| Will the racing be different at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, since it’s no longer part of the playoffs?
“I’m not sure. Ask (Kyle) Larson – he did a good job the first time. We’ll see if he can do it again. If he does, he may be the genie. I don’t know. I don’t foresee it being much different. I didn’t foresee Chicago being much different, you know? I think that Loudon sometimes is a more challenging racetrack to pass people on, but we’ve had a lot of success there and think we will again this weekend with our Interstate Batteries Toyota. There is more time or opportunity for slipping and sliding and contact being made, being a short track, being a flat track. So maybe guys won’t care as much, I guess, because it’s not in the playoffs and they don’t really need notes to help them try and run better there when it comes to playoff time. We’ll see.”
With the big three (Busch, Harvick and Truex) running so well, what do you have to do to get that edge over those guys and get your second championship this year?
“I don’t know. You’ve got to make Homestead. All three of us have to make Homestead. That’s what it comes down to right now. If we all make Homestead, it comes down to that race, it’s all about just beating them, beating those guys, outracing them. Last year, we did. We didn’t outrace the 78 (Truex), who was the class of the field all year long. Actually, I felt like we were the best car at Homestead last year. We just didn’t have a very good pit stop, had some issues. There’s just so many different factors. It’s way too early right now to kind of talk about that. I think we’ve got a great shot of racing Harvick, Truex, and I’m sure some of these other guys, like Larson, of course. There has been some uptick in competition from the Penske guys recently. I’m sure one of them is going to have something to say about it, too.”
In the July race you won at New Hampshire in 2015, you had to pit later in the race because you thought you had a tire going down. What do you remember about that race?
“I just remember that I thought I chewed the right-front tire off of it because I went into the corner and the thing just went straight one time, so I was like, ‘Man, I’m down to cords now, that’s it, it’s done.’ We shot to pit road and got it changed there and evidently, it was oil on the racetrack that just made the car slip so bad right out from under me. We got a lucky break and I hauled butt. Man, those five laps I ran were five qualifying laps through traffic trying to get back up to the front and pass (Kevin) Harvick to stay on the lead lap. That was our saving grace and ultimately we were able to win. It was really special. Being able to take home another trophy from there would be pretty cool. We have a lot of Interstate Batteries dealers and distributors up in that part of the country, and many who come down from Canada, too, so it was a great opportunity to be able to have them come to celebrate with us in victory lane, and we would certainly like to do it again this weekend.”
What does it take to be successful at New Hampshire?
“Loudon is a Martinsville-like short track, but it’s just over a mile. It’s a little more spread out, but there are some rooting and gouging going on because it’s a one-lane track and everybody fights for that particular groove. To be fast at Loudon, you have to have good brakes and you have to roll the center really well and get that good forward bite off the corners and make sure it sticks. The biggest thing about Loudon is, you keep losing front turn-in and that’s why the brakes go away, just because the corners are longer and more sweeping than you need to keep those front tires around you.”
The New Hampshire race is one of the shortest on the circuit. How do you approach that race knowing you might have a little less time to get to the front at the end?
“Essentially, at Loudon, you’re looking at how good your fuel mileage is and you have to look at when you have to make your last pit stop since that’s what everyone looks at. You end up running it almost like a road-course race because you do want to be the first guy on the last round of pit stops to pit. You want to get in there, get your tires and fuel, and then stay out the rest of the race and keep your track position since it’s so important there. It’s just a challenging race because it’s so hard to pass there. You can be two-tenths faster than a guy and not be able to pass him because everyone typically runs the same speed. You’ll have it where the leader might be a tenth better than the second-place guy, but everyone is separated by so little that it takes a mistake on someone’s part in order to pass them there.”
When you make a mistake at Loudon, does it cost you a little bit more because you have less time to recover?
“You don’t because you’re always on edge there. You’re trying to go as fast as you can into the corners, as deep as you can into the corners while rolling as much speed, or just a bit higher than everyone else so you are able to get back to the gas sooner. You’re going harder than everyone else in order to make the straightaway a little bit longer and get your momentum built back up. It’s definitely a challenging racetrack – not one of my best racetracks, I’ll admit that. I’ve won there twice so, if we get a good car – I guess I’ll need to have a really good car, apparently – then we might have a shot to win there.” |
