NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
MEDIA DAY
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 12, 2015
KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 TARGET CHEVROLET SS met with media during Media Day at Daytona International Speedway. Full transcript:
ON THE NEW SEASON:
“We’re anxious to just get going. We hope we’re still competitive with the new rules package. Everybody gets excited for the season to start. Once the season starts, yeah, just hope we can get a couple of wins and be competitive every week.
“Last year, nobody had any expectations for me other than failing (laughs), so the expectations are different this year (with) a little bit more pressure. But our team’s not paying attention to any of those expectations. We’re going to go out there and do the best job we can. So, I think we can run up front every week, hopefully, and be competitive and try and get a couple of wins.”
INAUDIBLE:
“We had a really good year last year; so, hopefully we can build off those stats and grow into even better finishes each week. I felt like we deserved to be in the Chase last year, but we just didn’t do the right things during the regular season to put ourselves in the Chase. So, I think we’ve learned from that and this year we’ll be pushing even harder to get in the Chase.”
ON BEING A NEW FATHER:
“It’s just a lot of exciting times in my life right now between racing and starting a family and all that. It’s been fun. The whole baby-thing; everybody warned us that it’s going to be extremely challenging. It has its moments. But for the most part, it’s just been a lot of fun to see how he grows every day. It’s pretty cool.”
INAUDIBLE:
“Just being a driver is a lot of fun because you’re out there racing inches off the wall or inches away from other drivers; sometimes getting into other drivers and the wall. But yeah, I didn’t really participate in many other sports, but I can’t imagine you get quite the sensation in any other sport as you do in NASCAR or in racing in general.”
ARE YOU GOING TO BE THE NEXT BIG THING?
“I don’t know. I hope so. I hope I’m the next big thing. We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess. I’m sure there are a lot of other ‘next big things’ coming up. I hope I can stand out as that guy.”
ON WANTING TO WIN RACES:
“Hey, I’ll still take a few seconds because that’s good for the points; but I think we could win a couple of races, for sure. We finished second three times last year. Had I done things differently in those races, we could have turned those into wins. Hopefully this year, with more experience and probably better race cars, I think our team has made some gains during the off-season to make our Target Chevy fast; so, expectations are to definitely get a couple of wins and make it a few rounds in the Chase and try to go for the championship.”
INAUDIBLE:
“I felt like in the Cup series last year, I did a good job of finding that edge and not really jumping it. My DNF’s were from me getting involved in either other people’s wrecks or blowing right front tires. In the XFINITY Series, I jumped an edge quite a bit. But I feel like I did a good job in the Cup series.”
ON RUNNING ON THE EDGE AND PUSHING IT:
“They are long races, so you kind of understand how patient you need to be at certain points in the race. As far as finding the edge, I don’t know. You just try and go as fast as you can without hurting your car.”
LAST YEAR THERE WAS SOME TALK THAT YOU WERE COMING INTO THE SPRINT CUP SERIES TOO SOON. DO YOU FEEL SOME VALIDATION ABOUT THAT NOW?
‘Yeah, this Media Day is a lot different than last year, for sure. There are different questions. I definitely paid attention to it and people doubting what we were going to be able to do last year; and fueled that into our team as ‘lets go out and prove them wrong’. I feel like we did that. But I didn’t let it get to me or anything like that. Just like anything else, I just go out there and try to do the best job I can. I’m going to try to do the same thing this year.”
MEMORIES OF DAYTONA:
“I really haven’t had any good memories here until the Rolex a couple of weeks ago. But, yeah; SpeedWeeks was not great. The 500 was awful. I got into the wall the second lap of the race and blew a right front tire. Came down pit road and tried to fix it as quick as we could. We lost a lap and went out there and had a fender rub and popped our right rear tire and spun out and lost a couple of laps. We almost got back on the lead lap at the end, and Austin (Dillon) got into us and we wrecked. But once I got into the wall, I couldn’t wait for the race to be over. So, I hope this year goes a lot better. It couldn’t go any worse, hopefully, but yeah. I’m looking forward to it. I feel like my luck here at Daytona now is changing in 2015.”
ON SUPERSPEEDWAY RACING:
“Superspeedway racing is so different. I didn’t leave here thinking oh, this is going to be tough. You only race Daytona and Talladega where it’s this style of racing. I really didn’t do all that good at Phoenix the next week, but we were fast. We had a bad pit stop and lost a lap there. Even after Phoenix I didn’t think this was going to be tougher than I thought. I really thought after Phoenix, even though we didn’t finish well, it went well enough to where we could run good all season long.”
ON JEFF GORDON:
“Jeff Gordon was a fan of mine when I was racing sprint cars and midgets and stuff; when I was 11. That’s when he started noticing me, I think. I’d always looked up to him as a kid; watching on TV and trying to follow his career path as well as I could. He grew up in northern California close to where I grew up. We raced sprint cars and midgets and stuff like that at a lot of the same race tracks and won a few of the same big races. Jeff was a guy I looked up to and he kind of paved the path for dirt guys to get to the Cup series. And then, being able to race with him for his final two seasons is pretty special. To be able to say I got the chance to race with Jeff Gordon is pretty cool.”
