NASCAR CUP SERIES
ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY
QUAKER STATE 400
TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
JULY 9, 2022

TYLER REDDICK, NO. 8 ALSCO UNIFORMS CAMARO ZL1, met with the media following the NASCAR Cup Series race weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Press Conference Transcript:

TALK ABOUT HOW YOUR WEEK HAS BEEN FOLLOWING YOUR FIRST CAREER NASCAR CUP SERIES WIN AT ROAD AMERICA.

“It’s been really busy. The funny part is, I already knew I was going to have a really busy week between Road America and coming here to Atlanta (Motor Speedway). But the win just made that a little bit crazier. We had a lot of things going on. We had to do some flying commercially for other things before the win, so it didn’t really change my week up that much, other than doing a little bit of media on Friday. But yeah, it’s been a busy week, so I haven’t had a lot of time to relax, other than try and relax all I could on Monday.

The week flew by. It felt like two, three days went by and here we are back at the track. That’s not a bad thing.”

THE LAST TIME HERE, YOU HAD A RIGHT REAR ISSUE. ARE YOU CONCERNED ABOUT THAT OR DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU ALL HAVE FIGURED OUT WHAT THOSE ISSUES WERE THE LAST TIME YOU WERE HERE?

“It’s in the back of my head, for sure. But the one thing that was really interesting about those failures between myself, Ross Chastain and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is that we were quite a bit different on a lot of the rear suspension settings. So that kind of leads me to believe that it wasn’t necessarily how we had our car setup or even how they had their car setup.. maybe it was something else. But certainly having the bumps off of turn two – the really big bump that we had – smoothed down I think will help with that. They’ve obviously made some changes; put some hash marks around the race track, which I think is a good thing. They’ve worked on the front straightaway a little bit, rounding the wall.

Yeah, I mean I guess I still have those concerns. But honestly there’s not much we can do about it. If they do present themselves again, we’ll go out there and run the best race possible, and hopefully we’re in a position where that won’t happen again. There was I’d say probably about 15 or 16 other Chevrolet’s out there that didn’t have that problem, so hopefully we don’t have any this time around.”

WITH THIRTEEN DIFFERENT WINNERS, DO YOU FEEL SAFE GETTING INTO THE PLAYOFFS?

“I feel safe just in the sense of the speed that we’ve had. Yeah we got that win, which is great. But I don’t feel safe and we’re by no means going to relax a little bit and kind of glide through the rest of the regular season. There are huge opportunities in front of us every single week now to really double down on what we’ve been doing. It worked in our favor last Sunday.

The goal still remains.. to go out there and win races. Nothing changes there. We just have the relief of getting that first win and validation that ‘hey, we can go out there and do this’, so that’ll just continue to be our goal. We’ll try and win some more.”

DO YOU WALK INTO THE GARAGE AREA A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT THIS WEEK THAN LAST?

“Yeah, I wore a rain jacket because it’s pouring (laughs). It’s pretty wet out there. But yeah that’s the big difference, really.”

QUESTION ABOUT YOUR CAR THIS WEEKEND – ARE YOU RUNNING THE DIGITAL DASH CAMERA IN ADDITION TO THE MIRROR?

“Yeah.”

DO YOU DO THAT AT ALL THE RACES?

“There were a couple that we didn’t. I think Martinsville and Richmond, we opted not to use it. Unfortunately, I noticed right away how much I was using the camera, even though in my mind I was using the mirror above the camera. We have them placed kind of similarly together. So that was pretty interesting those two races that we didn’t have it; going through the process of not having it and just ultimately waking up to the fact that I used the camera a lot more than I thought. So yeah, we pretty much run it everywhere.”

DO YOU USE IT PRETTY MUCH EXCLUSIVELY INSTEAD OF THE MIRROR? I’VE HEARD SOME GUYS SAY THE MIRROR DOESN’T REALLY GIVE YOU THE FULL PICTURE?

“It’s a little difficult. I’m glad we have both with the slots in the rear windshield. Just depending on the time of the day. We haven’t really raced in the rain or anything like that. But we did the Martinsville test when it was wet and having that camera was beneficial to some of that. I pretty much have gotten used to using it a lot. If I could tell you what I look at first every single time I look up, I couldn’t tell you. I’m probably looking at both. They both have their advantages. You kind of know and have a good comfort with the old school, standard mirror. But you can see certain things with the camera that you wouldn’t necessarily see with your standard mirror.”

IT SEEMS AS IF A STREET RACE ANNOUCEMENT FOR NEXT SEASON COULD BE SOON. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THAT? HAVE YOU EVER DONE A STREET RACE BEFORE AND DO YOU HAVE ANY THOUGHTS ON WHAT NASCAR SHOULD BE LOOKING AT IN TERMS OF MAKING SURE THESE CARS WILL RUN WELL ON A STREET COURSE?

“Street racing isn’t necessarily legal, so I can’t really say I’ve done it before.. (laughs).

The street course idea is a cool one. I was excited to see what we did on iRacing and put together the Chicago street course. That idea is very exciting to me. I haven’t had a lot of experience on road courses. They’ve been kind of new to me over the last couple of years. But the thought of a street course to me has been really exciting. I really enjoyed the (Charlotte) ROVAL at first because of some of the corners you have there – you make a mistake in turn one at the ROVAL and there’s a barrier. You overstep it a little bit in (turn) two and there’s another barrier. I think the thought of that could be really exciting.

