By Roy J. Akers – WWW.skyviewsports.net
Brooklyn, Mich. — With media availabilities happening, we speak with Nashville winner Ryan Blaney, second-place finisher Ryan Hocevar, Daniel Suarez, and Erik Jones. The questions and responses are interesting.
Ryan Blaney on rough racing
IN YOUR MIND WHAT IS THE LINE BETWEEN AGGRESSIVE, CLEAN DRIVING AND RECKLESS DRIVING. AND DO YOU THINK THE ATTENTION HOCEVAR HAS BEEN GETTING IS GOOD FOR THE SPORT? “Everyone’s line is different. I can’t really speak for anybody else. My father raised me. He raced for a long time, so I had that going for me that he was able to teach me the do’s and don’ts. I’ve been chewed out a lot when I was younger for doing the wrong thing – at being overly aggressive and costing somebody else. My dad chewed my ass out when I did that. I did it a few times in late models when I was like 13 and he said it right. He set the line. He said, ‘This is wrong. You do not race this way. This is just how it is.’ It was one of those situations where I’m racing someone hard and I made a mistake. I slipped up and I spun him out. It wasn’t intentional, but even those mistakes dad would really make me clean up right away. That’s just how his dad raised him. I guess in my mind, hard racing is fantastic. Everyone races hard. Contact is going to happen. I think it’s an issue if it happens repetitively, like a lot. I think that’s when it starts becoming an issue. It’s like, ‘Do you learn from your mistakes?’ You can say you’re sorry all you want, but if you don’t learn from them and make a change, then everyone thinks you’re lying and you don’t feel sorry about that.
Carson Hocevar on possibly being the next Intimidator
Question by Steve Sweitzer of the www.theLascopress.com – Carson, are you the new ‘Intimidator’ and do you feel comfortable with that characterization?
“I mean, if I win seven championships… But, you know, if you’re going to get compared to one guy, that’s the guy, endorsements from Dale Jr. and everybody. But I don’t think I’m ‘new’ anything, you know, I think I’m ‘new’ me. Everything about me is real… like I’m not trying to play a part, try to fit a role or trying to pretend to be anybody. But, you know, it’s for everybody else to decide on what they get and perceive of me. I know who I am and, you know, ultimately, I want to be known as me and sometimes that leads to comparisons.”
Ryan Blaney – On the in season $1 million dollar tournament
Question by Roy J. Akers of www.skyviewsports.net THE IN-SEASON TOURNAMENT IS GOING TO START SOON. DO YOU THINK GUYS WILL PAY ATTENTION TO THAT ONCE IT STARTS AND COULD IT DEVELOP INTO SOMETHING MORE? “It could. It definitely could. I think it’s a unique thing to have in the middle of the year. It’s definitely gonna be something on people’s minds starting this week. The qualifiers are this week and it goes for three weeks, and then we get going. I think it’s in the back of people’s minds. I wasn’t sitting around this week like, ‘It’s in-season tournament time.’ You just try to run the best you can and then when I think you get into that five-week stretch of the tournament, you’re gonna be aware of who you’re racing like, ‘Who am I up against this week?’ You’re definitely gonna be aware of that because there is a lot of money and pride if you win the thing. It’s like a five-week All-Star Race, so you’re always gonna be thinking about that. You could go the easy route and say, ‘If I just win all five races, I’m gonna beat everybody and win the deal.’ I guess that’s a mindset you can have for sure, but you’re gonna have teams thinking about it in the back of their head. Are they gonna jeopardize their race because of that? No, I don’t think so, but it’s definitely something we’re gonna think about through those five weeks and honestly these next three of seeding yourself. It’s like the March Madness bracket. You want to do well to seed yourself against an easier opponent, but it could be big. It could grow. I think it’s a great idea. Why not try it? You’re still gonna have racing, it’s just gonna be a race within the race between all the guys.”
YOU COULD SEE UPSETS AND HAVE LOWER SEEDS GO THROUGH. “You have that all the time. The first one is in Atlanta, so you’re gonna see some upsets there. You could see some big upsets. They knew what they were doing. And then Chicago, so you could see some big upsets in the first couple. I think that makes for drama and it makes for that, so you could see the Cinderella March Madness moments. That’s what we all grew up watching and you’re gonna have it here.”
Daniel Suarez on restaurant recommendations in Mexico
What is going to be your number one recommendation for food next week in Mexico?
“You know, actually, what I would like to do for you guys, I would like to put together a list of five places… five good local places for you guys to try. Tacos, I don’t know if you guys are into seafood or not, but there is an area that they do amazing seafood from the coast of Acapulco.
Actually, as soon as I land, I’m going to go there on Tuesday. As soon as I land there, I already talked to Julia, we’re going to go straight to this seafood place. This seafood place there has been around for like 60 years, and they are like the distributors of seafood in a big part of the city. It’s amazing. I’m going to put a list for you guys together, and I will share it with you guys somehow. There is a couple of good taco places around. I’m going to take my team on Thursday night to one of the taco places. So, yeah, there is a few places out there.”
Erik Jones on the longterm plans of Legacy Motorsports
Question by Roy J. Akers of www.skyviewsports.net – Erik, Jimmie Johnson said at Charlotte that the team is progressing nicely on a timeline set for the team and all three drivers have a top-five finish. Does LEGACY MOTOR CLUB have a game plan on where you want to be now and in a year or so?
“I think we’ve had a timeline the last couple of years and where we want to be as a team. I think that’s probably changed a little bit with last year and the struggles we had, but this year, we’re more on track to be where we want to be. Obviously, the end goal for LEGACY MOTOR CLUB is to be a championship team, right? There’s no other goal than that and obviously, there’s a lot of teams with that goal. But, becoming independent and not having the alliance, that was kind of a step number one, to say ‘look, we want to do this on our own and build this into a top tier program.’ So, it’s a long way to get there, and we have a lot of work to do to get there. We probably should win a race first, but you know the goals are there, and that’s a few years down the road, but I feel like where our performance is at this moment, winning a race in the next 365 days is probably goal number one.”
Carson Hocevar on expectations at MIS
Question by Roy J. Akers of www.skyviewsports.net Coming at the heels of the last three or four races and your 10th place finish last year at MIS, it seems like you’re on a roll. Do you really feel like you’re in a really good place right now as you march toward the playoffs?
“Yeah, our cars are just continuing to get faster obviously. It’s been a lot of fun for me to see how quick Spire can grow and how quick we can get going. It’s just a lot of fun that it’s just continuous progression, right? If it’s one step backwards, we just take two steps forward, and that’s been fun that we can have quick turnarounds and quick improvements. You see little teams, they’ll circle their few tracks a year that they can run good at, and, you know, we’re circling the few tracks that we need to completely wholesale. We don’t really have that too big of a weak spot in our game right now that, you know, we can show up any given week and run really good. We just want to figure out how to be great at all these places.”
Roy J. Akers covers NASCAR for www.skyviewsports.net
