Catchfence

Brian Vickers - Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR)

What is the next step for your team this year?

“I think the next step is the top-five in the points. Last year, we set our goals to sit on a pole, win a race and make the Chase and we accomplished all three of those. We burned ourselves out getting into the Chase because of the mistakes we made early in the season and we had to make up for them. And then by the time we got into the Chase, in a lot of ways we were burned out. We made mistakes in the Chase that cost us a shot at the championship. Can we run for a championship? Absolutely. There were 10 races last year that we collected the most points. But, realistically what is the next step for a team of our age and our maturity is probably a top-five in points. I think if we can repeat what we did last year plus be in the top-five it would be a really good year.”

What is the most important thing about the Chase that fans might not see?

“Managing those emotions and distractions and everything that comes along with being in the Chase. People get to see bits and pieces of it, but then when you add it all together it’s a lot and there’s a lot of added intensity, attention, distractions, media pressure and a lot of different things. The intensity level of the teams, the drivers and everybody within that Chase really kind of goes up once you get into the Chase. That’s something we learned last year. We really kind of burned ourselves out going into the Chase and we were just worn down by the time we started it in a lot of ways as a team. We really have got to learn how to pace ourselves more going into it with the idea of performing better while we are in it. Obviously, you do that and you have to set yourself up early in the season to almost lock yourself into the Chase or be in a good position that you can rest before the Chase which we didn’t do last year and that’s kind of our goal this year.”

Did you do anything over the off-season to stay in shape?

“When I was in Austria for Red Bull we did some snowmobile racing. It wasn’t quite go-karting but it was Snowmobile X. You had a lot of the Red Bull athletes and drivers from around the world and we competed in a snowmobile race. A couple of the Red Bull downhill skiers who used to race snowmobiles obviously won the race which was a bit of an unfair advantage growing up racing snowmobiles, but I had a lot of fun. It was pretty cool. Those snowmobiles really get on with it. There were some jumps in there where we were traveling a good bit through the air, that’s for sure.”

What do you think of the rule changes at Daytona this year?

“I’m looking forward to it. I think it’s good. Last year and the past several years in this sport, we’ve kind of shied away and we’ve gotten more and more conservative and I think it’s the wrong direction. This sport is about energy and intensity. Gladiators are supposed to be driving cars at 200 miles per hour and going into Talladega last year you’ve got a couple guys who were complaining about bumping and quite frankly, we looked like a bunch of pansies. We weren’t even allowed to bump. To me that just seemed weird. The policies going into Daytona this year where it’s kind of a ‘police yourself’ is the way it should be. That doesn’t mean that I want somebody to hit me in the middle of a turn and turn me around.”

How do you stop drivers from bumping you in the corner and wrecking you?

“It is a self-policing policy. If someone wrecks me this weekend at Daytona in the middle of (turns) one and two then I’m going to wreck him next weekend. If somebody hits me too hard and they wreck me then there’s going to be a price to pay. I’m going to wreck them next week. It worked for many, many years. I don’t think it’s something that NASCAR should have to be involved in and if we wreck each other and we all wreck ourselves then so be it. The last thing I want to do is see myself or anyone get hurt but if all you’re worried about is not about racing whatsoever and you just worry about safety then why do we even come here. We should just stay home instead of having a bunch of guys go out there and not pass each other, not race, not bump. That’s not what I came here for. That’s just my opinion.”

How difficult was it to come into the Sprint Cup Series at such a young age?

“It is definitely tough. I think that there’s so much. It’s really not what happens as much on the race track as what happens off the race track. There’s so much to being in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. There’s so much. Any pro sport whether it be the Sprint Cup Series, the NFL, MLB — there’s so much that takes place and so much that happens. You are pulled in so many different directions. It’s being able to manage all of that and all of what happens off of the race track more so than actually just driving the car sometimes. As a young adult that’s difficult to manage sometimes especially without the right guidance and the right person kind of being a mentor to you. I was lucky to have Jeff (Gordon) and Rick (Hendrick) and people to help me along the way, but my philosophy has always been this and if I can do it all over again I probably would’ve waited another year, I would’ve run another year of Nationwide. You can’t really come too late but you can always come too early. So I always caution young drivers that want to move up at a really, really young age and basically tell them that. Rarely do they listen, they want to get here as fast as they can, but that’s the truth.”

Do you think teams should limit what drivers can do away from the race track with the injuries drivers are experiencing?

“That is the one I always go back and forth with. Knock on wood, I haven’t been hurt and I hope I never will be, but there’s always that chance. I can’t see Red Bull ever limiting things. There may be other teams that limit it and some already do to a large degree, but Red Bull is not one of them I can assure you. I don’t want to say this and jinx myself — I really don’t. I try not to be superstitious but when I make comments like this it makes me nervous. The truth is we can get hurt doing anything. The off-weekend when Carl (Edwards) broke his ankle playing frisbee I did a three-day school on super bikes doing 170 miles per hour with my knee dragging on the ground. Arguably going into that off-weekend if you were a betting man the odds were not on me in Vegas. They were 100 percent for Carl (Edwards) because he was just having a friendly game playing frisbee and he ended up getting hurt. So, I guess the point of the story is that can I really hurt myself on that motorcycle? Can I hurt myself skydiving? Can Denny (Hamlin) hurt himself playing basketball? Absolutely. But you can also hurt yourself falling down the stairs. You can also hurt yourself throwing a frisbee. You can’t live your life afraid to do anything because you’re going to be miserable. In anything you do physically active to try to stay in shape so when you get to the race track you’re a better race car driver there’s going to be risks. I don’t care if it’s lifting weights, running on a treadmill, if it’s playing basketball, frisbee golf — there’s always going to be risks. There are risks when you walk down the stairs out of the bus going to practice. I live my life to the fullest extent that I can and I do what I want to do and I love it. I try to take reasonable precautions. I try to be as educated as possible about the activity that I’m doing and I’m trying to do it with the best guys that I can to limit that risk as much as possible, but I’m still going to do it. And if I get hurt, it sucks.”

- Toyota Motorsports, Press Release