NASCAR CUP SERIES
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2020
PLAYOFF MEDIA DAY 1
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Maytag Ford Mustang — WHAT DO YOU THINK BRISTOL WILL BE LIKE AS AN ELIMINATION RACE? “I think it’s exciting. It’s the first time Bristol has even been in the playoffs, so that’ll be neat and then making it a cutoff race too, that’ll be even more exciting. That place gets very rowdy. I look at it as just like having Martinsville as a cutoff race short track where everyone will be beating and banging. I personally would like to have a win or be really good on points before we get there, but I think it’s great. They’ve implemented a new format with some new tracks in the playoffs this year and I think it’s good, but I’m looking forward to that one and it will definitely be an exciting cutoff race for sure.”
ARE THE KEYS TO ADVANCE ANY DIFFERENT WITH NO PRACTICE AND NO QUALIFYING? “Yeah, I mean it definitely is different, but it’s what we’ve been doing all year. Teams have been preparing as much as they can before going to the tracks every single week. It’s not like now when the playoffs start, we’ve got to start preparing little bit more. I feel like if you’re not doing that throughout the regular season, I feel like you should be doing that throughout the regular season, but it’s key. It’s been key every single weekend. Now I think the biggest point is not being off at the start of these races and not getting stage points. That’s a really big thing. You look at stage points of being very critical when you’re running against 15 other guys throughout the first round and then it gets cut throughout the rounds, so stage points are huge. So you definitely want to be starting off good and have a good previous race with the way the lineups are set now with that algorythm they’ve got on previous week finishing and fast lap and points position, all that stuff. You definitely don’t want to be back in the playoff grid, so preparation is huge and just to set you up for that first stage. That’s very important.”
WILL STAGE POINTS BE MORE DIFFICULT TO GET SINCE ALL 16 START IN THE TOP 16? “Yeah. They were difficult to get before, but you’ve got some cars outside the playoffs that are really good as well that didn’t get in, so you’re gonna have to race them anyway. You’ve been racing those guys all year, whether you’re top 12 in points or 13-24. Luckily, fortunately, we were top 12 a lot, really all year, so we never really started terrible and that sets you up for the first stage, but with all the playoff guys being right there, they’re definitely gonna be hard to get. It’s really good competition and you’ve got to make sure you’re on your game from the first lap.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL YOUR MOMENTUM IS THIS YEAR COMPARED TO PREVIOUS YEARS? “Obviously, we’d like to have some more wins in the regular season. That’s what’s kind of hurt us in the last few years in the playoffs and throughout the rounds. We made it to the round of eight a couple of times, but just don’t have playoff points. You’ve got to win pretty much and you have these years to where every year it seems like there are a couple guys that have tons of wins in the regular season and they have massive bonus points and that really pays off when you get in the round of eight and makes it hard for those guys who don’t have them like we don’t. But I feel like our team has had more capability this year to win more races and be more competitive, it’s just a shame it hasn’t happened. Some of that was our doing and some of that you can’t control, but our whole group feels really good. I think our cars are pretty decent right now. You obviously have the 4 and the 11 who are really strong. Everyone is gonna be strong in the playoffs, so you really have to be on top of your game, but I like our momentum. It’s just a matter of putting races together and take them one race at a time. I think this team can do that, but it’s gonna be important for us to win in the rounds. That’s what it’s gonna take for us, I feel like, to advance or have really, really good point days, but I feel really good about this team. Todd Gordon and I worked well together this year, it’s just a matter of, like I said, keep building with each other and not making any mistakes, not having any blowups in the rounds. You can’t really have a mulligan, I feel like. I’m not saying we’re in the worst position. There are guys in worse positions than us, but we’re not in the best position, so we just have to have a solid 10 races.”
IS IT AN ADVANTAGE TO HAVING THIS BE THE THIRD RACE AT DARLINGTON THIS SEASON? “Yeah. I know we ran there twice already this year, but you go back and look at those two races. You go back and look at the Darlington race from last year and see how that plays out. The pit strategy side is a little bit different this weekend than the previous two races. They were way shorter. This 500-mile race is super-long and the way the stages are set and your pit strategy is set and how you pit in the stages are way different, so that’s something you can’t quite look at from the previous races this year, but you can go back and look at your notes about ‘how is the track, how are we set up?’ Things like that. Todd and I talked about that a lot this week. I feel confident. I thought we actually had a really good car in the second race and we had a penalty and we went in the back and got in the fence that kind of ruined our day, but you just go back and look at all your notes. That’s really important nowadays too. I mean, with no practice you’re relying on previous race notes and we rely on those heavily here going back to these tracks that we’ve already been to this year.”
DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE THE SPEED TO GO HEAD-TO-HEAD WITH THE 4 AND THE 11? “I think so. I’m not gonna sit here and say, ‘No, we don’t have the speed.’ You’d like to think so. There are some races I feel like we’ve been better than those guys and brought it to them and other races they’ve had really good cars and they’ve obviously shown up like they have all year. They’ve done a great job. Those two teams and drivers are doing really good right now and they’re super-strong and you go to the racetrack every week knowing those guys are gonna be strong, but the best you can do is just worry about your own team, worry about what you need to do as a driver to do the best that you can and figure out what you need to do with your race cars to be as competitive as possible. So I think our team can it’s just a matter of playing to our strengths and not making mistakes. That’s a big thing. Speedwise this year, I think we’ve been close it’s just a matter of execution and I think, hopefully, we can pull all of that stuff together here and just take it one race at a time. I think we can do it, it’s just a matter of putting everything together.”
DO YOU FEEL IT’S BEEN MORE IN YOUR TEAM’S CONTROL OR HAS IT BEEN THINGS OUTSIDE OF YOUR CONTROL? “A little bit of both. There are obviously things I can do better, some unlucky things but those things happen in racing. There are some you can control, so I think it’s half and half. You’re gonna have rough weekends where things don’t go your way and you’re gonna have rough weekends where I mess up, whether you damage your car or you don’t ask for the right things. There were sometimes where calls can go the wrong way — pit calls and things like that, but that’s just part of it. We just need to learn from those things, so I think to answer your question I feel like it’s about half and half, but I can’t sit here and complain about unlucky unfortunate situations because everybody has those, it’s just a matter of having fewer than others, I guess. The best that I can do is do my best and our team do our best and whatever else happens after that happens.”
HOW MUCH WORRY DO YOU HAVE ABOUT GETTING A POSITIVE COVID TEST? “Right now, it’s gonna really put you in a bad hole. Do we sit around and talk about that? Drivers? No, not really. You just be as smart as you can and be as safe as you can, not going out, not doing anything that you wouldn’t normally do. There have been a couple tests, a couple positives throughout the year with some drivers, but I’ve been fortunate to not be in that situation. I plan on not doing anything different. You just stay smart. If you’re gonna go somewhere with people, go with people that you know, that are doing the same things as you and being smart and safe about what they’re doing — not going out to crowded gatherings of people that you have no idea who they are and what they’re doing. If it does happen, it happens, but the best I can do is just be smart and not try to put yourself in that position where I might catch something.”
WHERE DO YOU FEEL YOU AND TODD ARE FROM A COMMUNICATION STANDPOINT AND HOW HAS IT GONE? “Working with Jeremy for a long time from XFINITY to Cup and transitioning to Todd, the first month was awesome. You get to work with them full weekends. He and I had to work together. John Miles, my engineer, I got to see them every single weekend and throughout the week also and we really get to learn each other — and crew guys you get to know them and what they’re like. Now it’s just been so limited with no practice. You can talk so much throughout the week on the phone and things like that, but it’s just different than being able to go through a couple practices and the whole weekend with them and talking to them. But I think we’ve gotten the best that we can. Todd and I get along really well. He’s an amazing crew chief and a championship crew chief and has won a ton of races, so I think it’s been going well. It’s a shame, but everyone is in the same boat. Joey and Brad have new crew chiefs also and a handful of other guys have new teams this year, but I think we’re doing the best that we can. I’d like to spend three days out of the weekend with them and a couple days during the week with them just talking to them, but we talk as much as we can and try to figure out what we need to do week in and week out to be better, but I think it’s been going really good it’s just a matter of continuing that and knowing each other more.”
IS THERE ANY CONCERN THAT KYLE BUSCH COULD GET GOING AND RUN AWAY WITH THE PLAYOFFS, AND IS IT POSSIBLE? “Yeah, we know it can happen. Obviously, Kyle has not had the best of years, but it’s Kyle Busch and that team can turn it around any given weekend. You don’t count anybody out even if they’ve been having a little bit of an off year and not what they’re used to. You don’t count anybody out. People can go on playoff runs. Look at Tony Stewart in 2011 and the playoff run he went on winning five of those races and winning the championship. Before the playoffs you never really thought they would be a contender and then people find stuff and they turn it on and things go their way and you saw what happened. Yeah, I’m worried about 15 other teams. You never know who can turn it on, what time. They’re all great teams and great drivers, so you have to be worried about everybody but at the same time you can’t be thinking about everybody all the time you have to think about yourself and think about your own team and what you have to do. You can’t control what everyone else is doing, but to answer your question, any one of these guys can turn it on at any time and it wouldn’t surprise me because teams can do that often.”
