NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
MEDIA DAY
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 12, 2015
RYAN NEWMAN, NO. 31 CATERPILLAR CHEVROLET SS, met with members of the media at Media Day at Daytona International Speedway. Full Transcript:
IF JEFF GORDON HAD NOT COME TO NASCAR AND HAD THE SUCCESS THAT HE DID, DO YOU THINK THAT GUYS LIKE YOU WOULD HAVE COME HERE?
“I think no doubt it helped, but he wasn’t the first one.”
HE WAS THE BIGGEST OF THOSE
“Not necessarily. Stewart did too.”
I COULD ARGUE THAT GORDON HAD A BETTER CAREER:
“You can argue all you want but I am just saying that he isn’t the only one that has had a big career. There was Ken Schrader, Mike Bliss and lots of other guys. For me personally that is the way I look at it. I am not Jeff Gordon and does he feel like he paved the way for me? I don’t know that. Obviously it didn’t hurt. I drove for the same Silver Crown team that he did and we both won a championship although eight or nine years apart from each other. So it didn’t hurt, but it’s not the only thing.”
ON THOSE THURSDAY NIGHT THUNDER DAYS, CAN I ASSUME YOU WERE WATCHING IT THEN?
“Yes, I was watching those. It was Wednesday night at first then it was Thursday night and I think it was Thursday night for us too. Those were huge days for us and that is why we spent a big part of our effort on open-wheel racing to race on pavement because that paved a way and proved to pave a way to bigger and better things.”
INAUDIBLE:
“I don’t think that there is a whole lot of math or anything. I think it’s just performance and I don’t think it has anything to do with having confidence and saying that it’s going to come easy the next year. It’s just a matter of stats. I go back and look at Dale Earnhardt’s record. He was a champion about every other year for so long. Did he take a year off? No. Either he or the team collectively didn’t perform as well in those even numbered years. So you can look at numbers several different ways. Whether it’s finishing second or starting with a new team that was 21st or 28th the previous year and turning it into a second. Does that mean we should win 20 races this year? I don’t think so but we never know.”
LOOKING AT THE NEW HORSEPOWER AND DOWNFORCE RULES, AS AN ENGINEER, HOW DO YOU THINK THIS IS GOING TO AFFECT YOU AS A DRIVER?
“I think the way we drive the cars will be very similar and I think what really affects us the most is what Goodyear does as far as developing a tire as the season goes and gives us what we need to make the racing better – and that is a tire that falls off. Because of the less downforce the tire does not need to be as durable. We saw so many problems with the tire last year and it was not because of low air, it was because of extreme downforce and the speeds that we were going because of that downforce. Taking downforce off helps the tire, but now Goodyear has to scale that back and give us a tire that falls off. So that is where the quality of the racing is going to be impacted and I don’t know if that is going to happen in Atlanta, or Vegas, or Phoenix, or California, or wherever. So I just think it’s a matter of time before we see the end result be what we want it to be. We have seen that in the past and I think we are going to see great racing in Atlanta because of Atlanta and not necessarily of the rules package.”
INAUDIBLE:
“We have to be able to decelerate going into the corner. Right now we can only pass somebody coming out of the corner. When you are wide open going into the corner, it’s just a matter of who has the bigger motor. You still have to have the driver have some kind of effect or some kind of cause and effect of making the pass incapable on the entry side of it. We are not decelerating hard enough, braking hard enough…..even at these big, fast race tracks. It’s so close to wide open that it’s just a matter of horsepower.”
INAUDIBLE:
“I think that the racing that I grew up with is a different style of racing than Late Model racing. I think Late Model racing in the 80s and 90s was primarily short track racing, and then it was ASA racing, which was very popular but ended up failing. I think that the way the kind of cars that the open-wheel racers raced with the lack of downforce, the kind of tires, the dirt and the sliding around that we had to do car-control-wise, definitely helped us with the bigger race cars. I think that when Jeff Gordon showed up it was right at the transition of bias ply tires to radials, so that helped play into the effect too. A lot of drivers were having trouble with the radials but open-wheel drivers knew how to slide a car and maintain it. Like even Dale Earnhardt Sr., from the stories that I read, he struggled with the radials at first. Just because he couldn’t drive it the way that he did with a bias ply.