I feel like we just have to make sure it’s not too narrow. It seems like Chicago could work, so I’m excited for it. I just hope we don’t lose a track that is also really good for us, too.”

AUSTIN (DILLON) WAS VERY OPTIMISTIC ABOUT THIS.. BUT IN YEARS PAST, ONE WIN CAN OPEN THE FLOOD GATES FOR THE REST OF THE SEASON. DO YOU FEEL THAT RCR IS IN A POSITION TO GET A WIN FOR THE NO. 3 CHEVROLET AND ANOTHER WIN FOR YOU?

“Yeah, absolutely. There has been a races this year where Austin (Dillon) has just been consistently up front all race long. Unfortunately it hasn’t been as frequently as they’ve hoped, but they’ve done a really good job when they’ve had that speed to stay up front all day, capitalize on it and get a good finish. That could happen anywhere. You look at the speed he had at Road America; I think they were pretty close to where they want to be. So it could be anywhere for either one of us. I would like to win again, but I would really like to have my teammate in the playoffs with me so that we can both take a shot at this as the season unfolds.”

HOW BIG OF A RELIEF IS IT TO GET THE MONKEY OFF YOUR BACK WITH YOUR FIRST WIN AND DOES IT MAKE YOU MORE AGGRESSIVE IN THESE NEXT EIGHT RACES GOING INTO THE PLAYOFFS?

“It was really nice to check that off the list. It was a huge sense of relief. It’s validation for all of us.

On the aggressive side of things, I don’t necessarily think I need to get any more aggressive. I think the big thing has just been to manage the race for us and manage risk versus reward. I don’t know if anything really changes for us as a team. We just won a race last time we were on the race track. I think we’ve been dialing it in and are closer to where we need to be as a group, and obviously we were in a great spot Sunday.”

THE XFINITY RACES YOU’RE RUNNING LATER ON, DO YOU PICK THOSE RACES OR HOW DOES THAT WORK?

“In a sense, yeah I kind of got to pick and choose. But two, I was kind of like ‘we’ll run as many as you want’. It’s worked out and they’ve enjoyed having me. We’ve been able to go out and win a race. We’ve had a lot of speed at a lot of the races. Unfortunately I’ve made mistakes.. I’ve done some things that I normally don’t do on Sunday’s.

Unfortunately to Big Machines’ demise on Saturday at Road America, I drove through too many boxes leaving and had I not made that mistake with them, I may have made it on Sunday. So running both has been beneficial. Obviously I’m not just using Saturday to learn for Sunday.. I want to go out and win with that group again. It’s been helping me, for sure.”

WOULD YOU CREDIT YOUR EXPERIENCE LAST SATURDAY IN THE XFINITY RACE IN THE NO. 48 CAR IN HELPING YOU WIN ON SUNDAY?

“In ways, yes. It’s not as big of a benefit as it used to be. The braking points, the handling characteristics of the car are a lot different now. After spending so much time in the Cup car and it being awhile since I’ve run a Xfinity car on a road course, I just forgot how scary and sketchy the Xfinity cars are. You have one little mistake or a little bit of wheel hop and you’re gone. In the Cup car, you can just attack, attack, attack. Those cars are pretty hard to upset. They’re a lot different for sure now.”

I UNDERSTAND THAT YOU RAN FOR BLOOMQUIST AND YOU’VE HAD SUCCESS ON DIRT IN CALIFORNIA GROWING UP. BUT WHEN YOU GOT IN A CAR, WERE YOU FAST RIGHT AWAY AND PEOPLE WERE LIKE ‘THAT KID HAS IT’? DID IT TAKE YOU A FEW YEARS TO WORK UP TO IT? AT WHAT POINT IN YOUR LIFE WERE PEOPLE LIKE ‘REDDICK SEEMS TO HAVE SPEED’?

“It seemed like getting 80 percent of the way there, like hopping in something and getting up to speed, for me growing up was never really a problem. It’s always kind of been the little things that I struggle with in the Cup Series.. just closing out the whole race. In dirt late models, it’s kind of the same thing, ironically. I’ve never even thought about that until you asked me.

But yeah, when I jumped from the different classes running outlaw karts when I was younger, I felt like I kind of could get right where I needed to be and be competitive right away. Jumping into a midget, kind of got up to speed right away. When I was younger, non-wing sprint cars were the same thing. The late model was the one that was kind of surprising. It was so much different. I had never really driven a car with fenders or a body on it. I was able to get up to speed pretty quickly in that heavy of a car.

I’ve kind of, thankfully, always had that on dirt. On asphalt, it was a little bit different when I hoped in a ran it. Mobile, Alabama, with Schrader for the first time, I was getting lapped like crazy. I had no idea what I was doing. I got to the bigger tracks where you’re sliding the car around, like Rockingham for my first NASCAR K&N start, it just seemed to come quick. Just that type of racing, where you’re sliding the car and having to kind of use your car control, really helped me to be able to be aggressive.. go out there and make the mistake, catch the car, learn from it, move on and get closer and closer. That’s just the way that I learned growing up.”

