NASCAR CUP SERIES
RICHMOND RACEWAY
COOK OUT 400
TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
JULY 29, 2023
KYLE BUSCH, NO. 8 X WORLD WALLET CAMARO ZL1, met with the media prior to the NASCAR Cup Series practice and qualifying session at Richmond Raceway. Press conference transcript:
THE DENNY HAMLIN AND KYLE LARSON INCIDENT AT POCONO RACEWAY – WHAT’S YOUR TAKE ON FORCING SOMEONE TO MAKE A CHOICE BETWEEN LIFTING OR POTENTIALLY HITTING THE WALL WHEN YOU GET UNDERNEATH THEM? IS IT A FAIR MOVE? DENNY SAID THAT IT’S BECOME AN ACCEPTED WAY OF DOING BUSINESS THE LAST 10 YEARS.. WOULD YOU AGREE WITH THAT?
“Yeah – so there’s different ways of characterizing driving styles, right? But also I guess racing styles and how aggressive you are – slide jobs or forcing somebody out of the groove and making them lift or whatever. But the cars being more equal this day in age, yeah – you don’t want to get stuck side-by-side with somebody and allow the third place guy to kind of come into the fray and make it a three-way battle. You want to disperse of that guy as fast as you can, and the easiest way to do that is run them out of the groove. Whether that’s dirty or not, it kind of is what it is. Denny (Hamlin) might be a little remiss and forgotten about him doing that same move to me back in 2010 or ’11 at the All-Star Race and putting me into the fence off of (turn) two. He’s done it for a lot longer than 10 years.”
YOU SAID ‘IS IT DIRTY OR NOT’ – DO YOU THINK IT’S DIRTY AND WOULD YOU DO IT FOR A WIN?
“Yeah, I mean I think in certain circumstances – you try to win races as clean as you can, right? I mean that’s always kind of been my way of being brought up. You have to have a race car to go to the next week with, so if you’re crashing your stuff or somebody else’s stuff, they’re going to come back and crash you later. I don’t know – if I was in that same boat, I’m going to try and race it out and do the best I can to figure out how to make a side-draft and make a slide job where I’m clear and I can take that guy’s air, not just force them up the track door-to-door and into the wall.”
FROM A DRIVER’S STANDPOINT, WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT WE SAW LAST WEEK VERSUS WHAT YOU WOULD SEE AT A SHORT-TRACK AS FAR AS LIKE A BUMP-AND-RUN FOR THE WIN?
“Well I mean the bump-and-run scenario – that might even be a worse cheap shot, you know? Carl in 2017 here, is that right? Keep bringing them up, I’ll keep telling you that it happened to me (laughs).
Yeah, you flat out run into the corner deeper than you know your car is going to stick and you use the guy in front of you as a brake, and that’s what happens in the bump-in-run sometimes. My issue with (Dale Earnhardt) Jr. here in 2008 was we were racing, battling hard side-by-side – you keep inching into the corner a little bit deeper every single time and there’s going to be a time where you go over that limit and you slip, and that was me and made contact with him. That to me, like we were side-by-side for three laps, and it was kind of building up. It was going to be inevitable. But those are hard racing moments and those are moments in which you’re pushing a little bit more when you get side-by-side with somebody for the first chance and you just whack ‘em out. That’s not racing, that’s whacking.”
IN THE SITUATION THAT YOU SAW LAST WEEKEND, DOES IT MATTER WHO’S ON THE OUTSIDE, AS FAR AS HOW LONG YOU RACE THEM ‘CLEAN’?
“Yeah – yeah, I would say it definitely matters who you’re around and who you’re racing with; what they’re history is and what your history with them is on how they’re going to be raced or how you think you should race them.”
ALONG THOSE LINES, HOW DO YOU DEFEND AGAINST A MOVE LIKE THAT? OUTSIDE OF BEING FASTER THAN SOMEBODY ELSE AND NOT GIVING THEM THE OPPORTUNITY, HOW DO YOU DEFEND AGAINST THAT BECAUSE DRIVING DEFENSIVELY SEEMS TO BE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE TO WHAT HAS MADE YOU GUYS SUCCESSFUL IN THE FIRST PLACE?
“Yeah, I think that’s the tough part, right? If you’re (Kyle) Larson in that situation, do you just lift out of the gas once Denny (Hamlin) gets alongside of you? No.. like you have to put trust and faith into that guy that he’s going to be able run you as you would expect to be ran and not have to lift. If Larson lifts and brushes the wall, he loses eight spots on that straightaway. So really, you’re in a no win situation when you’re that guy on the outside like that.”