IS THERE ONE DARKHORSE TEAM PEOPLE SHOULD WATCH? “I don’t know, maybe you’d consider the 18. Those guys on that team, the Gibbs organization has been really strong. I’m gonna be selfish and say I think our group has been check boxed as a darkhorse team by a lot of people. Anybody can do it. The 11 and 4 have been good all year, but there are a bunch of other teams that can step up and have really good rounds and I guess you could say upset what those guys have been doing all year. I think anybody can.”
HOW SCARY IS THE SECOND ROUND? “There’s are kind of some funky races in there with the Roval and Talladega, like you said. You never know what’s gonna happen in those rounds. You have one kind of normal race at Vegas there, and then you have the Roval and Talladega, so I don’t know. I don’t know what can happen in those rounds. You just try to go to the Roval and try to run a solid race and then Talladega is just try to stay out of wrecks. That’s the biggest thing and with the way that Talladega ends that second round, it’ll be like at Daytona so it’ll be interesting. It would be nice to be really to the good or locked in before that. I’d love to win Vegas and not have to worry about the Roval or Talladega, but you just hope that you put solid races together, but that is a funky round for sure. All of the rounds have their wildcards with Bristol being in the first one and then you have the Roval and Talladega in the second round and then Martinsville to end the round of eight, so there are a lot of interesting races in each round. I think NASCAR did a pretty good job of splitting them up in certain ways, but hopefully my mind says ‘go try to win Vegas so we don’t have to worry about them two.’”
WHAT DOES TODD BRING TO YOUR TEAM THAT JEREMY DIDN’T? “Todd has a little bit more experience than Jeremy. He’s been around the Cup Series for a little bit longer. I love Jeremy to death. He and I will always be really good friends for what we’ve been through for many years. We won our first race together in 2017 with the Wood Brothers. That was special, but I think it’s neat when you switch crew chiefs for the first time because when I was with Jeremy you kind of get locked into one mode. You guys kind of have your own language with each other. I know what he likes to change and he knows what I like as a driver and you can kind of get in a certain mode, whether it’s good or bad, and maybe not be open to new things. But the biggest thing I learned when I switched to Todd was everyone approaches things differently from a driver to a crew chief side and it just opened my mind up to just different things to try, and maybe certain things that I like that Todd does I like a little bit better than Jeremy or vice versa. But it’s just knowledge, it’s just knowledge of two different minds from those two guys and you kind of personally, for me, you kind of combine those two and it just opens your eyes a little bit on different possibilities and capabilities out there of what you can learn as a driver and learn about other people. So that has been nice to kind of combine Todd and Jeremy’s minds and working with both of them, so that was a big thing I’ve taken away from it. As a young driver it’s nice to have that. I think it just helps you learn.”
WHERE DO YOU NEED TO IMPROVE IN THE PLAYOFFS? IS THERE A CERTAIN STYLE OF TRACK? “You look at Richmond, the second race there, is a place we’ve struggled at over the years. It’s nice that it’s in the round of 16, but you still have to put a good race together. You can’t just run in the back all race and have a poor race like we’ve had there the last handful of years, so I would say on the Richmond side if we can only keep getting better there. Todd and I have worked a lot on that racetrack here because even at the start of the year we looked at the playoffs and how we’ve got to go to Richmond. That’s one of the biggest outliers to me as far as places where we need to really show up and do well at, a place where we’ve struggled in the past, but all the other tracks I feel really confident in. We’ve run really well at other tracks — the Roval, obviously we’ve run pretty decent at, Talladega, we’ve won two races at Talladega, but you never know what could happen. You can get jumbled up in someone else’s mess and end your day, so you never know. Richmond, to me, is the biggest one that we’ve really talked about on just having to put a solid race together.”
