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NASCAR MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 2, 2020Jeremy BullinsTravis GeislerTHE MODERATOR: We'll start with questions for Travis and Jeremy. Q. The challenges for both of you of Phoenix in a Playoff that you have four drivers, whoever finishes first is the champion. What challenge does Phoenix present in that scenario? TRAVIS GEISLER: Challenges as far as Phoenix goes, from my seat, probably the scariest part is watching the 2 and 22 race each other. That's my biggest challenge of the weekend, is making sure those guys play nice together. No, certainly a different racetrack. I think with the reconfiguration it still creates kind of a scary moment through the dogleg every time you go through, any time guys are racing each other. Restarts are really, really hairy. That's the most risky time I feel like for all of us, is trying to get settled out. Once you're settled out, the racing gets pretty reasonable there typically. The other part to me is it's an absolute no‑mistakes race. When you look at Homestead, it's really a recoverable racetrack where you can go to the back, have to have a different strategy, do different things, make something out of it. At Phoenix, there's really usually only one right strategy that works depending on how the race plays out. Very few opportunities to re‑pit, get tires, drive up back through the field. At Homestead you can do that. If you have a tire advantage, you can make a lot of time. Not a lot of falloff at Phoenix. All those things to me make it a mistake‑free race versus to kind of recover and scramble back to the front. Homestead, you saw that a little bit more over the years. JEREMY BULLINS: Yeah, I think Travis is spot on there. It's an event where you really can't make any mistakes. Fortunately we're all starting up front, but you have to do your best to stay there, work a strategy that keeps you cycled to the front. We've seen situations in the past where if you get a speeding ticket, you wind up having to do two tires or something off sequence to get your track position back, put yourself at a disadvantage to try to get track position back. A clean race is a big deal, not having any penalties, any issues, trying to do the best you can to have a nice, smooth day to keep yourself in position at the end. Q. Travis, are all four competitors kind of equal, would you say? TRAVIS GEISLER: Yeah, I mean, I think different but equal when you average it out. Obviously when you look at pit crews, it's a big part of the game out there. I think there are strengths and weaknesses there between the teams. They kind of balance back out with different things on track. You can kind of look through the pit crew rankings, make your own decisions on who ranks where. There's definitely a difference there. It's a difficult place to pass. That really comes into play as well as your strategy. I think on track when you look at it, I feel like we've had a pretty strong short track season. We've run well, Brad winning Richmond and Loudon in relatively convincing fashions. It's hard to win by much margin in this sport any more, but I felt he was really good at those races. Joey won the first Phoenix race. The 9 has been very fast there. The 11 has been really, really good at short tracks his whole career. I think the whole combo, if I look at it, Joey is probably the one that I wouldn't have looked at as a short track guy. I would have thought more as Denny and Brad being short track aces. Certainly Chase has proved himself to be the braking zone short track style corner king here recently, winning the Roval, winning Daytona road course. I think all of them have some real strengths, great teams behind them. So it's going to be a heck of a race. I have no doubt this one is too hard to call ahead of time who is going to have the advantage, for sure. Q. Jeremy, when they made the crew swap, it looked like Brad got the least experienced crew chief on paper. You guys have gone out and been the best of the Penske teams. Was that your motivation? How did you get to this point? JEREMY BULLINS: I wouldn't say that was my motivation. I think working with Ryan over the years, we were just trying to make steady improvement every year, get better every year. I think we had done that. When we made the swap, we immediately added a ton of experience to our team. We've just tried to take advantage of Brad's experience, use that to better what we were doing as a race team, put ourselves in a good spot. You certainly know what Brad is capable of when you go to the racetrack. Having success in the Xfinity car in the past kind of made it easy to hit the ground running. I think I wouldn't say it was a motivation. It was just trying to take advantage of the situation really of having his experience. Q. How does this feel for you to be here in the final four? JEREMY BULLINS: I'm enjoying it for the team. We've put a lot of work in as a team. We've had the same core group on our team for the last several years. It's fun for them to get some payoff, to get to the Final 4, have a real shot at winning the thing. That's the most fun part for me. Q. Travis, yesterday there was a lot of fans upset that the 20 did not pass the 11 at the end of the race. What is the team expectation? What are the 12 and 21 expected to do on Sunday? TRAVIS GEISLER: Yeah, I mean, with the way Playoffs work, it's odd in this sport versus other ones. Normally you have two teams that are both in the Playoffs. They go out there, it is what it is, they're playing to win. This one you've got 36 cars that are not in the championship hunt. That's just a product of our sport. The thing I was probably most proud of yesterday was Kevin Harvick finished behind. If you figure he finishes where he belongs, where he was running, he's behind two of his teammates directly. Brad finished behind two of his teammates directly. I was proud of