CHAMPIONSHIP INTERVIEWS: RON CAPPS, JASON LINE AND JERRY SAVOIE

NHRA MELLO YELLO DRAG RACING SERIES CHAMPIONS TELECONFERENCE

The following are excerpts from a teleconference on Wednesday, Nov. 16, with three world champions from the 2016 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season. Ron Capps (Funny Car), Jason Line (Pro Stock), and Jerry Savoie (Pro Stock Motorcycle) were featured on today’s teleconference.

THE MODERATOR: Thanks for joining us today. We are going to talk with the champions from the 2016 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series.

Joining us now is Ron Capps, the Funny Car world champion, driver of the NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Charger R/T. Ron had five victories and five runner-up finishes this year en route to securing his first world championship.

Congratulations, Ron. Thanks for joining us. Have you had to pinch yourself yet to make sure you’re not dreaming?

RON CAPPS: Yeah, every morning. I’m up in Santa Maria here. We’re celebrating things, the golf tournament we do every year. Just got to the golf course.

Every day, it’s been just a little bit of kind of reality sinking in. The big one was getting up on the stage Monday night in Hollywood. I’ve been on the other side of that, out in that audience. To be up there talking to all the other racers, my peers, my family in the front row, that was kind of a big reality check there. So it’s starting to sink in.

THE MODERATOR: Before Saturday, you were the winningest driver to have never clinched a title. I know you didn’t enjoy talking about that. Do you feel like a burden has been lifted?

RON CAPPS: Yeah, it is a huge relief. It did get old hearing that. You know, Jeff Wolf, and Leah, who has been working with me this year, my publicists, Jeff has been real good about keeping my attitude in check. It’s easy to get a little quirky when that’s brought up by a reporter every time, and you start to get tired of hearing it.

Near the end, get to Vegas, Pomona, where it was going to almost happen, but I’ve been there before. Trying to keep a level head, not lose focus, even though we were fighting our teammates, was hard to do.

I’m glad to have that gone. I hate it for Doug Kalitta. I know he’s not on my team, a different team, but I know he’s in the same situation. He’s one of the guys that is deserving of the championship but hasn’t won one yet. It was always mentioned with him. Now he’s got to hear it all year long.

THE MODERATOR: We’ll take questions for Ron Capps.

Q. Ron, were you ever worried this wasn’t going to happen, that your legacy would be one of you won a bunch of races, but no titles? I talked to a lot of NASCAR drivers who were in that position where they lost a close one. They begin seeing a psychiatrist to try to get over that. Did you ever do that?

RON CAPPS: No. Jeff Wolf is my psychiatrist this year. I think you were in several of the press conferences where I was really content where, ‘Hey, if it doesn’t happen, look what I accomplished anyway.’ I didn’t have to look for it. Ed “The Ace” McCulloch was my hero, crew chief, a legend in Funny Car history had never won a championship. I didn’t realize that even working with him several years.

I was okay. Not that I gave up on it, but I was like, ‘Look, it’s a new system, a playoffs. You just have to be hot at the right time.’ It was a bummer for me to think if we come up short after the season we had this year, by far the best I ever had, five wins, all the track records set, the killer runs we made, then it was going to hurt a little more this year if we didn’t do it.

Yeah, I did question could we keep up this pace, because this year was by far the toughest in Funny Car. I know we say that every year, but it was so tough this year.

So, yeah, I was prepared if we didn’t get through it. But don’t have to worry about that now.

Q. Ron, I’m sure you’ve been overloaded with surprise the last three days here. What do you think was the biggest unexpected call that you got congratulating you?

RON CAPPS: That’s a good one. To be honest with you, I’m trying to keep the text messages below 200 on my phone. My little icon says 196 before I made the call to you guys. I haven’t had a chance to sit down and take all these messages I’ve gotten.

I went to the awards, it was wide open all day Monday trying to get there, get my speech finished, do the awards. Hung over Tuesday morning. Drove up here to Santa Maria. It’s been non-stop. I haven’t had a chance to look and see.

