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NASCAR CUP SERIES: FOOD CITY PRESENTS THE SUPERMARKET HEROES 500May 31, 2020Jeremy BullinsBristol, Tennessee THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Jeremy Bullins, today's race‑winning crew chief. We'll open it right up for questions. Q. This week you have a full week off in between races. How far ahead are you prepared and what are you doing as far as communications with NASCAR trying to get the rest of the schedule and preparation for that? JEREMY BULLINS: Yeah, I mean, it is kind of nice to have a break, not have a midweek race this week. But you look ahead to next week, we have Atlanta and Martinsville in the middle of the week, then Homestead. There's still a lot going on, a lot of work being done. We're in pretty good shape on our Atlanta car so I'm hoping we can get to work on the Martinsville car and have it ready early next week. Should get a good jump on it this week as well. As far as the rest of the schedule goes, everybody is working hard on this. There's been a lot of work between NASCAR and the teams and the local governments everywhere. I expect all that to get cleared up pretty soon and we'll have a better idea of what we got going on. I think the midweek stuff has been great. I think the format of what we've been doing on Sundays has been great, too. Obviously we liked two out of the last three. It's been a fun few weeks. Q. When you came to pit road to take on the two tires with 41 to go, was the thinking if something happens up front, you might be better prepared to make a move late in the race? JEREMY BULLINS: Well, my thought was we only had about 18 or 20 laps on the tires, so I thought more guys would do two that pitted. The lefts have been wearing more than the rights all day. We've seen that in the past where cars can make some speed with just lefts. I wanted to cover the guys that did two, if anybody did. I wasn't too worried about putting fresh rights on. As long as we had better lefts, I thought we could make a better charge up there. We stayed out of trouble, got ourselves in position to capitalize at the end. Q. After the race Brad talked about how he felt the team had really developed a never‑give‑up attitude, had been gelling, then the pandemic came, got disrupted. You haven't had the fastest car in your two wins but how important is that quality to be a legitimate championship contender? JEREMY BULLINS: I think that means everything. The fact that we KNOW that we just have to keep Brad in the fight, keep him in position to where he can make something happen. I think if we do that, if we can manage to do that throughout the day, he's certainly not going to give up. I think our team has shown just how strong he can be when you put him in the right position. We've been able to do that a couple times. I thought we had a decent car today, definitely not the fastest car, but we made it better the last couple of adjustments. We were getting better and better. We were good early, just not so good through the middle. We kept restarting on the bottom. That killed us. I've told these guys from when we got paired up with Brad that he can do some special things if you put him in the right situation. We've been able to do that a couple times. Hopefully we can keep doing it. Q. How much did your thought process change going into this race with the adjustments to the short track rules package? JEREMY BULLINS: It's a lot like Phoenix. When we went to Phoenix, going into that race, we studied a lot more of 2018 than we did last year really. We kind of looked at the offsets and things that we did from 2018 to 2019, kind of backed up a step, tried to learn from things that worked here in 2018. Especially with no practice... Again, I got two of the best engineers in the business. I think they did a really good job with coming up with a game plan. Credit to them for coming up with a good setup. Q. When they told you you were going to have Brad as your driver, if they said you were going to win two of your first nine races, would you have said, That will work? JEREMY BULLINS: I'd never doubt what you're capable of with Brad. We had a ton of success with the Xfinity car. We won some races that we were dominant and had the best car and we won some races where we didn't have the best car but we fought all day, put ourselves in position to win. I think Charlotte we were probably a little faster than we were here. We weren't as good as the 9, but we were good enough to get in position to race at the end. We did the same thing today. Q. The media likes to talk about what Brad might be doing next year. Does that need to get done so you have knowledge of it or can you ignore any of that talk and do your job? JEREMY BULLINS: He and I have talked a lot about it. We both have said it's not going to be a distraction to what we're doing. If we keep having days like this, it won't matter anyways. Q. Normally we race Bristol earlier in the springtime. This is the latest we have raced here. Considering now you go to a lot of racetracks you normally race earlier in the spring, hotter conditions, what frame of reference do you use to anticipate what adjustments to make? JEREMY BULLINS: You just have to really study history, go back and look for the hottest races at different tracks, things that work at other places when it gets hot and slick, try to put together a good combination of what works. It was a beautiful day here today. You couldn't have asked for better weather. It certainly affected the falloff a little bit, but I wouldn't say it was super hot. As you get into the summer, we're going to have some races that will definitely come into play for sure. You just really have to look back at your notes, try to put together a plan. Q. Could you put into words how much you have or have not adjusted to racing in the era of COVID. Is it starting to feel normal? JEREMY BULLINS: It's still a pretty big change. This mask, that's probably the biggest thing. It's hard to get used to wearing one all the time. But it's part of what we got to do. The Victory Lane ceremonies are kind of a buzz kill. We still take the trophy home, so we'll get over that. But I think the weird thing is you hate it for the fans. I can think of two or three events over the last two or three weeks that if you weren't watching the race, you were here, you wouldn't know anything was going on. This place would have erupted on the last couple laps if it was full of fans. Hopefully we can get that back to normal soon. It is certainly different. At the end of the day we still have to do our jobs. The races are still there to be won. We got to focus on that part of it, just hope that the rest of it gets back to normal sooner than later. THE MODERATOR: Jeremy, congratulations on another win. Good luck at Atlanta Motor Speedway. JEREMY BULLINS: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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