INAUDIBLE

“I’m guessing I just learned a lot of those tendencies and that driving style from outlaw karts because a lot of things would just happen really, really fast. You’d have to bend it in the corner and you might be too sideways to straighten it up, back and forth. We were running around places like Cycleland and Red Bluff. Cycleland was kind of the big, wide open, run the fence, run the cushion, kind of track. Almost reminded me of Knoxville a little bit to scale for those outlaw karts. And then Red Bluff was your little bullring, where you have to muscle up; drive it in there, be aggressive. I just think racing those outlaw karts, in my opinion, just kind of laid down the great foundation for me with helping me with car control.

A couple years ago, I went out and got to drive a car around Cycleland again for the first time in like 10 years. I’m a lot older now and I go 180-190 mph around a race track, but the speed I had at Cycleland was kind of surprising. So I think I just learned a lot of great things from those cars. If you get a chance to ask Kyle (Larson) about it too, I’m sure he would have some interesting opinions. But I feel like I learned a lot of who I am as a driver from those outlaw karts.”

Team Chevy high-resolution racing photos are available for editorial use.

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.

NASCAR CUP SERIES
ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY
QUAKER STATE 400
TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
JULY 9, 2022

CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 NAPA AUTO PARTS CAMARO ZL1, met with the media in advance of the NASCAR Cup Series race weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Press Conference Transcript:

ABOUT A WEEK AGO, YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO HAVE YOUR CUP SERIES CHAMPIONSHIP TROPHY WITH THE WORLD SERIES TROPHY AND THE COLLEGE CHAMPIONSHIP TROPHY AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE A PART OF THAT. TALK ABOUT THAT AND WHAT IT MEANS TO BE ABLE TO RACE IN FRONT OF YOUR HOMETOWN FANS.

“Yeah, for sure. It was cool. I’m sure a lot of you guys have heard about it or heard me talk about it, but we had an opportunity to go to the College Football Hall of Fame there in Atlanta and have our 2020 Championship trophy, the Braves World Series trophy and the University of Georgia’s National Championship trophy on display there. For me, the coolest part about that is one – those three trophies being in the same room I think is really cool; and the period of time in which they were all earned has all been very recent. And probably the biggest piece of it is the way the fans of the Atlanta Braves and the University of Georgia have all just kind of kept me as part of the family here is I think really special and meaningful for me. Ultimately, I’m just a fan of them, too, and have grown up watching them. So I think that was really cool of them to include me and our team, and allow us to be a part of that event. It was just really special. It was a cool day as fan of what I’ve enjoyed watching over the years.

As far as being here at Atlanta (Motor Speedway), it’s always nice to race close to home. That’s one of the best things you can ask for, especially with our schedule and how much we’re on the road. It’s nice to be able to go home at night and be close to the house. It’s really pretty straightforward. Probably not a very exciting answer, but that’s the truth of it. I get to go home and sleep in my own bed.”

YOU’RE GOING TO BE GOING INTO TURN ONE WITH NO PRACTICE. HOW DO YOU SET YOUR MINDSET ON THAT WITH A RELATIVELY NEW CAR AND THE FACT YOU’VE BEEN ON THIS TRACK ONCE SINCE IT WAS RECONFIGURED?

“Yeah, we’ve already raced here once, so it’s just a mini-superspeedway now is really kind of what it is. It will be like qualifying at Daytona or Talladega.. you’re going to be running wide open. The track has a lot of grip. I think they fixed the bump thing there off of (turn) two that they had going on during the spring race, so that’s nice of them to do. I think everybody will appreciate that. I don’t think it’s going to make a big difference. Even if we don’t get to qualify, I think it will be fine.”

IS THERE A CHANCE FOR CARS TO GET STRUNG OUT HERE OR DO YOU EXPECT EXACTLY THE SAME AS MARCH?

“I think it’ll be the exact same. Certainly as it gets hotter, typically the track grip goes away. But I feel like when you have a repave that’s this fresh, I don’t think that impacts it just yet. Maybe in five years, it might take it that long. And two, we’re going slower with this package and everything else. So I think all of those things added together, the sensitivity of the track is less noticeable until you’re further down the road; or you’re faster where you’re not just right on the edge of whatever that speed number is to have to lift and all that stuff.”

HOW MUCH DOES RACING AT YOUR HOME TRACK DRIVE YOU TO WIN HERE?

“I would love to win here. That would be one of the best things to do.. to win at your home track. I’ve watched guys do that over the years and you can tell that means a lot to them. I think it would be very much the same. For me, it would be very meaningful to be able to check that box. We’ve been OK here. We had one really good run, I would say; and the rest of them, just kind of mediocre. Now the way that it is with speedway racing, it’s a bit of a toss-up. I think most anybody has a shot this weekend the way this event is now.

But yeah, I would love to check that box here. That would be super special to me. Having two races here is even better than one because you have two weeks at home versus just one, so I’m all for it. We can race here five times, four times, six times, however much they want. And it’s close to Charlotte too, so I feel like there’s worst places we could go for all of you Charlotte folks. So that would be good, right?”

IN THE SPRING RACE HERE, THERE WERE SO MANY CAUTIONS AND YOU NEVER HAD TO DO A GREEN FLAG PIT STOP. MAYBE THE SAME THING HAPPENS THIS TIME, MAYBE IT DOESN’T. IF IT DOESN’T, WHAT ARE THE CONCERNS OR CHALLENGES WITH TRYING TO SLOW DOWN BECAUSE OF THE NARROW CORNER AND TRYING TO GET SETUP FOR PIT ROAD HERE?

