Winston-Salem, N.C.

Media Moments Part One (Of Five Parts)
© 2003 Dwight Drum
Photos by Dwight Drum

NASCAR fans travel far and wait long cold hours in long lines for the opportunity of getting an autograph from their favorite driver at the T.Wayne Robertson NASCAR Winston Cup Preview. I traveled far (Tampa, Fla.) but I didn't have to wait in line. All I had to do is wait for the drivers to enter a media room. This great event is all about drivers and fans and I welcome fans everywhere to have a seat beside me. We all can't be in the media room, but I'm did my best for fans to share these wonderful moments with photos, questions and transcripts provided by the Winston folks.

Fifteen feet away from forty-four NASCAR stars all in one day…a NASCAR fan might melt at that proximity. I didn't melt, but by the end of that day I was numb for two reasons.

The first reason…although I've asked questions to NASCAR drivers, I've only looked into a few NASCAR driver eyes. The eyes tell much. Looking into 44 sets of NASCAR driver eyes all in one day was a thrilling experience.

The second reason...NASCAR drivers have had almost as much experience talking as they've had driving. If they don't have the natural glib-ability of a Michael Waltrip, they've learned to speak up and they've been trained to speak well. I'm an intense observer and when you get that many proficient word merchants in a single day, the mind fills up and has a way of losing its edge. Fortunately, I didn't lose my way and I didn't lose my camera eye. Please look beyond for words and images.

I've been close to many famous people over the past few years and it's unlikely that I am going to be star-struck, but let me add this…a lot of stardust can tire a mortal.

PART ONE

Media Moments…Part One (Of Five Parts)
© 2003 Dwight Drum
Photos by Dwight Drum

MATT KENSETH:

"During my time off did I take any time off? (Laughs). Katie and I are both from Wisconsin and our families are from there. We stayed up in Wisconsin a couple of weeks. We did a cruise for a week with Jeff Green, Tony Stewart, a few other guys, and a lot of race fans. We took a little time off, but it seems to go quick once Christmas is over. It seems like we get busy in a hurry."

"It's a good atmosphere to see and to meet the fans. Winston does a very good job in having this preview and having it organized and having every single driver here. It's a cool thing for the fans and a cool thing for us drivers because it's a great atmosphere to do it in. We're not working on our cars, we are here to meet the fans. It's great deal for the fans and drivers."

"It's really about the people that you surround yourself with and the equipment that you are sitting in. There was a great improvement at Roush from 2001 to 2002. It's all about the cars. Everybody we race against every Sunday, they are great drivers and surrounded by the right people and the right equipment; they can all win races. So I was real fortunate last year to have everything going our way; to be in better cars and have better engines and have good people around me making the right decisions on what to put in our cars to make them competitive."

Jeff Gordon

"Just try to find all of the areas that we could have been better and try to improve in those areas. Some of those areas were failures. So we are all paying a lot of attention to that; whether it be in the engine department or we had some rear gear failures and some things like that. We're just trying to make sure that we don't have any mistakes that are going to cost us points in the championship."

"And we've added a few people, you know, just to try to make sure the workloads don't get too heavy. Some of those people end up being on our pit crew too, so we feel our pit crew is going to be a lot stronger and hopefully a little quicker.

"Track position being as important as it was last year, we are going to try to do everything we can to get as good a track position as possible. Qualifying is one of the things we are going to work on a lot and not so much -- yeah, we work on that at Daytona, but it's the other tracks that we want to focus on qualifying to start the race off with good track position."

"I never dreamed of doing anything like that. Of course, I keep telling everybody I did things on that show that I never thought I would do in front of a mirror; let alone on live television, but I wouldn't do it if it wasn't fun. I love it. It's something that I enjoy, but I only enjoy it up to the point where my schedule, racing schedule, allowed me to do it and when the right opportunity comes along, I'm going to jump at it. The Saturday Night Live thing came to me a year and a half or two years ago actually and I turned it down several times because, (1) it didn't fit in the schedule and (2) I didn't have the guts to do it, to be honest with you."

"And then I talked to Loren Michaels, the producer, and he said, hey, if there is anything you are not comfortable with -- that's one thing I was worried about, I was worried I was going to get on there and do a skit that I wasn't comfortable with and I got pressured to do it and that wasn't the case at all. They treated me like gold and it was an awesome experience and any time an opportunity comes up, I'm going to jump at it if it fits into my schedule.

