NASCAR MEDIA CONFERENCE

February 28, 2021

Tyler Reddick

Chris Buescher

Press Conference

Homestead-Miami Speedway

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by our runner-up of tonight's race, Tyler Reddick.

Q. I was just wondering if you felt like you had 10 or 15 more laps could you have caught Byron and what was working for you at the end.

TYLER REDDICK: Obviously this was a 400-mile race, and everyone knew that. I just didn't have a very good last restart. We kind of struggled to get our Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen Chevy going, and I had just a poor restart, and it was the difference, unfortunately. That's all there is to it. Needed to be able to hold on better at the start and just didn't.

THE MODERATOR: We are also now joined by Chris Buescher. Looking at the run tonight, you did have a stage win and you also finished P2 in that second stage. Walk us through your night from your perspective.

CHRIS BUESCHER: It was a really good start for us, and I was really happy with the speed we had in the daylight in our Fastenal Ford Mustang. Really proud of this group. I think we knew this would be a pretty good test for what we were able to have made gains on during the off-season, and I think that showed that a lot of things we hit on and are headed in the right direction.

With that, unfortunately the night did not do us a whole lot of favors, and dirty air was really rough on us there at the end. But we still learned a ton out of it. A little bit of fender damage that may have slowed us down. It's an excuse basically. We've got to keep working at it hard, but I am really proud of everybody and everybody back at the shop. They did a really nice job on this race car. I think we made some awesome gains. We've just got to keep our heads down going to Vegas and see what we can apply and definitely work on what we can make better as the racing goes on.

Q. Tyler and Chris, I'm curious with this being the first mile-and-a-half track but such a unique track at the same time, how much can we take from seeing all the parity that we saw today? Chris, you were up there for a while, McDowell had a strong day, so many different names that we aren't necessarily used to seeing at mile-and-a-half tracks in recent years. Does that apply going forward?

CHRIS BUESCHER: I would think so, for sure. It is a different racetrack and it is worn out, but you're still going to maybe not compare it directly to Vegas, which is very fast and high grip, right, but you're definitely going to be looking at Atlanta or some of these other mile-and-a-halfs that are getting a little rougher, getting a little more wore out. So yeah, there's definitely things that will apply. Not 100 percent of it, but at the end of the day there's a lot that you can learn from these types of tracks, even though the speeds are very different from the beginning of a run to the end of a run.

TYLER REDDICK: Yeah, I agree with Chris for the most part. I think of Atlanta. Obviously we don't go to Fontana. Maybe you'll see it at Kansas. But those kind of tracks I would agree -- Darlington is another one where it may not have the size of the other mile-and-a-halfs but you move around and search for grip. I would say those couple tracks you will. But your Vegas, your repaves, those tracks, I think they'll look a lot different than what we saw tonight because you don't move around as much and you don't have the tire falloff.

Q. Tyler, what were the struggles the early part of the race and what turned it around? I think people would understand racers want to win every race. With the start you had, with finishing second, I think some people would be a little bit surprised about how down you seem to be right now.

TYLER REDDICK: Yeah, just because I knew that it was going to take a well executed restart, which unfortunately I didn't do the last two, three -- maybe it was four or five spots. Five too many. It takes time to get back around those cars. They're good drivers, they know what they're doing, and that's just the difference. I don't know why we were so off in the beginning of the day here. Last year or in the summer, we took off really, really good in the daytime, so I saw we would be better in the day and everyone is going to catch up at night, and it was the opposite.

Yeah, when you see how much faster you were than the guys in front of you and you know you're running out of time, it gets frustrating. Really if you go back and look at one or two things that would have changed the outcome. Yeah, I get it, can't go back and change it, but we had a really bad start to the year. Second is great, but it's not going to put us in a great -- we're still way back in the mess, in the mix of it.

We'll look at Darlington and Atlanta maybe -- I can't run the fence at Atlanta but there's a couple tracks left that what works here you can somewhat apply to those places.

Q. Tyler, can you get anything positive out of this or is the frustration and disappointment of finishing second with a car capable of winning too much for you at this point?

TYLER REDDICK: Well, there's a lot of positives. I feel like the story of our -- of my rookie season and the story of our team last year was start off really good, midway through the race, just go all the -- it just blows up in our face and we just don't get a good finish out of it. Today was the opposite, which was nice. It's something that we've been needing to get, figure out how we can have nights like this and what we can do to continue to stay hungry and keep fighting.