MANY, MANY YEARS AGO, ROBIN PEMBERTON SAID ‘BOYS, HAVE AT IT’. NOW WE ARE TOLD THAT THIS A SELF-POLICING SPORT, BUT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN SUSPENDED NOW FOR DOING THINGS THAT ROBIN PEMBERTON TOLD THEM YEARS AGO WAS OK. WHERE DO YOU COME DOWN ON ‘BOYS, HAVE AT IT’, POLICE OURSELVES OR WE’LL SUSPEND YOU IF WE WANT TO?
“Well I think in some of the suspension cases, it was a big egregious.. it was a bit much. I was probably close to that with my incident with (Kevin) Harvick.. man, I’m giving a history listen today boys and girls, in 2010 or ’11 I think at Darlington (Raceway). I hooked Harvick in the right-rear and that, today, would have been grounds for suspension on that one. But we had a history and we had a run-in, and he ran me into the fence and everything else. So I think they kind of waived on that one, just how we’d been racing with each other.
Yeah, there’s a line and they know where it is, and we all try to get to that edge as much as we can when we’re mad at somebody. You’re going to have those repercussions when it comes down to it.”
(NO MIC.)
“There is no definitive line. I don’t know if it’s over there or it’s over there, but it’s somewhere in this room.”
YOU RACE AGAINST A LOT OF KIDS. YOU BRING UP A LOT OF KIDS THROUGH KBM. I WOULD THINK THAT YOU TAKE A LOT MORE SATISFACTION OUT OF GETTING A WIN THE WAY YOU DID AGAINST COREY HEIM IN THE TRUCK RACE, WHERE YOU SET HIM UP AND PASSED HIM TO GET THE WIN. A WIN IS A WIN, BUT I WOULD THINK FROM A MORALE STANDPOINT, IF THERE IS ONE IN RACING, THAT THERE’S GREATER SATISFACTION IN HOW YOU DID IT?
“Yeah, there were definitely some other moments in that race where I was alongside of him – I was loose and I could have just stayed loose, stayed in the gas, ran into him and him washout or whatever. But I try to keep our stuff as clean as we could; race it out and race it hard and clean for the finish. Like I said, there’s certain people that you’re going to do that with, but there’s also how you’re raised and your mentality of what you feel like is right and you live by that moral. I think (Kyle) Larson is down probably four on Denny (Hamlin), at least, right now so he’s got a lot to get even.”
YOU WON AT AUTO CLUB SPEEDWAY IN THE SPRING. WE’RE GOING TO MICHIGAN INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY NEXT WEEK, WHICH IS A SIMILAR TRACK. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT GOING BACK TO MICHIGAN AND WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR CHANCES ARE?
“Yeah, completely different race tracks. Even though they’re two miles, the same distance – man, Fontana (Auto Club Speedway) and Michigan (International Speedway) are so vastly different from each other. But I’m looking forward to it. We’ve had good speed at the fast race tracks this year – the 1.5-mile to 2-mile speedways, even the 2.5-mile tracks. So I would like to think that we’ve got a good shot going to Michigan. I remember, I think, running second and third with the No. 8 car there last year with (Tyler) Reddick – he was fast, we were fast. We both had good cars and unfortunately I got caught up in a wreck early on and didn’t get to finish. But it seems like they’ve got a good baseline package for that place, so I’d like to think we’d be fine.”
YOU HAD A STRONG WIN AT SRX ON THURSDAY. DOES THAT GIVE YOU ANY CONFIDENCE HEADING INTO A SHORT-TRACK HERE AT RICHMOND RACEWAY WITH NASCAR?
“Yeah, I mean it does. It tells you when you get everything right that you can do the job. Those cars are all pretty equal, the same and whatnot. I was really loose in the heat races, but I was able to kind of tune on it a little bit with the adjustments that were allowed and made my stuff a lot better for the features, so that was really cool. It’s fun to race and get there and duke it out with some of those guys. To not have spotters is certainly different. I think you kind of see that and that’s sort of where most of the wrecks come from – it’s about knowing your situation and having situational awareness. That’s the biggest thing that race is all about. When I was running in the back of the second heat, like I was trying to make my way forward. I couldn’t make my way forward, so now I’m like – ‘OK if I’m not going forward, then there’s going to be somebody behind me that’s going to be trying to go forward. I better look in the mirror and just check and see where they’re at’. So you always just have to be on top of it.”
OBVIOUSLY SRX HAS SUSPENDED PAUL TRACY. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE THAT KIND OF MODEL APPLIED IN NASCAR FOR THAT KIND OF MOVE?