“Yeah, I would say that’s going to be pretty wild to watch, for sure. I think a lot of it is going to be weighing how much you want to be really secretive about what you’re doing. Like at a Daytona race nowadays, manufacturers get together and nobody is telling each other when they pit; you kind of want to catch the other guys off guard. So it’s like how much do we want to live in secrecy there and try and have this super strategic plan to out-smart our competitors; or how much do we not want to crash. The more we don’t tell the people behind us that we’re not pitting, the higher the odds are of us crashing because somebody wasn’t aware that a group of five or six guys are fixing to come to pit road. So I think that piece of the puzzle is going to be important.. just to relay the message. People understand behind you, ‘hey, the Chevrolet’s are coming this time’ or whoever. I feel like at least our first couple of stabs at it, we should probably be a little more open about what’s going on just to see how it plays out because we didn’t do one before. It is narrow and the people that are further back in the pack are going to have to be really aware of what’s going on and be able to give some extra space.

We’ll see, but hopefully that’s what happens.”

FROM A HISTORY STANDPOINT, DO YOU THINK THIS TRACK IS DIFFERENT ENOUGH NOW THAT IT SHOULD BE VIEWED DIFFERENT IN THE RECORD BOOKS?

“Honestly, yes in my opinion. It’s like a different place.. it’s like a completely different track coming to now compared to what we used to have.

That’s a great question. I look at Jimmie’s (Johnson) dominance at Texas (Motor Speedway); they repaved it and he goes back there and wins again. It just adds to the legacy of how good he already was there. But I do agree, I think it’s different enough to where it needs to have a little bit of a different storyline to it; or at least everyone understands that it was repaved in 2022 and then you can kind of understand from there who was dominate, if anyone, and kind of how things changed. It is like coming to a different track now honestly compared to what it was. It was a different deal last year.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS SEASON, SO FAR? THIRTEEN DIFFERENT WINNERS AND YOU LOOK AT THE POINT STANDINGS NOW, THE GUY ON THE BUBBLE IS EIGHTH IN POINTS. IT’S KIND OF A VERY STRANGE SEASON AS WE GET INTO THE FINAL RACES OF THE REGULAR SEASON.

“And heck, you still have eight races.. you have a ton of racing left between now and the Playoffs. You only need a few more winners until you lock everyone in on wins. It’s a different deal than we’ve seen the past few years. Will that continue? I don’t know. We’ll just have to kind of wait and see. Is that just a one-off season thing where we have a year like this; or is that going to be the new norm moving forward? I think that’s a question that nobody really has a good answer to.

I just look at how many races are left and that’s a lot of races. Eight weeks.. stages mixed in there and all the things that can happen in eight weeks. And there are guys that are beyond capable of winning one, two, three races that haven’t won yet that are certainly there too. It’s been an interesting year. Glad we’re on the winning side of it. Certainly we’re grateful to have a win at this point and be able to try and focus on getting some more. It’s an interesting situation, for sure, when you look at from the outside.”

LOOKING AHEAD TO NEW HAMPSHIRE NEXT WEEK, DO YOU FEEL LIKE WE’LL HAVE THE CHAOS WE SAW AT GATEWAY AT LOUDON, AS WELL?

“I don’t think it will be as much at Loudon, personally. I think Loudon will be more like races up there in the past. Really, I think it’s going to be very difficult to pass. It always is when you go up there. It was one of the most difficult places to pass, I felt like, in the past. So now, I think it’s going to be even more so, which I think it will be very track position oriented, pit stops and restarts even more so. And probably as time goes on, it will continue to get more and more in that direction.”

SINCE THIS HAS BEEN MOVED TO A SUMMERTIME RACE AGAIN, DO YOU GET MORE FAMILY OR FRIENDS HERE FROM DAWSONVILLE?

“No, probably not. I think it just kind of depends on the weekend, honestly. Probably a little bit more the opposite, really. I feel like a lot of my friends are gone, at the beach or away with family throughout the summer. But I don’t know, we’ll see. I certainly have some friends coming down on Sunday, but I don’t know that it will be a major difference.

We’ll see. I’m looking forward to it. Like I said, it’s always nice to be around home. When you do have family and friends around to come down and hang out, I always enjoy that time with them and have them at an event. Not often you’re close enough to home where people can, so looking forward to that.”

IT SOUNDS LIKE THE ANNOUCEMENT FOR A STREET RACE NEXT YEAR IS COMING. WILLIAM BYRON WAS JUST IN HERE AND HE WAS KIND OF SKEPTICAL AFTER RACING THAT LAYOUT ON IRACING. CURIOUS YOUR THOUGHTS ON IT AND WHAT YOU THINK WOULD MAKE A GOOD STREET RACE FOR THE CUP SERIES?

“To be honest with you, I don’t really know a ton about all of that. I did the iRacing thing there in 2020, so I don’t know how similar it will be to that.

To me, when I think about that, I’m like OK – we need to make sure it’s a good event. The drivers might not like the track and it might not be ideal for us. But when you’re in the middle of the city and have the ability to draw that kind of a crowd out to your race, we better make sure it’s put on well. Done at a very high level, people have a good spot to watch the race from, things to go do and make it an event. That’s what it needs to be.. it needs to be an event. And I think as long as it’s that and it’s done well, it will be a success whether the drivers like the track or not.”

Team Chevy high-resolution racing photos are available for editorial use.

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.

