Dover, Ricky Stenhouse, Darlington discussed on NASCAR America
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The Dale junior download. You're both you're both grimacing over here. Make sure you want to catch it. Tomorrow, 5 p.m.. You're still grimacing Jeff. Come on. We told him, hey, man. When you go to that, do that. Download is like true serum. All that stuff is still flying out. And the final Supercross race of the season Saturday on CNBC, you can relax now. Thank you. Yeah, but you want to hear those stories thinking of a guy on motorcycles, Ricky Stenhouse junior started on motorcycles way back in the day. Currently though, he is in a truck because I tornado just went through the farm. Everybody okay? Stenhouse at the Stenhouse house? It did not go through. Our farm, but near the farm. Less than a mile, less than a mile down the road, I guess I said a tornado touched down. So we don't have any power at the ranch right now. So we came to the other side of mooresville to grab some food and then I remembered dang, I gotta do this show, but luckily we weren't at home because I didn't have Wi-Fi anyway, so better service over here. That's awesome, man. Hey, congratulations on the terrific finish on Sunday, second for you guys at Dover. How needed was that finish for you guys at JTG Doherty racing? It was very much needed. Obviously, anytime you get a good run like that, have an opportunity to chase a leader down, especially at a place like gover, always build a lot of confidence in the team. You know, us as a team, we felt like, you know, there's been a handful of races where we've had good speed, just nothing to really show for it, and then you put three short tracks where we've really struggled on top of it, and I feel like, you know, that really makes the taste and look like a bad start. So, you know, we felt like we've had some speed. We finally were able to put it all together on a track that has some speed. Which makes us look forward to, you know, what's coming with Darlington and Kansas coming up next. So we still got some work to do, but you know the short tracks or something that we got to get a handle on. So Ricky, you guys go the Daytona 500, running really well, shot to win the thing. Get wrecked really late. And then from there, it just seemed like you had not been able to keep your momentum back. You go this weekend and run really well. What is the key to keeping everybody pumped up? Keeping yourself pumped up so that you can go and just fight through a tough start of the year. Well, I think that's kind of the culture that we have at JTG Doherty racing is just everybody's buckled down. We're a lot of good racers, a lot of hard racers and, you know, they see the speed that we've had at certain racetracks and I think that bumps them up. They know that I really liked Dover and everybody's tuned in when, you know, we're working on new setups and have meetings and, you know, it keeps everybody pumped up, but, you know, obviously when you come off a second place finish, that was huge momentum for everybody in the shop to show up Monday. You know, they watched a race Monday from the shop and I'm sure they got a little more work done. Monday afternoon after that finish. So we got a lot of good racers and, you know, it's tough to beat, you know, good momentum, but it's hard to put all that together. So we got Darlington this weekend that we're really focused on, feel like we can carry that momentum that we had. So Ricky, we got a couple of folks who have called in to chat with you. So we'll start with James in New York. James you're on with Ricky Stenhouse junior, go ahead. How are you doing there, Ricky? Good, how are you? Feeling pretty good. I wanted to ask, after your second place finish at Dover, what have you learned going into Darlington this weekend, which is a track similar to Dover? Yeah, I mean, the high speeds and how banking is definitely, you know, lend yourself to, I guess, the same philosophy of a setup. We're definitely going to have some differences in setup, but you know, for us, it's just, you know, trying to get something close and, you know, I got to some simulator work, I got to do tomorrow and hopefully we can get that dialed in. We felt like we had a really good simulator test before we went to Dover and, you know, you got to start close and practice. You only got 15 minutes before you got to go qualify and that's kind of the key to a successful weekend is unloading where you need to be. So sim session I have tomorrow is going to be important, but it'll be, it'll be, we got some good notes from Dover. Hey, Ricky, you said finishing second at Dover, you guys were finally able to put a race together. And that's exactly what chase Elliott said as well. Like for the first time all season, they executed the whole way, put a whole race together in one. So for you, for your team, what was the key? I know it was a tire management race. Was it a caution following the right time? Was it managing strategy? Well, what did you guys do to be able to put a full race together for the first time this year? I feel like for us, it all started, like I said, the simulator test we had a good test there. Showed up, practice. It drove similar to the simulator. And so we started making a few adjustments and, you know, felt like we were happy with the speed. And then when we dropped the green flag on Sunday, I was like, wow, this thing's really good. So from then on, it was, you know, let's pit with the leaders. Let's not do anything crazy. We had really good pit stops all day. We didn't speed on pit road. Our tire management was really good. My car was good on the long run. We didn't have any tire issues. Which, you know, let us just do normal stops and do everything normal. We had a good race car, which makes up for a lot of issues as well. So, you know, for us, it was just, you know, staying within our limits and not pushing the car too hard. And having those good pit stops and Darlington's a long range, a lot of pit stops, a lot of car management, how to keep it out, keep it off the wall. Don't worry your tires out. So it'd be similar. So Ricky just real quick, Jeff rodd point earlier. It's going to be a bit of a learning curve for drivers this weekend, less grip with this race car. So how will this car fare at Darlington you think? Talking to a few other guys that did the test. You know, the one and two is fast as ever. Sketchy with the new car, you're not sure exactly when it might step out on you. Which has been kind of the theme, I feel like for this race car, especially on the faster race tracks we go to. But then three and four is where I feel like is going to be the biggest difference that, you know, the fans are going to see in us drivers with the downshifting that we're capable of doing with this new car, you know, three and four, Jeff knows you were always looking for a little bit better drive up out of the corner. And so now we can downshift when you run that bottom lane in three and four. And so that'll be something totally different for us that we haven't done at Darlington and I don't know if it'll take the high line away or not. All right bud, we all enjoy dinner and glad the tornado didn't actually hit the ranch. That's good stuff, man. We'll see you in Darlington, okay? Thank y'all.