By Sarah Handy, Staff Writer
CONCORD, N.C. — Sarah Handy spoke to the three Front Row Motorsports drivers — David Ragan, Michael McDowell and Matt Tifft — before All-Star Weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Here is what they had to say about leadership, qualifying, the longest race of the year, the Coca-Cola 600 and much more:
This first question is for you David, you’ve been with Front Row on a couple of different occasions, do you feel out of the three of you that you’re more of the veteran leader with Michael, or do you feel that you all lead in your own individual ways?
McDowell: Well, David’s older than I am, that means he’s more of the veteran.
Ragan: Which still floors me, because you wouldn’t think it. I mean looks wise he probably looks a little bit younger, but he acts like he’s sixty, so you wouldn’t believe I’m older than him.
McDowell: He’s got more experience, he’s definitely the leader of the pack.
Ragan: I mean yeah, I feel I’ve been here longer then Michael has and certainly Matt, but Michael’s got a ton of experience in the Cup Series, and racing, in general, we’ve both raced since we were young, and we’ve been in the stock car world for a long time. You know the deal at Front Row, it is like a family business.
Bob Jenkins is a very hands-on owner, invests a lot of his financial dealings in the team, having Jerry Freeze, a lot of our senior management and guys at the shop have been there for a long time. It’s good to know everybody’s personalities, what they like, what they don’t like. I think that helps a little bit. I’ve enjoyed being around multiple times, for multiple years. It definitely feels like my home and a family feel more so than a normal business feel.
(To Matt Tifft) Do you feel like you lean on them for advice with being your first year in Cup?
Tifft: Yeah, absolutely. You know it’s tough the transition from Xfinity to Cup its much bigger than I anticipated. Much more from the competition level. These guys have helped me a lot from the car side, and what are teammates cars are doing, but there’s such a big step up just in the performance side.
You have to execute things a lot better than you can on that side (Xfinity), over there you can have a good car and make up four or five spots on a restart if you wanted too. Here it’s one or two spots because everybody is just so good. These guys are better into that experience in so many different aspects of the racing. For me, just the green flag pit stop sequence, for Xfinity racing you might do that once a month. That’s a big change for me, just getting the rhythm of doing that each and every week.
They just went back to the single-car qualifying. Both you Michael and David had some top-15, top-20 starting spots when it was group qualifying. Do any of you feel a difference in the car now that it’s back to single car?
McDowell: I think that when it was group, it gave us more opportunities to have some better performances because if you timed it right after you got the run and executed it really well you could get a top-10 maybe with a 25th place car.
I like the group qualifying but now the fastest cars will qualify up front but with this package, you can turn your car out and put a lot of speed in it or put downforce in it and make it better for the race. There’s a hybrid of both, so it’s a pretty mix feel. Even at Kansas with single car qualifying some of the best cars in the race didn’t qualify that well. Qualifying is always important, but I think it’s probably less of an indication of how fast someone will be on race day now.
Front Row is considered a small team to most, do you feel that underdog type label should be lifted? Front Row does run three full-time cars in Cup.
Ragan: I don’t like to use the word underdog. We are a smaller team compared to the number of employees and our budget. There’s no secret that Team Penske runs three cars, but they probably have four hundred employees and we have 75 or 80. Yes, in some numbers we are. I think we have great employees, great partners and a lot of upside. I think we are the right size team for the model needs to be in Cup racing.
I think that 400 and 500-employee race teams will be a thing of the past in the next few years. I think the model that Front Row Motorsports has taken, I think that’s something that NASCAR has looked at and I think we’ll use as the model that it needs to be. I think our car owner realizes that and that’s why he’s encouraged by the progress we’ve made over the last four or five years. We are a smaller team compared to our budget and the amount of employees we have. We still have a lot of great people and a lot of cool things going on.
If you guys ever get into one another on the track, not necessarily intentionally. Do you reach out right away to mend things?
McDowell: With each other or with other drivers?
With each other
McDowell: Well, David and I usually ride to the airport together or drive back home.
Ragan: We can’t separate too much.
McDowell: Yeah, usually he’s my ride so you know with teammates I think it’s different. David and I got together at Las Vegas last year, we both crashed. It was one of those things were you just go man we were both racing hard. We didn’t try to run one another over intentionally. I think it would be different if there was a lot of hostility and you ran into each other every week that would probably escalate quickly inside of a team standpoint, especially with the guys.
I think drivers in particular you get run into and you run into people, it happens, it’s part of it, but when your team starts getting fired up about one driver or group constantly crashing into you. I think that puts a lot pressure on the drivers to not let that happen or to make things right. You definitely don’t want that inside of a team. Most of the time you just figure it out quickly.
Say NASCAR comes to each of you individually and asked your opinion on what track you think should be added to the schedule. What would you say?
Tifft: Mine is Road America, which Michael might agree with.
McDowell: I think that would be a good one.
