explain to anybody unless they witnessed it because it was so cool and so heartwarming and it made it even all that much more special that I can drive this race car and hopefully make a lot more memories with them because the way they tell those stories and the pride they have for their team and every accomplishment they’ve done makes it so special.”
HOW DID YOUR FRIENDSHIP WITH JIMIME JOHNSON DEVELOP? “I think what made it comfortable for me to be around Jimmie and race with him and chatting with him is I’ve raced with all three of the Johnson brothers, so I’ve raced with Jessie, Jarrett and Jimmie going back to the Hickory Motor Speedway days, things like that, and I’ve been friends with their dad, Gary, knowing him really well, so it shows what kind of a family they are because they’re the most great, genuine, humble, down-to-earth people and Jimmie is the same way. They’re just a great family, so you love being surrounded by people like that and Jimmie is the type of guy that’s level-headed, always has been, great guy, great human, also has jokes that people may not see and he’s a funny guy, but he’s been a comfortable, great guy to get to know him and his whole family.”
HOW HAS HE HELPED GUIDE YOU THROUGH THINGS? “He’s always been a good level-headed guy to go to and talk with and even just talking on basic, personal things just as a human being has always been good to get to know him, but as far as my career he’s always given really neat reinforcement of keep grinding. He’s understood my path to get here and how hard I’ve worked and for Jimmie Johnson, seven-time champion and great guy, to have always been so encouraging throughout my career has really meant a lot more than he’ll know.”
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE JIMMIE STORY? “Honestly, it literally was the other day because we were parked by him in the garage and we’re right next to him. He came up to me and said he was in Uptown Charlotte and saw a guy that looked just like me. He thought for sure it was me from the side view getting a pedicure with what looks like his wife or something and he was like, ‘Oh man, I’ve got him now. I’m gonna get this on video. I’m totally blackmailing him.’ He was gonna give me a hard time and then he saw the guy turn and look and was like, ‘Oh, it wasn’t Matt.’ But he had his phone out ready to fully get me and I was like, ‘Thanks, man. Appreciate it.’”
HAVE YOU EVER HAD A PEDICURE? “No, I have not. I’m not totally opposed to it, but now that I know Jimmie Johnson would have exposed me on social media I apparently need to be pretty careful about where I go if I do it with my wife.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE WEST COAST SWING COMING RIGHT AFTER THIS RACE? “I think it’s cool, it’s busy. It’s a really busy first part of the year for the team. It’s a true test and a testament to them for preparing a lot of race cars and getting ready for a whole lot of traveling between Speedweeks here and going to the west coast, but I think it’s cool. I think it’s a good schedule change, good balance, good for the fans. I’m excited about it. I love going out to the west coast, so speeding it up and getting out there right away is fine with me.”
DO YOU HAVE SENSE OF WHERE YOU’RE AT AFTER THAT STRETCH? “I think so. Yeah, Daytona is unique. This is a unique race. These are unique circumstances. When you go to Vegas, Fontana and Phoenix those are more straightforward race tracks that will kind of give you a feel for how you’re firing off as far as performance of your race team, where you speed is and what you need, so going to a short track and a couple bigger race tracks I think it’s gonna be a good indicator.”
WHAT ABOUT THE PASSING AT VEGAS LAST YEAR? DO YOU EXPECT A BETTER RACE THIS TIME? “Yeah, you know what’s weird is it was so temperature sensitive. The two races were completely different, nothing even the same. The first race I was getting frustrated because we were holding it wide open through one and two every single lap, never lifting, and it was tough to pass and it was cool outside. We go to the second race and it’s 100 degrees and I felt like we were sliding all over the place and had zero grip, which was really weird and surprising to me and a completely different approach as far as how we set up the race cars, changed the racing a bunch and the groove was all spread out and we were not even close to wide open, so I’m like, ‘Wow, what do we expect this time? Check the weather? I don’t know.”
DO YOU THINK THE CHANGES TO THE PHOENIX PACKAGE WILL HELP? “Oh yeah. You aren’t gonna find anybody more excited than me. Thank goodness. Really. Honestly, I’m thankful that they did that and thankful that they put up with me being pretty vocal about it in a constructive way because I really, really love the lower downforce on those shorter race tracks because all it’s gonna allow us to do this year is slide around more, get to people’s bumpers and move people out of the way and pass way easier and not get stuck in that miserable dirty air bubble at a track like Phoenix or Richmond. We’re gonna get back to what we love and good old fashioned short track racing. It’ll make it so much better, so yes. I’m probably number one the most excited. I was about to throw a party when they made that announcement.”
