JTG owner Daugherty finds humor in Allmendinger’s road course pressure
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A lot of NASCAR is about proving you have what it takes to run with the elite. Drivers can spend an entire career in search of that one win to validate their spot in the Sprint Cup Series garage.
That’s exactly what it felt like for AJ Allmendinger, driver of the No. 47 JTG Daugherty Racing Chevrolet, leading up to his first win of his Cup career at Watkins Glen International last season.
“You can run up front, but if you don’t have that win, you’re just looked at differently,” Allmedinger said at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour presented by Technocom. “All it takes is that one win to get in and your name is no longer talked about.
“But just to get a win, and really our base group has stayed the same, so we’re a family. We’ve won a race together now. You can’t it away and it just gives us confidence to go want to win more and I think we can, it’s just going to take a lot of work. We’ve gotten better in the offseason, as I’m sure everybody has said. We’ll see once we unload at Daytona and really unload at Atlanta and the season really kicks off, but I feel good about what we’ve done.”
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While the JTG Daugherty team may have made improvements in the offseason, it was announced on Monday that they won’t be able to demonstrate their progress at the Sprint Unlimited race at Daytona International Speedway.
“In mid-December NASCAR changed the rules regarding Sprint Unlimited eligibility,” JTG Daugherty Racing team owner Tad Geschickter said in a statement released by the team.
“We were not qualified for that race until NASCAR’s decision to expand the field stating all 16 drivers who qualified for the Chase were eligible. We had already budgeted for our 36 points paying races. There was not ample time for us to secure additional sponsorship and prepare for the race without compromising our Daytona 500 preparation.”
Moving forward, it’s no longer about securing that first win, but maintaining and continuing success into the new season.
“I think for year two (of the new Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup format), we still expect to win and get in,” No. 47 crew chief Brian Burns said. “We’d like to say that running consistent all year long — let’s say something bad happened at the Glen or a track where we were expected to win — I’d like to say we made it in on points as well, to be a consistent team like that.
“To get into the Chase is great; to compete and run well in the Chase is another step that we’re working on getting towards and that’s just being consistent everywhere we go. We don’t just want to show up and have people talk about us at Watkins Glen, saying this is the team to beat. We want to go to every track and say this is a team that could win at every track we show up at, and that’s our goal.”
Allmendinger’s win at Watkins Glen in August last year put the one-car team into the Chase field for the first time in the organization’s short history and from there it was a learning experience for the new title contenders.
“What we’ve learned is that we’re not as good as we thought we were,” Daugherty said. “We captured thunder on a weekend in Watkins Glen and got a little bit ahead of ourselves and then got our butts kicked a lot from there forward. So we’ve got to, no matter what happens, we’ve got to bounce back every weekend regardless.”
While making the Chase can create daunting pressure for drivers throughout the season, continuing to cultivate road course success is another heavy load to carry. But Daugherty explains that he feels stress-free when it comes to racing on a road course.
“I never feel any pressure, and that’s too bad because I know AJ is drinking Pepto-Bismol,” Daugherty joked. “I love it, I think we’re gonna kick everybody’s behind. I tell everybody … I go through the garage, I tell Jimmie Johnson, I tell (Clint) Bowyer, and I tell Jeff Gordon, I tell all of them, ‘We’re gonna kick your butt.’
“The week before we went to Watkins Glen I went down the line to every man … I told Jimmie, I told Jamie McMurray, I told Clint, ‘We’re going to wax your behind at Watkins Glen.’ Now AJ was not really happy with me for doing that, but I don’t have to drive a race car, all I do is talk. So I don’t feel any pressure.”
For Allmendinger, he knows that 2015 is about carrying the confidence he found last year into every race of the upcoming season.
“There’s no more pressure than what I put on myself,” Allmendinger said. “I expected to go out there — whether it be Sonoma or Watkins Glen — and be one of the cars to beat. Now that we’ve got a victory (at Watkins Glen) it feels no different to go there and still be one of the cars to beat. I’ve got confidence in myself, no matter what type of race track that I’m on. It’s just fun now to be able to go back to a race and be the defending champion and to finally have that in my Sprint Cup career.”