NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
COKE ZERO 400
DAYTONA BEACH INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
JUNE 30, 2016
DALE EARNHARDT JR., NO. 88 NATIONWIDE CHEVROLET SS met with media and discussed his approach to restrictor plate racing, the pre-race pit road crowd, Austin Dillon’s accident at Daytona one year ago, and more. Full Transcript:
WHAT IS THE SECRET TO NAVIGATING THIS TRACK?
“Well, the first thing is you’ve got to have a fast car and that starts with the fabrication department, the engine shop; the crew chief has got to be sharp knowing every little part of the car that can influence the speed of the car. You’ve got to just have everything in a row there. The car needs to be as good as it possibly can be. That really makes the driver’s job a lot easier when the car is a dominant car. I’ve had plenty of dominant race cars down here. And when you’re out on the race track and you have such a good car, you gain more and more confidence as the weekend goes and your confidence really starts to create more opportunities. When you’re confident about your car, you’re trying more passes and trying to do more things. If you don’t feel confident in your car, you might second-guess a decision or not do something. Every little move you make out there sort of puts you in position to win. I don’t think it’s just one thing that you do at the end of the race. It think it’s from the very beginning of the race and what you’re doing lap after lap is going to determine where you are at the end of the race and what position you’re in and how confident you are about your situation. It just keeps going throughout the weekend. The car really kicks it off. If you get in there and you’re car is not where it needs to be or doing the things that you want it to do, it’s very hard to have the confidence in it to put it where it needs to go.”
AFTER TALLADEGA, DO YOU HAVE ANY MORE OR LESS CONCERN ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF FLYING CARS HERE? OR, IS IT JUST GOING TO BE A CRAP SHOOT?
“The cars are going to get airborne at these race tracks. We’re going pretty fast. And in certain circumstances, they’ll get airborne anywhere, really. In a bad situation there’s just as much potential here as there is at Michigan or anywhere else. We see cars flip as a lot of different race tracks. But, I know that’s been a topic of discussion for the plate tracks particularly after Talladega. And I’m hopeful that NASCAR is looking at ways to figure out how to keep the cars on the ground. We didn’t make any changes going into this race from the package. But, they’re two different race tracks, and hopefully that will play a role in keeping things a little safer for the drivers. But we’ve seen them flip everywhere. And it’s just not at the plate tracks. We definitely didn’t like what we saw at Talladega. And I’d rather not get upside down if I don’t have to.”
IT’S BEEN A YEAR SINCE AUSTIN DILLON WENT INTO THE FENCE HERE AT DAYTONA. CAN YOU JUST TAKE US BACK AS YOU WERE CROSSING THE FINISH LINE AND WHAT YOU SAW AND WHAT WAS GOING THROUGH YOUR MIND THE FIRST 30 SECONDS AFTER THAT HAPPENED?
“It’s just frightening. In the mirror, it’s hard to tell what part of his car got into the fence. Those fences do a lot of damage to the cars trying to keep them inside the race track and out of the grandstands. I just was worried about Austin and hoping that he was okay. I think that was everyone’s initial reaction. But watching it from the mirror, you couldn’t tell whether the bottom of the car, which is probably the best-case scenario in that situation, hit the fence; or the top. I was just worried about that.”
YOU’VE HAD GREAT SUCCESS AT RESTRICTOR PLACE TRACKS, ESPECIALLY HERE AT DAYTONA. AT TALLADEGA YOU TALKED ABOUT THE RACE AND SAID YOU HATE IT. IT SEEMED LIKE YOU HATE THIS STYLE OF RACING, AND YET YOU ARE SO GOO AT IT. HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THOSE EXTREMES?
“When you don’t run well, you hate it. We spun out at Daytona and Talladega and we have a pretty good understanding of why our car has been unstable. We brought a new car that’s hopefully going to be a much better race car for us. We went back to our set-ups that seemed to work so well. So, the guys are always working and trying to find speed and we that really made the car unstable so we dialed some of that back out and went back to our older set-ups and hopefully that is going to be all we need to be competitive and be able to get up there and be aggressive. But, yeah, if you run up front and finish in the top 5, you can have a good time out there and enjoy what you’re doing. But if you wreck and particularly when you wreck at these place, you wreck hard. You hate it. You don’t want to be in those situations where you’re crashing and it seems like that’s the way plate racing is. It’s either all or nothing. And there’s really no middle ground.