DOES THAT PUT MORE PRESSURE ON THIS WEEKEND? “To be honest with you, I haven’t even thought about it. I’m focused on Darlington and then we’ll move on.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang — DO THE KEYS TO PERFORMING WELL IN THE CHASE CHANGE WITH NO PRACTICE AND NO QUALIFYING AND ALL THE PLAYOFF DRIVERS STARTING UP FRONT? “I don’t know if it changes, really. The dynamics are just as important to win as ever during the playoffs. That part doesn’t change. No practice always makes it questionable, but I don’t know, we’re almost used to it at this point with no practice and not knowing what’s coming around the corner next and not knowing who is fast changes the dynamics of the race a little bit, but we’ve kind of gotten used to it. Kind of what you’ve seen here the last few races since we got back going will probably be more of that to continue, where there may be some teams that hit it really fast and others that need to make big swings on their adjustments and it’s how you get to that point as quickly as possible. I don’t think the playoffs change what we’ve been doing here the last few weeks.”
THOUGHTS ON BRISTOL AS A CUTOFF RACE? “I’m cool with it. I think it’s definitely gonna add some drama. We all kind of saw what kind of drama Daytona brought last week with it being the last race of the regular season and how exciting that is, so for the sport it’s great. For the teams, a little stressful because anything can happen. We’ve strategy work in a lot of different ways at Bristol. We’ve seen contact at Bristol, so a lot of things can happen, but, for the most part, we’ve just got to do our thing. The fact that the cutoff races are stressful already and they’re at tracks that anything can happen definitely adds a lot to it and for the sport that’s a great thing.”
STEVE PHELPS SAID THERE WILL BE NO CHANGE TO THE COVID RULE. WHAT PRECAUTIONS WILL YOU TAKE AND WOULD YOU BE HESITANT TO GO GET TESTED? “No, I think it’s important for us to, number one, our safety needs to be the utmost concern, just for everybody — not just for ourselves, not in a selfish way but in a selfless way we need to be smart about testing. Now, also, we need to be smart about who we see and how we do things and all that as much as ever. As the world is starting to open up slowly and things like that, I think for these 10 weeks I probably still need to be smart about it because my season is on the line. I think we just keep doing the same things we’ve been doing. You wash your hands. You wear your mask. You social distance. Those are the things that you can do. It’s also important that we need to win this thing, too. As you guys know, sometimes going and doing everything through this Zoom isn’t as effective as you want it to be, and it’s the same when you’re trying to lead a team. So just trying to do things the smartest way possible, trying to lead a team from a distance, but in times where it’s important to see people or do things, those are the moments you just have to make the most of, but, also, be careful about the way we do it.”
ARE YOU LESS OF A LEADER THIS YEAR DUE TO THIS SITUATION BECAUSE OF A LESS CONNECTION? “In ways I have to agree with that. I don’t want to agree with that. I want to be the leader with Paul, but my hands are tied. There’s only so much we can do. Penske has done a good job at trying to keep everyone separated to where if there was an outbreak it didn’t shut down the whole (interruption at this point). In general, we’re trying to be as smart as we can. It’s hard to throw everyone up on a Zoom call and speak directly to somebody. It’s been a little harder for me this year, too, because it’s a new team. I’m typically the guy that’s in the garage until the garage closes. The way I led was by being present and building relationships. It’s been a little harder to do that this year, for sure, but we have to find unique ways of trying to gather the team together and rally the troops. It’s a little bit different, but it’s different for everybody and we have to be creative and find new ways. Is it as good as I want to be? No, it’s definitely not as good as I want it to be, but I feel like we’ve done a good job at being creative and trying to find ways to keep everyone together as a team.”
THOUGHTS ON PIT ENTRY AT DARLINGTON AND HAVING THE FIRST ONE UPON ENTRY? “It’s funny you bring that up because that’s been the running joke here at Team Penske for a little bit is that Todd will always go furthest forward possible and Paul will be the guy that kind of goes back and forth on just trying to figure out what’s best for that particular weekend. So, the first few weeks was a little bit odd because I’m used to being all the way down at the other end and I didn’t want to drive by the stall, but now I’ve kind of gotten used to it and Paul has done a good job at some pit selections. That was one of the things we went through at the beginning of the year is what works for me with pit stalls, and what direction can we get the best rolling times with and each racetrack is different. Some narrow pit roads are different than the wide ones and pit openings are bigger than others and timing lines, there’s a lot that goes into that game. It’s not a random selection sometimes as much as some people think. There’s a lot that goes into that and I don’t know if there’s one more challenging than the other being in the front or the back, it’s just more or less a strategy of how do we have the best rolling time at the end of pit road.”
