NASCAR CUP SERIES: GO BOWLING AT THE GLEN

August 20, 2023

Rudy Fugle

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by our race winning crew chief Rudy Fugle. What does this win mean?

RUDY FUGLE: Yeah, I really don't know how to take it yet. I'm sure it'll settle in after a few weeks or after the year. Pretty cool. Grew up about 30, 40 miles from here. Came here a lot, but just in the area with my parents here. It's pretty special.

Q. Talk about the excitement for William, race No. 5, win No. 5.

RUDY FUGLE: Wow, just to get the road course win, he works and takes a lot of pride in his road course racing and it's kind of been up-and-down. When we first got Gen-6, Hendrick was the best road course race team ever, and he was really good at it and trying to learn from Chase, and then we got this Next-Gen car and we've kind of been up-and-down on the race.

Started COTA really good, close to the 45, and then we just haven't been good at all. We were solid last week, at least starting in the back we didn't get to show it, and then this week just good the whole time. That's huge on him from a feedback wise and all of his work for braking and all the things he does to get better.

He drives that for us. Thanks to him, Max Papis works with him and his coach, and that helps, as well.

Q. Rudy, you remember some of your years kicking around following the racing action growing up in the buffalo and New York area going to different tracks. Talk about that, your connection to buffalo.

RUDY FUGLE: For sure. I spent -- I actually raced, only thing I raced, I raced at Lime Rock Speedway in Caledonia, so not far. I raced at Ransomville Speedway not far from buffalo, used to go to Canada Way every Saturday night with my girlfriend, now my wife. That was what we did. Those were the dirt tracks where we went all the time when Syracuse was still open and Rolling Wheels. Western New York dirt tracks and big block modifieds or whatever it was was where it's at.

I still miss seeing that. I watch it on TV sometimes. But getting a win here is just as special. It's right in the area. Used to play sports not far from here, so it's pretty cool.

Q. At the beginning of the season would you have said that -- would you have predicted that William would have 12 top 10s and five wins going into the Playoffs before you ever got to Daytona?

RUDY FUGLE: Yeah, I mean, I really had a good feeling that we were going to have a good week. I really thought we'd compete to -- time will tell, we've got to get to the Final Four and compete for a championship. That's what we want to do. That's been our goal.

But you never know how it's going to rack up. You don't know how it's going to be two wins or if you're going to get a bunch of top 10s or whatever it is. We've just been really strong, and then we've gotten a lot of really good breaks and have super fast cars. We've been able to capitalize.

Having William -- restarts, pit stops, they always keep us in it no matter how our stuff is, so that helps, and then today was just a super fast car, too.

Q. There's this dip that happens with you guys through like July and early August and William talked about it yesterday, but he said the difference this year is you guys have had fast cars but maybe were trying different things unlike last year where you guys were missing it altogether during the summer. Is that the case with the four wins this late into the season? Have you guys been maybe trying different things or trying to execute differently?

RUDY FUGLE: Some weeks that makes sense. Some weeks we've been off. Historically even when I was truck racing I wasn't super great. My teams weren't super great in the summer. Just some oddball races that don't line up -- we put focus on every single race, but put the most amount of focus on the races to win a championship and the races to get you in that championship which is usually the first ten and the last ten and then the summer plays in different ways.

We had fast cars at Michigan and Pocono and a couple other places this summer that we didn't have last year, and that helped. We've had things happen. We weren't afraid to try different strategies and take some gambles and that probably hurt us at times for finishes.

But yeah, a little bit of both. It's just kind of what happens. But it is really good to get the momentum going for the Playoffs, and we're super confident going into not only Daytona but going into Darlington. We're working super hard on that first round and hoping to move forward with that as soon as we can.

Q. I was just wondering how you feel about the last 10 races? Where do you feel like you guys can execute the most, and obviously going back to Darlington, one of you guys' great racetracks?

RUDY FUGLE: No, I love the whole 10 races. They're tracks that are good for us, tracks that we ran well at the beginning of the year, and tracks that we've just been strong on.

Honestly, having a dip, as Kelly talked about, in the summer has made us work a lot harder from all aspects, so I think we're going to have faster cars when the Playoffs start. We'll have more pace. Hopefully we can execute and do the right things. That's what the Playoffs is about. With everything as tight as it has been in the Next Gen, it's about execution. You can't shoot yourself in the foot, you can't speed, you can't go to the back, you can't spin out and wreck.

Those mistakes are harder to overcome, so that's our focus is execution, but every one of those races -- Kansas we ran really well at, Darlington we ran really well. Bristol the two years I've been here we finished third, I think. Just really good races for us. Excited to go march to the Playoffs.

Q. I just wanted to ask you if the fact that William has dominated the race today, how important is that in making some sort of maybe a little statement? It may not be a purposeful one, but it is a statement when you do something like this as you guys are heading into the Playoffs.

RUDY FUGLE: Yeah, self-confidence is fine, too. I don't have social media of any kind. I don't pay attention to anything else, so it's all about self-confidence and our team's confidence. If we can improve that, that's number one. Running well is great, but when you run well like this, we've got six playoff points out of today. That's huge. Six points is going to pay off at some point.

And then to get 59 points overall today is going to protect us from losing third place. I don't know that we're going to catch Denny or Martin, but a little protection going into Daytona is not bad.