Ragan: I think you’ve got to get rid of two tracks before you can add one. We have too many now. I think Memphis Motorsports Park would be a good track. You know, Iowa for the Cup Series would be good, but you’d have to get rid of one of the Kansas dates or one of the Chicago dates.
It would be hard, which we don’t go to Chicago twice, but you know if you get over 38, 40, 42 races that is way too much. I think Irwindale would be a great track, it’s close to Auto Club Speedway. There’s some good short tracks out there. I think we could add one or two more road courses. Road Atlanta could be a good road course we could go too.
A lot of people I’ve spoken to this weekend have said more short tracks. Do you guys all individually agree that there should be more on the schedule?
McDowell: It depends on which kind of short tracks. I think that Martinsville’s are different then Bristol’s. I think some of those flatter short tracks where body damage and all that stuff isn’t a big deal. You can beat and bang and people aren’t easily offended, but when you go to places like Richmond. You go to other places aerodynamics still matter, so Richmond you can’t race the same as you do at Martinsville and so I’d enjoy going to slower speed, real short tracks, lots of tire fall, wheel spin off the corner
Tifft: A lot with what ARCA schedule does.
(McDowell and Ragan both agreed with what Tifft said)
(Looking at Matt Tifft) I know you’re the youngest on the team, but this question could still apply to you. If you guys could tell a younger self anything what would it be?
McDowell: This is what I get to tell Matt all the time.
Tifft: I think for me; you know the biggest thing in this whole process was just keeping your confidence up but also knowing the highs and lows of the sport. You’ve got to ride the wave somehow, and you can’t get too excited or too down.
Like David said we have a long schedule, if you get too high or too low, you’re going to burn yourself out one way or another. If you get too high on it, you set realistic expectations you’ll only set yourself up for failure there. I think you’ve got to be smart about that and that’s something I’ve learned over the years, you’ve got to be patient, take each week as its own deal and don’t get wrapped up. If you’re in a slump, you can’t just dwell on it. You’ve got to take each week as a new opportunity.
Do any of you have any pre-race superstitions or rituals? Do you do the same thing every week?
McDowell: I don’t do anything like that.
Tifft: I always wear white shoes on race day.
Ragan: Do you really? Why do you do that?
Tifft: I think they look cooler.
(Everyone laughs)
Ragan: I try to eat a good supper and go to bed at a good hour on Saturday night but other than that I don’t do anything.
McDowell: I don’t really believe in lucky shoes or gloves, or anything in your pocket. I feel in this sport you make your own luck by having good cars, good people and you just have to execute. I think Coach Gibbs says it best, the most talented people that he’s ever had whether it be athletes, drivers, are the luckiest and there’s something to that.
Do any of you own any of your own memorabilia?
Ragan: I’ll go first. I have old sheet metal, old driving suits and some old helmets but I don’t know what you’d consider memorabilia.
McDowell: (To David) Do you have any race cars you’ve won with or anything like that?
Ragan: No, I do have some old race cars and three or four from over the years that I’ve been able to keep. I think that’s neat stuff, as far as hats and shirts, absolutely, you could dig through our closet. My parents have kept that stuff, and we give a lot of stuff away. We have so much over the years. I don’t have a lot of it displayed, I think we have a lot of it, I think everybody does, closets full. Michael might get rid of things.
McDowell: Yeah, I’m on the other side. I’m a little bit too OCD for it and I don’t like having stuff in my house, so I get rid of all of it over the years.
Tifft: I could believe it.
McDowell: Every year when the season is over, I take everything that I have that’s racing related and I put it all in a box, I do giveaways, and I start out the year fresh. I don’t like keeping things around. I don’t even have any of my old trophies or anything like that. I got rid of all of it.
Tifft: I have some old sheet metal just from cars that I’ve liked, wrecked or had a story to it. I don’t have too much but the one thing I did keep was when I was little, I use to collect die cast cars. When my first die-cast came out, I did keep that one because it was pretty cool for a full circle moment.
Otherwise, like they said you get to the end of the year and you’ve got a bunch of stuff to giveaway. For me going to a different manufacturer, you’ve got to pretty much junk everything. As Michael said, you’ve got to start fresh somewhere. Definitely, your clothes you wear you’ve got to get rid of.
How do you all feel about the 600 next week, it’s such a long race, how do you stay focused?
McDowell: Yeah, you know we just kind of take it one week at a time. With this package (The All-Star Package) being different then next week. You used to use the Open and The All-Star to kind of gear up for the 600. You still do a little bit but with the package being so different, not a lot will translate so I haven’t really started thinking about the 600 yet.
It’s a long day, it’s a fun day, it’s a hard race and the transition from day to night. There’s so much that happens over a long period of time in those 600 miles. For Matt, it’ll be pretty cool. I remember my first 600, I got to halfway and I was like you’ve got to be kidding me that this is only halfway. It’s a long day, no doubt about it.