NASCAR CUP SERIES
ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY
QUAKER STATE 400
TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
JULY 9, 2022

WILLIAM BYRON, NO. 24 AXALTA CAMARO ZL1, met with the media in advance of the NASCAR Cup Series race weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Press Conference Transcript:

GIVE US A QUICK OVERVIEW OF RETURNING HERE AS THE WINNER OF THE SPRING NASCAR CUP SERIES ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY RACE AND HOW YOUR TEAM PLANS TO APPROACH THIS WEEKEND.

“Yeah, it’s pretty straight forward for us. We do our pre-race meeting on Thursday and talk about strategy stuff, lane choice and things of that nature. But there’s nothing really at the track that we can prepare for besides qualifying, which is really just trying to hit your shift points and trying to make sure I do everything on my end to keep the car wide open and cut as much distance as possible. Pretty straightforward day as far as that goes. We know that this race is going to be its own beast and there’s going to be a lot that happens, and just try to mentally and physically prepare for that. Make sure that you’re studying the things that happened in the last race here because I do think it will be a really similar race. I’m kind of interested to see how the hash marks in the corner change things and see if that changes anything, handling-wise, or if that’s just a visual reference.”

ABOUT THE HASH MARKS.. ARE YOU SAYING THAT THEY MIGHT BE SLIPPERY OR SOMETHING, OR THEY MIGHT NOT HAVE AS MUCH GRIP?

“Yeah – so typically, anywhere you have paint in the corner, typically it adds some front grip sometimes. It could make the cars move around a little bit more maybe in the banking, so I’m just kind of interested to see if that’s the case. Like at Talladega (Superspeedway), there’s one and then there’s a space, and then there’s another. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK MAKES YOU A GOOD SUPERSPEEDWAY RACER? HOW HAVE YOU EMBRACED IT TO GET GOOD AT IT IN A SHORT TIME IN YOUR CAREER?

“When I was starting out, like going back to the first truck race on a superspeedway; I was really nervous, timid, didn’t make a lot of moves and I ended up getting into someone else’s crash. So I was just like ‘man, this just doesn’t make any sense. I feel so timid, I feel so nervous the whole time.’ So I just started to take a more aggressive approach to try and learn. Knowing that the outcome might be the same – maybe I’m going to crash or whatnot at the end of the race – but at least I’ve learned something throughout the race and don’t feel like I’m just a passenger in the pack. I hated that feeling of just feeling like I was going to ride around and hope for the best. That didn’t set well for me throughout the race, so I just took a more aggressive approach.”

IF YOU DO END UP STARTING THIRTEENTH IF THERE’S NO QUALIFYING, FROM WHAT YOU LEARNED IN THE SPRING, WILL IT BE EASY FOR YOU TO GET IN THE FRONT? IS IT STILL DIFFICULT TO GET TO THE FRONT CONSIDERING IT’S A 1.5-MILE SUPERSPEEDWAY-TYPE RACE?

“Yeah, it won’t be super easy by any means. The outside lane is pretty dominant. Trying to pick my way through different battles will be critical. I’d like to get some stage points in stage one, so yeah we want to try and get towards the front and gives ourselves a chance at points.

This weekend is important to try and go for those stage wins. That’s what everyone is after, is those playoff points right now.”

YOU WON THIS RACE AND THEN WENT AND WON MARTINSVILLE A FEW WEEKS LATER. IN THE TEN RACES SINCE MARTINSVILLE, I THINK YOU HAVE ONE TOP-10 AND ZERO TOP-FIVES. WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE SLUMP? IN COMING HERE WHERE YOU WON ALREADY, ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO TURNING IT AROUND FROM HERE?

“Yeah, certainly looking forward to turning it around. It’s been a rough stretch. It’s not been from a lack of effort. I feel like for a couple weeks there, you’re still riding the high from winning Martinsville (Speedway) and getting your second win.. all those things. So we kind of went to Bristol Dirt, which is its own beast. And then Talladega (Superspeedway) is it’s own beast and still had a good run there. We just got on a rough patch there.

We’ve had speed. Like Darlington (Raceway), we obviously had speed. Kansas (Speedway), we were leading the race and had a flat tire, damaged the whole underbody of the car and had no speed after that. That showed us how important that was. There’s been a lot of other races, like Charlotte (Motor Speedway) – qualified fifth, ran in the top-five for the first half of that race. We made a strategy decision to short-pit that stage. Given how many cautions there were at Charlotte, we were running out of tires. We restarted 18th and unfortunately got in that crash that took out 10 plus cars.

It’s just been tough. There’s been maybe one or two races where we just didn’t have any speed. Gateway, we were really bad. That was a wakeup call, for sure. And then there has been a couple like last week – we had a loose wheel and fortunately it didn’t come off. We were running eighth at the time after starting way deep in the pack, so it’s been circumstantial things.

The results don’t look good at all, but we know that the majority of the time – I’d say 75% of the time – we’ve had the speed to compete. It’s just been a lot of circumstantial things; some in our control and a lot out of our control honestly. Parts failures.. Nashville (Superspeedway), we had a steering rack. I wouldn’t say that we’re not trying; it’s just been tough to put a smooth, solid weekend together, which is what was making us win races. We were a top-five car and executing the way we needed to put ourselves up front.”

NEWS BROKE THIS WEEK THAT THE CHICAGO STREET RACE COULD BE A REALITY NEXT YEAR. WHEN YOU THINK OF A STREET RACE, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEAS OF HOW NASCAR SHOULD APPROACH THAT?

