Team Chevy Drivers and Crew Chiefs Tour Lansing Grand River Assembly Plant
Bowman, Ives, Larson, Johnston, Wallace and Blickensderfer get sneak peek at where the Camaro ZL1 is assembled
Lansing, Mich. (June 7, 2018) – Three Team Chevy Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series drivers and crew chiefs received a unique experience prior to heading to Michigan International Speedway for this weekend’s FireKeepers 400. Alex Bowman and his crew chief, Michigan native, Greg Ives; along with three-time Michigan winner Kyle Larson and his crew chief, Chad Johnston; and Bubba Wallace pilot of the famed No. 43 Camaro ZL1 with his crew chief Drew Blickensderfer toured the Lansing Grand River Assembly plant where the Camaro ZL1, the street version of what the Chevrolet Cup Series competitors pilot on track are assembled.
Chevrolet has made available for media use high-definition video interviews with all three drivers and crew chiefs, high resolution photography from today’s event and below select quotes gathered from the visit.
QUOTE SHEET:
ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 88 NATIONWIDE CAMARO ZL1
“It’s cool to be here. When we picked up that car we didn’t really get to tour around a lot. We were kind of just in this area watching it come off the assembly line. So, it’s cool to get to walk through and see the process.”
HOW DOES THIS COMPARE TO THE RACE SHOP?
“They get stuff done in a hurry here compared to us. So, it’s pretty cool just to see how everybody works together and how the processes work so efficiently and how everything has been so scienced-out to make it as efficient as possible.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT RACING AT MIS THIS WEEKEND?
“I’m excited. We tested here a couple of weeks ago and we were really strong. It’s one of my favorite places. We were really strong here in ’16 when I drove the No. 88 car, so I’m looking forward to it. I think we can be really good.”
WHAT IS IT ABOUT MIS THAT MAKES IT A FAVORITE TRACK TO SO MANY DRIVERS?
“It’s just fast. If you’re driving it by yourself you like the high-grip fast places and that’s what this is. I enjoy it. It’s tough to race. It’s real narrow and aero-sensitive, but as far as just driving a race car here, it’s a good bit of fun.”
IS THERE A BIG CHANGE BETWEEN THE RACING IN JUNE AND THE RACING IN AUGUST AT MIS?
“It’s been so long since I’ve run both; it’s been since 2015. It’s hard to say. I think if the weather changes, yes. If the weather is similar, probably not.”
GREG IVES, CREW CHIEF, NO. 88 CAMARO ZL1 AND MICHIGAN NATIVE:
WHAT DOES COMING TO A PLACE LIKE THIS MEAN TO YOU?
“It definitely means a lot to not only see what is happening here at the GM plant and all the cars being made, but I remember driving by this place several times back in college days coming down here for college and working around the area. To actually come inside and obviously I think it might be a little bit different than maybe 15 years ago when I was back in college, but definitely a great experience here. It’s great to see the people that put these cars together. Most people see it on the lot as a finished product, but the heart and soul that you see just walking up and down the line it’s awesome to see and definitely makes me proud to represent the Chevy brand.”
KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 CREDIT ONE BANK CAMARO ZL1
HAVING WON AT MIS BEFORE, DOES THAT GIVE YOU ANY CONFIDENCE THAT YOU CAN GET IT DONE?
“I think it depends on how your practices go. If your cars had a good practice then yeah, sure, you have a lot of confidence going into the race. I don’t ever really get too worked-up about qualifying because the races are 400 miles, or whatever. So, you have three and a half hours to figure it out and get to the lead. On the dirt track stuff, with the shorter races, that’s when you get more concerned about starting positions. But if your car is good enough in practice, that will help your confidence out for the race.”
WITH THE CHANGE IN TIRES, IS THAT A BIG DEAL AS FAR AS HOW YOUR CAR WILL PERFORM THIS WEEKEND VERSUS PAST WEEKENDS?
“I don’t know. Chad (Johnston, crew chief) might have an idea of the balance adjustment, but once I get out there and get some laps, you kind of get an idea of how your car is and what adjustments you can make, and how I’ll need to change my driving style and things like that.”
WHY WOULD THIS RACE BE MORE DIFFICULT TO WIN THAN THE PREVIOUS THREE?
“Well, I think the last one won was really difficult. I ran like 10th all race long, but we were able to have some good pit strategy and a good restart at the end. But, the other two that we won, I felt like we had the best car probably, going into the race. So, where right now, I think you look at the same three guys, the No. 78 (Martin Truex, Jr.) and the No. 18 (Kyle Busch) and the No. 4 (Kevin Harvick) as being the favorites even though maybe with my wins I’m probably considered the favorite or a favorite, but we’re just a little step behind those guys right now. But, I think with having three wins, the confidence could be up and that could be important.”
WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS THE COOLEST THING YOU SAW HERE TODAY?
“I think one of the coolest parts was where I guess they marry the car, so like you’ve got the body and then all the underbody stuff and a machine that sucks-up to it and plugs some stuff in and how they have like a few people per station where the car moves forward to the next group of people to work on whatever they’re working on. So, there was a lot of cool stuff that I didn’t really expect to see.”
DO YOU SHOW-UP FEELING POSITIVE AND GOOD ABOUT THINGS, OR IS IT A SCRATCH EVERY TIME YOU COME TO MIS?
“Yeah, I don’t know. I guess I really don’t think about the wins that I’ve had there now the last three times. I just go there like it’s another race I’m trying to win and hopefully we’re just as strong as we have been the last few times. So, we’ve just got to wait and see until we get on the track. But, I think you definitely have maybe a little more confidence maybe when you come back to a place you’ve won at.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT COMING TO THIS PLANT? IT’S GOT TO BE PRETTY COOL TO SEE HOW THESE CARS ARE MADE.
“It’s a lot bigger than what I was expecting. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I was just really surprised at how smoothly everything is run and all the technology that’s here to make building one car is pretty spectacular. There’s stuff from floor to ceiling moving and bicycles riding around with parts and stuff. There are a lot of people here and everything is run smoothly, at least from what I see.”
HAVE YOU BEEN TO A GM PLANT BEFORE?
“No, this is my first time. So, like I said, I didn’t know what to expect. It’s definitely really cool.”
WHAT DOES IS MEAN WHEN A DRIVER AND A TRACK MATCH UP SO WELL?
“It’s just how comfortable they are with the place and whether it be speed or line or just driving technique of what it takes to get around there. I think for Michigan, I don’t know what it is that suits me, but I think I think it suits our team or our team suits that track. We’ve always had fast race cars at Michigan.”
YOU’RE STILL SO RELATIVELY NEW IN TERMS OF HOW MANY SEASONS YOU’VE HAD IN THE SPORT AT THE CUP LEVEL. HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE THE ABSOLUTE FAVORITE BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU’VE DONE? IS IT A NEW FEELING?
“A little bit. I felt like a lot of places last year, with how good we were running, us and the No. 78 (Martin Truex Jr.) were the favorites for the first half of the season. So yeah, last year felt definitely different than normal. Not that I’m used to it, but after the season we had last year and being pointed as one of the favorites, I don’t think I’m shocked, I guess, this year, when people point at us.”
DOES IT FEEL ANY DIFFERENT HAVING HIGH EXPECTATIONS PUT ON YOU AS A FAVORITE AND SOMEBODY WHO HAS WON?
“Even when I’m a favorite I don’t really look into it at all. I’m just out there racing and I go as fast as I can and try to finish as high as I can. I don’t really think too much about the hype or what’s behind it all.”
CHAD JOHNSTON, CREW CHIEF FOR KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 CREDIT ONE BANK CAMARO ZL1
ON HIS APPROACH TO EACH RACE EVERY WEEK
“We come that way every week. It doesn’t really change. We have the expectation every week when we leave the shop that we’re going there to win the race. So, whether we’ve won three, six, or nine, we go into the weekend the same way.”
WHAT IS IT ABOUT MIS THAT HAS MADE YOU SUCCESSFUL THERE?
“The last race we won here we definitely shouldn’t have won; it was a late race restart. I think it’s a multi-groove race track. It’s fairly wide. It suits his (Kyle Larson’s) style to move around and find grip. A lot of guys might move their lines around a couple of feet and he might move it around from the line to the boards. It suits his style. Our 1.5-mile program is probably the stronger part of our program and it lends itself to Michigan. It’s a faster place to get around, a lot of on-throttle time, so it suits his style even more so.”
IS THERE THAT SENSE OF PRIDE THAT MIS IS BASICALLY THE MANUFACTURERS’ HOME TRACK?
“I think it’s definitely a sense of pride if you can win in your manufacturer’s backyard. With Ford being up here, I don’t think Toyota is, but as far as just automakers in North America, it’s pretty impressive. And you’ve got to be pretty proud to know that you leave with that hardware when you leave here.”