DO OTHER DRIVERS COME TO YOU FOR ADVICE WITH THE WAY YOU HAVE COME UP TO THIS POINT? “Yeah, I’ve gotten some interesting and really neat things happen, where people have come to me for advice because they’ve looked up to my path or story to get here because it has been way out of the ordinary for sure. I’ve been so lucky. I don’t know if I’m a good one or a bad one to talk to because I’m an honest guy and I’ll tell the part of how hard I’ve worked and how lucky I’ve been, but the main thing when people tell me is I make sure to express that I want to reiterate, I don’t want to be a downer, but I want to express how lucky and fortunate I have been, like literally on top of pouring everything my whole life and risking everything I still so many times along the way, if I wasn’t in this place at this time exactly, if this one piece or one of these one thousand pieces was out of place that I couldn’t even control or would have known to do, I still wouldn’t be here even on top of it all. Paul Menard, that situation. I can go through every single one and I feel like one day hopefully write a book many years from now to help people understand because it’s been a tough journey – different than others.”
AND IT’S BEEN CHALLENGING IN WAYS PEOPLE CAN’T IMAGINE. IS THERE ONE THING THAT STANDS OUT ALONG THE WAY? “My current one of all, actually, does stand out the most. There have been so many that I’m like, ‘How in the world did this happen? I couldn’t have even though this up or dreamed this up.’ But this one I felt like, for me and my family, was the craziest of the week of Bristol, learning I have nothing, and then looking and you’re kind of just trying to think, ‘what can I possibly even do?’ And I had nothing, like nothing even in mind like what’s even open, what’s gonna happen, what could come around? There’s no way and then when I got this phone call from the Wood Brothers I was like, ‘What can I possibly do for them?’ Paul is their driver, so it’s just crazy. I couldn’t have even thought it or dreamt it up any better than this one, so this one probably stands out as the craziest.”
WHAT WAS THAT RIDE HOME LIKE AFTER BRISTOL WITH YOUR WIFE? “A little bit of all the above. That’s the weirdest feeling I’ve ever had in my entire life, hands down, nothing even compares to that. I didn’t know, and still to this day didn’t even know what I was feeling. I couldn’t figure it out because I was dejected, it was an emotional week of my wife crying every single day and go home and just being so numb, I felt like a zombie and would just go to the track and do my job and keep grinding. But then after that being so dejected, but then having the fans, that reaction picked me up and be like break us down where we didn’t even had words. It was an emotional week that I literally couldn’t even express to people how tough it was, so to answer your question on the drive it was almost kind of quiet because I still couldn’t find the words to figure out how I was feeling. There was so much going on and still not knowing my situation and it was weird.”
SO THE SILENCE AFTER 500 LAPS WAS RATHER STARK. “I think my wife and my parents were probably a little more erred to the excited side of like, ‘wow, that was still an amazing accomplishment.’ I as a competitor was like ‘man, I don’t know, I’m still so bummed, but the crowd reaction was cool, but I still don’t have a ride.’ I mean, I went through it all. I don’t even know, man. And I think on top of all that more so that whole week wore on me a lot, just the emotion of trying to pick my wife up, my parents were in the roughest emotional state I’ve ever seen them in and I’m trying to hold it together myself and then go to the track and still be disciplined and do my job. It all kind of wore on me to where I didn’t feel like I had anything left after that race. I laid it all out on the line in the race and then after the race I was just drained.”
YOUR MOM WAS ALL EXCITED WHEN SHE CAME TO THE CAR AFTER THE RACE. “I got out of the car and I couldn’t say anything to my team. I wanted it so bad for them. I wanted it so bad for everybody that, yeah, my mom came over to the car and I remember that. I think my wife was a little bit more on my page where I don’t even know what to say. My mom was excited as a parent of ‘wow, you did a great job,’ but I just didn’t even have words to speak to anybody. The only time where I really felt the most emotion probably was the fan reaction. I still couldn’t get words out, but that had the biggest impact on me – the fans.”
DID YOU HAVE ANY BAD OR WEIRD JOBS BEFORE YOU STARTED IN RACING? “No, not any bad ones, but I did have some fun experiences or I would say a host at Texas Roadhouse. I worked at a restaurant and did that for a while when I was younger and I felt that gave me good work experience. It was fun. I grew up. My dad has been a hard worker his whole life, so doing that was fun. And then I worked for the little car business while I was racing in the XFINITY Series early, early on. I was working during the week still, so that stuff was cool. It taught me good principles.”
RYAN NEWMAN, No. 6 Koch Ford Mustang – WHAT DO YOU EXPECT TOMORROW? SANITY? “Yeah, I think there will be a lot more respect and a lot different mentality with just the fact that it is our 500 cars, and obviously a lot of people watched and learned and you get that preseason excitement out of the way of people that either thought they knew how to drive better than they do or forgot how to drive, which seemed to happen in both ways to the same person at times.”
WILL YOU NOT DO THINGS THURSDAY THAT YOU MIGHT DO ON SUNDAY IN THE 500 WITH 20 TO GO? “Without a doubt. That’s a factor of being cautious, being smart, and the problem is not everybody is racing for that. You’ve got three teams that are racing to not be in the 500, so those are the guys that you kind of have to keep an eye on. There’s more than that, but the end result is those three guys are gonna miss.”