Snake called me. The president and CEO of NAPA Auto Parts called me, probably the coolest one so far. I know there’s some messages I haven’t seen. Friday I’m going to get a chance to sit down at home on the couch and go through and thank everybody. It will take a while to catch up.

Yeah, I’d have to say the answer to your question, probably Snake was the coolest.

Q. How long does it go before the pressure to repeat hits your shoulders?

RON CAPPS: Today (laughter). I’m already thinking about next year. I was at dinner last night with Allen Johnson, Del Worsham was sitting with us. I rode to the dinner with him. We were talking about next year already. Brandon Bernstein and a bunch of us from other teams were in the car after dinner. Everybody was already talking about what’s going on for Silly Season for 2017. I’m thinking to myself, ‘I’m not going to have any time to enjoy this because everybody is starting to talk about next year.’

I guarantee you, Rahn Tobler flew back to Indy, has a few days’ rest, but I promise you he’s already focused on that. Probably not long.

Q. Ron, I’m wondering, is this championship even more satisfying for the fact that you had to beat out your teammates to get it?

RON CAPPS: Well, we knew we would have to. In the beginning of the season we saw the Forces and the Kalitta team struggle a little bit. But the Countdown you know they’re going to come alive. Force the middle of the season, he starts winning Denver, the Western Swing stuff. I knew our cars were going to be the cars we had to beat to get to the championship. My car is much like their cars.

The gratifying part was just continuing the pace we kept up. We didn’t even win a race in the Countdown. I wouldn’t want to race our NAPA car because Tobler, man, he was throwing down heats in the middle of the day, and when we needed them, we came through as a team. It was crazy to keep the pace up.

Guys would run in front of us. I’m sitting in the car, the next car, going, ‘Wow, that was a good run, I don’t know if we can come close.’ Come out of the hatch after the run, the TV guy would tell me, it was low E.T. of the round. That just continued. You never know if you can continue. That’s the problem.

It was a torrid pace that Ron Tobler put our car through. I think that just put a lot of pressure on other teams. I think that was the big key.

Q. You got congratulations from your rivals on the stage. Were you expecting that or was that another surprise?

RON CAPPS: I went to dinner last night. I almost got teared up last night, with Del Worsham in the car, my publicists Leah and Jeff Wolf, told me that Del put that together. I walked out on the stage for driver intro. You walk out, the fans are there. All of my competitors, not even a Countdown, but everybody was standing on the stage waiting and shook my hand. I almost lost it. It was crazy. That’s hard to do. If I got asked, you wouldn’t be happy about it, you just got your butt kicked for a championship. For those guys to come up there and do that, that was unbelievable. I can’t even tell you. Just thinking about it again kind of gets me a little worked up.

But that was huge.

Q. Ron, known you for a long, long time. I know this without question is the pinnacle of your career. How do you do it again? How do you win two in a row now?

RON CAPPS: I don’t know. But Force told me they’re going to start rolling in now (laughter). I don’t know what planet he’s on. I’m sure I’ll talk to you guys in February and we’re going to look around at all the announcements made, new teams and sponsors coming in. We’re going to find out it’s going to be even tougher next year.

Just keeping it up. I’m pretty lucky because I’m not as good as I was made to look this year with my racecar. I wanted to go out there and do my job, but the racecar that was given to me by Tobler this season was unbelievable. It really would have taken a lot of messing up for a driver just to go up there and not win in this car. So it was just a good team effort.

I was able to come through a few times on hole shots, but those wouldn’t have been there either if the car wouldn’t have run as it ran.

I can’t wait. I’m already thinking about next year. It was such a relief to win, have the season over, get that monkey off my back with that.

I can’t wait to defend it. I can’t wait to hear Alan Reinhart announce our cars, ‘Here is the defending world champion’s car coming up next.’ Things like that haven’t sunk in yet. Talking to Del Worsham last night at dinner, it’s little things like that. It’s not just winning now and enjoying it, it’s representing the sport next year, wherever I go, being announced as the 2016 Mello Yello champion. Del said that made him so proud every time his name was mentioned this year as last year’s champion. I’m looking forward to soaking all that up.

