	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES: 1000BULBS.COM 500

October 14, 2018

Lincoln, Alabama

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Greg Zipadelli, the competition director for Stewart‑Haas Racing, with the race winning team, the No.10 Smith [] Bacon For Life Ford.
We'll open it up to questions for Greg.
GREG ZIPADELLI: Free bacon for everybody (smiling).

Q. Nobody won bacon today.
GREG ZIPADELLI: I will get you bacon (smiling).

Q. How did you get these four guys to work together the entire weekend, to stay in line like that? Had that last caution not come out, you could have been four‑wide across the finish line.
GREG ZIPADELLI: That would have been cool.

Q. Unless they all wrecked. How did you get that cooperation?
GREG ZIPADELLI: I think after last week, we didn't do a great job executing as a group, because we could have had the same result. We just talked a lot about it. I just think everybody said, We need to help each other, work together like teamwork, show everybody that we are teammates. I felt like our cars were strong enough that if we did that, we would have a very strong day.
We came in here with the 10 and the 14 needing stage points. Everybody executed that perfectly. Then at the end of the race, Let's do everything we can to help each other. Everybody knew the circumstances. Hats off to drivers and crew chiefs. Nobody was selfish today. Everybody looked out for each other. That's a great feeling as far as from my perspective.
We pay these guys every week honestly to be selfish, take care of themselves, run as hard as they can and finish up as high as they can, win as many races as they can. Everybody gave and took today. Very proud moment for Stewart‑Haas.

Q. (No microphone.)
GREG ZIPADELLI: Man, I don't know. That 41 was strong. He towed that group pretty fast. I think they were planning on trying to, if we got away, letting them race it out. It just obviously didn't come to that.
Couldn't be prouder of that group for executing like they did today and giving and taking, having consideration for their teammates.

Q. Obviously Aric has come close so many times this season. It's probably been frustrating for him. What does it feel like after all the wild endings that he ends up on top?
GREG ZIPADELLI: Yeah, it's pretty cool. I don't know how many of you know Aric. I knew him, but not like I do today. He's one hell of a kid. He's a class act. He's been a breath of fresh air to our group. He works really hard, listens to other drivers. When he speaks, everybody listens because whatever he says, he feels confident in what he's sharing with our group.
To see those guys have opportunities this year, for them to keep their chin up and continue to fight all day, end up here in Victory Lane, locking them into the next round, I couldn't be prouder for him. Johnny with his first win as a crew chief, it's pretty cool.

Q. You said you had to sit them down and talk to them, You need to go out there as teammates, make this happen. With all your type A personalities, who is the hardest one to get to play together?
GREG ZIPADELLI: No, honestly we talked about it this week in our meeting. We talked about it here after our practice debrief. It wasn't lecturing. It was simply, Let's look at the big picture. It's good for our company to help each other and to have as many cars as we can move to the next round. It's pretty simple.
Everybody, honestly they did a great job. Couldn't have asked any more out of them.

Q. Did you know the way you had your cars built this weekend, really nobody else had that type of skew, ability to do what you did?
GREG ZIPADELLI: I mean, you go back to the Daytona 500, we have four cars capable of winning. Aric was half a lap from winning. Talladega, Daytona, we've had really good cars that run up front. We have not been able to put it all together.
We've been working on little details. Honestly there's not a lot. Two of the cars that were here raced in Talladega in the spring race. We just fluffed on them. Came out here with good finishes, we worked on them.
I think everybody felt like we had good cars. We always have good motors. Doug and his guys do a phenomenal job everywhere. When it comes to restrictor plates, they really step up to the plate.

Q. Kurt was hoping for a caution on the last lap. When you're watching it, you see them crash, are you like, Throw the caution? You know your car probably would win. Or, Let's play it out, I want to see how it does?
GREG ZIPADELLI: Honestly, I didn't really see the replay. I just knew they wrecked, was expecting to hear the caution caution, and never did.
We've been in that situation before where one of our cars didn't win. Me as a parent, you love all your kids. I got four of them that I have to love and care for. I'm proud that we were in a situation that we were and isn't always capitalized on it. Usually in the past, other people have capitalized on situations like that with us.
Aric and Johnny, it's been a long time coming. They've had a few opportunities this year that they were really strong and things didn't go right at the end. Finally it came around to them. Couldn't be happier.

Q. Do you have the meeting with just the crew chiefs, then they relay the information to the drivers, or a big pow‑wow with everyone involved?
GREG ZIPADELLI: We just have our regular competition meetings on Tuesday where we all sit in the room, talk about our weekend, the next weekend. We have a debrief after practice where crew chiefs, drivers, myself are in there, engineers. We just talk about our cars, what everybody is going to do. No different than I think anybody else in the sport.
There was nothing special. It was just simply, Let's work together. They did. I think they all saw the strength of them working together.

Q. I checked the stats. 2005 was the last time a Ford team with four or more cars had all of their drivers win in the same season. What does that say about Stewart‑Haas Racing's team this year?
GREG ZIPADELLI: I think that says we've got four good drivers, four good crew chiefs, and a great manufacturing backing, near 400 employees that come in and work hard every day. Honestly, that's all it is. We have really good people that have a lot of heart, passion. We have a lot of racers that show up before they're supposed to at 7:00 and never leave before 4:00. They don't need to be asked to stay to get that little bit extra done.
THE MODERATOR: Zippy, thanks for joining us.
GREG ZIPADELLI: Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.
THE MODERATOR: We are joined by the crew chief of the race‑ing winning team, Johnny Klausmeier.
We'll open it up to questions.

Q. Could you tell in your meetings this week that Aric put Dover behind him or had he not put it behind him? Were you concerned at all today he was still maybe have a hangover from that race?
JOHN KLAUSMEIER: No, I knew right away that he had put it behind him. The first thing with Aric, he's putting so much work into it. When he comes to the competition meetings, they start at 10:00, he's there two hours early, he hangs out in my office, we talk about the upcoming week one‑on‑one. I knew he was over it. It was tough for us both to swallow. We talked about Talladega, how it was going to play out, what we needed to do for points.
The complicated situation with points is we were racing teammates. We also need to work with those people when we got here to the track. It was a precarious position we were in. It went really well. All our teams worked well all race long. We were able to capitalize at the end.
Our goal was just to get as many stage points as we could. We were able to do that. The teammates at the end ran out of fuel, we were able to get the victory and go to the next round. It was quite the redemption from last week.

Q. The way you worked together, it seemed like every time there was a restart, within half a lap maybe you were in line 1‑2‑3‑4. Was that the game plan going in? Did it work even better than you expected it might?
JOHN KLAUSMEIER: Yeah, it definitely worked better than we expected. You can't control how you're going to come out of the pits, what strategy is, where you're going to line up. We had a plan for the beginning of the race. It just so happened all of our cars started one through four. We kept that plan throughout the whole race.
We were in various positions. At times Aric was getting a little bit nervous about how many stage points he was giving up by playing the team card. At the end of the day it all worked out and it was fine.
THE MODERATOR: Johnny, thanks for joining us.
JOHN KLAUSMEIER: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297