“I don’t know that he did a move.. I just think that he had absolutely zero situational awareness and thought that he was far enough ahead of the guy on his outside that the guy should lift and get out of the gas. He must have learned from Denny (Hamlin) the week before. I don’t know.. that was completely blatant and uncalled for of just driving up the race track and not having any care for the guy that’s alongside of you. They want to put on a good show. They’ve got a good product. They’ve got nice cars and they just keep getting torn up because of dumb moves.”
YOU’VE TALKED ABOUT YOUR SHORT-TRACK PACKAGE THIS YEAR AND HOW YOU GUYS WOULD LIKE TO GET BETTER THERE. YOUR STATS AT RICHMOND RACEWAY SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES. HOW RECEPTIVE HAS RCR BEEN TO YOUR FEEDBACK ON WHAT TO IMPROVE, NOT JUST ON SHORT-TRACKS IN GENERAL, BUT AT THIS RACE TRACK SPECIFICALLY?
“Yeah, I mean we’ve been talking about it nonstop, day in and day out – trying to figure out what it is that we need to do to get better to go faster at the short-tracks. This weekend will be another one of those tests, just being at a short-track here and trying to figure it out. There’s really not a whole lot of short-tracks left for the remainder of the year. You’ve got Martinsville (Speedway) and Phoenix (Raceway) I think, so this is kind of your last test before knowing that you better be ready for the Championship Four and having a good shot for a title run.
Yeah, we’ve completely thrown a whole new idea and concept out there this week, so we’ll see.”
ARE YOU CONFIDENT IN IT?
“I should be because it’s a damn copy and paste from somebody else that was really fast here in the spring, so if it doesn’t work, we’ve got bigger issues.”
YOU SPECIFICALLY HAVE BEEN SO GOOD HERE – FINSIHED ALL BUT ONE LAP YOU’VE EVER COMPETED IN ALL OF THESE RACES. HOW MUCH ARE YOU ABLE TO MAKE AN IMPACT TO KIND OF CLOSE THE GAP AND GET IT WHERE YOU NEED TO BE?
“Yeah, that one lap.. that one lap killed me, too. Knocked us out of the playoffs that year.
I’ve enjoyed Richmond (Raceway). When I first came here, it was in the Truck Series on the old asphalt back with the sealer and stuff. I was terrible – I think I hit every wall there was here that night. And then I came back the next time with the Xfinity cars – sat on the pole, won the race for my first win and that was the repave of this track in 2004. I’ve just always enjoyed it, always liked it since then. Always been pretty familiar with how to get around here. It reminds me a lot of some other short-tracks that I’ve raced at, including my home track in Las Vegas, the Bullring, and then some others around the country, too. How it’s aged and wore out reminds you a little bit more of some of those places, as well.
It’s fun, I enjoy it. I’ve done well here, which makes it a lot easier to talk about. I would love to go out here and get another win or two so I can get myself closer to Richard’s (Petty) mark of the most wins here.”
PUTTING ON YOUR TEAM OWNER HAT IN THE TRUCK SERIES, IS THERE ANYTHING THAT NASCAR OR THE SERIES COULD DO AS A WHOLE TO KIND OF CURB COSTS MORE THAN THEY ALREADY ARE?
“Find more money for us to race for. That’s where it comes from. The world of motorsports is not getting cheaper, that’s for sure. People costs, tire costs, inflation.. everything has really gone up. The engine program with Ilmor was a great start of that, but those costs have now I think gone up 26 percent or something in the last two or three years, so even that’s taken a hurting. Our teams are flying less – we’re driving more, they drove here to Richmond (Raceway) because you just can’t pay for that stuff. The flight costs have gone up $250 a ticket, per person, or something like that to go to these races. You have to race for more money. If it costs more money to go racing, you need more money. And if there’s no sponsors, you have to be able to race for more.”
AS COSTS HAVE GONE UP, IS THERE MORE THAT NASCAR CAN DO IN TERMS OF JUICING THE PURSE MONEY TO COINCIDE WITH OTHER COSTS THAT GO ALONG WITH FIELDING A TEAM?
“It’s no different than running a business, right? A race team is a business. When your top line and your bottom line – like if you don’t have enough top line, your bottom line is going to be black or red. So whatever it is in that space you have to work with, you know what you have to work with. Most business operate on 10 to 35 percent profit range and I would say race teams probably operate within a negative 30 percent profit range. We’re always spending more than what we’re bringing in, and that’s why it takes rich people to do it.”
About Chevrolet
Founded in 1911 in Detroit, Chevrolet is now one of the world’s largest car brands, available in 79 countries with more than 3.2 million cars and trucks sold in 2020. Chevrolet models include electric and fuel-efficient vehicles that feature engaging performance, design that makes the heart beat, passive and active safety features and easy-to-use technology, all at a value. More information on Chevrolet models can be found at www.chevrolet.com.
