NASCAR CUP SERIES: VERIZON 200 AT THE BRICKYARD

July 31, 2022

Randall Burnett

Richard Childress

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by the team owner of the winning No. 8 car, Richard Childress. Richard, why don't you start us off and talk about how exciting it is to win here at Indianapolis for you guys.

RICHARD CHILDRESS: Anytime you win at Indy, it's always great. This will be the fourth win on the Brickyard. We won one with Ty Dillon with the Xfinity, so we've won five times. Anytime you can get a win at Indy, it's very special.

Q. Did you ever think with Tyler going away, would he lay down, because he's fought for you every week? How does it make you feel to know you've got a racer out there?

RICHARD CHILDRESS: Well, after they made their announcement, I met -- I thought about it a lot that night, gave it a lot of thought, and it's more than just about one person. It's about a team. Stayed up most of the night thinking about what I should do, how I wanted to handle it.

I went in the next day and told the whole team it wasn't a perfect circumstance the way it went down, but we're going to give it everything we've got this year, and we'll see where we go next year.

Q. You've won here on the oval numerous times, now you've won here on the road course. There's talk about whether this race should be on the oval or the road course. There's a lot of history with the Brickyard 400 on the oval. What does Richard Childress think?

RICHARD CHILDRESS: Well, we came here the first time in I think it was '93. Bill France Jr. brought Earnhardt and myself and wanted to know what we thought about it. We ran it, Dale drove the car then, and I guess it was going into '94 we came back up here with Rusty Wallace and two or three other drivers and we ran the oval.

When you drive through the gates, go through the tunnel and you drive through here, just the history, tradition of Indianapolis gives you cold chills the first time I came -- well, the first time I jumped the fence but we won't talk about that.

It gives you cold chills when you think about Indianapolis and the history. So yes, I love it. I wish we were back on the oval for sure.

THE MODERATOR: We are also joined by the race-winning crew chief Randall Burnett.

Q. For either or both, Tyler has a three-second lead, caution comes out. What goes through your mind at that point?

RANDALL BURNETT: Oh, no. No, I was talking about it on the way up here. We had like a three-, three-and-a-half-second lead there. Obviously Chase was pretty fast. All those guys were pretty fast right behind us. I feel like Tyler was saving his stuff pretty good there.

We kind of expected it. We were expecting it at Road America the other week. We were just kind of waiting on it to happen and it never did there, so to see it happen here wasn't a huge surprise. With the tire falloff there was no real strategy to play like you didn't have to worry about having to pit or not. Tires weren't falling off.

Just hoped for the best. Hopefully not get drove down in there and wrecked, and fortunately we weren't part of that. It worked out great.

Q. What were you thinking when you saw Chastain go up the access road?

RANDALL BURNETT: Yeah, I was trying to watch on TV and then flashed away and was showing the cars wrecking and they flashed back to Tyler and the 1 is right there, I'm like, Where did that guy come from? I saw one car go blowing through the whole thing. I didn't realize that's where he came out. I was trying to get caught up. Where did he come from? That was pretty entertaining. I don't know if he got a penalty or what for that, but yeah, glad him and Tyler didn't get together and ruin our race. That was more what I was worried about than anything at that point.

Q. Randall, can you discuss how instrumental the brake package is that you're using on these cars to do what you do, because a lot of your competitors targeted that. They said you guys had an excellent brake package. I'm not taking anything away from your driver, but they said that it looks like you guys have really gone to work on the brakes.

RANDALL BURNETT: Well, I credit a lot of that to Tyler. He's worked really hard on understanding how to brake better. We've worked hard as a group to figure out a package that works for him.

Everybody has got the same stuff on these cars. Everybody has got the same rotors and calipers. It's basically a choice of master cylinders and brake pads and stuff like that, and fortunately for us we found something that worked for him pretty early in the season, and we've been able to work with that. He does a phenomenal job at knowing how hard to push, making sure he hits his marks right. Took really good care of his stuff and still had phenomenal speed today.

That's an "atta boy" to him for sure because he used to hate these places, so he's done a great job pushing himself to get better for sure.

Q. How much does the technical alliance with GM help because Hendrick had been so stout on the road courses? I think Larson won three out of ten and we don't have to say anything about Chase, but to kind of take over the mantle, that's got to be a feather in your cap.

RANDALL BURNETT: Yeah, Chevy has put a lot into this deal this year, and it's been certainly helpful to be able to more freely bounce ideas off one another. We don't fully know what they're doing and they don't fully know what we're doing, but there is a lot more dialogue between the teams.

It's been helpful for sure.

Q. Randall, what was the conversations like in the aftermath of Tyler's announcement, and what did you tell the team?

RANDALL BURNETT: Well, you know, it's one of those things. It's a business deal. We've still got a lot of racing left to do with Tyler, and that's what I told our guys. We're all professionals. A lot of us, everybody in our team is veterans of the sport. We've all been around for a long time. We've seen drivers come and go and things move around, and that's just part of our sport.

