BEING IN A MUST-WIN SITUATION WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR YOU? IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN DO TO UPGRADE YOUR PERFORMANCE? “I don’t think so. Even the first race here we were coming to win, anyway, so I don’t think it changes your outlook. Every weekend you’re trying to win. I think maybe knowing that you’re in a must-win makes it a little bit easier to maybe try to win the race just from a strategy standpoint because you don’t have to go for the points, where like on a road course at the Roval you kind of shoot yourself in the foot to try to get points and you don’t really have a shot to win the race, so I think for us this week knowing that we’re in a must-win it maybe makes it a little bit easier from a strategy standpoint if the cautions fall the right way, but we go to the racetrack every weekend looking to win.”
DOES IT CHANGE YOUR LEVEL OF AGGRESSIVENESS ON WHAT YOU’RE WILLING TO DO AND NOT DO? “I think it’s hard to say what you’re willing to do sitting here versus when you’re in the moment. The emotions and adrenaline, everything is totally different than when you’re sitting here. Definitely knowing that you have to win if you’re in second, you’re gonna know. If you were in a different points position, running second might put you into the final four, where, for us, you’re gonna have to win the race. I don’t know what you’re willing to do. I think it’s different for everybody and until you’re in that moment it’s hard to say. We’ve just got to go try to get a win.”
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED ABOUT YOURSELF BECAUSE YOU HAVEN’T EXPERIENCED THIS AT THE CUP LEVEL BEFORE? “I feel like even through the regular season my whole career I’ve never given up in a race. I’m always 100 percent every lap, but I will say I felt like in the playoffs I did a lot better job of just risk versus reward and kind of knowing like at Texas, for example. We were running 28th. You’re not gonna drive to fifth right here, so just maintain where you’re at and watching Harvick, he’s so good at that. At the beginning of the race he might not be the best car, but at the end he finds himself up there in a position. I feel like in the playoffs I’ve learned a lot about how to put the whole race together, where I probably didn’t do the best job of that for really my entire career. I felt like in the playoffs we had a string of four races where I would say two of those we definitely finished better than where we ran all day and it was just a matter of putting yourself in position and just chipping away at it. On the restarts, try to gain two or three spots. On pit road, try to gain two or three spots and by the end of it you’re up there in the top 10 and sometimes in the top five, so I felt like I learned a lot about that in the playoffs and when to not put yourself in a bad situation trying too hard. I didn’t do a very good job of that in the regular season. I felt I did a lot better in the playoffs, but went all back on it last week though.”
WHAT HAS IT BEEN LIKE FOR YOUR FIRST TIME IN THE CUP PLAYOFFS? “I would say honestly that the intensity has not been as high as I thought it was going to be and some of that is probably because I’m not up there battling for stage points, so that could be some of it. But I felt like the Xfinity Series, like I remember 2019 was my first playoffs there and being in the top five to seven in those stages and how hard the racing was, and I would say it’s similar in the Cup deal. I guess what I thought it was gonna be is I thought it was gonna be exponentially more than even what the Xfinity Series was from an intensity standpoint and it’s kind of the same. That kind of caught me off guard because I did think it would be a little more, and I just feel like at the Cup level everybody is so cut-throat now anyways. Late race restarts and just restarts in general everybody is kind of out there for themselves, so the intensity didn’t really change, I didn’t feel like, from the regular season to playoff time.”
HOW DISAPPOINTED ARE YOU TO BE IN THE POSITION YOU’RE IN? “It’s disappointing for sure, but it’s not as disappointing as the other eight guys that are already knocked out. We still have a one in eight chance. It’s a slim chance, but we still have a chance, where there are eight other guys who don’t even have a shot to be in the final four. There’s still a lot to be proud of. It’s disappointing that we’re in a must-win. I felt like if we could come here and kind of do the same as we did the other rounds of the playoffs, where we could be just within 10 points we had a chance to go out there and point our way in, but we’re gonna have to earn it and that’s how it should be. We’ll try to win tomorrow. I thought we had a pretty good car here the first race, so it’s gonna be interesting to see how the race plays out. If it’s as hard as it was to pass the first race, if we qualify good today and start up front, we can really kind of maintain the race. We’ve just got to go there and know what the goal is and tomorrow just got to do it.”
HOW ARE YOU VIEWING THE SEASON FOR YOURSELF AT THIS POINT? HAVE YOU OVERACHIEVED GETTING TO THIS POINT OR IS THIS WHAT YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO? “I would say underachieved a little bit just because I know what we’re capable of, like when we put it all together, truthfully, we could have three race wins right now just based off speed alone. So, only having eight or nine top 10s, when we put the whole race together – the last four weeks we’ve done it in and that’s where we should be week in and week out and a lot of that falls on me, so I feel like I underachieved just from not finishing. I should have won the Coke 600. The Bristol race I probably wasn’t gonna win, but the Coke 600 I had the best car and ran fourth with it, so I felt like I underachieved in some areas. I felt like I learned a lot. I felt like I grew a lot this year. I feel way more confident in what I’m doing and I feel like I belong in the Cup Series a lot more, so, from that side, I feel like I’ve achieved a lot of the goals and checked a lot of boxes that I wanted to check going into the second year of the Cup Series, but from a results standpoint you always want more. You could win 10 races and you wish you would have won 12. I wouldn’t say just making it to the top eight was an overachieving moment for us because I felt like from a speed standpoint we are a top eight car when we put it all together. We just haven’t done that as consistently as others, so I felt like I underachieved a lot just in my performance. I’ve just got to get better and it’s gonna come as I get more experience. It’s just putting myself in these situations and learning what not to do will hopefully help for future times when I’m in that same situation.”
SAFE TO SAY THIS QUALIFYING SESSION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT OF THE YEAR FOR YOU? “Yeah, for sure I would say. We’ve been really, really good qualifying on the short tracks. The big tracks we’ve kind of struggled, but the short tracks have been really good to us, so, yeah, definitely a really important one. This is one where as a driver you feel like you can make quite a big difference. I didn’t do a very good job the first time here. I locked the left-front up, so I need to definitely not do that today, but, yeah, definitely a really important one. Like I said, if it’s gonna be as hard to pass as it was the first race, then starting up front is gonna be huge, and the pit stall selection is massive here. So, it’s definitely an important qualifying session.”
HOW DO YOU MEASURE SUCCESS AND HOW WOULD YOU MEASURE IT THIS YEAR? “It’s tough when you’re this close if you don’t make it because you can taste it. I go back to the Vegas race. I thought I was gonna win the race with 20 to go and you can kind of taste that final four. When you’re this close, yeah, you’re proud to make it this far – at least in my situation, being my second year. I’m proud to make it to the final eight, but when you’re this close you’re gonna be bummed if you didn’t get there. For me, I definitely would say it’s 50/50. There are some things that were a success, but there are other areas where it probably wasn’t a success. I think you’ve got to continue to keep trying to be more and more successful, and I feel like I gave up a couple wins this year. Like last week, making a mistake and spinning out when you’re four laps away from the stage is a mistake I don’t need to be making, especially when the stakes are as high as they are. I’m kind of 50/50 on the success side.”
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