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NASCAR GANDER RV & OUTDOORS TRUCK SERIES: LUCAS OIL 150November 6, 2020Mike BeamMaurice GallagherAvondale, Arizona THE MODERATOR: Congratulations, Mike. Thank you for taking the time to join us. We'll go straight to questions from the media for you. Q. Mike, the decision at the end to come to pit road and take tires, the 98 truck had been able to make his way through the field on fresh rubber, but historically it hadn't seem like new tires made that much of a difference at Phoenix. What went into the decision to take tires? Were you surprised at all at how effective they were on the restart? MIKE BEAM: Not really surprised because there's so many laps on them. That's the thing about Phoenix, it's so wide there you can get going. Competition meeting we talked a little bit. I'm not saying that everybody agreed if it come down to it we'd split the decision if we had to to make sure one of them won. I don't know at the end if that really worked out like that. Sheldon and Zane, they didn't really have anything to lose. I wasn't really surprised. I was surprised they got up through there, but you're at Phoenix. I got to rewatch it. I was watching Brett and Grant on the front row. How did that just happen? I was up in the suite and I saw them come down the backstretch. Dang, that's Sheldon. Where did he come from? It didn't really surprise me. THE MODERATOR: We are also joined by Maury Gallagher. Thank you for taking the time to join us. We'll continue to take questions. Q. Mike, where do you feel Sheldon has improved the most this year? MIKE BEAM: Well, Sheldon has worked so hard, for sure. Well, all of them have worked really hard. I feel like Josh has helped Sheldon immensely. He's just learned how to race. His car control is amazing. He's improved in every aspect of driving. Pit road, just everything. Him and Jeff working another season together, like I told him, Sheldon and Jeff, where Sheldon, he's messed up enough stuff over the last year and a half, he did learn. He's just become a student of the sport. Through our driver development program, you are a student of it. We teach you. It's however hard you want to work. He's worked hard at it. He knows he wants to get Cup racing. Those Cup guys, Chase and those guys, he's really worked hard. Q. Where does Wise have the biggest impact? Is it conditioning or mental ability or what? MIKE BEAM: Who is that? Q. Josh Wise, what is hit impact? MIKE BEAM: It's everything. He works on conditioning, but he works on just the mental part, too, from pit road, pit road entrance. He really works on situation awareness, this could happen, this could happen. They're very schooled by the time they take the green flag. Especially now with no practice, I think that's where we've fit in Jim this year with Chevrolet support, all the tools they gave us. Josh, being a past driver, you know, he knows the mistakes that can be made. We make sure we limit our mistakes. We've made quite a few this year, but that's where Josh has helped these young guys. Q. Mike and Maury, what can you say about just the sheer dominance of the team this year across the board, building a powerhouse team over the years in truck? MIKE BEAM: Well, it's taken five years to get here. Definitely we've gone through people to get to this point. Our crew chiefs get along so well. I say my job is easy because Maury, the financial commitment he's made. To be able to help us build a winning program like we have, we couldn't do it without Jim's support and the partners we do have. But it's taken us a while to get here. The crew chiefs, they get along well. They work hard, the engineers. Everyone there. Our fab shop is second to none. It's just been a lot to work. Tom, he's pretty relentless, he keeps working, keeps working, trying to make it better. We really focus on trying not to have any weaknesses. Plus we work on our strengths. I feel like this year we've been able to capitalize on all that. MAURY GALLAGHER: Let me just comment that the winning environment starts at the top. It's what we call business (indiscernible) at the top. Mike joined us five, six years ago, November of '14. I wouldn't even call us mediocre at that point. One of the great stories when I was introduced to Mike was one of the gentleman that introduced him to me, he paused in the middle of that and said, Mike is really intense. Are you sure you want to do that? I just said, You just named my tune. This is professional sports. Intensity is important. But it's all the metrics that Mike talked about. I'm in business. Tone at the top, leadership, no mistakes. It takes everything. You just don't luck into this sport. This year I've had the best speed of everybody. I think it's been evident weektoweek. That's attention to detail. I think the other thing is, my favorite stories, I'm not that fluent, many of these teams don't talk to each other. They got four teams under a roof, kind of four independent separate silos. That information needs to be shared, in our opinion. Everybody gets the good stuff. You saw it. It's not just one truck that dominated, it's three or four, for the 24 truck a couple races. I couldn't be prouder of what Mike and the team has done. Like he said, it's taken a couple, three years to get there. It's been fun to watch and it's been rewarding to a fault. Q. Maury, this is your first owners championship ever in the Truck Series. What does it mean for you to finally receive an owners title? MAURY GALLAGHER: The winning of the championship from the competitive side is certainly number one. Going up against Kyle Busch every year for the last four or five, six years, even this year one of the great highlights was our ability to beat him in the Shootoff when Chase was able to beat him in Charlotte. It's just great. I mean, you