We've talked about it as a group, and Richard sat in on some of them and talked with all of us about it. The biggest thing we can do is go out and do what we did today and that's put fast cars underneath Tyler and try to win races and show everybody what this team is made of so we can try to figure out what we need to do to fill that void.

That's what we're going to continue to do. We feel like we've got a great shot at the championship this year, to win two races now after just not even a month apart.

We're really looking forward to getting to the Chase, and got a lot of good races in there, so hopefully we can pull that off, too.

Q. Amid a season that's been very successful for you guys, was there ever a doubt at any point of hey, our season can go sideways here, and the promise we have is not going to be fulfilled?

RANDALL BURNETT: Well, after we got spun out at Bristol coming to the checkered I was a little upset about that. I was hoping that wasn't going to knock us out of the playoffs. But this team is very resilient. We've had fast race cars all year. We've taken ourselves out of races by making mistakes. We've had others take us out of races. We've had tires -- you name it, we've learned how to lose them all year this year and give them away, and what we've been preaching lately as a group and everybody pushing each other to minimize the mistakes and make the most opportunities, and I feel like that's what we've done this month.

Q. Richard, going back to your first answer, if I've got this right, I think you said we're going to give it everything we've got this year and we'll see what we get next year. Are you guys still figuring out 2024 with the 8 and Tyler?

RICHARD CHILDRESS: Yeah, Tyler will be in the car at RCR next year.

Q. After you figured out what the situation was with the 1, how were you communicating to Tyler? You're not actually racing the 1 for the lead. What was the communication between you two.

RANDALL BURNETT: Well, Derek spoke up pretty quick and he's like, that's going to be a penalty on them. He informed him pretty quick to not put himself in a bad spot, but we also had the 2 right there and Ross was still racing us hard. It was important for us to get by the 1 to gap to the 2 because if we messed around with him and let the 2 by us -- it was quite a mess right there for a minute, and pretty stressful situation. Fortunately we were able to get by the 1 and just get away from it clean and not have to worry about it.

Q. Richard, this is your team's first season with multiple wins by one driver since 2013 and your first season with multiple wins, period, since 2017. Is it safe to say that RCR is back, or do you still have a ways to go?

RICHARD CHILDRESS: Well, it's great to be back competitive again. The doors have been open, the lights have been on, but we haven't been competitive. But it feels great to come to a racetrack and know you're going to be one of the teams that's going to be racing for the win.

Q. For either or both of you, with Tyler's wins kind of sandwiching his announcement at the start and end of this month, did today's win feel any different? Was it more special given everything that the team has gone through over these last couple weeks? Can you describe the dichotomy between these two wins?

RANDALL BURNETT: I mean, obviously any win feels special. I think it's just a hats off to our guys. To be able to be big enough and put that behind them and go out there and do the job at hand, and that's what we can do best. That's what we've got to do going forward.

I think it shows the resilience of this team, the dedication by everybody on this team to be able to step up at a big place like here and not have any mistakes today and everybody pull together and get to the common goal, I think that speaks a lot for this 8 team.

Q. Randall, I don't know who came over the radio and said it, but you guys were obviously very pumped up and somebody said to Tyler that he didn't take any s--- from anybody and he'd earned that one. Was there doubt that he was going to be pushed around or something? I was curious that reaction.

RANDALL BURNETT: Well, I think there's been a few times we've been in that position before with Tyler, and it didn't go our way. I think he's learned a lot from those situations. Heck, one of the times was our first year in the Cup Series with him, and he was racing Austin at Texas, and Austin got the best of him on two or three restarts when we restarted up front against one another.

He takes that on his shoulders and he tries to study and learn from it. I was just really proud. He was laser focused today and didn't miss a beat.

Those restarts can get crazy. You never know what's going to happen, if somebody is going blow through you down there, or who knows what's going to happen. He did a great job not missing his marks, not overdriving it, hit it precise, and was able to do what he needed to do.

Q. Was it you or Derek?

RANDALL BURNETT: That was Derek. I told him that he just won at Indy, in case he didn't know. Derek was the one who told him he didn't take no s---

Q. Earlier this year when we spoke you said you were really hoping that this team would get in Victory Lane because Tyler has worked so hard and you guys have come so close. What has that been like to see how he's matured as a Cup driver and how this team has come together to smooth out races and put everything together?

RANDALL BURNETT: Well, I think it's not only Tyler, I think it's our whole group. A lot of us have been together for a long time. We've got a veteran pit crew that's been through a lot together. Just this whole team, it's pretty impressive the talent we've got and the depth we've got on this team and how we pull together. It's pretty phenomenal and great to see that we're getting the fruits out of our labor and winning some races now, because like I said before, we've blown plenty of them and had plenty of them taken away, and just whatever happened and come up second however many times.

It's nice to finally be finishing them off the way we should.

Q. Richard, which is better, Victory Cuvee or Victory Lane champagne from here?

RICHARD CHILDRESS: No doubt, Victory Cuvee, for all the winning moments in your life. It's pretty good. (Laughter.)

THE MODERATOR: Richard and Randall, congratulations. Thanks for joining us today.