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Texas II winning team post race interview

Ford Racing press release

An interview with Trevor Bayne and Jack Roush and Chuck Norris

Victory lane: race winner Trevor Bayne
Victory lane: race winner Trevor Bayne

Photo by: Action Sports Photography

TREVOR BAYNE – No. 16 Ford. Drive One. Ford Mustang – YOU LED THE FEWEST LAPS FOR A WINNER AT TMS (6). “Normally, you don’t want a record for leading the least laps, but it’s okay when you have a win at the end of it, so I’ll take that. I think Chad will, too, and Jack and everybody else. We’re really excited with this win and the fashion we were able to do it there at the end, to race against Carl Edwards and Denny Hamlin – two of the best drivers and two of the best cars in the series – and be able to get them there. Carl drove me really, really clean there at the end. I was expecting a bit more from him actually, but he did all he could to hold us off, I guess, and still was clean. That was really fun at the end. I can’t describe how this feels to get a win in the Nationwide Series finally and to do it with these guys at a track like Texas, it means a lot to me and it’s my brother’s birthday. I forgot to talk about that earlier, so happy birthday to my little eight-year-old brother.”

JACK ROUSH, Owner – “I couldn’t be prouder. Texas has been real good to us. We won with Jeff Burton here in the inaugural race back in the nineties. That was a wonderful event. The thought that I had when I watched the checkered flag fall and Trevor I said, ‘It’s great to be there for his first win,’ but then I remembered his dad said he had taken him racing since he was five years old and he’d run thousands of races and I bet you obviously remember your two wins from this year with NASCAR, but I bet you don’t know how many times you’ve won in your life, have you?”

TREVOR BAYNE CONTINUED – “I don’t know. It’s somewhere over 400 or so with local events and all that, but I can promise you that these two are the most memorable.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – “That’s great. I’m really proud of Trevor and proud of Chad and proud of the job that Mike Beam and all the guys did to get the cars to have all that speed in them. Doug Yates and the guys did a great job with the engine and, of course, I’m especially happy to be here with Ford Motor Company to win, I think, the first manufacturer’s title in 10 years or so – since 2002.”

CHAD NORRIS, Crew Chief – “We kind of struggled a little bit being tight in the center all day and we worked on the front end there a little bit and I knew it was gonna be a 20 or 30-lap run there, and our car was really good on about 20 laps. The caution that came out there with about seven to go really played in our hands. We tightened the thing up just a little bit, just so we could get going, and the thing really took off and he did a really nice job at the end of the race and just raced his butt off. I can’t be more proud for him and Jack and Ford Motor Company.”

TREVOR BAYNE CONTINUED – CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR YEAR AND WHAT DOES THIS DO FOR YOU AFTER A ROUGH WEEK LIKE YOU HAD AT TALLADEGA? “I don’t know if you could script a story like the year I’ve had. It’s crazy to think only one year ago I was making my first Cup start and to come back here to Texas and get our first Nationwide win, this is a place I’m gonna love from now on. But this year has been a lot of ups and a lot of downs, but I think the people around me and myself, we’ve tried to stay right here the whole time. We’ve tried not to ride it to the top or ride it to the bottom and that’s been important for us – to be able to come back after bad things happen, just like after Talladega with all the negative things that were going on, that was fuel to our fire to be positive and to come out here and show everybody that we’re here to stay and that we can do this and that’s what Chad’s mindset was, that’s what my mindset was, Jack, and everybody around me. We try not to feed off the negative things and we know that we’re gonna be back to a positive day, so, with that said, when we do have good days we do ride that a little bit more. I’m pretty happy to be here and to be in the media center finally for a Nationwide win. It’s a dream come true.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – DO YOU STILL USE THE AUDI WIND TUNNEL IN GERMANY? “We’ve got a moving-ground plane wind tunnel in Concord and we haven’t been to the Audi wind tunnel in two or three years. It helped us a lot until we got the resource close by, but it’s certainly something we look forward to going back and establishing a baseline if we lose our way.”

