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NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES: FIREKEEPERS CASINO 400June 12, 2016Chris MillerGene StefanyshynBrooklyn, Michigan THE MODERATOR: We have Scott Miller, senior vice president, NASCAR competition, as well as Gene Stefanyshyn, senior vice president of innovation and racing development. Just your initial thoughts, Scott and then Gene, and then we'll open to up to media for questions. SCOTT MILLER: Well, watching the race today from the tower, it was definitely different than we've seen here before, a lot of action on the restarts, a lot of movement there. Obviously we all watched it get strung out a little bit, which we weren't hoping for longer into the runs. I think we saw a lot of things that we liked, some other things that may need a little bit of reevaluating, but I think overall for such a big move in downforce that it was a really pretty successful day and something that we can build on. GENE STEFANYSHYN: Yeah, I would say at times they were strung out a bit. I think probably need to come back to a bit more work on the tires, which these tires have not been tuned to this package, so we'll work with our Goodyear folks. Probably a bit handicapped by the entry speeds pretty high, so still that creates some aero effects, so that's something we'll look at. But again, this has been planned as a two to three‑step process. We're off to Kentucky tomorrow and then we'll be on the track at Kentucky, shorter track, lower speeds and all that, so we'll see how that all comes together. This is part of it. Did see some things, I think the middle of the field we did see cars running together and passing, so yeah, I think more work to do. Q. A lot of driver comments in here and on pit road about out of control, very loose, but also very entertaining from their perspective. Is the out of control, loose and making it kind of hard to drive the objective that you guys are looking for? SCOTT MILLER: Well, I don't know that we want them to be out of control, but it's one of those things. And like we said earlier, we worked with the‑‑ we worked with the drivers and worked on‑‑ one of the biggest things that the drivers are looking for is that off‑throttle time and that differential between the mid‑corner speed and the entry speed. That's one of the very, very positive things from what we saw throughout the course of the whole weekend is that we did achieve that goal. A little bit more ability to run closer together, we crossed that hurdle, and I think we'll be looking at something here. GENE STEFANYSHYN: Yeah, I think the drivers‑‑ obviously we don't want them to be out of control, but they do want to be challenged, and they want to exhibit their driving skills, and getting off the throttle and using their brake a bit and when to get the throttle, picking the right point and all that, I think that's when they really enjoy driving, and I think when they enjoy driving, they generally put on a better show, so that's kind of the objective. Q. I assume from what you saw today that you're good with this rules package being used at Kentucky, that there wasn't anything that was so drastic that you would change? SCOTT MILLER: Yeah, that's right. We were deliberately at a big track, smaller track, so this will continue with the plans. It won't change direction at this moment, no. Q. When would you expect teams to get‑‑ if there are any changes for Daytona rules package, when would we‑‑ SCOTT MILLER: There won't really be any changes for Daytona that I know of right now. Do we got anything on tap, Gene? GENE STEFANYSHYN: No, not for Daytona, no. Q. With you guys coming back here later this year, do you anticipate just‑‑ because Goodyear will have time I'm assuming to maybe come back with a different tire, would you just wait on that and see what kind of impact that has before you guys say, okay, maybe we‑‑ you talked about slowing the straightaway speeds down and stuff. Would you want to wait and see what happens with that before you do anything? GENE STEFANYSHYN: Yeah, I think so. I think, again, we want to move cautiously. We've got a plan. We come back to Michigan. We'll see what the '16 package looks like because we've kind of come here with a '17 package. I think a good deliberate approach with Kentucky in there. Obviously we still want to talk to the drivers, what they felt, and get that input, how did the car feel to them, and also we need to look at our data, passing, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah, so we've still got to get home and look at some of this information. Q. If for some reason you all‑‑ everything does look copacetic to the competitors and to NASCAR, are you still looking at holding the package until 2017, or do you think we'll see it before then? GENE STEFANYSHYN: That's a good question. The question I think has been asked several times before, and I harken us back to the way we handled it last year. We had a similar situation, so if you want to use that as a surrogate. We talked to the drivers, we talked to the OEMs, we had a good conversation with everybody and we asked, should we move, shouldn't we move, what's the fair thing to do. Everybody thought they've got their engineering book in place for that year, and they said, hey, let's wait until next year. Not saying that will be the same decision, but we need to get to the end of the journey and get through Kentucky and see where we are. But I think if you use last year, people might want to just stay with what we've got, run our course through the end of the year, and introduce something new for next year because we really don't want them to also be going off and working on a couple of duel pass. I guess it all depends when you announce it, but if you tell them earlier and you start bringing some of the old package, when are you going to introduce the new package, so we want to avoid that kind of stuff. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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