come into this business, you do professional sports for winning. It's the ultimate reason, the ultimate narcotic, if you want to say it that way. I couldn't be happier and more proud of the team, all the guys back at the shop, GMS. As Mike said, it's everybody doing their job. It pays off in spades in what you saw in the last few months, particularly tonight. It's good, very good. Q. It seemed like Brett was really frustrated with his team, not happy at all. What do you take from your perspective on what he said? He may have called out his team from my perspective. MAURY GALLAGHER: I didn't hear what Brett said. Anybody in that position is going to be upset and angry. I'm sure in the heat of the battle he didn't mean anything because that team has performed all year. Brett arguably was the most consistent driver the entire year in many ways. No, Brett is a good guy. We really have enjoyed having Brett around. I'll go look at the film. If need be, we'll chat it out. Brett is a competitor. Q. We saw the strength of the team this season, how well you performed. What do you use to be stronger and a bigger force, if possible, in 2021? MIKE BEAM: We'll go back, we break down every race from Daytona clear to Phoenix. I keep a sheet on this is what we did well, this is what we need to work on. Then we'll just go work on it. The thing that you have to be careful of I feel like right now, we're in a pretty good place on certain areas, but I'm going to be honest with you, you just don't know yet. We worked so hard to get to here tonight. I don't know. Execution of the team, some of the mistakes we've made. It's kind of we lost a couple races, but it come down to the end there. When you're dominant like that, people's going to do opposite of what you do, stuff like that. The guys communicated well. I couldn't be happier with everyone. We'll just keep doing what we're doing, make sure we're doing that, not out‑think it, try to get too smart about it. We keep it pretty simple, really. I'm too old (smiling). MAURY GALLAGHER: I think the thing Mike is underselling, if you take the average age of our four drivers, Brett old man 26, 27, 28, the average age is 17 to 22. Do the math. What is it? 19. Tyler is 19. I don't know that any team in the last five years in the time I've been around, say Kyle had a couple years with William and the like, he had one driver a year that would really stand out. Mike had three, four drivers this year, youngsters, that all stood out. That's a difference maker. It's one thing to have speed, but if you don't know what to do with it, can't bring it home, that's the big deal. I can't be happier for the way we've evolved our ability to make these young drivers into really good drivers. As I told them many times, you don't win the race on lap 10, but you can sure lose it. When you see the moves Sheldon made, that was the natural talent. Zane was right behind him. That's what Brett did a couple years ago on that restart. He just got underneath. It's shorter around that curve in one and two. Popped out the front. They knew their business. As Mike said, they had incredible truck control. Those two guys, all of them, Tyler, Sam went to Bristol and won as a 17‑year‑old, and he dominated. Those are to me real difference makers that separated us from the crowd this year. Q. As you look towards next season, when can we expect you guys to finalize the driver lineup? MIKE BEAM: Hopefully here in the next two weeks. We worked on it. We got most of it done. It comes to a point where you just got to quit working on it and just focus on what's ahead. We really focused on getting Zane in there at Martinsville. Of course, tonight. We was hoping to at least get one. Moffitt won Kansas. Maybe Sheldon to point his way in. We pretty much stopped all that stuff. We had a lot of performance meetings, technical meetings and stuff to just make sure we dotted our Is and crossed the Ts. Hopefully here in a week or so, yeah. Hopefully next two weeks we should be finished with it. Q. Mike, you've been in this sport a long time. MIKE BEAM: I have (laughter). Q. With the knowledge that you have, with everything that was thrown at you this year with COVID, to get three teams into the final four, how did your experience in this sport benefit you through this? MIKE BEAM: Well, I've done it for a long time. I've had hardships. You get through it. You try. There's a fine line right there between your personal feelings and your professional feelings. Basically that's what we did. We just kind of made sure our number one priority was to keep everybody safe. Worried about the drivers getting COVID, stuff like that. Even the teams, we did have some, but very mild. Not with the drivers but some of the team members. Honestly, we've worked on this stuff for months. The shop we work in shifts, people work 6 in the morning till 1, then those guys work till 8 or 9 or 10 at night. This last week we didn't have power, Saturday or Sunday after Martinsville. They were in there pulling down, setting up, had generators. The guys just kept working. I can't, I don't know what's word is, tell you how hard these guys worked. It was good to see. These guys worked harder this year than I've ever seen people work. They wanted it so bad. You could tell in the shop. People are so focused. But my message to everybody is, I've been there before, you just got to keep it simple. You got to do what got us here. We can't out‑think it. I feel like my experience paid off there. THE MODERATOR: Mike and Maury, we'll let you both go and celebrate with your teams. Thank you for taking the time to join us. Have a great off‑season. MAURY GALLAGHER: Thank you. MIKE BEAM: Happy holidays. Thank you, ma'am. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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