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NASCAR MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 17, 2016

Matt Crafton

Q. Matt, you're the veteran of the group, established champion, and a new format for the series. Has it changed your approach going into this last race versus other years?
MATT CRAFTON: Yeah, I mean, without a doubt it's definitely changed how I've came into this race because every time I've came into this race, I've just had to basically‑‑ I think the first year I had to finish‑‑ start the race. As long as I took the green flag I was the champion, and the second year I had to finish like 20th and whoever I was racing for the championship had to win the race, lead the most laps. We just rode around and stayed out of trouble at that point, and now this year, we say, go race hard. I like it. It's going to be a lot of fun Friday night without a doubt. We should put on a good show for sure.
I wasn't a fan of the Chase at all, but right now in the year that I've had with five DNF's that we've had this year, to still be in contention for a championship, that's unheard of. In the past, the whole points system, I wouldn't have even thought about it. I would have been happy with a top 5 finish in points. But we've had‑‑ we won enough races early to get ourselves in, and we didn't have too many DNF's in this Chase.

Q. Do you think you've become a fan of this Chase system this season?
MATT CRAFTON: Yeah, it's made me become a fan because at the end of the day, if I wasn't‑‑ if it wasn't this Chase format, I promise you I would not be in this position racing for a championship. I wasn't a fan of it at the start of 2016 when they said it, but now I'm a big fan of it because I'm getting to race for a championship.

Q. Do you think it's perfect or‑‑
MATT CRAFTON: Yeah, I mean, there's some things I would like to do a little bit different with it, but I mean, it's pretty good. Just maybe a little‑‑ I think maybe I would like to have one race you could throw out or something like that in the deal and maybe just like say four races or something just maybe a little bit different. But those three races, if you have that one bad race in those three races and somebody just top 10s you to death‑‑ say you finish second, second and 30th and another guy comes in and he finishes ninth, ninth and ninth and say I led a bunch of laps and was contending to win when I was finishing second and second and somebody finished ninth, ninth and ninth, they're going to move on, and that guy could be your champion.
But you still have to be very consistent, and we had a problem at Martinsville with brake problems and caught on fire and still finished 17th and dug our way out of that hole, and then we were at Talladega, broke a valve spring there, and finished‑‑ had a DNF there and still dug ourselves out of the hole. It can be done, but it's very tough to do without a doubt.

Q. This weekend we're running the same tire that you guys had at Texas a couple weeks ago. How did the tire feel to you there?
MATT CRAFTON: I loved the tire that they had. I like the tire that we had here last year better just because I won on it and we kind of knew the characteristics of it. But the Texas tire was always good, the same tire that we ran in the past at Texas. We've won races in the past with this tire at Texas, and now we're going to run it here, so it should be good. We were contending for the win in Texas in the fall race, so we should be pretty good tomorrow night.

Q. ThorSport had some issues away from the track this year with the big fire up in Sandusky. What would it mean to be able to bring the big championship back to Ohio?
MATT CRAFTON: It would be very good to bring it back to Ohio, just to see‑‑ the shop is not running at 100 percent. It's still not all there. I think it's about 10,000, 15,000 square feet. It's still not there. We've moved some stuff around. We used some of the basement that we had and we weren't using before, so we've moved a lot of stuff downstairs. We're making it work, but it's still not 100 percent. Just to be able to have a shot at bringing the championship back to Sandusky and seeing how everybody rallied around in Sandusky‑‑ we had four different shops, four different locations in five shops throughout Sandusky to spread all the teams out so everybody had a place to work, from the point where the shop caught on fire, I think it was June 12th, it put us‑‑ I knew it was going to hurt us a little bit, but I didn't realize it was going to hurt it as bad as it did, and it definitely put a damper on the way we ran because at that point we were just on a downward spiral.
We had the pull‑down rig and that stuff to work with, but we didn't have surface plates, and just the places the guys were working didn't have all the tools that we usually have at the shop, and it put us behind, and we dug ourselves out of that hole, and looking forward to tomorrow night.

