NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
MEDIA DAY
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 16, 2016
AJ ALLMENDINGER, NO. 47 KROGER/SCOTT PRODUCTS CHEVROLET SS, met with members of the media at Media Day at Daytona International Speedway. Full Transcript:
NEW DEAL THIS YEAR. NEW CREW CHIEF. NEW GENERAL MANAGER.
“New everything. It’s actually been really good. I was a little disappointed for (the team). They put a lot of work into the 500 car and to not have the speed that we wanted was disappointing for them. They were planning to get the Atlanta car prepped for two weeks and I think it kind of made them mad and they went back and kind of worked on it a bit harder to make sure it was right, so it’s just fun to have those guys in the shop. I think the stuff we’ve already done has been really good. We have eight brand new cars lined up. We have brand new cars for the first five or six races to start with. The work ethic and the amount of want that they have is pretty cool to see. You never really know until you really get on the racetrack, and you won’t really know until you get to Atlanta, but I like what I see at the shop.”
FOR A SINGLE-CAR TEAM TO GET A CHARTER IS A GAME-CHANGER. HOW ARE YOU FEELING ON YOUR SIDE OF THE EQUATION?
“It doesn’t affect me that much in the sense that I change anything that I do. I was nice to come to Daytona knowing you guaranteed in the race. I’ve talked to (co-owner Tad Geschickter) about it, just more about his overall perspective and how he felt about it. He was pumped up because it would help a team like ours immensely because of all the work and money that he’s out into it and have something come back now is big for him. My contract with Tad has always been upfront and honest, and if the team gets more money and we run well then we all benefit from it. It’s not like I should get more money just because of the deal or vice versa. It’s like we joked when I signed the contract last year. I literally didn’t look at it. That’s the trust factor. I believe in what we’re doing and I want to be here. If we go out and win the Daytona 500 and win the championship, we all benefit from it, which is what it should be. It shouldn’t be just me or Tad or anybody. All the people inside the shop benefit from it.”
THERE’S NOT A LOT OF GUYS THESE DAYS THAT SIGN FIVE-YEAR DEALS.
“No, but you have to look at it for a lot of reasons. I’ve been fortunate enough, good and bad, to go to a lot of different race teams. What I love about Tad and (wife, co-owner) Jodi is they are caring owners. You look at a guy like (crew chief) Randall Burnett, who was at Ganassi for 10 years, and he comes here and says ‘These people are so genuine and nice.’ Of course, right now you’d love to have all the resources you want at your disposal, but we’re getting there. I want to be here and I think we can make something great out of this.”
NUTS AND BOLTS, HAVE YOU GOT THE DIGITAL DASH CONFIGURED THE WAY YOU WANT IT?
“Actually, that was the fun thing about Saturday – to see how that kind of worked out. We obviously never had a green-flag stop to know how close your pit road speed really was. I tried to push it a little bit my first time down, and from there we had all that damage so we not always rushing down pit road. But it seemed like it worked out fine.”
CAN YOU SEE IT OK?
“You definitely can see it; it is bright. I tried to use the dimmer switch, but I didn’t see it working.”
ARE YOU GOING TO DO ANY SPORTS CAR STUFF THIS YEAR?
“No, it doesn’t to work out. With NASCAR, too busy.”
WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO THE (INDIANAPOLIS) 500 AGAIN?
“No. The moment Justin Wilson passed away I said ‘Never again.’ The only way I would do it is if they put in a closed cockpit over the car and tested it and they thought that was a good direction in safety then I might think about doing it again.”
YOU HAVE SEEN THE DRAMATIC DIFFERENCES THAT HAVE COME WITH SAFETY HERE.
“But it’s a different situation in the fact that IndyCar is just like Formula One. The basis of Indy car racing is open cockpit. Stuff like that has always been more at risk to happen. But every form of racing is doing the job to make it safer. NASCAR continually works on the racetracks and inside the cars. The direction with all the testing that they’re doing that they showed in the safety meeting is progress. Will you ever get to the day when you strap in a race car and say, ‘Ah, there’s no chance of something really bad happening?’ Well, no. That’s a part of racing that will always be there, but the best thing we can do is make it as safe as possible. It is way safer than it was 15 years ago. It’s getting better. When it comes to the IndyCar side of it, that took a big part of me away right there.”
IS THERE A DAY THAT GOES BY WHEN YOU DON’T THINK ABOUT JUSTIN?
“There are good days and bad. I thought at the Rolex I had done a pretty good job. We would remember the good times, joke about it. I remember that we played a mini-golf tournament that Barry Waddell the driver coach and spotter and his son, and Stef Wilson. It was a tradition that Justin and Barry and I would do. Even at RuSport we had tournaments with a point system. We played awful that day and said that Justin is up there messing with us. So we had the good times and I woke up Saturday and read a tweet that (team owner Michael) Shank had sent out and it killed me inside. It hurt, and it was tough. But you always think about him. We all have to experience stuff of our losses. He always made me a better race car driver and I remember everything about it.”
DO YOU HAVE A FEEL FOR THE NEXT ROOM FOR (SAFETY) IMPROVEMENT IS?
“The grass is one thing for sure. It looks pretty but the grass is one thing that tears many race cars apart. Certain ways when it’s wet (the car) picks up speed. The tracks, they’re doing what they can. You’d like to wake up tomorrow and have SAFER Barriers at every part of the racetrack and things like that, but, in general, they are doing the best job that they can to try to update racetracks. Inside the car, NASCAR is doing all they can to test different rollbars, different things inside the car to make side impacts a lot safer. They’re doing the work. You can’t make a split-second decision and say this is the right way to go. You have to do the right testing, so I understand.
“Right now, the grass has gotten thicker and it just augers in. I remember the Fourth of July race here two years ago they all wrecked in front of me and I hit a wet patch and went to go down pit road and locked the tires up and hit the grass and it looked like I had been in 200 mph power front impact and I didn’t hit anything. Pavement would be nicer.”