TREVOR BAYNE CONTINUED – WERE YOU THINKING ABOUT THIS WAS WHERE YOU GOT SICK LAST TIME OR MADE YOUR FIRST CUP START? “Honestly, I didn’t really think about anything except coming here off the momentum we had at Charlotte. We’ve learned so much about our mile-and-a-halfs and the Roush Fenway cars have been so strong, and our Wood Brothers car has been the same way at the mile-and-a-halfs lately, so I was kind of feeding off that coming here, trying to do the same thing that Chad has been working on me to do. He’s had me watching different films and things to work on my driving style a little bit. That’s been important and it’s been applicable to a bunch of mile-and-a-halfs and been able to gain advantages and really work that, so it’s been important to learn at Charlotte and bring that here. Obviously, the sickness does come to mind a little bit when you think about Texas and my first Cup start comes to mind, but I would say more the first Cup start than anything.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – HAVE YOU HAD TIME TO HEAR ABOUT THE PENALTIES TO KYLE BUSCH? “I wasn’t at the truck race last night. I had an engagement that held me away from the race track, so I didn’t see it first-hand. I became aware of it this morning and the buzz in the garage after I had done one interview already. I really wouldn’t care to comment on what NASCAR has done. I think that anybody that wrecks one of these cars or creates a problem after a caution or after a checkered flag really does so at their own peril, and I’m sure NASCAR will do something that’s reasonable in the broad scheme of things.”

TREVOR BAYNE CONTINUED – IS THIS THE FIRST TIME YOU’VE EVER WORN A COWBOY HAT? “I’ve actually worn them before, probably like Halloween when I was five, and I wore one in this morning and they were making fun of it, so I think now I can actually wear it. I didn’t think it would ever look good with a race suit, but I think this one looks okay.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – “Actually, I heard when they presented him with his hat in the winner’s circle that he had planned to buy one if he could, if they were available, but this way he saved that investment.”

TREVOR BAYNE CONTINUED – CAN YOU TAKE US THROUGH THE FINAL RESTART? “Going into the last restart, like Chad said, I knew that our car was gonna be really strong for a short run. We were able to gain three or four spots every single restart all day, and I knew at the end there with us being in fourth position, that was about the number of cars we could pass and we were just able to get a great restart, kind of like the one at Charlotte, where we were able to push Carl out front. And once he got out front, we actually cleared the 18. Had I not cleared the 18, I don’t know that we could have won the race, but, fortunately, we had enough power to get by him and was able to get to the bottom and get on Carl’s left-rear a little bit and get by him. But these kind of restart races, these are the kind of wins you’ve always wanted. As a driver, I remember at Myrtle Beach Speedway when I was probably 15 years old in the Hooters Pro Cup Series, there was a green-white-checker and I started fourth and ended up winning the race, kind of the same way, and that’s one that’s always stood out in my head, so that’s the driver I want everyone to know I can be – is a guy that can go get it done at the end. I’m glad that we were finally able to do that and I know that these guys have been pulling for me all along and it’s cool to finally see that pay off for them.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – ANYMORE CLARITY ON WHAT RICKY AND TREVOR WILL BE DOING NEXT YEAR? “Our programs are not firmed up. We’re working with sponsors to try to make the best offering that we can or the best package that we can, but I really don’t have anything to announce on that. It was another win for the NextGen oil, Valvoline’s new oil, and we’re real excited about that, too. They’ve got an added package for the oil that’s real attractive for us with the NextGen, but Goodyear had a great tire. We had a great engine. The engineering support from Ford was good and without having all those things behind us, we couldn’t have realized the success that we had today.”

TREVOR BAYNE CONTINUED – DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY TO YOUR FANS FROM A SOCIAL MEDIA STANDPOINT? “Well, after Talladega I’m a little scared of Twitter. I got on there and saw what everybody was saying and kind of hurt my feeling a little bit, so I’ve been staying off a little bit. But I’m really excited to have the following that we do have. After Daytona it obviously skyrocketed from 6,000 to around 64,000 now on Facebook and everything, so I really do appreciate the true fans standing behind me all the time. They’re always there to lift me up and encourage me and just keep me going, so it’s great to have any fans and the social media ones are just as important as the people that are here, so it’s been cool to see that grow all year long through the ups and downs and seeing the support that unconditional. That means a lot to me.”

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