WERE YOU SMART ENOUGH AT 25 TO THROTTLE BACK WHEN NECESSARY OR DID THAT COME WITH EXPERIENCE? “I don’t know about that. It’s different racing now than when I was 25. It’s not even really fair to compare. When I raced my first Daytona 500 I think I finished 13th, which was the last transfer in, and I don’t even know if we would have made it on anything else, but I remember it was a big race to me in the Gatorade 125s at the time. That was a different mentality than anything now, I think.”
THERE ARE 17 DRIVERS AND CARS THAT CHANGED. HOW DO YOU KEEP ABREAST OF WHO IS IN WHAT CAR SO YOU KNOW WHO YOU WANT TO DRAFT WITH OR BE AROUND? “I don’t really pay a whole lot of attention to that. The guys that you want to be around are the guys that didn’t change, so that, to me, seems a little bit easier to manage than it is trying to focus on the guys that did change. Those are typically not the guys that you have to worry about so much, knowing that that was me last year, I get it, but that’s just the facts of it.”
WHAT WILL YOU TALK TO CHRIS BUESCHER ABOUT AS FAR AS THE 500? “Just my advice as a teammate obviously that has an influence on how strongly ours and our organization I would think, but in the end we may not even be around each other for 500 miles, you just never know.”
YOU DIDN’T HAVE HELP AT THE END OF THE CLASH. “No, I didn’t have a lot of help there at the end. I watched the 14 car push the 3 car to the lead with two to go, so I wasn’t really sure what the m.o. was there, but we had a shot at it going into three on the last lap and just got out-drafted and out-teamed and the 20 and the 11 stuck around us.”
WOULD HAVING HIM IN THE FIELD HAVE HELPED? “Having anybody get to help you would be a benefit compared to what we had on Sunday.”
WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE TO THE SCHEDULE NEXT YEAR? “I want there to be less time per weekend to have a race. We can have 50 races. Let’s just say that if we have 36 times two right now, that’s 72 plus another probably 20 days of extra, so let’s just say there are 100 days we spend at the race track, let’s make it 50 races where we spend two days at a race track and not 36 races we spend to make the 100 days. Let’s go to more places with less time.”
IS THERE A FAVORITE TRACK NOT ON THE SCHEDULE YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE? “All of them. Dirt tracks are the most obvious to me. I’m such a proponent of short track racing and going over to Volusia or even other race tracks like Kokomo Speedway, Eldora, Knoxville, the Chili Bowl. Those places are special and those fans see that and know that and they are our core fans. In my opinion, those are the ones that we alienated in some respect years ago and we need to get that back and one of the best ways to do that is to go to their dance hall and play to their music.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON JIM FRANCE? “I think Jim is a great guy. He’s shown a lot of great leadership with respect to his role in our sport. He has the best interest of everybody from what I’ve seen, a huge improvement compared to some of the leadership of the past and I’m not afraid to say that. I think that we all learn from things we do right and we learn from things we do wrong.”
CAN HE TAKE NASCAR INTO THE FUTURE? “It doesn’t take just one guy, it takes a whole bunch of people. It takes a whole team with the sanctioning body and a team like this it’s not just on the weight of Jim France’s shoulders or Mike Helton’s shoulders or Ryan Newman’s shoulders, it’s a team sport, it really is, from a management standpoint, decision-making, the financial side of it, the track owners, the sponsors, it’s all those things and not just Jim France.”
WHAT DOES HIS STYLE MEAN TO YOU? “It’s good to be heard. The squeaky wheel doesn’t get the grease if it’s not heard.”
WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR SHORT TRACK RACING? “Just enjoy it. I had the opportunity to run the Chili Bowl and the Gateway race before that, and plan on doing some more. I plan on doing a couple modified races, whatever makes sense. I just enjoy racing those short tracks and dirt tracks so much. I kind of wish I hadn’t forgot about them so much.”
HOW DID YOU FEEL GETTING BACK IN THOSE CARS? “I had a lot of fun at the Chili Bowl. We finally got rolling there. We got crashed in our A-Main on prelim night, which got us in the E-Main. We won the E-Main and started 16th and raced to seventh in nine laps they took five, so just had a lot of fun and ran out of time.”
WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO IT AGAIN? “I’d love to do it again. It was a blast. A lot of good people. Aggressive Hydraulics sponsored us. A few other sponsors on our team, but Clauson-Marshall brought me a good race car. Coca-Cola was part of it. Brake Safe Technologies was a part of it. We just had a lot of fun.”
WHAT KIND OF RELATIONSHIP DID YOU HAVE WITH BUESCHER BEFORE HE CAME BACK TO ROUSH? “We went fishing one time. I think I out-fished him and I guess he doesn’t know any places to out-fish me, so we’ll have to figure that out this year.”
