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NASCAR CUP SERIES: FOXWOODS RESORT CASINO 301August 2, 2020Jeremy BullinsLoudon, New Hampshire THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by the race winning crew chief, Jeremy Bullins. Walk us through your strategy there throughout the race, how it feels to get the win at New Hampshire. JEREMY BULLINS: Yeah, obviously a great day for this Alliance Parts Mustang. Strategy was straightforward. Most of the time you had enough laps that you wanted to pit. We made a strategy play there early in stage one to stay out of the yellow, try to run that whole stage. Almost paid off. Worked out okay for us. Seemed like after that, the cautions kept falling near the fuel windows. You had to make the decision, Am I going to pit here, stay out and wait? Fortunately seemed like we timed that pretty close, were able to keep cycling back to the front. THE MODERATOR: We are going to start taking questions for Jeremy. Q. You obviously had the success winning at Bristol. There haven't been many of these 750 package races so far this season. The rest of the way it's over half the races are going to be. What is the challenge going to be staying ahead of everybody? JEREMY BULLINS: Obviously with Phoenix being the championship race this year, Bristol and Richmond and Martinsville all being Playoff races, the 750 stuff is going to play a big role in deciding this whole thing. We certainly put effort into that. Brad is really good at 750 stuff, has been for a long time. I think you just have to keep working, just have to take every race as a practice session and learn everything you can from what we did today, the decisions we made coming here. We took things all the way back from Phoenix, notes from Phoenix, applied them to how we came here because it was the same tire. You have to use all the information you can get and treat each race like a practice session and try to learn as much as you can. Q. Denny was talking to us about how the lack of a Richmond race in the spring affected his team's ability to build a baseline setup for some of the flatter racetracks. Not having that first Richmond race, how jarring has it been and how do you adapt and make sure you have a good baseline for Phoenix? JEREMY BULLINS: It's tough. There are certain races throughout the year, throughout the normal schedule, that have historically been a checkpoint of where you are against the competition. That first Richmond race is always a good test to see where you stack up, see what you need to work on. Not having that, to Dustin's point, it's been so long since we had a 750 race, you have to knock the dust off your Phoenix notebook, think through that. Fortunately we spent a lot of time during the shutdown trying to plan ahead, take what we learned at Phoenix and get smarter yet because there's such a big emphasis on that race at the end of the year. Q. Without practice, how confident are you in your fuel mileage calls? JEREMY BULLINS: Pretty good. It's one of those things that we historically track a lot. We've got a great database, if you will, of all the history with that stuff, even with this aero package going back to 2018, what the mileage was. Roush‑Yates does a grate job of not only giving us great horsepower, but letting us know where we are on the fuel curves with the engine maps and what the mileage should be. Kind of had a good game plan going into it. As soon as you get a stop or two under your belt, you know where you are for the day. It is pretty easy to work backwards from there. Always going to be situations like today where you are pitting closer to the window than you want to be, you need a couple cautions. I would say we have a pretty good idea, fairly educated guess. Q. When Harvick goes a hundred something laps, does that add to your info? JEREMY BULLINS: Yeah, for sure. Those guys are on the same tune‑up that you are. Should be really close. When you see that, it kind of gives you some confidence to know that that's possible, that's doable. Q. After Brad got out of the car, he said he's had a great career but he probably needed a kick in the butt. He felt that you and the 2 team have done that to him this season, made him a better driver. Have you noticed anything different while working with him as a crew chief that would make him say something like that? JEREMY BULLINS: I think in a lot of ways it's very similar when I worked with him in the Xfinity car. You get the feeling that you got a shot to win every week. That's all you can ask for. That's the way it was when we were on the Xfinity car: we left the shop thinking we should win this race. We've only got three wins, which is great. But there's a lot of races. Looking back, think if we did this a little bit different, we could have won that race, too. It's I think it's a testament to this team. This group is very good at not taking no for an answer in a lot of ways when it comes to trying to get better, trying to push things, find new ways to find speed, find handling in these cars. I think everybody at Team Penske has that mentality. I think it's been a really good working relationship with Brad. We've tried to use his experience to our advantage as a team. I think a lot of it is just, I told him day one, our job is to give him the tools to be