Darlington Southern 500 Win Was Big, But Life Hasn’t Changed

Well, a lot has happened since I last wrote. Namely, we won the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway last month.

From the start of this year, I said I felt like we were going to be capable of winning this year; I said that pretty clearly, actually. I didn’t expect it to happen that early, though, and I certainly didn’t expect it at a place like Darlington.

That being said, everything fell in our favor and we had a fast car – we didn’t just luck our way up to the front. We had worked our way up to the front the whole night and had done things right. The irony of it is, we were actually mad when that late caution came out – but the caution is what allowed us to win the race. That was a funny situation for us.

The main thing is, the Darlington win has just changed the confidence of the team. The team has gotten more confidence, I’ve gotten more confidence and our expectations are a lot higher now. And that’s a good thing – that’s what you want, because we know what we’re capable of when we do everything right.

Another thing that’s changed is our goals for this year. Those are completely different now. We’re looking back at some of those races at the beginning of the year going, “Dang it! Son of a gun, we lost points there where maybe we had a part fail or I made a mistake or we got caught up in somebody else’s wreck and we wish we had those back.”

That hurts, because our main goal is now to get into the top 20 since there’s an outside chance that one win could get you into the Chase. But you’ve got to be up there in the top 20 to even have that shot – and we could get another win. I certainly didn’t think we were going to win this early, so later on in the year, we should have an even better shot at winning.

The way these races have started to play out lately, you’re seeing some of the fuel mileage and strategy stuff going on. I think it’s pretty well-documented at this point that if you have a car that’s fast enough and you get clean air at the end of a race, you could be in good shape.

After Darlington, I did quite a bit of interviews. Quite a bit! It was pretty busy. I couldn’t put an exact number on it, but I’d say it’s probably close to 100 in that first week alone. In that week, I didn’t have a free minute. Even though I got a lot of the same questions over and over, I didn’t mind talking about the win.

By the time I got to Dover, I was happy to just have a night to sleep and just chill out. Obviously, though, you want to celebrate a little bit with your friends, so I had that to take care of one night – which seemingly ruined one night and the following day for me!

The three or four weeks after that were extremely busy, though, and even now there’s a lot more stuff we’re included in as a team. It kind of changes your image around the garage and amongst the media. It puts you at another level.

Another change since I last wrote is I’ve bought a home in Colorado. I’ve spent a lot of time out there working on it and getting ready. My fiancee, Megan, is going to come out there with me this week and we’ll get to stay in the house for the first time. My mom is going to come help me out with some of the moving stuff, too.

We’re still going to split our time between Colorado and North Carolina, because all our families are back in North Carolina. But with the Furniture Row Racing shop being in Colorado, it makes sense to spend more time there; plus, I like Colorado.

I’d go out to Colorado on my own, even if there wasn’t racing out there. Fortunately for me, there is a racing reason to go out there – and it’s the team I work for. Quite honestly, if I was ever in position to have a second home, that’s where it would be. Some people like the beach; I like the mountains.

We don’t really know what we’re doing yet with our stuff and how much time we’re spending in each place – we’re just kind of winging it, which is not really my style. I’m a very organized person, like, “This has got to be set in stone.” I like everything to have a rhythm and flow to it.

So this is closest thing I’ve ever done to just going somewhere and not really having a plan or knowing what’s going on. I’ve spent enough time in Denver to know about the area, though; the only thing that might be a little awkward is going to be not having all of our stuff.

At least we’ve got our dogs with us. They’re going to see if they can find some mountain lions to play with at some point.

Going back to the Darlington win though, it’s not life-changing. Whether it’s career-changing, I don’t know. I think once you start winning a little more often, that might be more life-altering than one win.

But I think right now, it was cool for the team to get our first win. And it was cool for me to get my first win.

Ever since Talladega my rookie year, I looked back on that race and wondered if that was going to be my only opportunity. So to capitalize on it at Darlington and make the most of it when it was there, that was probably a bigger deal for me personally: I no longer have to look back on Talladega and go, “What if?”

There’s a lot of great race car drivers who have never won at this level and probably deserved to win at this level. You look at things and think, “What is going to be my mark when I’m done here?” So that was big for me to get a win.