MATT DIBENEDETTO – No. 32 Ford Fusion – HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT TEAMS POSSIBLY LOOKING AT OTHER TEAMS’ EFI DATA? “That’s the first that I’ve heard of that. I’d be curious to find out because that could be a lot of interesting information being passed around or looked at.”
IF THAT TURNED OUT TO BE THE CASE WOULD THAT HELP A TEAM LIKE YOURS? “There’s ways that it would help. It wouldn’t do much to make up for the obviously large lack of budget and aerodynamics and things like that, but any resource that you can have at this level, no matter what it is or how small, you have to be so perfect at everything at the Cup level that anything that we can get our hands on is gonna benefit us for sure. We would definitely be on it, for sure, if we could get any sort of access to data.”
DO YOU HAVE MORE MOMENTUM COMING INTO THIS YEAR? “Yeah. Last year was cool. We didn’t have a lot of time to prepare for the year because it all came together. We didn’t start working until January, but starting off with a top 10 in the Daytona 500 and then getting another top 10 and finishing eighth in the Brickyard 400 and running well at a lot of race tracks, and some unconventional race tracks, like we ran well at places like Michigan and Charlotte and some odd ones that we didn’t think we would excel at like we did, so going into this year I feel like we do have some good momentum and the same group of people working together, the same crew chief. So we need all those people and they all make a whole lot out of very little. It’s great. We’re a family team and we really have to stretch everything we have and we outperform people that are on monumentally higher budgets than we are and that makes us proud that we’re able to do that because we have good people.”
DOES IT HELP BEING A FAMILY TEAM WHERE EVERYONE IS CONCENTRATED ON ONE EFFORT? “The good things are it is cool being a single-car team. They’re solely focused – and it’s not that you’re selfish – but everyone has their focus solely on your car, your deal and how to improve the team and having such a small organization. If we need to implement a change or we find something that can make our race cars better, it’s not like we have to go through a whole implement of four cars or a whole laundry list of people and get it all approves. It’s like, ‘Hey, this would be better. Should we do it?’ ‘Sure,’ and boom, it’s implemented. So those are some of the good things about a smaller team is communication doesn’t really get lost. It’s pretty easy when you only have 16 people in your whole organization.”
WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS FOR 2018 AFTER BEING A SURPRISE TEAM IN 2017? “It’s hard. I never know exactly where to set our goals other than just vaguely saying we want to overachieve and on a weekly basis outperform teams and people that we know are on a lot higher budgets than us. So we just kind of stack ourselves up like that. When we were racing last year we raced with the Front Row cars, the 95 car, if we could pass some RCR cars, whatever, those are all good days for us. In general, with no attrition, if we could run top 25s are solid, good days for us and points-wise, if we could finish in the top 30 that’s great. All that if all overachieving. Everyone saw how much we were able to take a team and improve it over one season, just by putting some good people in place even with a small budget and showing what we could do.”
ARCHIE FLIES UNDER THE RADAR AS FAR AS HIS INVOLVEMENT WITH THE TEAM. HOW INSTRUMENTAL IS HIS INVOLVEMENT? “Archie is a really smart guy. He’s a businessman, so he does know how to make the most out of what we’ve got and operates smart. Everything is organized. We have a budget. We know exactly what we’re working with and everything is laid out for the whole year. His son, Mason, is our general manager and he’s a workaholic, so everyone has to really multi-task. Everyone carries a lot of hats at our team.”
SOCIAL MEDIA IS BIG. DO YOU HAVE A STRATEGY WITH THAT? “I honestly don’t have any particular strategy, I just like to be myself and I like everything to be organic. We don’t sit and strategize anything, I just like to be active and share my life, share our experience, share our team and share everything with the fans because that’s what they want to see. I want to let them live through what I’m doing and see how much work it is and how hard we work to be trying to do this. I do have an ultimate goal of I want to fill those shoes and I want to be in position to win races in the near future and with a lot of some of these guys leaving this sport, I know with my personality and how I can engage with fans that I can make a big impact on the sport if I continue to climb the ladder.”
THE SEASON IS LONG. IS THERE A TIME WHEN YOU LOOK AT IT AND REALIZE YOU MIGHT ONLY BE HALFWAY THROUGH? “You’ll probably be surprised, but sometimes it blows by just because you’re so busy all the time and it’s a non-stop grind, so it actually kind of flies by and I’m like, ‘Holy cow, we’re already three-quarters of the way through the season. It felt like I just got with the team and we just started.’ Even though it is a really long, grueling schedule, it goes by so fast just because you’re so busy.”
ANY CHANGE YOU WOULD MAKE TO THE SCHEDULE? “Maybe like a couple more breaks integrated in would be OK if I was picking or choosing, or honestly, I’m OK with the schedule but some of those two-day shows help us a lot because it gives us a little more prep time. We don’t have all of the same resources and a lot of employees like the other teams do, so when we have those two-day shows it gives us an extra day at the shop and those are really beneficial to us. So maybe I would implement more of those.”
WHAT DOES THE ALLIANCE WITH THE WOOD BROTHERS MEAN? WILL YOU WORK CLOSER WITH THEM? “No, there’s no alliance it’s just a partnership with them and the old 32 charter. Nothing that affects our team. We don’t get anymore resources, technology, nothing out of it. It’s a good partnership between them two and for the Wood Brothers to have a charter and everything secured up, but that’s about all I know. But as far as our team it won’t affect anything.”
ALIGNING WITH JOE FALK BRINGS UP THE POSSIBILITY OF POTENTIALLY HAVING A TEAMMATE THIS YEAR. “Yeah, for sure. Honestly, I’ll probably sound silly, but I haven’t been able to pay enough attention to it because I’ve been so focused on getting prepared for the season. On all of that charter stuff it’s crazy and interesting, but I’ll let Archie and Mason handle all that stuff. I think as far as the stuff we’ll have to work with our team and operations will be the exact same. I just want to make sure that’s totally clear. I don’t want people to think we’re getting Penske equipment or something. We’re not. We’re the same exact operation as we were last year.”
WOULD IT BE HELPFUL HAVING A SECOND CAR TO WORK WITH? “Not really. When you’re short-staffed or people are already multi-tasking so much that when you put all that effort into your car that is usually best to keep your focus on that, but whatever decisions they make I’ll support. If there are instances where that comes up, I’m sure they wouldn’t do it for no reason. It would make sense one way or another, but I know we’ll be focusing on trying to make the most we can out of that 32 car and make her go as quick as we can.”