We definitely tried to work on our car a lot throughout the night, but then we just made some choices to just go for track position on the pit stops, and that definitely helped us, too. There is positives, but there isn't a whole lot you can take away from here and apply at other racetracks as a driver and how you drive the track. But how you execute and all that you can kind of apply going forward.

Q. What are your expectations after a win like this and trying to build on it? Do you feel like you're going to just jump and go right to the next mile-and-a-half or go right to Vegas, another 1.5-mile track? Do you feel like you guys are just capable of taking this momentum and at least bringing a good car there?

TYLER REDDICK: I don't think the momentum carries based on how our long-run performance is. The momentum of being able to get out of the hole and being able to fight through that, you know you can carry that. But it's unrealistic to say that we can go to Vegas and be able to run that much faster than the field. It doesn't happen there. It doesn't happen at Texas since it's been repaved. Doesn't happen at a lot of the tracks we go to. You have to win these races by being very consistent, making the right calls on pit road, and as a driver, staying up front, keeping your track position. You just can't -- you don't have the options you do at Homestead and other places that we go.

Q. Chris, as gut-wrenching as it may be to get a top-20 result after having a superb day, what does it say about how the Roush organization has been able to adapt well with Newman scoring a top-10 and of course you having a strong run before the final run?

CHRIS BUESCHER: Oh, I mean, it's a step in the right direction for us. You know, the finish is not something we're real happy with right now, but it is good to see Ryan and the 6 guys be able to get a strong finish out of it. Really glad that we were able to run strong for a lot of the race, and we just have work to do to figure out how to help ourselves later on, how to work on our cars, or make them as good in traffic as they can be, really work on executing everything perfectly through a race so that we can finish where we were able to get to early on.

At the end of the day it is very frustrating because we definitely felt like we had a car capable of winning early on, and at the end we definitely weren't in that good a position and didn't have that confidence.

At the same time, the important part is it's a long off-season, and with this being our first mile-and-a-half, we definitely have a lot of things that we learned from. We're definitely going to dissect this one very thoroughly and learn from it even more so that we can have more days like this going forward and then just finish them off on the tail end just as strong as we started today.

Q. Tyler, you talked kind of coming into this race that you might be conservative a little bit because of the points hole and everything. I'm wondering if that factored at all in what happened early on in the race?

TYLER REDDICK: No, unfortunately we just were way off. It was very odd. The Xfinity car and the Cup car couldn't be any different. Our Motorsports car was a GMR Motorsports chassis originally, and it was pretty wild. I fought the same thing in the Xfinity car in the beginning of the race and into the night as I did in our Cup car. I feel like that helped me be able to kind of explain to the team and believe that as it transitioned into night we were going to get better so that was a positive. Unexpected, but that helped us get through it.

Yeah, we weren't trying to be conservative. We brought what we thought was a really good race car. It showed up at the end, but it wasn't there to begin with.

Q. Chris, what changes has Jimmy Fennig done over the off-season that has helped Roush Fenway get better?

CHRIS BUESCHER: I don't know if I could go through and tell you one thing. There's a list of things that we've tried to do just to try and create a central person to really help guide our race team in general across all departments to work towards common goals, even so much as bringing back some old-school techniques just to really sit down and tear into what it is we feel like we're looking and get input from not only Jimmy or the crew chiefs but the entire race shop and try and work to figure out what everyone knowledge is telling them. The vast majority of team members that are at our race shop have been working in racing their entire lives and they know what they're doing, and they have insight into something that helped them through the years in some race car, and I think a lot of that has come together, trying to work hard to find that for us and really put together a lot of these small things so that we can have a better result at the end of the day.

I think everyone knows Jimmy as a very hard-headed racer that has a ton of respect throughout our entire organization, and I think that we believe in him. Jack believes in him. I think we all wanted to help build Jack's legacy and to keep building it. He's been doing this a long time, a lot of races, and we're just trying to get back to those days where we can be winning races through a year and contending for championships at the end of the season. There's not one thing I can tell you, but many, many things that were happening each and every week through the off-season.

THE MODERATOR: Chris and Tyler, thank you both for joining us. We appreciate it.