KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 M&M’s Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing 
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How did the two-car tandem draft feel with the new NASCAR rules? “Today with the new rule package and everything for the cars it certainly changed it a little bit, not a whole lot. There’s some different elements — the drivers really have to work hard trying to make sure that you stay connected and that you can get air into the intake for the radiator. Other than that, it’s kind of good just to get back in a race car and get back to the feeling of everything.”
What will it be like not to have communication with your teammates in the draft? “It’s going to be a lot more difficult. So far here at the test they’ve allowed us at least to talk to each other. Coming down to race time, we’re not supposed to. It’s definitely going to make it challenging. You’re going to have to go through talking to your spotter, your spotter talking to his spotter, his spotter talking to him so there’s too many different channels that you have to go through to get the communication going.”
DAVE ROGERS, crew chief, No. 18 M&M’s Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
How did the new NASCAR rules affect the draft? “Today was a good example that you can’t unlearn things that you learned in the past. Everyone in the garage area learned that the fastest way around here is to have two cars hooked up bumper-to-bumper and go. We’re never going to forget that. I know NASCAR is working really hard at making some new rules to bunch us back up, but as racers we’re going to take whatever route is the fastest — that’s the name of the game. Right now it still looks like two cars tied up is faster than a pack is going to be. The rules are going to have impact. Cars can’t hook up as long, they can’t stay nose-to-tail as long as they used to and when they do stay nose-to-tail for a longer time then the guy in the back has to pull further to the outside of the guy leading. You will see a different style race in February based on the rule changes, but you’re still going to see a bunch of racers try to hook up nose-to-tail.”
How long could the cars stay hooked up in the draft? “With the rule changes that NASCAR made, they really tied our hands. You can only stay hooked up bumper-to-bumper, center line to center line a half to three-quarters of a lap. So NASCAR accomplished their goal there. You can go longer when you pull out to the side. If you pull far enough out you can ride there all day. The more you pull out, the longer you can ride there, but the slower you are. If you need more speed you’re going to pull in center line to center line, if you need to stay cooler longer then you’re going to get that grill opening exposed to clean air. Drivers are going to have their hands full trying to figure out what they need to do and when they need to do it — and when do you lay all the cards on the table.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 20 Home Depot/Dollar General Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
How did the two-car tandem work with you and Kyle Busch? “Oh man, we we’re pushing like crazy. It was alright. It was okay. We’re just working with what we need to do to try to be able to do it again with the rules changes and stuff like that. It’s made it super hard. It works good in practice right now, but when we get a bunch of cars around us in a racing situation, it’s probably not going to work as good. We’ll kind of see what happens. I wish we could get a lot of cars out there and I think that will be happening in the next couple of days, maybe tomorrow. I’m sure there will be a lot more cars out their drafting. Hopefully, something like that happens and it comes along good and we’ll have a better read than where we are at. We’re trying some things — trying to keep our car as cool as we can, some handling things, getting pushed and stuff like that.”
What do you anticipate in a big group? “I wish we got more cars out there today to know for sure, but I really think that we’re not going to be pushing as much. I think there will be a little bit of pushing and I think there will be a lot of old school draft, or whatever you want to call it. I think a lot of people are going to save it until the end and a lot of people won’t be able to do it for a very long time. I think it’s going to kind of look like the races when we first started to figure out how to do this two-car draft and only some people were doing it and some other people were just doing the regular draft. All that is probably going to look similar to that than what we had before.”
What are your thoughts on eliminating the in-race communication between drivers? “I’m hoping they change that back, because it ain’t going to pretty if we can’t talk to each other.”
JASON RATCLIFF, crew chief, No. 20 Home Depot/Dollar General Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
How was your first day of testing at Daytona? “It went good. We started off just making some single car runs and felt like we found a few things. We found some speed. Our drafting stuff — the biggest thing with the rule changes that NASCAR has come out with this year and just trying to figure that out and see how it’s going to affect our cars cooling wise, the spoiler is a lot smaller and just working through some stability things and trying to get the drivers comfortable to where they can draft. The thing we don’t know yet is when you get 15 or 30 cars out there together, that’s what we’re trying to prepare for. Until you do it, you really don’t know what you’ve got. We learned some things there, we made a lot of chassis adjustments and obviously going through the new EFI (Electronic Fuel Injection) stuff and trying to get familiar with that. It was a good day. We’ve got a couple more days here and I think we’ll learn a lot.”
Is there a bigger risk with the two-car tandem with the new rules? “There is because you’re cutting it way too close. You can stay together, but you have to sacrifice speed to do it. You have to tuck out and get some air on the nose and as you do that you continue to slow the car down. Again, when you get seven or eight groups out there doing that it’s going to be a different ball game. It will be interesting. Hopefully, tomorrow we will get more guys out there drafting and get some more tandems out there and see how it works out. One time there we got three cars — all three Joe Gibbs (Racing) cars out there just to see how that would work out and it was okay. The speed wasn’t there. You have to weigh it all out and by the time you do the swap every two or two-and-a-half laps then you figure all that in — we’re just trying to weigh all our options and go back and lay it all out on the table and see what’s best.”
What do you think we will see in the race in February? “I think you’re going to see bigger packs just because guys can’t stay tucked up like they could before. The cars are going to get too hot. Today we were able to communicate fairly well, but I think they’re talking about taking some of the communication away between the drivers — for safety reasons. A lot of times you get a lot of chatter and you don’t really know who to listen to and who not to listen to. NASCAR is looking at that and so that’s something we have to think through as well, but I think it will be more packed up. You’ll see two-car tandems, but they’re not going to be driving away from the rest of them like we’ve seen in the past.”
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FedEx Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
How was the afternoon test session? “It was good. It was good to get back on track and get the emotions and all going again. It takes a while after you sit out for a while to kind of get back in the rhythm and things.”
How long can maintain the two-car tandems? “Just about two laps really was the max for us. We couldn’t do much more than that, but we’re on the verge of being able to use it and not use it and we’re kind of in between, so I think if it stays this way it could be make for a lot of accidents during the (Daytona) 500. It’s kind of uneasy running that speed with two cars draft”
CLINT BOWYER, No. 15 5-Hour Energy Toyota Camry, Michael Waltrip Racing How was the car after you got back on the track? “We got her straightened back out and she’ll be fine. We’ll get back out there drafting and looking forward to that. Just had to make sure that the car didn’t knock any speed off it, but it’s just fine.”
Is the two-car tandem riskier with the new rules changes? “The reward is worth the risk, unfortunately, and when you have that situation you’ve got to go out and do it. We got bit, but we’ll learn from it and we’ve got to learn some more tomorrow.”
Source: Toyota Motorsports, Press Release