“I’m very skeptical. I drove it on iRacing and iRacing does a great job with the tracks. If it’s anything like that, it’s very, very narrow. So we’re going to have some work to do to create a passing lane. I don’t think it’s a matter of just making the track super wide so there’s room for error, but there has to be a passing lane. So we have to be able to get inside of somebody under braking and not just hit the wall. There is some work to do there to get the track a little bit wider, a little bit more room to race each other.

I think it’s a cool idea. The atmosphere should be great and it should be exciting. I’ve not been to Chicago much, but it should be exciting.”

YOU WON THE TWO RACES PRETTY QUICK OUT OF THE BOX AND DESPITE THE CIRCUMSTANCES AND DIFFERENT THINGS YOU JUST TALKED ABOUT, ARE YOU SURPRISED YOU’RE RETURNING TO ATLANTA (MOTOR SPEEDWAY) FOR THE SECOND TIME AND IT’S STILL JUST TWO WINS?

“Yeah, definitely surprised. If you would have summarized our first half of the season to me and told me we had two wins, but our results were nowhere near that. Like last year, I think we had 10 races in-a-row that we finished in the top-10, so we were a really consistent team. It’s not like we’re doing anything different. We don’t really have any different pieces on our team than last year. I think we’ve got a better pit crew than we had last year. Those guys are really fast. We just had a misfortune and issues, so we just have to keep showing up and putting the effort in. After the first handful of races went poorly, we started to put more effort in and started to focus even more on details. Unfortunately, that stuff hasn’t shown up yet, but eventually that work that we’re putting in is going to show up. Hopefully it’s this weekend. New Hampshire is a big test for us to see how competitive we are there, too.”

SPEAKING OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, GIVEN WHAT HAPPENED AT GATEWAY WHICH IS A SIMILAR TRACK AS FAR AS THE RACING IS CONCERNED, WHAT KIND OF RACING DO YOU SEE UP THERE?

“I think it all depends on what the track looks like; what they do with the PJ-1 and how they set it up. Luckily, I’m going to be able to run the Xfinity race that weekend, which I’m excited about. I’ve ran one Xfinity race so far this year and finished second. It was a lot of fun at Texas (Motor Speedway) in those cars, so I’m excited to see how the track plays out there. In the Cup car, this car requires different lanes, but it’s really good if there’s multiple lanes. I think it should be a good race. You’re able to get air on the nose at New Hampshire (Motor Speedway) in a lot of instances, so it should be a good race.”

YOU MENTIONED EARLIER COMING BACK TO ATLANTA AFTER WINNING. WHAT’S YOUR COMFORT LEVEL HAVING RACED HERE ALREADY?

“I think everybody is going to get better, so it’s not going to be near as easy as it was the first time around. I think everybody gets a chance to look at the data; look at what worked, how I kept the lead and stuff like that. So it’s not going to be as easy to fend people off, for sure. It’s just going to be adapting as the race starts. It’s kind of the same thing as we did last time. You just adapt and learn as we go. I’d like to lead a bunch of laps like we did last time, but it’s going to take a lot of learning in the first stage to get there.”

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Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Quaker State 400 Advance | Saturday, July 9, 2022

Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 17 Fastenal Ford Mustang for Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing, is coming off a sixth-place finish last week at Road America, his second top-6 finish in the last three races (2nd at Sonoma). He stopped by the Atlanta Motor Speedway infield media center before qualifying to talk about his recent hot streak and expectations for tomorrow’s scheduled race.

CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 Fastenal Ford Mustang – HOW DO YOU FEEL GOING INTO THIS WEEKEND AND HOW WILL DRIVERS APPROACH IT? “Coming here the first time, I think we all learned a ton, whether that was how wide the racetrack or the groove would go, not necessarily three-wide racing, but we had three pretty distinct grooves that we could move around to and it wasn’t so much an issue of dirty racetrack as much as it was to where we could get the cars to handle. The bumps were pretty prominent at that time and it was still early on with this race car too. I think there were a lot of unknowns. There were a lot of things we’ve learned since on how aggressive we can be with basically ride quality in our race cars and what makes speed, so we’ve tweaked on a lot of that through the year as well, and I think everybody has a better understanding to where it might be a little bit under control as we get out there on the racetrack. I don’t think that – it seems like this is probably the outlier for right-rear tire issues for a lot of the races this year, so we weren’t in that category, but I think we have some understanding on some of the things that are in the race cars that are being really hard on tires, so I think that should calm down. I think most of the accidents came from an issue last year, so, anyway, I say all that – all that we’ve talked about to try and figure out how to be better this time around. Last time, came down here we started the race off and had to make some really big swings at getting the balance right and in the process probably weren’t able to keep maximizing speed with those adjustments just to make it drive well, so we have a much better handle on that now. I feel good about it. We’re not gonna go across the finish line backwards this time. We’re gonna keep going forward. We’ve already gotten the whole upside-down thing out of the way for the year, so we’ll keep it on the ground – shiny side up – and hopefully just be the first one under the flag. Lots to figure out. We learned a lot last time. We’ll see how with some of the updates and some of the patches how that will affect it here this weekend. We’ll be watching the Xfinity race and see how that plays out and I guess we’re gonna get a taste of it first in qualifying as the sun comes out here. We’ll see how that one lap goes and be ready for 400 miles.”

