NASCAR: Kyle Petty Transcript from Dodge Teleconference

Tuesday, April 5, 2005
Dodge Motorsports Teleconference
Bristol Recap, Martinsville Advance
             

            

KYLE PETTY (No. 45 Georgia-Pacific/Brawny Dodge Charger)

 

YOU GOT YOUR TOP 10 AT BRISTOL. WHEN CAN YOU WIN? "This is Nextel Cup
racing, and nothing surprises you any more in Cup races. If we won a
race it'd probably surprise some people, but I wouldn't be surprised
because you never know what's going to happen. To be there on a
consistent basis is what we're looking for. Looking at Petty
Enterprises, Bobby Hamilton won a race and John (Andretti) won a race
there in the last five or six years or eight or 10 years or whatever,
but consistency wasn't there and that's what we're shooting for. Even
though we had a top-10 finish, realistically we're smart enough to look
at it and say we probably had a top-15 car. We were just very blessed
that when things started falling apart for other people we were able to
run good enough to pick up the slack. We're not reading any more into a
top 10 than what you can, but I think qualifying-wise to see Jeff come
there and qualify sixth in the Cheerios Dodge Charger, I think that's a
good sign because when you watch guys start to win again they start to
qualify well again, and I think that's a big thing."

 

DO YOU FEEL LIKE ALL THE PIECES ARE IN PLACE? "I feel like we've got a
lot of the right pieces and a lot of the pieces we have we've got to
continue to make stronger. We've said that all along. For five years
I've said the same thing. We've got to get better, better, better no
matter what we're doing, whether it's our aero program or our engine
program. I think the work we did with Dodge this winter, working with
Ray's group on the Dodge Charger and be able to have Evernham
Motorsports engines, that's basically a good baseline for us. We can
look at the 9 and 19 and if they run well and we don't run well, then
obviously that means our cars have to get better and our teams have to
get better. We feel like our aero program and our guys in the fab shop
have done a tremendous job. I said at Daytona when we qualified well we
felt like the guys in the fab shop and our aero stuff was pretty good.
We just hadn't had any been able to prove it to any people. We went down
there and qualified pretty good so it showed that was there. We have to
work on other areas. We feel like we've got most of the bases covered. I
won't say we've got every base covered, but we've got somebody standing
on every base and we've just got to make sure we get more people on
those bases and get stronger in those areas."

 

FROM A CAR OWNER'S STANDPOINT, IS THERE ANY WAY TO COME OUT OF BRISTOL
WITHOUT TEARING UP CARS? "I don't mind going to Bristol. I don't like
tearing up my stuff at Daytona and Talladega. If you look at cars coming
out of Daytona and Talladega, they look a lot worse than they do coming
out of Bristol from a car owner's perspective. We spent hundreds of
thousands of dollars on making sure our drag numbers are right, that
we've got great cars and great chassis. We go to Daytona with a car
that's been in the wind tunnel maybe six times that costs you 10 or 15
thousand dollars a shift in the wind tunnel and the first thing you do
somebody goes out there and bump drafts you and tears the rear end off
of it or tears the side off. I don't mind tearing up cars at Bristol.
Nobody likes tearing up cars from that perspective, but that's part of
what racing is. That's part of what Cup racing is and it always has
been. The problem is it hasn't always been that way at Daytona and
Talladega. I have a bigger issue from an expense standpoint tearing up
stuff at Daytona and Talladega than I do at Bristol."

 

HOW MUCH CREDIT DOES PAUL ANDREWS GET FOR THE TEAM'S SUCCESS? "Paul has
not done anything from a day-to-day standpoint. I would not put that
load on anybody, believe me, especially bringing in somebody like Paul.
What Paul has done, he's brought stability to the 45 team and that's
bled over and helped Greg Steadman who was running the 45 team. I think
that's helped him focus on the 43 Cheerios Dodge Charger instead of
having to worry about the Brawny Dodge, too. Just like I said when we
hired Paul, we went through two or three different guys. I think Steve
Lane is a great example of somebody who can be a great crew chief some
day. He's over at Ganassi's right now. Where we're at as a team and
where we're at as an organization, we just didn't have time for somebody
to come up through the ranks. We had to hire somebody this time, we'd
tried it two or three times, we had to hire somebody this time who had
the experience and who had the know how and had the ability to come in
and run the operation from pit road. From calling pit stops and pit
strategy, Paul fit the bill perfectly. I think he takes a lot of
pressure off Greg, and that helps everybody at Petty Enterprises."