Q. A lot of times these Camping World Truck Series and XFINITY Series are known as feeder series. You seem to be content where you're at in the Truck Series. What is it about this series that make you say I'm happy here, and do you plan on finishing your career out here?
MATT CRAFTON: Oh, yeah, without a doubt. I'm very happy to finish my career out here. I mean, yes, I would like to race the races in the XFINITY Series or run Cup races if I was on the right equipment. But if you're not going to be in the right equipment, you're not going to be able to contend to win. I really don't care to do it. I ransom XFINITY races whenever I drove for RCR and had Menard's on the car there and finished third a couple times and ran very good, but the Camping World Truck Series is such great racing, and I don't just say it because I'm racing in it, but there's so many fans out there, true race fans. It's the best racing in NASCAR.
I love to be a part of that, and it's short enough races where we put on a great show from start to finish, and you can still make a living, get to drive a race car and have 23, 24 weekends to do it.

Q. How satisfying is it to see three veterans of the series here contending for a championship with this new format in its first year?
MATT CRAFTON: Oh, yeah, without a doubt. It was good to see Christopher, their team. He's came a long ways from the start of the year, his mistakes and this and that, but we all made those when we were starting in this Truck Series. To see that he's made it into the Championship Four is definitely very big for him, and I guess the cream rises to the top.

Q. This year the Dash for Cash in the XFINITY Series, I'm not really a fan of the heat races they've introduced, but would you be interested in having a Dash for Cash set up in the Camping World Truck Series?
MATT CRAFTON: Oh, absolutely, because it's Dash for Cash. If we're racing for some money, I want to do it. It's exciting, too. We're exciting, and it's something for the drivers that are in that Dash for Cash to go out there and put on an even better show than we do already.

Q. To build on that, if we had one, what tracks do you think should host the races?
MATT CRAFTON: All the ones that I run good at. I'm not sure. I don't know exactly how the Dash for Cash works. I see the racing. I watch the races that they do, but I don't know exactly how they get in it and how they‑‑ I know how they win it, it's head to head at that point, but I'd like to see it in Atlanta, I'd like to see it at Texas, Iowa. There's a lot of really good racetracks that we put on a good show, and it would be fun.

Q. What's the general key to actually being able to run well here at Homestead? You're the defending champion of this race; what goes into it? Is it just something that really can run well up near the wall?
MATT CRAFTON: No, I don't think so. Last year I won the race and I wasn't on the wall, and there's been races in the past here where I've raced for the lead and I haven't been against the wall. The XFINITY cars and the Cup cars, there's a lot more rubber that gets down on the racetrack, so they start searching for that extra groove. You've got Kyle Larson who's in the truck race. I'm sure he'll have the thing against the fence. Are we going to have to be there to win the race? I don't think so. But one of the hardest things about this race is we practice at 8:30 to 9:30 and I think it's 10:30 to 11:30 when our second practice is, and then we race at night. This place has some of the biggest swings from day tonight. You've got to build enough adjustability in the truck and know what the thing is going to do from day tonight, as well.

Q. Does that make the 8:30 practice session especially crucial?
MATT CRAFTON: No, no, because it's so much different because there's no rubber on the racetrack at 8:30, and it's just a completely green racetrack as we call it. There's no rubber on it. We're never going to see a racetrack that's going to have no rubber on it because we're going to practice and then XFINITY is going to practice, then we're going to practice again. You've just got to build enough adjustability in it. Yes, the track will be cool, and it's going to be cooler at night, but it's going to heat itself throughout the day, and even when we do race, that track temperature is still not going to be as cold as it was at 8:30 in the morning.

Q. The fact that you don't have a points cushion here to fall back on like you have in previous years, how does that change things for this race?
MATT CRAFTON: I've got to beat those three guys. At the end of the day, we're going to race this race just like we've raced any of them. We're honestly not going to worry about where Johnny is running, where Timothy is running, where Christopher is running. If you go out there and win the race, you'll win the thing. If you look in your rear view mirror and look at who's in front of you, you are going to drive yourself crazy. If you just go out there and drive as hard as you can and put yourself in victory lane at the end, you know you'll get it done.
In the past I haven't had to do that, and last year I had to. My back was against the wall. I knew I had to come win this race to even have a shot, and we did. We came and set a fast time, sat on the pole and won the race. We came up short still, but we still had a few too many problems last year and came up short, but I love coming to this place. A lot of fun.

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