"Robbie handles himself great. He handles the people great, and I think that all of the criticism coming down on all of us, maybe he took too much of that and put it on his shoulders. I've always said and I said to Robbie and I said to everybody, there is no one person that makes it, makes the success happen, there is no one person that makes it fail. And when we work together, we win together and lose together. So I hope that that experience last year and everything that we went through only made it stronger. During the off-season, everybody had a great attitude toward getting this season started. If you end the season with things kind of falling off and things not going well, it makes it really hard for those guys over the off-season to build all these new cars and to get pumped up and get ready for the next year."

"You're seeing more guys win but not as many guys win multiple races. So to me, that says how competitive it is and how difficult it is to win and there is never a time any luster is taken off winning a Winston Cup race. It's special and everybody knows it. When it's your 13th win of the season, I can tell you there is not quite as much luster on it as there was on the first couple. I think the trend that we are seeing just goes back to this whole track position thing"

"I look at this event, the most die-hard fans that you have in the country, they are here. You've got to remember what they're going through to get here. They are traveling for long distances. It's cold. They made it a little easier on them in some ways where they don't have to bear some of the temperatures and sleep out on the sidewalks like they did a few years ago but still these are real die-hard fans. Anybody, that would come to an event like this, travel long distances and sit up there, you know, and wait to get an autograph of their favorite driver, obviously, they're a big, big fan."

"For me that's a great thing. To be able to experience that from my side and maybe try to go back to some memories of mine when I waited at Indianapolis for Rick Mears' autograph and finally got it; how much that meant to me. So, it's good for us to try to put ourselves in other peoples' shoes and recognize how special it is and how much it means to them. We are very fortunate to have people to come out and support us as drivers, our sponsors, our team and the entire sport.

"There are always things they do to try to keep the competition level. Whether you are a new guy or old guy, there are always things to adjust to. They have to change with the times, keep up with what the drivers are asking for and with what the fans are asking for and of course putting on a great show which is what Winston Cup racing is all about."

"It's just like anything else in racing, you have to be open-minded to adapt from it, to learn from it and just ask questions. Whether it's easier for the young guys to do that or tougher for the older guys because it's a different way of life for them, I don't know. It used to just be them and the stopwatch. Now you can say that some of the engineers, they bring up a lot of ideas about the car. Of course you have to AB everything and that is test it one way and then back it up again. It's a process that everybody is going through and it's easy for everybody to learn if you put your mind to it."

"So with the pressure of obviously living up to the expectation of the previous year will be a new element because I haven't had that opportunity yet. So it's a challenge. I'm looking forward to it. It will be a lot of fun to be able to have that limelight, so to speak. But it's a matter of being able to produce results. You got to go out there and be competitive. There's different types of tensions that pull you in directions. There are things I haven't seen before and I am not familiar with; you have to roll with the punches. Being a rookie in Winston Cup racing is probably the most treacherous, the most mind-boggling situation that one individual can go through. So this is a new element where you have to continue to strive forward and to be one of the forces to recon with in Winston Cup. There's a lot of pressure that comes with it."

"I know I got Richard Petty, David Pearson and Cale Yarborough, I got their autographs when I was growing up. Your expectations when you meet people like that are -- just -- you sit in line for a long time and when you get up there you want their autograph and you are excited to be there. You are excited to get their autograph and take it back and cherish it. I found my Harry Gant souvenir I got in '93 or '94 for his final ride. Now, if I would have brought it, I would have had him sign it for me today. But I didn't bring it. When I was growing up, there were people that I would get autographs from; it's always a good feeling that you go out there and stand in line, the guy appreciates it and you take it home and your dad says, we will put this in a plaque for you. So we will save it. It's always a neat feeling. I appreciate what they do. I appreciate what the fans do because they have been standing outside in the cold all night long and all morning long. And to have the patience to sit there for that long a time for them is more than me having patience signing all of that stuff. I think, they are waiting for that one moment to tell you something or ask you to do something for their kid or something like that. I try to make it as special as you can for them because that goes a long way.