PAT SUHY, CHEVROLET RACING NASCAR COMPETITION GROUP MANAGER
ON THE PROGRESS OF THE NEW CAMARO ZL1 RACE CAR
“Our teams are working very hard. We’re certainly working very hard with them to understand where we’re at. There have certainly been bright spots. Last weekend at Pocono, we saw some good speed out of multiple cars across a couple of different teams, actually across all three of our key partner teams. So, I think it’s coming along. The new car, I think the new rules, the splitter, the flat splitter, I won’t say it caught people flat-footed, but I think the new body was just an added complication on top of some pretty significant rules and enforcement changes by NASCAR. But again, if you look back I think as far as Kansas or even before that, the No. 42 car of Kyle Larson has had good speed at a number of places. A couple of the Hendrick Motorsports cars have been fast at different places along the way. So, I think it’s really a matter of people finding their way; not only with the new car, but with the whole Hawk-Eye system, the flat splitter, and things like that. It’s a lot of work to put on somebody’s plate.”
SO, IT’S NOT REALLY ONE THING, BUT DIFFERENT VARIABLES THAT HAVE BEEN WORKING AGAINST YOU IN A SENSE?
“I wouldn’t say ‘against’ so much, it’s just a matter of you have to put things on your list of things to do and you’ve got so many resources and you can do so many of them in parallel and you’ve just got to do it in sequence. I think we’ve been doing, sequentially, more than we might have had to if it was just one thing changing, like the new body.”
IN WORKING CLOSELY WITH THE TEAMS, HAS THERE BEEN A COMMON THEME OF MAYBE WHAT THEY ARE FEELING OR BATTLING OR TRYING TO WORK ON?
“I think aero-performance is a big one, obviously. And that’s affected by all those things I just talked about. We had, by far, the most collaborative effort on developing the submission car, the body; typically, that would be us with our design staff and our racing designer. We do some CFD, we do a few tunnel tests, that was the old days. And this time we had many, many wind tunnel tests. We had aero lead engineers and aero working engineers and CFD engineers from every team, from Hendrick Motorsports, Richard Childress Racing, and Chip Ganassi Racing, basically working in lock-step with us all the way through submission. And, normally, that’s where we would stop working together. But, the good thing about where we’re at, is it’s really promoted a continuous working together. And we’ve been able to do a lot of learning in the wind tunnel, collectively, which keeps every team from having to go out and do that on their own. So, we’re not working on, I’ll call it the ‘special sauce’, but we’re working on the basic recipe, if you will. We’re working on the chili without the jalapenos.”
SO, IS CHEVROLET STILL HEAVILY INVOLVED IN WORKING WITH THE TEAMS AND MAKING THIS CAR A SUCCESS?
“Yes, we are. And as we see the assembly plant here today, there’s a lot of work in process. And when you think about the early part of the season with the West Coast Swing, those cars had to be in process and built and the configurations determined long before you go to the West Coast. And so, there’s an agility level that you don’t have, especially that part of the season; and I think as we got past that, and the flat splitter, and the straight edge instead of the template, I think that threw people through a little bit of a loop, too. But as we got past that, I’m confidence we’re going to see gains here coming into this next third of the season or so. I think we saw the beginning of it last weekend at Pocono, and maybe spotty signs of that a week or two before.”
SOME DRIVERS HAVE SAID WHEN WE GET TO SUMMER WE SHOULD BE OKAY. IS THAT A GOOD TARGET?
“Yeah, I think so. Again, we’ll keep watching and we will certainly respond accordingly. And it’s not like okay, we’re done, let’s see how it turns out. We continue to work and collaborate and again, sometimes going through a tough stretch brings people together. And the result down the road, longer term, is going to be much better because of that.”
BUBBA WALLACE, NO. 43 CAMARO ZL1:
ON THE PLANT TOUR:
“We have had an awesome day here at the plant tour for GM in Lansing. Really cool to see how the Camaros are put together from start to finish, see the man hours and the machine hours. It’s so crazy to think you’ve got robots running through here kind of assembling these cars now-a-days. It’s still cool to see the personal touches that employees do here and most of the employees are NASCAR fans, even Bubba Wallace fans, which is pretty cool.”
CAN YOU SEE THE SIMILARITIES IN THE CAMARO ZL1 YOU DRIVE ON THE TRACK AND SOME YOU HAVE SEEN BEING ASSEMBLED HERE TODAY?
“Yeah, you can definitely look at the nose and you can tell the difference and see – oh there is one of our cars and then there is one that you see and you think ah that is a little different than ours and then you see another one that is like what we drive. It’s cool to kind of spot those out. They definitely have a unique look to them.”
DREW BLICKENSDERFER, CREW CHIEF, NO. 43 CAMARO ZL1:
ON HIS PLANT TOUR:
“We were able to see where the Camaro ZL1 and other Camaros are made. It was a pretty neat experience being able to see the body meet with the chassis, how everything comes off trucks from other facilities to go into these cars and how efficient they are. It was a pretty cool learning experience.”