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NASCAR CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES: FORD ECOBOOST 200November 17, 2017Rudy FugleHomestead, Florida THE MODERATOR: We're joined now by the crew chief from your 2017 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship team, Rudy Fugle. This is your second Truck Series championship. You had your first one with Erik Jones in 2015. You've had 21 career NASCAR Camping World Truck Series victories with four different drivers: Kyle Busch, Erik Jones, William Byron, and now Christopher Bell. Pretty solid record there. Talk us through tonight and what this one means to you. RUDY FUGLE: Yeah, so kind of screwed up qualifying, missed the second round, qualified 13th. Kind of our only worry of the day, practice went really well this morning as planned. Then they dropped the green, and he drove to the front. We kind of had a really good truck, and we just tried to stay ahead of the other playoff guys, the P's as we call them. There was times where we were riding, times where that's all we had, and had good pit stops. The race kind of played out easy where he didn't have to take a wild strategy or anything to get us screwed up, so it worked out well, and everything was smooth sailing. Q. Could you believe that the race went caution free? RUDY FUGLE: Homestead always gets that feel, so it's common. But usually there's one blown tire, one somebody got way too loose and spun out. So yeah, I was waiting on that. It was 20 to go, and I'm waiting on it and waiting on it and waiting on it; it was like, okay, we've got to take tires and we're too tight to fire off, so what am I going to do, I don't want to free it up too much. So yeah, I was waiting for that other ball to drop. But it never did, so it worked out. Q. The growth of Bell from last year to this year, what have you seen in him, and has he been any different as he's kind of learned the ropes, I guess, in these last two full seasons? RUDY FUGLE: Yeah, no, for sure. It's three and a half years at KBM asphalt racing. He was a dirt racer, and he showed up at KBM, went super late model racing and then went truck racing for two years. Just to see the confidence grow in him and how everything was going, just‑‑ and way less mistakes. Last year was full of little mistakes here and there that cost him, and he just learned that, hey, you don't got to push that hard. Just kind of‑‑ it's just a different type of racing than he's used to. He's definitely grown a ton. Q. What kind of job did Hirschman do as a spotter, because I think it's just normal that when you have a truck as fast as Christopher's, you you want to be out front leading, and he just told him run your pace and don't get involved in the 27. I mean, how difficult was that to kind of find that balance? RUDY FUGLE: I mean, Hirschman is the smartest spotter in the business, period. He understands everything. He's just really, really good. He deals with Kyle Busch on a regular basis, so he figures out how to deal with the highs and the lows and tries to keep it centered up. He's just really, really good, and I was just keeping Hirschman apace of, hey, a four‑second lead, a six‑second lead. Even though you're third, you just look at how much you're leading by. We had to pull the reins back pretty hard there a couple times, but it worked out. THE MODERATOR: Congratulations on the championship, great season, and we look forward to seeing you in Daytona. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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