DO YOU HAVE A STORY OR MEMORY ABOUT JEFF GORDON?
“I’ve gotten to hang out with him a couple of times away from the race track when we’re in Knoxville, Iowa because he sponsored our sprint car. Well, he sponsored it this year and I got to hang out with him the last couple of years there as part of the children’s foundation. We got to do go-kart races and so forth out there and then hang out with him after the races at night. And he’s a character. He’s a lot of fun to hang out with. That’s the kind of Jeff Gordon that a lot of people don’t get to see and I’ve never seen before. He’s definitely a fun guy to be around.”
HOW DO YOU HANDLE ANY NEGATIVITY OR THINGS SAID ON SOCIAL MEDIA?
“It’s like people’s jobs. Or some of them; that’s all some people do. You just try and block it off. We get more positive tweets than negative tweets. For every hundred positive tweets, you might get two negative ones. So I just try to pay attention to them, or just laugh at them.”
ARE THERE ANY NEGATIVE ONES THAT STICK IN YOUR MIND?
“I don’t pay attention to them, so I don’t really know.”
DO YOU ACTUALLY SHOP AT TARGET, WHICH IS YOUR SPONSOR?
“Heck, yeah. We do all of our shopping at Target, whether it’s groceries or clothes or anything. I swear, we’re home three days a week and we’re probably there (at Target) two days a week. Target is probably the best sponsor in the garage and I’m glad to have them be a supporter of mine.”
INAUDIBLE:
“Well, even the Unlimited and stuff; I haven’t been a part of it before. This is my first Unlimited. But it’s not a points race so I imagine it’s a pretty relaxing race. It doesn’t even have an effect on where you start in the 500. So, I think this whole weekend is pretty relaxing. We get to go to Volusia for a couple of nights and watch our sprint car team run. And then I’m going to head to New Smyrna Sunday night to watch Rico (Abreu) run his first K&N East race. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
WHAT HAS ATTENTION BEEN LIKE FOR HIM (RICO ABREU) SINCE CHILI BOWL?
“Chili Bowl is a huge event, and a lot of people that don’t pay attention to USAC season, they watch the Chili Bowl either there at the race or watching on TV. There’s probably a lot of people that have never heard about Rico that tuned into the Chili Bowl and saw this kid win, and saw him get out of the car. For how aggressive he is, they expected to see a guy that is five foot eight get out and they were shocked when they saw somebody who was four foot four get out. When people see that, they become and instant fan because he is different from the rest of us drivers out there and can get out there and kick all of our butts. He’s gotten a lot of attention lately. He has been handling it really well. You can tell he is really humble about it.”
HAS HE ASKED YOU HOW TO HANDLE THE NEW FOCUS AND ATTENTION?
“Yes, he has asked a couple of things. And I explained to him. Anytime he has a question for me, he knows he can ask me because he is going through the same thing I went through when I first got noticed. It took me three years to be a front runner in sprint cars. Once I did, it blew up for me. That is how he has been. He is my best buddy, I’ll help him out with whatever he needs.”
WHERE YOU SURPRISED WHEN FELIX (SABATES) GUARANTEED BOTH YOU AND JAMIE WOULD BE IN THE CHASE?
“Felix is a character. No, I wasn’t surprised because that is our expectations for sure. I think that is Chip Ganassi’s expectation every year. I feel like me and Jamie both expect that our cars are going to be really fast this year. Last year we were both fast enough to deserve to be in the Chase. We just didn’t do the right things during the season to put ourselves in position to make the Chase. We had too many DNF. That was probably both of our reasons for why we didn’t make it. I think this year we have even faster race cars, and hopefully we can both get a couple of wins and lock ourselves in the Chase.”
HOW ENCOURAGED WERE YOU WITH THE SPEED OF BOTH CARS TOWARD THE END OF LAST SEASON?
“That was very encouraging to see how both of us were running. Even though we weren’t in the Chase, we kind of played like we were in the Chase. We made aggressive calls and things like that to gain experience in the Chase even though we weren’t in the Chase. But we got ready to hopefully be in it this year. I feel like the experience we got last year will help when we are in Chase.”
WAS IT THEN A TRIAL RUN OF IF WE WERE IN THE CHASE, WHAT WOULD WE DO HERE?
“Yes. Exactly. And I think the No. 42 team would have finished sixth in points at the end of the season had we been in the Chase. I think Jamie was eighth or ninth or something like that. We were both strong runners in the Chase. I think almost every team once the Chase rolls around the kind of pretend that they are in the Chase. Especially with this new format making it into different rounds. Even though you aren’t in the Chase, you act like you are. It is a good way to gain experience as a team making race calls.”
ANY BIG SURPRISED FOR YOU IN YOUR FIRST YEAR OF SPRINT CUP?
“No. Well, maybe the most surprising thing to me was how well we ran. I had hoped we would get a couple of top-10s, not 17. I sure didn’t think we were going to get 17 top-10s. I think that was surprising. “
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