“You’ve got to get yourself out there and put yourself in some pretty compromising situations that are touch and go. And if you want to go up there and win the race, you’ve got to put yourself in some situations that are really sketchy. Sometimes in the plate racing it’s as hairy as you can stand. It’s about as much excitement and nerve wracking anxiety as you can stomach. Sometimes it’s really easy. Sometimes your car is so good that you just get out front and stay there. And we’ve had those kinds of cars, too. It seems like to me that last year, the package was a little bit different. When we changes the engines a little bit, I think they changed the lifters or something in the motors, and they thought that they needed to put a smaller plate on the car for this year. And that, to me, has changed the way the cars draft a little bit. They’re a little bit more stuck side-by-side because the cars are actually down on power compared to last year. So, the cars are side-by-side more. Passes are harder to complete. You get kind of stuck together and fighting and side-drafting each other and not really completing the passes that we saw us completing last year.
“And that leads to more bumping and pushing because guys are stuck side-by-side more often so guys are looking for help more often and guys are in position to push people more often because they didn’t complete the passes they were completing last year. That’s the only difference I see in the package between the two seasons. And it’s made for the racing to have a few more crashes and cars are flipping and so forth because the cars or packs are a little bit tighter, if you can believe that. It looks the same. But out there in the car, you can definitely sense a little difference.”
IT WAS REALLY FUN WATCHING THE DRIVERS WATCH THE THROWBACK RACE LAST NIGHT. WHAT WERE YOUR OBSERVATIONS AND WHAT DID YOU ENJOY ABOUT THAT? ALSO, IS THERE A DRIVER COUNCIL MEETING TONIGHT? IS THERE ANYTHING IN PARTICULAR YOU’D LIKE ON THE AGENDA?
“Oh, there are a couple of things, but nothing crazy. A lot of the stuff that we were loud about earlier has been cleaned up and a lot of changes and improvements have been made that the Council has wanted. The conversation in the Council over the last couple of months has actually been real quiet. So this meeting rolled around and it’s kind of a business as usual feeling to it. We’re going to talk about a lot of the same things. I guess we’ll talk about the All-Star format and little things like that. But there’s no big ticket item that really stands out to me. I thought that the security on pit road last week was pretty bad during pre-race. And we’ll talk about that some. Some of the drivers are concerned with how messy that’s getting considering what’s going on. We’re trying to get in the cars and all that stuff. It was pretty crazy down there. It’s great to see that much energy, but some tracks seems to be able to corral it and control it a little bit better and give the crews their space to work about the cars and so forth. So, that’s something I think some of the drivers are real concerned with, but nothing too bad or out of the ordinary that’s going to change the sport too much.
“The Throwback was great. I really enjoyed that. I felt like it was a neat treat I was pretty humbled by the idea of the network showing the race and appreciating what we accomplished and it was fun to think about it and talk about it and watch it and see the comments. So, that was very fun for me. I appreciated it. I know a lot of the guys that were involved in that victory were watching were communicating with me. So, it was a special night.”
DO YOU TAKE ANY SORT OF DIFFERENT APPROACH WHEN YOU HAVE A NEW CAR? BEFORE YOU LEFT THE PROPERTY, DID YOU WAVE GOODBYE TO AMELIA OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT?
“Yeah (laughter). No, we’re not going to be naming cars anymore. I knew as soon as we did that it sort of took off and put a lot of pressure on that car and the team. These cars just don’t stick around long enough to get names. You used to race cars for years and years and they would show a personality. These days, you only keep a car for maybe a year before it’s unrecognizable or it’s cut out of the herd. We had so much success with that car last year that we ran it this year and we probably shouldn’t have. There are newer ideas and theories and better ways to do things that car didn’t have. But we assumed, hey, it was doing so well, why wouldn’t it keep going? But it seems like over the off-season there’s so much improvement and gains made by every organization that you can’t afford to rest on what you did the year before. Anyhow, we’ll see how this car does. We’ve got some good direction on trying to improve and built this car with some newer ideas and hopefully it’s going to go out there and be quick.”
THE RACE REPLAY LAST NIGHT FROM THE 2001 RACE HERE AT DAYTONA ON NBCSN WAS THE NUMBER ONE TRENDING TOPIC ON TWITTER WITHIN AN HOUR OF IT STARTING. HOW MANY TIMES OR HOW RECENTLY HAD YOU WATCHED THAT RACE START TO FINISH? WAS IT EVEN MORE SURREAL TO WATCH IT WHEN EVERYBODY YOU WERE ON TWITTER WITH WAS TALKING ABOUT IT?
