Regan Smith returned home to Central New York for NASCAR’s annual stop to Watkins Glen International. Smith is in the midst of contending for his first career NASCAR championship. Heading into Watkins Glen, Smith sits fourth in points and just 30 points out of the lead.
Smith is doing all he can to win the XFINITY Series championship for he and his team. In two prior full-time seasons in the XFINITY series Smith finished in the top five in series standings.
His main focus is to end up with a full-time Sprint Cup Series ride. Many teams, including Hendrick Motorsports and Stewart-Haas Racing have looked at Smith to drive one of their cars in case of emergency. The driver is fed up with the substitution role and wants a top ride in NASCAR’s top division.
In this exclusive interview with Speedway Digest, Smith discusses all of that and more including what it means to be home in Central New York, how he and his teammates work together and chances at the 2015 XFINITY Series championship.
Dustin Albino: How does it feel when you come back to your home track?
Regan Smith: It’s good. It’s my home racetrack and I have lots of friends and family in this area. Not all of them get to come to race track and watch, but it’s always good to come to your home racetrack and get to play around on it and try to get a win. I’ve grown up watching races here and watching a lot of the guys I call heroes go around this place for quite a few years. I have a lot of memories of this track both as a fan and as a driver.
Albino: Do you ever get to visit Cato?
Smith: I do. Actually my wife is up there today with our little son. He’s up there meeting some of the great-grandparents and seeing some of the rest of the family. I’m not going to make it this trip because of the schedule. It just didn’t work out this weekend in coming in on Thursday night and leaving Saturday night. But I do get up there when I can and I try to stop by and check it out. It hasn’t changed much since I was originally there, so it’s still Cato.
Albino: Last season it seemed JR Motorsports was unstoppable. Has the competition caught up?
Smith: I think the competition has caught up a little bit. I think some teams have developed some new stuff and have taken another step. It’s not necessarily that we’re behind, it’s just we have to work on some other area that we weren’t working on, and you don’t always know that until you get to a point where we’re at right now. On the intermediate tracks, we’ve felt like we’ve lacked a little bit of speed, but with that said, we have some good cars on the road courses. I think we have some good cars on the short tracks and we have a lot of those coming up right now. We’re working hard back at the shop to continue improving all of the other stuff.
Albino: How well do the No. 7 and No. 9 and No. 88 team’s work?
Smith: As close as we can. Everyone has their own opinion on how to do things and what to do, but we all have access to each other’s stuff to see what each other is doing . The crew chief is going to interpret the data how they want. If you get off (on the setup) or someone else is really good, you can look at their stuff.
Albino: Is it more difficult or is it fun racing a teammate for the championship?
Smith: It really doesn’t matter. You’re still racing for a set goal and you don’t want to win it the wrong way I don’t think anyone wants that. You don’t want to have an asterisk next to your name, so you race each other hard and race each other smart; whether it’s a teammate or not. I want to beat my teammates just as much as I want to beat the other guys out there and if not more. You want bragging rights within your own shop that you’re the best in the car so you work hard to do that.
Albino: Currently, you are sitting just 39 points behind championship leader Chris Buescher. It looks to be a four, maybe five team race to the finish. Do you feel your team has a good shot at winning this championship?
Smith: Yeah I do. I feel that we have as good as of a shot that we’ve had any of these years. We have to keep closing in obviously. We don’t want to have that gap there. So many things can happen throughout the stretch of these road courses and different places. Yeah, I feel that we have as good of a shot as anybody and 39 is not a huge gap. It’s not as small as we would like it to be right now, but we’ve had some problems throughout the course of the year. Two small problems will put you that far back. He could easily have a problem and make things really tight again.
Albino: What do you feel is your best shot at a victory?
Smith: Watkins Glen this weekend.
Albino: Three out of the next four races are on road courses. How do you feel about this stretch of races?
Smith: I think that we can win at any three of those races. I think that we can win Bristol and I think that we can win Darlington. I don’t see any reason why we can’t at those five race tracks. That needs to be our goal. That needs to be our focus, to do that and I don’t know what’s after Darlington, but I’m sure that we can win there too.
Albino: What do you feel your team needs to improve on in the last third of the season?
Smith: I think just a little bit of overall speed. We’ve seen some cars that have had a little more speed than us at a couple of places, and we haven’t been able to figure out how to go a little bit quicker. We unload well, which is a good sign and that means that we are doing the right things at the shop. It seems like we are back to that after practice and that’s where we are at our best. It means everything that we are doing before we get to the track is great, but it means we’ve got to find a little more speed otherwise. The guys at the shop are working hard on that. We’re working hard on making sure that we do the right stuff at the race track and that’s all you can do.
Albino: Why do Cup Series teams look at you as the “super-sub”
Smith: I don’t know. I wish that one of them would look at me as a super driver so I can get back in one of their damn cars. I’m about over the substitution roles and I’m ready to have my own ride there.
Albino: So obviously that’s where you want to be?
Smith: Yup, That’s where I want to be.
Albino: Though it’s not official, there has been speculation regarding Elliott Sadler coming over to JR Motorsports in 2016. Where does that leave you for next season?
Smith: I can’t speak to that news. I haven’t heard anything about that yet. If there’s something that is going on or if there isn’t, then the team will let me know about that aspect, otherwise I just kind of do my thing and drive. We haven’t had our discussions for next year on my stuff. We typically don’t until later on in August or September. Every year that I’ve been here, I’ve had a year-to-year contract and then we sit down at the end of the season and look at what’s going on.
I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been in some good cars here and have a good working relationship with Dale and Kelly. I really appreciate everything that they have done and continue to do. To take it one step further, they’ve been really good every year allowing me the time to go out and try to focus and see what Cup rides are available and what is kind of open in that garage and I’m not going to do it any different this year. I’ve made it pretty clear that I would like to be back in the Cup Series and I’m not getting any younger. So I have to do it sooner rather than later.
Albino: Going back to this weekend, how did the car feel in the first practice?
Smith: It was good. We had to adjust on it. We were having a little problem with the motor stumbling through the esses, which is a normal problem here. The motor tuner is trying to get aggressive as they can without having that happen. Once we go that out of it, I thought we had a third, fourth, fifth place car or right around there. The two Penske cars are in another zip code. I don’t know what we can do during the next two practice sessions to find speed to catch them, but we’re going to keep working on it and find a little more speed somewhere and go from there.
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