WHAT KIND OF DIVIDENDS DOES IT PROVIDE YOU TO HAVE YOUR CAR OWNER ALSO DRIVING ONE OF THE TEAM CARS? “That’s a special situation. Obviously, Brad has more skin in the game than any teammate I’ve ever had as a boss and an owner at the same time, so that’s been really good through the year to see his drive and his passion to continue to help RFK be better. I think it’s easier from my seat to come in for Monday meetings and be able to sit down and talk about what we struggled with, what we want to be better and to know that an owner is sitting there and was just in that same driver’s seat. They’re saying the same things and understands it and makes it, I don’t want to say more of a priority because I never felt like there wasn’t a priority to fix things anywhere I’ve been in the past, but I think it just gives them that same feeling and that same push to try and make it better, so it’s been really good. I learned a lot from Brad this year on many fronts. To be quite honest, I don’t know how, and I’ve told him this, I don’t understand your time management. I don’t know how you do all this. I am spun out trying to do two things at once and he’s got so much going on and making it look easy. I haven’t quite grasped that concept yet, but it’s been real neat to have him and see all the detail that he dives into and, like I said, the passion to get us better and make this a place where we can win races. We’re getting close. We’re making some good progress through the year, probably not near as much as we expected through the off-season. We thought that would go a little bit better. I was definitely hopeful it would be better, so we started off maybe a little bit behind where we figured and it’s just taken a little bit of time to get that progression where we need it to be. We’re not there yet, but we’ve been definitely making some steps in the right direction in the last several months.”

DID THIS TRACK FEEL LIKE A MINI DAYTONA OR A MINI TALLADEGA TO YOU THE FIRST TIME YOU RACED HERE IN THE SPRING? “It definitely has superspeedway style to some of it. It’s not Daytona. It’s definitely not Talladega. It’s not quite the same, but mentally it’s exhausting because you’re going through the same things, but at the same time this is a little bit more of a physical race. I think last time we were all gripping the steering wheel so hard because everything was on such an edge like new asphalt typically is. It doesn’t matter if it’s a mile-and-a-half, where we’re getting big lifts or if it’s a place like this where we’re wide-open or trying to be wide-open, but just being right on the edge of that tire and the grip level makes it to where it can be very tricky to try to make a lap without having a mistake turn into a big accident. I think that really wore us out more than anyone expected last time. I think we have a better understanding of that now. I’m not saying the fact that the asphalt has been here a couple more months is gonna change much of that feeling, but we’re ready for it. There’s a lot more lifting, a lot more handling that’s going with this – maybe more like some of the Daytona feel that we had when we had very little downforce in the cars – so it’s bringing back some of that to where you’ve really got to focus on doing what you can to get the car to pass. The one thing I’ve been thinking about is the bottom is a little bit hard to make work as we get into a run. It seems like other tracks you can get the numbers in the bottom and you can make that work and going back and watching it doesn’t seem like that’s as strong of an opportunity for us at this racetrack at this current time. I don’t know when that changes, if it does, but right now I’d say the one thing you’ve got to be careful is that you get a big run and you think you can go clear three cars, you’re probably gonna lost four spots, so you’ve got to be careful of that.”

DO YOU EXPECT NEW HAMPSHIRE TO BE SIMILAR TO GATEWAY? WHAT KIND OF RACE DO YOU SEE THERE? “I took a week off for Gateway, so I wasn’t there. That being said, it’s definitely been interesting to see some of the racetracks that have been hard to pass and some of the ones that have been less so, and trying to figure out why exactly that is. New Hampshire, we’ll definitely be shifting there, but it’s a lot rougher than some of these other racetracks and it’s just got a lot more character. We’ve got different lanes that have been paved at different times. There are different grip levels. There are different banking levels. The bumps into three are really rough and will continue to be so with this race car. We have really good brakes in these cars, so I think that opens up the opportunity to get into the corner better. With the downshifting it was something that we almost felt like we could get away with it the last car, so we’ll definitely be there with this one. I feel like there’s a lot of things that make me believe that will be a racier track than some of the others. I’m surely optimistic that it will be. I think that Loudon is a really neat racetrack. It’s not been one of my best by the numbers, but I always enjoy going there because it does have a lot of character. It just lets you do different things from behind the wheel, try different lines, be able to make passes in different areas, whether it’s the apron or three lanes up from there, so I think it’ll be a fun racetrack. Obviously, a little bit of a home track for our organization with the Fenway Group being close by in Boston, so we’ve got to go up there and put on a good show and be good for them, so I think it’s got a lot of opportunity to be a really good race. We’ll see if I’m right or wrong. Don’t call me out if I’m wrong at the end of this, but I’m definitely optimistic heading into it.”