DO YOU THINK THE NEW CHASE GAVE THE FANS WHAT THEY WANTED?
“I don’t think you can ever make every fan happy but I think a majority of the fans were excited about the Chase before and especially after. I don’t know how you couldn’t be. I think the format was good and I was questioning the one-race championship, but it proved to be a success. We could have all been racing for 36th at some point, you just never know. Nobody got caught up in someone else’s mess and there was no drama like that but you are going to have that at some point if the Chase format stays the way that it is. So you can work your tail off for 35 races and be the victim of somebody else’s mistake and cost yourself a championship. So there are several different ways to look at it but from a fan standpoint, I think just watching it in review whether its highlights or whatever – I think it was really good for our sport.”
WOULD YOU HAVE CARED ABOUT HOW YOU WON THE CHAMPIONSHIP?
“The trophy doesn’t tell you anything about how, how many races you won, and doesn’t tell you what lap you passed the second place car. It doesn’t tell you any of that stuff.”
WHAT ARE YOU ANTICIPATING ABOUT SUNDAY’S QUALIFYING? ARE YOU DREADING THAT?
“I don’t believe in the qualifying format, especially as what we do at restrictor plate tracks. At the non-restrictor plate tracks I could argue it, even in my own head, because it’s still the driver and the race track. But having other cars manipulate you in an effort to qualify, especially at one of the biggest races of the year, to me is not in the best eyes of our sport. Just based on who might get knocked out for somebody else’s or team order that is not necessarily fair. I mean you have corporate America and a lot of fans that are riding a lot of money, a lot of effort, a lot of time and a lot of belief in something like this and there is no reason for it to be so disappointing to so many.”
AT THE PLATE RACES SHOULD THEY JUST STICK TO A SINGLE CAR OR IS THERE SOME FORMAT OUT THERE THAT WOULD WORK?
“We don’t even have to do single car. We could do single car format, but put two or three cars out there at the same time and knock them out. It’s not rocket science. There is the math to do it there in a one hour program. Just like what we do in qualifying practice. You have four cars out there, evenly spaced, and you do your qualifying runs. NASCAR waves the flag and you go. If you don’t go within two seconds, you get disqualified from qualifying. It’s pretty simple.”
DO YOU THINK ITS SOMETHING THAT IS GOING TO SHAKE OUT?
“We almost had Jeff Gordon miss the Talladega race by one spot because of this qualifying procedure. So not to say that it’s going to happen to Jeff Gordon or to Dale Jr., but if it does happen to somebody that is big in our sport – it’s not going to be good for our sport. That is not what qualifying is all about.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT GOOD PEOPLE BEING PUT TOGETHER TO MAKE A GOOD TEAM?
“I feel fortunate to be in the position that I am with Luke Lambert and the guys that we have on our team because I really didn’t know what to expect in the 2014 season. I mean I trusted a guy like Richard Childress who has great respect in our sport in so many facets has the ability to see what the potential is, but I think that even in the 31 team that our performance surpassed even his expectations of what we might have been capable of. Without a doubt I am happy with where I am at and doing what I am doing and the people that are around me. But that doesn’t guarantee us to be in victory lane.”
WHAT DID YOU LEARN AT RICHMOND FROM A COUPLE YEARS AGO, TO RICHMOND LAST YEAR AS FAR AS WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO TO GET IN THE CHASE AND WHAT LESSONS WOULD YOU TAKE INTO THIS YEAR?
“You just have to fight no matter what. You have to fight hard whether it’s Daytona or Richmond or Watkins Glen or whatever. Every race you have to fight and looking at the Chase last year, we knew how to fight and I knew how to fight because I had been in that position before. I had been that bubble guy no matter what it seemed for the last few years. The way that the bubble deal worked in the Chase, it was basically four more opportunities to fail and you had to fight through that in order to not fail. I think that was a strength of myself and our team collectively to be as successful as we were last year.”