“A lot of them races we won Twitter and social media wasn’t really around back then. It was pretty fun having that instant communication and discussion and dialogue with the social media platforms that we have today while you were watching that. It felt like I was in a big room with everybody watching it together. That was great. I thought it was a good experience and one that I hope that they continue to try. You know I love the old stuff and I think the fans enjoy those iconic races and moments in the sport. There are so many to choose from. I think it is pretty fun especially… I really didn’t plan on watching the race, but it just so happened that I was sitting in the house with nothing to do. If they get the drivers that are involved in those events to sort of play along on social media I think it adds to the experience for the people watching. The driver, who in my case, I think if you won the race it’s certainly exciting to be a part of that experience what was going on last night. I’ve watched it before several times. I’ve watched a lot of my old races. One of my favorites to watch is the All-Star race, the (Daytona) 500 wins, the 2004 (Daytona) 500 win I will probably watch it more because it’s older. I like to sort of refresh my memory of what went on. I guess me and (Steve) Letarte watched that 2001 win a couple of years ago when me and him were still working together, maybe one night at the house drinking beers I put it on and we watched it. He was joking with him about it as it was coming on last night that we were going to watch it again. I thought it was great. Like I say it was a super good treat for me. I was super humbled by how everybody plugged in. It’s great to be reminded about stuff like that. That was a special night. I’m glad that people think it’s cool.”
WHERE IS YOUR CONFIDENCE, PERSONALLY, AT THIS POINT OF THE SEASON?
“We are a little frustrated with how we ran through the month of May. We have seen more speed out of our cars and had some bad finishes, wrecks and so forth. Tore up a lot of cars this year, uncharacteristic I think for us to be in so many accidents. So, where we are in points is very frustrating. It creates a lot of anxiety between me and Greg (Ives, crew chief). I think that we both are not happy with where we are in the points. We are wondering and worrying about trying to make the Chase it shouldn’t be something that this team is concerned with. I think we are way better than where we are. In the past several years we have sat around the top five in points throughout the season. Things just came easier for us. They are not coming so easy today. We just have to keep working. I’m not worried about our speed. I don’t feel like we are missing anything. We had a really fast car this past weekend at a place where I really don’t like to race and don’t really think I’m very good at. We went to Michigan and I thought we had a fast car we just didn’t get a chance to see it and get up there and see where we could go with it. So, I’m not real worried about our speed because I feel like we have had good speed over the last couple of weeks. Certainly, in May we didn’t and that was hard to do and frustrating. Hopefully, we just get to Richmond and we don’t have a lot of pressure about trying to make the Chase. Hopefully, we can put a string of races together that will give us a good cushion between us and the next guys fighting for those last few spots. Obviously, we need to get a win to put all that to bed, but nothing is guaranteed. If we don’t get a win going into the Chase we are going to have to do well in these next 10 races and just be real consistent.”
SINCE THE REPAVE HERE AT DAYTONA HOW SIMILAR ARE THE RACES AT TALLADEGA AND DAYTONA AND HAS HANDLING BECOME MORE OF A FACTOR HERE AS THE PAVEMENT STARTS TO AGE?
“It is starting to show some handling issues in the races. We really didn’t see that for a very long time here. I think a lot of us were really surprised how Daytona turned out and how the cars drove. It’s real frustrating during Speedweeks… there are a lot of practices, but the track never really gets to that race condition until Sunday. It was a complete curveball for me, and a lot of our cars (Hendrick Motorsports), as far as how the cars drove and how much handling was important to being competitive. Everybody was scrambling in the race working on the balance trying to get the cars to turn and do everything they needed to do because we hadn’t had to worry about it before.
“So, it’s starting to crop up a little bit. You used to be able to get a good read on where you were when they ran the qualifier duels during the day, but that is not the case anymore. So, we don’t really have an idea at all what the cars are going to do until the 500 comes around. This will be a little bit different because of the night race. Even though the temperatures will be up the night will provide a little stability and the handling issues won’t be quite as severe if there are any. But, the cars tend to be a little freer maybe or turn a little better at night versus during the day. I think we will still see some handling be a part of it especially when we are all very close together. When you are behind guys and you are really close side-to-side on each other’s doors, which is what we have to do with the package because we are side drafting so much more today than we used to. When you are around there in those tight boxes with cars all around the air on your car, the downforce on your car is so little that you can spin out or get tight very easily. You have to be very careful.