that for the sport's sake because very easily when you're in that situation, onesy, twosy points, you could see the 10 and 14 roll over, then you see our two cars. That's the last thing any of us want to have happen. It was great to see it play out the great way. I watched the 20 race the 11. I felt like he was racing him pretty hard. I think if he could have personally, man, I'd say he was as motivated as any human out there to pass the 11. I think if he had it in the car, he would have. Hey, he's losing his ride there. That was his opportunity to show them he was better than their top guy. I would have thought he would have tried to make the pass, which I think he was. Certainly the 12 and 21, there's an expectation of those guys to race a certain way with the 2 and 22. It's a very fair and clean way. But I don't think it's just roll over and let the guy have it. I think certainly you get down to the very end, it is kind of what it is. The weird part about it, maybe the best part about the last race is you're not counting onesy, twosy points any more, it's just whoever is in front of whoever. If you're behind the 11, the 2 getting by the 21 probably really doesn't matter. I think that cleans up a lot of that potential conspiracy theory that's out there for our Playoff system. You have to run at the front. If you look at any of the Playoff races recently, the guys who are contending for it end up at the front. Everybody races them pretty clean. Those guys are in Playoff mode still. There's an elevated level of play there. Q. Jeremy, you mentioned you're enjoying this for the team. This will be your first appearance in the championship race. What is that like for you? Will it maybe be a little bit of an advantage as they say what you don't know you don't know going into the race? You don't have to overthink it maybe? JEREMY BULLINS: Yeah, it's different. But fortunately we've been through this a couple times with the Xfinity car, a little bit different format obviously. We won the 2013 owners championship by one point. We've had some close battles. We've had to scratch and claw a little bit. It is a first opportunity at the Cup level. I think just that experience alone from the Xfinity side will help. I think we're just trying to make it no more than what it is, not make it bigger than what it is. Obviously there's a lot on the line. We still got to go about our business, do things the way we've done all year to be in this position. As long as everyone goes into it with that mentality, we'll have the mindset and keep ourselves where we need to be. Q. Brad tweeted earlier you're going to bring the car that won Loudon and Richmond. When was that decision made? How have you been fluffing on it recently? What do you have to do to get it ready for Phoenix? JEREMY BULLINS: I think it was made as soon as they dropped the checkered flag at Richmond. I was beating on Travis before we got to Victory Lane to make sure we put that one aside for Phoenix. Yeah, it's been a good car. It's been a great car. Hopefully it's got one more good weekend in it. I think we've done everything we can do to continue to learn and make it better, apply everything that we could that we've learned since Richmond, make some good decisions, try to make it as good as we can make it. Q. Travis, certainly you guys have been strong on the short tracks. Last year, probably not as good. With the way the schedule changed this year, how much of an emphasis was put on the 750 short tracks? Did it take away from some of the other efforts? TRAVIS GEISLER: Yeah, certainly, as soon as possible they put Phoenix as the last one, everybody started grabbing the wheel on the ship, started trying to turn it. It's a difficult thing to just say let's go be faster at this style track because you're always trying to do that. We were really weak we thought a couple years ago, we were honestly I would say terrible at a lot of short tracks. We had probably our weakest stretch of short track races in a while. We all started to focus on it, try to get ourselves reasonable. There's a lot of points on those tracks. As soon as the Phoenix announcement came out, there was a pretty good fire under everybody at that point. We certainly went to work on it. I can't point at one individual thing. Like it always is, it's a combination of hundreds of details that come together. We probably did marginalize some of our other developments a little bit. I would say superspeedway package is the one that takes a little bit of a hit when you look at it. Used to be its own discipline with its own car, everything was very specific. Now with it having a lot of the same rules that we run on our 550s every week, it's like let's try to work on that thing, focus on the short track a little bit more. You always work on everything. Proud of the effort so far. Hopefully we got one more good week out of it, we'll be rewarded for our efforts on that program. Q. How much of a challenge is it in terms of making pit calls, maybe trying to do something a little different if you have to be in that situation, or if you have to do something that's more of an act of desperation because there are very few opportunities to recover if it's the wrong call? JEREMY BULLINS: I would agree with what Travis alluded to earlier. Seems like there's one strategy that's predominantly going to be the one that's the right play. Usually when you see somebody off sequence, you're trying to make something happen, recovering from a penalty or something like that. I think the strategy part of it should be pretty straightforward honestly. Cautions at the wrong time or things like that might change that. It should be fairly straightforward from that side, to be honest. THE MODERATOR: Jeremy, Travis, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate your time today. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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