 

COMMENT ON THE DODGE CHARGER NOSE "There are issues with the Dodge nose.
There are issues not from a heating-cooling standpoint just to out
running. That's not the issue. The problem is when you put
100,000-150,000 people in the grandstand and a bunch of people in the
infield, the racetrack is going to get dirty and there's going to be a
lot of trash on the racetrack. I know at California we absolutely
struggled with overheating. We were hot the whole time. We pulled all
our tape off, but you pull all your tape off and the next thing you do
is catch a hot dog wrapper or a potato chip bag, and that's the problem
with the nose from our standpoint. It has nothing to do with the
aerodynamics really. I think if you talk to the people, nobody has a
problem with it aerodynamically. It's just when we really sit down and
the Dodge people really sat down and tried to design the Charger, they
wanted the Dodge to be a car the fans could look at and say, 'hey, there
goes a Dodge Charger.' That's what that grille does for us. It says,
'there goes a Dodge Charger.' I guess part of the price we're having to
pay now is from a heating standpoint. We're having to be really careful
and watch the grille and keep the grille clean. We don't want cookie
cutter cars. We don't want the Dodge Charger to look like a Ford or
Chevy. We want it to look like the Dodge Charger. That's the price we're
paying right now. We're going to have to figure out a way to make it
work. If NASCAR does step in and give us some help, it would be greatly
appreciated. If they don't, then we're just going to have to figure it
out ourselves."

 

PERSONALLY, HOW DID IT FEEL GETTING A TOP 10 FINISH AT BRISTOL? "For me
it was really.good. We probably had a top 15 car, and I was ecstatic
about having a top 15 car at Bristol just staying out of trouble all
day. To come home and finish in the top 10, it's been five or six years
or whatever since I've been able to run in the top 10 it seems like. We
struggled. It's well documented. You guys write about it a lot. I don't
know why. For us it's a huge morale booster. Our guys were sky-high when
we went out of there, and the Cheerios Dodge had qualified in the top
10. I can't tell you how big a morale booster that was for both teams
and the guys at Petty Enteprises. To leave the racetrack on Sunday, it
was huge for me personally, but for the guys at the shop, it was big for
all of us."

 

COMMENT ON ALL THE CAUTION FLAG LAPS SO FAR THIS SEASON "You're saying
it's up this year from last year? OK, was it up last year from the year
before? I guess that's the way I'd have to look at it. I'd venture to
say it's a little cyclical. I think some of the things that happened at
Bristol were just impatience. People were trying to give each other
room, but it's a small racetrack and you think you've got to make things
happen in the first 15 laps of a race or you're going to get lapped.
There was a lot of impatience the first two or three cautions at
Bristol. I just marked that down to that, but I'd say it's more
cyclical. I would not step back at this point in time and say it's all
about the spoilers, it's all about the tires, it's all about this or
that. I think right now everybody is running hard and everybody knows
they've got to run hard and there's just stuff happening right now. If
you go back two or three years, it probably all averages out."

 

DO YOU KEEP A SCORECARD FOR THE SHORT TRACKS? "No. You'd have to be
crazy to get into something with somebody at Bristol and then go to
Martinsville the next week and do something to them. That's wrong. You'd
need to have an IQ check or something. I'm sure NASCAR is looking and
they're going to be keeping tabs, but if you look at the big picture,
and I watched some of the Busch stuff yesterday with Dale Jarrett and
Shane. Dale is a good enough guy with a cool enough head, I'll bet if
you ask Dale about it today he's probably about half forgotten about it.
It's just a heat of the moment type stuff. I don't think you're going to
get into any of that. I don't think you're going to get into any
retaliation. I do think it's strange we run Bristol and Martinsville
back-to-back, two of the racetracks where tempers seem to flare the
most. I don't think you're going to have to worry about it. As a driver
racing against other guys I'm not going to worry about it."