“That is becoming an issue, which is good. We loved when this place was slick and bumpy. The bumps were getting kind of severe in some spots and the asphalt was coming up in some places, but that was a great challenge. That gave the crews and the crew chiefs a challenge to get the cars to drive well and handle well. Everybody would haul butt for five laps, 10 laps and then about lap 20 you would start to see the cars that were handling move toward the front. It was great. It was a lot of fun. So, I’m excited that the track is sort of easing that way, not as fast as we would like obviously, but the technology these days with the asphalt they put down is so much more impressive than what they had in the 90’s and 80’s. These tracks are certainly not aging as fast as they used to.”
WHAT WOULD YOU TELL NASCAR FANS COMING TO THE RACE WHEN IS THE BEST TIME TO APPROACH YOU AND WHEN IS A TIME NOT TO APPROACH YOU? TALK ABOUT RUNNING THE ORLANDO UNITED STICKER THIS WEEKEND:
“Yeah, it was a terrible tragedy. I’m glad that the sport has got the stickers on all the cars. I think it’s a great way for us to show our support.
“It’s not really about when to be approached by a fan. As long as I’ve been around the sport it’s just an open policy. You see a driver you walk up and ask for an autograph if you want one. I think though what we want or what the drivers are concerned about is just a more defined area around the cars so that our guys can get in there and effectively get the tire pressures right and get the cars ready to go. Like I said, there are some tracks that are doing a really good job of that. I just for whatever reason when we come down pit road in the trucks to get to the cars there was no definition on where people needed to be, to create so lanes of access for even the trucks to get down through there and us to be able to get to our cars and stuff.”
GENERALLY OVERALL DURING THE WEEKEND WHEN IS THE BEST TIME AND NOT THE BEST TIME TO APPROACH YOU?
“I think the best time to find me is during practice when I’m around the car. I’m going to come out of the hauler and get in the car about 10 minutes before practice. That is a great time. I’m going to get out of the car after practice and go to the hauler. That is another good time. I’m going to go sit in the hauler in between all that. I’m in that hauler all day. I don’t really come outside the hauler much other than to get to the car. Those are good times. I walk to the bus after practice and before practice that is a good time. That is usually about 30 minutes before practice. I don’t know. Not every driver is the same. Some drivers get here sooner. Some guys maybe not as on time. I can’t even believe it thinking about it now, but when I drove with Tony (Eury) Jr. and Tony (Eury) Sr. I used to show up five minutes late to practice. I can’t even imagine keeping a job doing that these days.”
IS THERE SOMETHING TO BE SAID FOR ENJOYING RACING AT RESTRICTOR PLATE RACE TRACKS?
“Yeah, I think that some drivers feel the way I do about road course racing about plate racing. They just don’t want to do it, don’t like it. I definitely come in here thinking this is a great opportunity to win a race. I’ve won 17 plate races in my career I think, something like that. Maybe it’s 10, six at ‘Dega and four here. I’ve won 17 races here counting the 125’s and Xfinity races and all that. This is a great place for me to get a win. I’ve got to come in there with that kind of confidence, but I know there are races where I’ve gotten out and just don’t understand why we have this kind of racing. Why is the package like this? Does it have to be this way? Do we have to run three-wide and crash on the last lap? It seemed like when we had the Car of Tomorrow we wrecked on the last lap of the Talladega races every damn time we went there. It gets so frustrating because if you weren’t first or third or fifth you were wrecking. And for the longest time it was hard to understand that we are going to go to the race track and odds are we are going to crash. I’m going to work all weekend, bust my ass all day long lap after lap after lap in the race and I’m probably going to wreck. So, that was hard to wrap your brain around that ‘hey this is life or this is okay’. Nobody thought it was weird, but for the longest time that was the way it was. These cars they crash and we crash, but it doesn’t seem like it’s every single race at the end, but it’s still frustrating when you seem like you can’t avoid it. There was a string there from like 2007 to 2012 like you couldn’t avoid it. You just couldn’t figure out what you needed to do to not be in it. So, it got real frustrating there at one point, but we got rid of the tandem that was no good. And the racing to me has steered in a little better direction something similar to what we had around 2001. We still crash, we don’t want to flip, but it’s not as frustrating as it used to be. I do enjoy when you get out there and you are doing everything right and everything seems to be like you are in a zone. That is a fun time and that’s a good time. You go out there and you run and you come back in and your guys go ‘man I can’t believe you made that move’. I mean it’s fun to go out there and do stuff. It was rough there for a while, but it’s definitely, I think this car and the changes we have made to get away from some of the things that we didn’t like about plate racing there for a while have improved.”
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