Q. Do you remember before you climbed out the racecar, when you knew you clinched, as soon as you got past the finish line, do you remember what the first thought you had in your mind was?

RON CAPPS: I wanted to see my family, and I wanted to not break down on TV. I was trying to compose myself. ‘All right, this is done.’ It was dark. ‘The chutes are out. I’m at Pomona. You’re at Wally Parks Boulevard. You’re at the most historic race on a night run.’ We ran good, went 3.89. I was coasting down, the chute is out, the motor is coming down on idle, flames had been up, and it hauled ass. It was a great run to come around the corner, coast up to where the TV people are. I remember thinking how lucky I am to be where I am at Funny Car, making the turn, the chutes out, at Pomona. I’m being ready to be announced as the champion.

There were a lot of emotions going on right there. Just wanted to see my family.

Q. You were just talking about getting the monkey off your back. I’m sure winning that world title is the highlight of your season. After you clinched, you talked to us in the media center and said that it was a year of milestones for you, passing people in the record books, getting your 50th career win in the 50th anniversary of the Funny Car class. What besides the title are you most proud of?

RON CAPPS: You know, just representing NAPA Auto Parts. You have to remember, when they came in, I had the Brut sponsorship with the cologne. They came into the sport knowing our car was available with me as the driver. That’s a dream sponsor. The first year they come out, they run commercials, it ran on network television with my NASCAR teammate Michael Waltrip.

So the support and what they did for our sport and have done, I’m looking forward to doing commercials for next year now. It elevated our sport and opened it up to a whole new bunch of fans on the NASCAR side with network television, millions and millions of eyes.

I’m proud we’re able to give back to NAPA. Basically you can say, ‘Hey, man, sponsoring a racecar in NHRA was a great decision.’ I think this championship has said that. Having the president and vice president, having them sit at our table, that really meant a lot and made me proud that I could, you know, say, ‘Hey, our sport of drag racing is worth you spending those millions of dollars and making me the face of NAPA.’ Just a lot of gratifying moments.

Q. Let’s go back in time. The first race of the year you beat the reigning world champion, Del Worsham. A few races later you don’t qualify at Las Vegas. How did that up-and-down sequence there affect your confidence or push any doubts about reaching the point you are at now?

RON CAPPS: It didn’t at all. I swear to you. It was funny because I knew, Tobler doesn’t get too lost as a crew chief. Whatever it was, we were going to find it. We test if we normally don’t run somewhere. I knew it wouldn’t be long. Sure enough, we brought another car out. That’s when I knew we had a chance at a championship, was really the Winternationals. We won.

Him and I had a pretty good argument about something. It was personal. It was racecar, but it was something we hashed out Saturday night before we won Pomona. It was one of the moments where the relationship gets better or it doesn’t. We came closer. It was a lot of talks we had Saturday night that was heated between us, but it made us so much closer. The next day we went out and won. We’ve been closer since.

That moment that we stayed and tested on Monday with a different car that he had the guys get completely ready to go in case we had an accident, that car hauled the mail the next day test. I said, ‘We’re going to be fine.’

I’m glad we had the DNQ, I really am. It showed we were going to have what it took to do whatever we needed to do with whatever car. That was a big moment for me.

THE MODERATOR: Congratulations and thank you for taking the time to talk with us this morning. Enjoy your off-season.

RON CAPPS: Thank you, man. Appreciate it.

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Jason Line, driver of the Summit Racing Equipment Chevy Camaro, and the 2016 Pro Stock world champion.

You claimed your third Pro Stock world title this weekend in Pomona. You finished this season with a career-high eight wins and 14 final-round appearances. You must feel on top of the world.

JASON LINE: I do. I feel great. I actually feel really lousy, but I feel great mentally. It was a great season. I’m glad it’s over.