successful. We're going to rely on his feedback a lot to do that, his experience. It's just been a good mix. I think just some fresh ideas from our team, you combine that with his experience, been able to talk about what you anticipate the racetrack is going to do as the day goes. That stuff is invaluable when it comes to making good decisions. Q. Brad talked about how important it was to go out and get a dominating win. He doesn't like to talk about other drivers, but doing it in what for the most part was a one‑on‑one battle with Denny Hamlin, was that a telltale sign for you? JEREMY BULLINS: I think it's what you have to do. The way things are looking so far this year, the 4 and the 11 have been the teams to beat. You need to come out and show that you can do that. I think we're not giving away the championship yet. Everybody still has a lot of work to do. We've got to be able to do this in Phoenix. We got to be able to win enough races between now and then to be in the final four to get to Phoenix. The other two wins, not taking anything away from them, we had great cars, put ourselves in a position to take advantage of situations late in the race, but we won this race. It does feel different. It is more fun to do it that way. They're all great. We're not going to be disappointed in any of them. Today was a lot of fun. Today is the kind of day that you need if you want to contend for a championship. Q. You and your teammates have been extremely fast all year, but highlighted lately by Blaney and his success. You can only speak for your team, but how significant is it for you to be able to break through for Team Penske today? JEREMY BULLINS: Yeah, I think today was a day where obviously with no practice, no qualifying, the things you have to do, we nailed the setup I would argue better than anybody. We had the best long run car. The race played out to where you needed that. We got a couple long runs, it paid off for us. I think we've had speed a lot. We've had a lot of top 10s, a lot of solid days. We were close at Kansas. We've really worked hard on the 550 package, trying to take the next step there. We got closer at Kansas to win. We felt like coming here, if things went right, we'd have a good shot at it. It's nice when the plan comes together, I guess. Q. Anything in particular you're eager to learn over the next few weeks as the Playoffs approach? JEREMY BULLINS: I think the big thing for us is to try to take these races like today that carry over to the Richmonds and Phoenixes and try to learn as much as we can. We'll debrief tomorrow, try to learn as much as we can from what we did today, the decisions we made, what will apply moving forward, what we can do better moving forward. Some of the races the next few weeks, some of the races, Michigan is not in the Playoffs, now it's obviously a race we want to go win, but some of that stuff you're trying to go win a race, get stage points, Playoff points. Every opportunity we're at the racetrack with no practice, every race is like a practice and you're trying to learn as much as you can from it. Q. I think I heard you on the radio say that you wanted to make the car competitive enough that Keselowski wanted to stay and continue to be your driver for a long time. What is it about him that gets you jazzed up and excited to come to work every day? JEREMY BULLINS: I think you just go back to all the success we had in the Xfinity car. I think we won 14 races or so with that car. Like I said, it's a lot of fun to work with him. You know there aren't very many tracks that you're not going to go to that you don't have a chance to win the race. That's the ideal situation. This is a performance business. A lot of ways, every year is a contract year. The pressure's always there to be successful and to compete. But that's what we live for, that's what we want to do. When we got paired up in January, I told him, Our job is to give you what you need to be successful. I'm going to need your help with what that is, but we'll make that happen. So far so good. I think obviously it's going really well. Hopefully we can keep it all together. Q. How have you seen him mature over the last few years? JEREMY BULLINS: I only caught the last half of that. Q. How have you seen him mature since having his two daughters, taking the leadership role at Team Penske? JEREMY BULLINS: I think he's grown a lot over the years. When I first started working with him, he wasn't married, didn't have any kids. Now he's married with two kids and a business outside of racing. Obviously when you have that kind of responsibility you have to learn to find a good balance in your life, find a way to make everything successful. That's one of the things we talk about all the time. He's the first one to ask, What do you need from me? I'm the first one to tell him when I need something. Just trying to find that good balance of what we need to be successful as a team, at the same time let him enjoy life with his family and do the things he needs to do. But he's certainly not one to shy away from his part of the responsibility. THE MODERATOR: Thank you for joining us. Congratulations on the win. We'll see you next week at Michigan. JEREMY BULLINS: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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