HOW DOES THIS CAR CHANGE THE MENTALITY OF WHEN YOU’RE NOT RUNNING AS WELL AS YOU’D LIKE TO BE? “We’re all learning together, so it’s not just the teams. There’s zero practice this weekend. We’ve been here one time with this car and we have zero practice and we’re supposed to have it all figured out. And, really, when we’re talking about that time it’s very short, single practice session. You can’t change much in that timeframe and what you have for the race is what you have. We start talking about what we’ve been able to work on to get better. The amount of time we’ve had to do it is absolutely minimal, especially for a place like this and now we go straight into it. So we’re having to learn during races, which means that you’re having 400 miles of something that you’re almost stuck with. You’ve got little tweaks during the race, but you’re almost stuck with something for 400 or 500 miles every week and you have to reapply that for the next race – the next race that will be similar to that one. It’s not our three 45-minute practice sessions that we’ve had in years past, where you’re constantly improving, so it is time-consuming. It takes a lot more patience from that side of things, but it’s not just our team side of things it’s a lot from the driver’s side as well. I don’t think any driver out here will tell you that they’ve been in something that has driven very similar to this car at all. It’s been a complete reset in what we learn and what we’re trying to do. We’ve seen trends through a lot of SMT data on the driver’s side of what you can do differently maybe in qualifying, what you can get away with there. Some of the times you think about places where we’re downshifting in the corners a lot, the penalty for overdriving and missing a corner is absolutely minimal. You downshift, you recover, you go again. It’s showing up in the race and I think that’s some of the reason it’s been hard to pass at maybe a Martinsville, but it’s showing some speed or potential to gain at different racetracks and at different times ,whether that’s restarts, qualifying, but maybe not necessarily late in a run. On the driver’s side, it’s taken on a big reboot as well and it’s what can you get away with without really hurting yourself and I think what we’re finding is the penalty for overdriving at certain times just isn’t really there. It’s just a matter of not going so far to where you’re tearing up equipment. We’re all figuring it out. It’s tough because it is hard to go a full race knowing that you’re not where you need to be off the truck for that weekend and knowing that you’re locked in, that you don’t really have the ability to change what you may need to, so you take it and you do the best you can with it, you learn from it and try to be ready to apply it for the next one. That’s really all we can do right now.”

IS IT FRUSTRATING TO SEE TIMES LIKE TRACKHOUSE AND RCR, TEAMS YOU WERE RACING AROUND LAST YEAR, TO SEE THEM HAVE THE IMPROVEMENT WITH THIS CAR WHERE YOU GUYS MAYBE HAVEN’T HAD AS MUCH? “No, it’s not frustrating because you’re not wishing ill on anybody else. You’re just trying to figure out how to be better from our side and, ultimately, what other people have been able to do and how they’ve been able to progress in other teams that has nothing to do with us. We didn’t do a good enough job to be that team to be talked about, so, like I said, that’s kind of what I was alluding to at the beginning is we did not get to where we thought we would through the off-season, where we believed we would. It wasn’t due to a lack of work or effort. We just didn’t get to the right things, so it’s taken us races through the season to get closer and to keep figuring some things out and we’re getting there. We’ve definitely found some speed in the race cars. Our road course stuff has made big gains, but that even took COTA for us to figure out. We went to COTA and were nowhere near where we needed to be and had to come out of there with a lot of notes to figure out how to be better and we took that jump and were immediately night and day better than where we were at that racetrack, so I think that’s what it has taken at a lot of these, most all of these ovals for us is we’ve had to go to the racetrack to learn and to continue to dial all that in. At the end, no, you’re not frustrated about other peoples’ successes, it’s more how do you make ourselves more successful. How do we get ourselves into that conversation quicker and I’d say that’s more of it is we’ve just got to keep doing a better job in getting there.”

YOU ARE WITHOUT YOUR CREW CHIEF FOR THE NEXT FOUR RACES. AS YOU TRY TO MAKE A PLAYOFF PUSH AND GET BETTER, WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES WHEN YOU’RE NOT ALL TOGETHER TO TRY AND DO THAT? “We’ve got a lot ahead of us. We’ve got to be careful because people are gonna start calling all of us part-time if we can’t all show up on the same days, but it’s definitely a challenge right now. We’ve been kicked when we were down a few times here and a lot of it on our own doing, so that’s something we’re still trying to iron out and it’s just hard because we’ve had almost three months of good race cars. We’ve had good speed. We’ve had good races. We’ve had some bad results and without those I don’t know that we’d be in the same position we are right now. If we could have cleaned some things up. If we could have had a little better luck. If we could have gotten away without a penalty. If we wouldn’t have been upside down at the end of Charlotte, not even the end, you add a lot of things up and it’s dismal in those areas for the finishes, but the speed has been there and the progress has been there and it’s just hard for anybody but us to realize it because we’ve been able to see where we’ve been through races. We can pull the data. We can go through everything that we have to figure out and see that the results aren’t there, but we know where we’re at and that’s the part that’s gonna hurt is we know we’ve been competitive enough to make our way there, we’ve just had a lot of different things that have gotten a hold of us. Yeah, it’s gonna be a challenge as we go through Atlanta. I have a lot of confidence that our team is gonna get through this really well also. Travis Peterson is gonna be on the box and has been working with Scott Graves for four years, I believe, since they’ve been at Roush together, so that makes it to where it’s a pretty seamless transaction. As we’ve gotten to personnel limits at the racetrack, all the teams have basically built up war rooms back home and following other sports in the way that they do that, so Scott’s not on the beach on vacation this weekend, but he’s back at the shop and in a room to help make the weekend go as seamless as possible. It would have been nice to have practice and try and get used to how that’s gonna go, so we’re gonna go straight to a qualifying session here hopefully, and then right into the race. On the flip side of that is, being this style of race might make it a touch easier to get that first one out of the way so that we’re ready and can iron out any of the wrinkles in the system to be ready for the next three to where it can go as smooth as humanly possible, having somebody several hundred miles away for the next handful.”