IS THERE A DARKHORSE TEAM YOU HAVE YOUR EYE ON? “I would say probably the 10. I’m looking at a darkhorse team that’s maybe not everyone is talking about. I think there are obvious ones that are gonna be fast, you’ve got Kevin, Denny, I think we’re in that mix, Brad is in that mix, Chase will be in that mix some, but the 10 has been kind of sneaky and just consistent — nothing flashy, but just kind of doing his thing — so I would say that’s one car that can probably get pretty far through. They’ve got pretty good speed, they don’t make many mistakes and they just kind of get through. The first couple of rounds that’s one of the things that this playoff system rewards the first couple rounds is being consistent.”
HOW MUCH OF A SUCCESS WAS THE FIRST WEEK BACK AT DARLINGTON? HOW MUCH PRIDE IS THERE? “One hundred percent, and I don’t think it’s the pride that the drivers take it’s the pride that the whole industry should take. The drivers sometimes just show up and we do what they tell us to do, but when I think of the collaboration that it took from everybody in our sport — media, race teams, NASCAR, everybody, drivers as well had to come together to find a way to take advantage of the opportunity of being the first sport back without completely blowing it and having a COVID outbreak and being the first sport to come back and be shut right back down, and we look like a bunch of fools. We didn’t want to do that either, so everyone did an amazing job, and that starts from the leadership at NASCAR and trying to find a way to be first back and do it in a safe way and continue going. Other sports learned from and watched us because we were the first back. They had nothing else to watch, so they had to see it and that was the opportunity ahead of us is that there wasn’t any other content out there at the time from a sporting perspective. I love the term when people say when there’s a crisis there’s an opportunity and we took advantage of that opportunity, so, yeah, there’s pride in that and we should be proud of that.”
WHAT WILL IT MEAN TO WIN THE TITLE IN 2020 WITH EVERYTHING GOING ON? “Nothing less than it would have if it was a normal year and nothing more. It’s a championship and that’s all that matters is the trophy on the little thing back here, and it’s reminding me how badly we want it. No matter what the rules are they’re the same for everybody. There’s gonna be a winner and there’s gonna be a loser and we just approach it the same way. Yes, we have to do things differently to achieve that trophy than we would have if it was a normal year, but the cards are dealt and we know what we’ve got and we’ve just got to play them the best that we can.”
HOW DOES DARLINGTON SUIT YOUR STYLE? “I think it fits really well. It’s been a good racetrack for us. I don’t have a win there, but it’s been a racetrack that we’ve consistently been able to run in the top five and lead laps and be close. We just need a couple of things to go our way to be able to win there. It’s one of my favorite racetrack to go to. I like that the tires wear out and you can’t go hard every lap and you’ve got to be smart on how you’re using your tires, and yet there’s still some aggression that you need to have on how close you run to the wall and moving around and finding places where there’s more grip as the run goes. It’s a very enjoyable race for a driver. It’s grueling. It’s very tiring. At the end of 500 miles there you’re more exhausted than any other racetrack we go to. It’s a long, long race, where you can’t afford to make a mistake, especially in the playoffs — tapping the fence and getting a flat tire or whatever it may be, so you just gotta be smart. It’s long and it’s mentally and physically very tiring.”
HOW CONFIDENT ARE YOU AFTER A CONSISTENT REGULAR SEASON? “We just need to continue the confidence and consistency we’ve had over the last few weeks. If you take Daytona out, we’ve been able to string together quite a few top 10 finishes and put ourselves in position to possibly win with some things going our way. So no need to come off of that. We need to continue to slowly build and become stronger as a team. You’re not gonna find one thing that’s gonna be a light switch that’s gonna put us all the way to where the 4 and the 11 are, but we’re not far off. We’re two or three little things away from that and this year is just reminding me of 2018, which is a great season for me, where we had some growing pains and some things we had to learn throughout the regular season and we slowly built the speed back up for the playoffs and the next thing you know we won two of the most important races and we win the championship. It just has that feeling to me throughout the regular season, so I feel like for those reasons I’m as confident as anybody rolling into this thing in our race team and myself because we’ve been here before. We’ve done this before, so we’re ready to rock.”
DO STAGE POINTS TAKE ON AN ADDED IMPORTANCE IN THE PLAYOFFS AND HOW WILL THAT AFFECT YOUR TEAM’S STRATEGY? “It does. Every point is gonna matter. We’ve seen plenty of times where a team makes it or not make it by one point. Sometimes it’s tied and it goes to your best finish. That happens a lot, so every point matters and you just need to race that way because you don’t know what that point is gonna be worth at the end of the day. That part is probably where the intensity piece comes up a little bit. I don’t think it changes much for me because I’ve already raced that way. I look at that as the regular season points how it just turned into playoff points at the end of the regular season came around. I look at that the same way, where we have seven or eight more regular season points that could have been one more playoff point, and that’s over the course of 26 races, so we’ve just got to continue to have that mindset to where every point matters at every point of the race.”