 

ARE MORE DRIVERS MAKING MORE AGGRESSIVE MOVES THAN THEY DID 15 YEARS
AGO? "Yes, but 15 years ago they made more aggressive moves than they
did 15 years before that. I think the whole sport itself has changed. We
can go all the way back to the question that was asked about tearing up
cars at Bristol. Talked to Pearson or my father or Cale or Allison and
those guys. I think guys respected their equipment a lot more and they
respected other people's equipment a lot more. You just get people that
ran over each or were incredibly aggressive. Now, having said that,
you've got to remember at that point in time everybody just had one car.
It wasn't like everybody had a fleet of 15 or 20 cars sitting back at
the shop that they could just trash one and go get another car. That
wasn't the way racing was. I think as racing has changed, there is
aggression, but that's what racing is all about. There's got to be some
aggression out there. When you drive on the highway you drive
defensively. When you drive on the racetrack, you drive offensively. I
think there needs to be some controlled aggression and sometimes it
seems to be a little out of control, but I just think it goes back in a
lot of cases to respecting the other guy's equipment and what he can do,
not ability-wise. It's never a case of ability, but it's a case of
respecting the other guy's face and sometimes you don't get that. We
could sit and talk this question until we're blue in the face because so
many factors that go into it - the speeds we run now, the type of
racetracks compared to Rockingham and Darlington and places like that
with multi-groove racetracks where you could run high and low. The tires
are getting better and the aero is getting better. As far as that goes,
there were 10 teams and now there's a lot of teams that show up and can
run within four tenths of each other. We can throw age into the mix.We
can throw old drivers and young drivers on the racetrack at the same
time. I think we can keep adding on things that are factors that factor
in to it, but I don't think you can look at one thing. I think it's
where the sport is at this point in time." 

 

WHAT'S THE MOOD AT THE SHOP? "I think everybody at the shop has been
walking a little bit taller, but I think we have been since the
beginning of the year. I go back to Daytona. Being able to work closer
with Dodge over the winter and all the Dodge engineers out of Detroit,
Ted Flack and all those guys, to be able to re-engage ourselves with the
Dodge factory from an aero standpoint. Then to have Ray and his group be
able to come down and point us in the right direction and have Paul come
on board. The Evernham engines, there were a lot of things we thought
were going to be a plus. We went into Daytona with a little higher
spirits. Then we kinda fell on our face in Atlanta and that was a big
race for us, but the big thing for us was to be so bad at Atlanta and
then come to Bristol and have one car qualify in the top 10 and have
another car finish in the top 10, I think that showed we can recover
from some of this bad stuff. We just need to keep getting stronger and
stronger. I think it shows it's a strong team and morale wise, it's as
high as it's been in a long time."

 

ARE YOU ASKING NASCAR FOR HELP FOR THE CHARGER? "From my understanding,
I don't know of anybody that's gone to NASCAR and said, 'give us some
relief on this nose.' I do not know that. I have not been a part of that
and would not expect to be a part of that until it came out of Detroit
or somewhere else. The Dodge Charger was designed so the guy sitting in
the third row in the grandstands could say, 'hey, there goes Ryan Newman
in a Dodge Charger' or 'there goes Rusty Wallace in a Dodge Charger.'
Not to have to squint real hard and ask if it's a Ford or Chevy. What is
that thing down there? That's kinda the way a lot of the cars look right
now. When you look at them I think the brands have kinda lost their
identity, and I think Dodge has done a tremendous job of getting their
identity back. I don't think anybody has gone and said, 'hey we want a
different nose.' You just have to throw it out there and say it has been
a problem for us and it's been winter. It's not summer yet, but these
things are getting ready to overheat and if that happens you might want
to look our way."

 

COMMENT ON SIGNING BY THE DRIVERS ON THE TRACK "There's a lot of signing
going on in these cars. It just so happens that a lot of them don't have
in-car cameras. When the soldiers went to Iraq, every unit had a
reporter with them. Maybe we'd be better to have a team reporter that
rode in the car with us and could write down everything and report it
the way they see it. Let me tell you something. When you're sitting in
that car and somebody runs over you or you get mad at somebody, you see
it totally different than sitting in the grandstands or sitting in the
press box. If Shane flipped somebody off or if Dale Jarrett came to the
window and had something to say to him, they had a reason to do that. It
wasn't just out of the blue. It wasn't just all of a sudden somebody
decided they wanted to go and do something. They had a reason to do
that. From a penalty standpoint, I'm sure if they penalize for
verbalizing it, they've got to penalize us for sign language too at some
point in time. If you look at it like that, I'm sure they'll probably do
something, but I don't think he should get too much heat for it. That's
a little juvenile if you ask me when you start complaining about stuff
like that."