THE MODERATOR: You and teammate Greg Anderson, who finished second right behind you, dominated the redesigned Pro Stock class in its first year. What gave you guys that boost to get off to the hot start you did and maintain that lead over your competition throughout the season?

JASON LINE: You make it sound pretty simple. I don’t know if it’s quite that easy.

There was times we didn’t have much of a lead, especially the second half of the year. How we got off to such a good start, I can’t answer that question because I don’t know how they did it. We obviously chose to do things in a slightly different manner. I don’t know what those differences are.

We knew pretty early on that we had a little bit of a magic there that they didn’t. I really still couldn’t tell you what or why that is. I’m glad that we found it. Obviously we chose to work in the right areas over the off-season. It was a lot of effort, for sure. It always is. Obviously we worked on the right things, and that made all the difference in the world.

But the second half was very close. We got a little bit better as it went on. Obviously by Pomona, felt like we had a little bit of an advantage. It was a great season. I guess we got tired of losing, for one thing. Just working hard.

THE MODERATOR: You say it wasn’t so easy, but you did maintain the points lead at 22 of 24 events on the year, and you notched a career-high 65 round wins to go along with those eight race victories. How do you plan on outdoing yourself next year?

JASON LINE: That’s a good question. Yeah, I didn’t realize we held the lead for that much of the season. Kind of shocking, actually.

I’m not one to, I guess, bask in the glory of the moment. But it was a fun year. What we’re going to do for an encore, I’m not sure.

I can tell you this, we’re both at work today. We’re trying to get better. We have lots to do. I think we both are well aware of the fact that it’s going to be tougher next year. For whatever reason, we caught everybody off guard with the new rules package. We were able to adapt quicker than they were. Now that they’ve had it for a year, next year’s going to be tougher.

It’s going to be hard. Doesn’t mean we can’t do it. I think we can. As great as this year was, it was still only our second best year in the history of our shop. So we’ve actually had a better year.

I think it is possible to do what we did this year again.

THE MODERATOR: Questions for Jason Line.

Q. Jason, if you look back at this season, short of actually getting that trophy, what was the most incredible moment in your season?

JASON LINE: I think for me probably the highlight of my season — let me think about that for a second — probably Pomona, the first Pomona. When Greg and I both made the final round, I remember sitting there waiting to get interviewed, which is not my favorite thing, but waiting to get interviewed, thinking to myself that we actually had something that nobody else did. It was a really nice feeling.

Even though you don’t know how long it’s going to last, I guess for me I was very proud that we worked on the right things over the winter. That was a highlight. I knew we were going to have a special year at that point.

Q. Ron Capps made a comment about how fans of the NASCAR world and sponsors and everything in the NASCAR world have reached out. Have any of your friends from the world of NASCAR reached out to you since you won the title?

JASON LINE: Absolutely, yep. Several more today actually. All the engine guys that work in Cup, I would say that I’m friends with a lot of them. They love the naturally aspirated engines, they love Pro Stock.

Yeah, I’ve heard from a bunch of them. It’s nice. It makes you feel good. It’s a good feeling. For me it’s a good feeling knowing I have a lot of folks that really support me. I feel good about that.

Q. Jason, a year ago at this time when you and Greg were just starting to work on the new rules package, did you guys see it as a blank sheet where you might be able to capitalize, or was it like this is a huge monetary mechanical thrash we have to face here? How did you approach it?

JASON LINE: I’m going to say the latter of the two. Like I said before, it’s not a secret, we did not embrace it at all. We did it because we had to. It’s what we do for a living.

Honestly, I think not only did we not think at that time that we could do what we did this year, I’m pretty sure that our competitors didn’t either. In fact, I just happened to read, one of our guys drug it up, one of our competitors said they wouldn’t be surprised if they won every single race. I think that was a good motivator actually, if we all thought about it. I never would have made a bold statement like that. I would have said we’d have been lucky if we won anything because we didn’t know.

