CHASE FOR THE NASCAR SPRINT CUP
SEASON FINALE
FORD 400
HOMESTEAD-MIAMI SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
NOVEMBER 18, 2016
CHIP GANASSI, TEAM OWNER, CHIP GANASSI RACING, met with members of the media to discuss the addition of Tyler Reddick to the CGR Xfinity Series team. Partial Transcript:
ON TONY STEWART:
“He drove for us at Indy one day, did a great job. You know you get involved in this business and you meet people along the way and I’m just sorry we didn’t work harder to do more with him as a driver with our team. Obviously the opportunity didn’t present itself from time to time, but did an outstanding job and I think had a real shot at the Indy 500 that day. We just had a bad pit stop and couldn’t get him out of the pits and that was the end of the day. Did a great job for us and it was kind of before doing the double had all the excitement or the interest from everybody that it has today. I think it was 2001 when we did that and I’m just sorry we didn’t work harder to have him around more. It is 2001 and it just seems like it was a couple of years ago.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE PROGRESS YOUR CUP TEAM MADE THIS YEAR AND HOW BIG OF A STEP YOU ARE GOING TO NEED TO TAKE IN ORDER TO GET TO WHERE YOU NEED TO BE?
“I think I’ve said before this business is like laying bricks you lay them one at a time. Nobody has learned how to put 10 bricks up at a time yet, that is what this business is like. It’s building a wall of bricks and it is one at a time. If I had an unlimited budget we could get there a lot faster, but I think our team is on pace to where we want to be. It’s a matter of the people, it’s a matter of the talent, again it’s not unlike I was talking about earlier with Tyler (Reddick). It’s everything you’ve got to have everything these days. In this sport you’ve got to have everything, on the track, off the track. Everything from the PR department, the janitor, I didn’t mean to put the PR department down there with the janitor. I do mean to bring the janitor up to the PR department (laughs). You’ve got to have everything. I’ve often said before I think the biggest problem today in the sport is not the drivers and the sponsorship or anything it’s people, it’s finding the people that want to work. This is a damn hard business to work in. A lot of us in this room are happy that it’s the end of the season where we can get a breather here. It’s something we all want to do and we are very passionate about, but it’s a lot of work to be in this business. It’s like pitchers in baseball, there are more teams than there are good pitchers. There are more teams in this sport than there are good people to do the work and run on them. We are fortunate to have good people. Finding those people and putting them together that fit well together to make up a team is a challenge.”
HOW DOES STEWART-HAAS RACING MOVING TO FORD STRENGTHEN YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS?
“I think we’ve always had a good relationship with Hendrick Motorsports and that relationship continues to get better every single day. We just resigned for a few years there so we are pretty happy. I see our relationship doing nothing but getting better over there.”