 

WHAT'S YOUR TAKE ON MARTINSVILLE'S FUTURE? "I don't see right now why it
would change a lot. If you look at it we have two Bristols and two
Martinsvilles and those are our four half-mile tracks. We have two
Daytonas and two Talladegas and those are our two two-and-a-half mile
tracks. When you look at things like that, the schedule seems to be
pretty well balanced. It seems to draw real good as they continue to
build new grandstands. It draws a lot of people from West Virginia, and
there's not a hotter racing area in the country than Virginia from a fan
base. Everybody in the state of Virginia pulls for somebody on the Cup
circuit. I think when you look at it like that, then it's a good place
to be. It depends on what they do with other racetracks. I think as they
begin to look at the Northwest or New York City or other venues, then
they'll have to go back and address a lot of other racetracks, but I
don't think Martinsville is in any more danger of losing a second event
than a lot of other racetracks. I think since NASCAR has really come in
and taken over and started to run the place, I would say their position
is probably safer now than it has been."

 

OVER THE YEARS WHAT HAS BEEN THE MOST POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE CHANGE FOR
NASCAR? "Probably the biggest change both positively and negatively has
been the popularity. Obviously you look at the popularity of the sport
and you say, 'man, that's a huge positive.' You look at the TV ratings
and the amount of fans, corporate sponsors that come into the sport and
are able to be a part of the sport like Coca-Cola, Dodge,
Georgia-Pacific, General Mills, I can name all my sponsors. You look at
Home Depot and so many different sponsors of so many different products
from all over the country and it's grown by leaps and bounds. That's
been the biggest change, going from 50,000 people at a racetrack to
150,000 or 200,000 people and the corporate involvement in the sport.
That's probably been the biggest change for the last 20 or 25 years.

 

"At the same time, it's a negative because it's changed a lot of the
sport. I think we bill ourselves as a sport that's extremely fan
friendly and fan accessible and as we get more fans coming to the
racetrack, it seems like we withdraw into our cocoon which is the garage
area and the bus lot where drivers can get away from the fans and get
away from people because there are so many people at the racetrack. It
seems like you're in a mass of humanity all the time. I think from that
respect, from our side, it's kind of taken the sport and made it more of
a closed area and it's become more of a business than a sport because of
the money and because of the things involved. The popularity is a
double-edged sword. It can go both ways."

 

ARE YOU NOTICING A LACK OF RESPECT FROM THE YOUNG GUNS TOWARD THE
VETERANS AT THE TRACK? "Not really, I don't think so. Let me say this
about Shane (Hmiel). If anybody has a history of the sport it's Shane
Hmiel, growing up with (father) Steve. Steve working with Richie Evans,
the great modified driver for so many years and then coming to Petty
Enterprises and working with my father and Dale Inman. Shane was born
there. I was in Steve's wedding and around when Shane was born, so if
you say Shane has no respect for the veterans, that's dead, 180 degrees
wrong. He respects the sport as much or more and probably understands
the history of the sport as much or more than other people. When you
talk about an isolated incident, if there's 500 laps at Bristol, it
(flipping the finger) goes on for 500 laps. It may not be the same
driver all the time, but it happens all the time. I think that's a
two-way street. I think we as veteran drivers have to respect the talent
and ability of these kids that come in and jump in really good cars and
run good right off the bat. You watch Reed Sorenson, Kasey Kahne, Casey
Mears, you look at these guys and they're great racecar drivers already
at 20 years and 19. They're phenomenal talents right off the bat, and
you've got to respect that talent. I think from our standpoint it's
two-way street. It's a give and take. If we expect them to respect us,
then we've got to respect them. If they're running good we've got to
give them a little ground. If we're running good you expect for them to
give you a little bit of ground. From this standpoint I think we're
jumping on a dead bandwagon here. I don't think we need to jump on Shane
too hard for this because that could just have easily been any other
driver that's out there right now. We could be having this same
conversation about Kyle Petty or Bill Elliott or Ricky Rudd if I had
gotten into it with a veteran driver or a young driver or whoever else,
so I think it's almost a non-issue."