WILL TEAM PENSKE WORK TOGETHER AT A PLACE LIKE TALLADEGA OR DOES THAT END IN THE PLAYOFFS? “No, I think we all still need to work together when you go to the superspeedways. The game has changed at the superspeedways the last few years with teamwork. As you see not only the teams themselves working together as Penske or Hendrick or Stewart-Haas or whoever work together on the racetrack, but you see the manufacturers really work together. You see the Fords, you see the Chevy’s, the Toyotas kind of on their own little island sometimes, whether it’s strategy or even within the group trying to position themselves to take control of the race, so I don’t see that changing because we’re in the playoffs. You might even see that building.”
DO THOSE TWO WINS SEEM LIKE A LONG TIME AGO SINCE THAT WAS BEFORE THE BREAK AND WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU WERE MOMENTUM-WISE BACK THEN TO WHERE YOU ARE NOW? “It feels like a long time ago to answer your first question. Way too long. We’re ready to win again, but I do feel like we’re getting close back to that same point as we were. To me, there’s no doubt when we went back racing we weren’t where we wanted to be. I even said it a few times, almost like a lost puppy not knowing what road to go down to get back to where we need to be, and it’s hard to find that direction without practice. Going to a different racetrack every week it’s hard to grow. It took longer than we wanted it to, longer than we expected it to, but I feel like we’re getting really close back to where we were at the beginning of the year. We can get ourselves in position to win again and I feel like we’re right at it, so I do feel pretty good about where we’re at again.”
WHAT WAS YOUR MESSAGE TO ERIK JONES? THE FACT YOU’VE BEEN THERE? “I reached out because I feel like I’ve been there before and I just wanted to. I watched his interview before the race at Michigan. I was sitting in my bus and he was with Marty Snider and the question was asked about next year and what it was and I said, ‘Oh, my God. I remember this.’ It just came rushing back and I was like, ‘Oh, this poor kid.’ So I texted him on the way home on the airplane and said, ‘Hey, man. I’ve been where you’ve been before. If you need someone to talk to about it, there aren’t many people who can understand exactly what you’re going through right now. I’m here. If you want to talk about it, that’s great. If not, that’s fine, too.’ He reached back and said he wanted to go to lunch and I said, ‘Sure, we’ll go to lunch.’ His question was, ‘What changed from Gibbs to Penske in my career?’ Hearing his whole story is scary how similar it is, like it is almost identical the way he was brought up racing, the way he was at Gibbs. It was almost identical. That being said, you can’t tell the future and know where he’s gonna go next and that it’s all gonna be great and it be the best thing that ever happened to him, but I did say that God put you in these positions a lot of times to make you stronger and grow you and direct you in the place He wants you to be. In the moment, you don’t know that. In the moment, it’s the worst. It’s awful. The stress and I remember thinking so many times that, ‘Oh my gosh, all I ever wanted to be was a race car driver. I put all my eggs in this basket and it’s coming to an end. What am I gonna do with my life?’ Those thoughts run through my mind and it’s kind of scary, it’s really scary if we’re being honest. It’s kind of hard to explain to some people because you’re still driving a race car for a living and it’s not that bad in comparison to what a lot of people have to go through, but it’s still something that’s challenging and doing that without your dad there for him, because that’s the guy he grew up racing with his family and his dad and I just couldn’t imagine doing that without him, so I just tried to speak some life into my situation and what can be for his. It doesn’t mean that he’s gonna win the championship three years from now like we were able to do. Who knows what’s gonna happen, but I do know that it’s steering him down a direction that God is pointing him to be in. Like I said, it felt so similar that I had to say something and after talking to him it was crazy how close it was, so the whole situation all the way through was like, ‘Yep. I’ve been there.’ So it was kind of fun to talk to him and I hope something works out for him, I really do. He seems to be a really good kid. I say kid, I sound like an old guy when I say that, but, young man, I guess. But he’s grown a lot already in a lot of the same ways that I have. I came in as a cocky, arrogant little kid that was gonna come in and beat everybody and then I realized that I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me to do and him showing his humbleness to talk to me about that shows a lot of growth as well.”