"It does sound different. Those guys have racing in their blood and they come from great racing backgrounds. They will be great racecar drivers in the Winston Cup Series, I'm sure. It is different. But I know when they put their helmet on they are like me. It's a different series but they still do the same thing on race day, drive that race car and try to win and do the best they can to have the best day and the best strategy and best results for their team. It is a little different name-wise, but it will bring a lot more to the sport than, say, if they were not here."

"That's why they call it testing, it's not qualifying. If we were all qualifying down there it would be different. I don't know where we will end up. I know that we've got what we got. The guys have worked hard in the motor room, in the fab shop, built cars right and left, new Chevrolets, and when we go back down there we will be competitive. That's all we can ask for because it's tough. Like I said a while ago, there is only a little bit between all of the cars. It's not much. If you build the right car, you will have a good one. If you don't you are going to suffer through the week. Hopefully we'll have it all dialed in. I'm looking forward to it."

"Yes, I was a slow learner, very conservative because of the things I had done in the past, and it's hard to have a lot of success in some tracks and say okay, that's not the way you need to do it any longer. But I have been believing in the computer more and more. At the end of the year I was exclusively using it real hard. I ran real good with it ? second in Phoenix we almost won. We had good runs in Homestead only to have a problem with the little wreck. Long story short we have really good engineers now. I have been used to making the calls from the seat of my pants my whole career. I definitely changed and definitely paying a lot more attention to that. And using what Ryan is doing on his test sessions to our advantage and he is doing the same in what we are doing."

"I probably learned more from their engineering team than he learned from me because they started off with a goal in mind, and that was they are basing everything off of the computer. Basically everything off of a number and I based everything off the seat of my pants. At the end of the year I was coming closer to those guys. I'm never going to be totally confident in everything it does, but I am getting a lot of my stuff off of the computer. Computer can't sense temperature changes, tire wear, a rough racetrack, a lot of things like that. Nowadays about every single team has access to that stuff. What makes it more successful from team to team is the people you hire that can understand that information and translate it into the right springs and shocks and stuff. I learned more from them than they learned from me."

"We don't have to answer the question of can we win a championship and can we overcome the adversity issue, I think we have answered those questions to everybody. I told the guys, you know, it's my goal to win the Winston Cup Championship two years in a row? Absolutely. Number one goal is to have fun this year. I have had more fun leading up to the season over the winter than I've had in a long time. Probably best prepared to go out and start racing again. This is the first good year I feel ready and prepared to go back racing."

"I challenge everyone of you guys, go spend one solid week, seven straight days at a Winston Cup shop and leave on Thursday and go follow the crews around and you do that for one week and then follow a driver around for one solid week and then come write your stories. But I challenge every one of you to do that. Take two weeks out of your schedule. If publications or whatever are having problems with expenses for a week, I will help out a little bit if that's what it takes. If you could follow what a crew guy does for seven days straight and what a driver does seven straight days, I think you guys would understand more and the fans would as well. You guys are our direct link to the race fans and if you guys don't understand how do we expect the race fans to understand."

"Don't sit here and tell me that you guys exactly know what goes on in the garage area and what it takes to be a Winston Cup driver or crew. None of you. I was a Busch car national driver and I thought I had all of the answers before I got here and thought I was prepared. Boy did I find out that I was wrong. Four years learning I'm still learning and still trying to adjust to it. I think it's something that NASCAR looked at really hard. I think they've tried to find a common ground for the drivers and crews and race fans. They have done a good job.

"One thing I always said, I will never ask anybody to lie for me or cover up anything I do. If I did something stupid, say I did it. But you don't have to write that I did something stupid for the next eight months. It happens one time and it is over with until I do the next stupid one. Once you write about it one time, be done with it. That's the one thing that disappointed me about what you say or what you do because nobody will ever leave it alone. I have already answered questions this year about battling the adversity last year; what are we going to do this year? I will probably do two or three stupid things this year just like I've done all three years I have been in Winston Cup Racing. I am a human being just like everybody else. We all make mistakes."

"But be fair with us about it. If you are going to crucify us, well, listen, we have to do what we have to do as drivers to protect our race teams and sponsors to where we get by and we give you the same. If you are fair about what you write each week it leads us as drivers to feel a little more open and not be so reserved about what we say. We will give you fair comments if they are reported that way.