More news from Travis Pastrana - Two part interview with ESPN X-Games.com - Talks about the layout of the team & a possible 3rd driver!!!
Travis Pastrana has to be the hardest working man in show business. His schedule during the past few years became more and more hectic as a freestyle motocross rider, then a rally driver and the owner and performer on the Nitro Circus tour and TV show.
Over the past couple of seasons, Pastrana has also dabbled in the sport of NASCAR, but this year he decided to jump into NASCAR with both feet and became a driver for legendary owner Jack Roush's Roush-Fenway Nationwide team. Even with this frenetic schedule, he has decided to run another year in the Global Rallycross Championship season. I got a few moments between car rides to talk 2013 with
No. 199, who revealed a new technical partner for his GRC team.
Pastrana was so informative we've decided to split the interview into two parts. Here's Part 1: (Part 2 to come on Friday)
XGames.com: So 2013 looks like another busy year for you. What are you looking forward to in GRC?
Pastrana: Driving GRC with heroes like Petter Solberg! He signed the hood on my first-ever rally car that I raced and I still have that cut-out piece that he signed from my crashed hood hanging on my wall at home. There's just so many of the WRC [World Rallycross Championship] guys coming over and it's an awesome opportunity. And to have X Games doing four stops, to have this opportunity, even though I am definitely full time and racing 34 rounds of NASCAR this year, this is something that, definitely, I can't give up. The cars are awesome, the competition is awesome, and it's a lot of fun.
Dodge race fans, please pay attention to these next set of questions - IMPORTANT sections in BOLD type!
So what's the structure of your GRC team coming into this year?
The structure of the team is Bryce Menzies is our No. 1 driver. He is going to drive every round.
I am team owner, which means
I get to drive whenever I want [laughs]. So we're running two cars every race and I'm driving as much as I possibly can. There's a couple that we're actually going to be taking flights to and Bryce, he's awesome, and his dad is really helping out to get private jets from here to there.
We might even get someone else to qualify the car in a few places that I have two races, but any time that I can physically make it, without a teleport, from where I am to the start of the race: I will be there.
If you are not in that second car do you put someone else in there?
"Yes, there's actually three guys we are talking to right now that are all pretty eager to find out who's in. So it depends on what round and what our sponsors say."
"We've kind of got names and there's guys that I would like to put in. But as a team owner it also comes down to a little bit of business because we are looking for a guy that can either get out there and win or bring some decent exposure and media attention, which is obviously what everyone is looking for, but we're NOT looking for a consistent guy for a championship. " (HUH, WHAT! You kidding me? ????)
"We have that with Bryce, who I think has learned a lot. There's no one that I have ever worked with that is more of a sponge than Bryce Menzies. He listens to everybody, he tries everything and takes what works. He comes in and he's very smooth and very consistent, but with these cars you have to be aggressive, man. You have to stomp straight line braking, pitch the thing in the corner and straight acceleration. He's used to kind of arcing everything in and just having almost like a road car line. So learning from what he has done with the rally car I'm excited to actually race short course racing again and try his technique" [laughs].
So your team has a new technical partner for this year?
"Yes it does. I shouldn't say it held us back last year, but we didn't really get a lot of testing at areas that we thought were good. You know, we had a lot of parking lot stuff -- or what felt like parking lots last year -- and this year the courses should be different and there should be a lot more dirt."
"Some courses might be mostly tarmac and some almost all dirt is what I hear. So with Dirtfish Rally School not only do we have our cars up there [Snoqualmie, Wash.], but any time we want to go drive -- and for me I have not had a lot of time in the last two years on the all-wheel-drive stuff -- it's awesome to go up there and drive."
"They were laughing, but last time I was there I was like "Dude, I want to go through the school. I want to learn" and they were like [laughs], "Why?"
"I can learn anything, and it has been great because you know Bryce went up there for a week and just worked with their instructors.
Bryce could probably beat most of their instructors in a head-to-head event, but there was a lot of stuff that he was doing that is, you know, not right for rally and that he could be doing better. I think it has been really great for both of us who are not full-time rally guys."
So somebody could sign up for Dirtfish school and find themselves desk-to-desk with you when they get up there?
[Laughs] "Yeah, it happened all last week and it will happen next week as well."
Back in New Hampshire last year you were talking to me about the challenge of changing from one style to another style of racing. These days you are predominantly a NASCAR driver, but what's it like to have to, on the same weekend, jump out of a car where you are driving that oval and then get into the GRC car?
"It's actually a lot more different than I had thought. Last year the only race we won, I ended crashing out of the NASCAR race [laughs] so it gave me a little more time to compute what I had to do for the rally."
"You know, I always said if you can drive one thing you can drive whatever -- it doesn't matter, but all-wheel-drive is like motocross. It is all about aggression, you are hard into the corner, brake hard, accelerate hard. When in doubt -- throttle out, kind of deal. It's an aggressive form of racing. NASCAR, the speeds are so much higher you're constantly on the edge. Such minimal, minimal input into the wheel. You're just barely sliding all the way and if you ever start sliding too much, with just how the cars are set up, it's really hard to catch. There's no handbrake, you're not usually hard on the brakes."
"Everything is very smooth and very, very subtle. So I had a really hard time last year -- not necessarily going from racing one to racing the other, but the qualifying. Usually you would go practice one and then practice the other, then you would qualify in one and qualify in the other."
"The biggest trouble for me was just to jump in on that first lap of NASCAR and then that first lap of qualifying for GRC, you had to drive completely different and that had to be your fastest lap. It's something that the NASCAR guys had definitely brought to my attention -- just how I qualified when I raced the GRC were all my worst and all my worst NASCAR races."
"Also with the GRC after NASCAR -- like in Vegas -- it sounds stupid, but when you are in the car for that long, mentally you are really exhausted. So I went in and I [took the joker lap twice] pulled a "Dave Mirra" [laughs]. Something that I pride myself on is taking the joker [the one-time-only short- or long-cut lap in GRC racing] when it is going to benefit me most and making those split second decisions and I was just slow mentally. It's a challenge."
Part 2 of this interview to come on Friday!