The unknown is what kills you. We knew nothing about fuel injection. The truth is, we’re still in its infancy with us. We have a long ways to go, a lot to learn. The gains will be smaller at this point, but there’s still gains to be made. Obviously, from a monetary standpoint, it is going to be very expensive. We absolutely have to keep going forward and learning more.

It never ends. As long as you believe it never ends, it never does. There’s more to gain.

Q. Jason, obviously you’re good friends with Greg, you’re teammates. From a psychological or mental standpoint, whatever you want to call it, how do you disavow or dissociate yourself as a teammate and a friend when it comes down to crunch time to win a championship? I know you both were pulling for each other, but at the same time you’re certainly pulling for yourself. How do you do that?

JASON LINE: I don’t know that you can. It’s a strange dynamic, to say the least. I don’t know if we were pulling for each other or not.

Obviously the selfish side of you wants to win. Make no mistake about it, racers are selfish folks. You have to be somewhat in order to win. It’s just kind of the nature of the sport.

It’s tough. We’ve been together for 14 years, which I think has got to be some kind of record. Usually it’s very difficult. We all have big egos. It’s very difficult to survive that, especially racing each other, knowing that really the person who stopped you from winning more this year is also somebody who helped you win as much as you did.

It’s hard to take an objective look at it. At some point it’s difficult to separate heart from head. It’s a tough deal. I think we handle it better now than we did 10 years ago. There was no fighting. We didn’t come to blows or anything. There were no foul words said at all. We both realize at this point that it is bigger than just the two of us. It’s important that we win as a group.

That being said, it’s still hard. Each one of us wants to win. I know he’s disappointed, as I would have been, as well.

Q. There was so much made coming into the 2016 season about Erica Enders, two championships in a row, then Coughlin coming in full-time, switched to Dodge and Mopar. To see them go from as strong as they were the previous two seasons to such a trying season in 2016, from a competitor’s standpoint, can you empathize with them? How surprised were you at their lack of success this year?

JASON LINE: I can certainly empathize. It’s not easy, especially when both those two are used to being up near the top. Erica has certainly had more bad times than him. Yeah, it’s tough to take.

Winning masks a lot of issues. When you’re not doing well, it tends to bring out either the best or the worst in you. I’m sure they had a lot of very trying moments over that. I don’t know. Tried not to pay attention to it, worry about our own deal. But tough deal, there’s no question about it.

Q. You had a pretty big lead heading into the Countdown. With the points resetting and some competitors nipping at your heels, did you ever get nervous and think, ‘Now we really got to turn it on, can’t let up?’

JASON LINE: I don’t know about nervous. But yeah, I mean, I think we definitely felt that way. After Chicago, really after Norwalk, we started to test some different things. I tested a lot of different stuff in the next few races. It certainly cost me from winning some races that I could have, should have won in there that I didn’t.

I was willing to go backwards for a little bit to make sure that when the end of the year came around that we really had exhausted all of our resources for the pieces and parts we had available at the time, so we had the best stuff come Countdown time.

We did kind of a lousy job qualifying. You know, it was not easy. I know it probably looked easy on the outside. There were still some moments there where we didn’t do a very good job. Probably shouldn’t have been as close as it was. I made a few mistakes, was fortunate enough to have it work out still.

I don’t know about nervous, but yes, certainly aware of how close the competition was.

Q. Are you going to continue riding this wave or do you have any big changes planned between now and Winternationals?

JASON LINE: Yes, we have a lot of changes. I’m going to say very ambitious tests planned over the winter. That being said, there’s no guarantees. I do feel like what we have right now, come Pomona, it’s going to be obsolete. Got high hopes again for next year. Again, there’s no guarantees, but we have a lot of new stuff in the works.

Q. I know the Summit team has things planned overseas for the troops. What are you going to be doing?

JASON LINE: I think perhaps Thanksgiving we’re leaving, us and Eddie Krawiec and Andrew Hines as well. We’ll be going again to Kuwait this year. I’m not sure where else, but other places in the region.

We’ll have a busy schedule, I can tell you that. It’s fun. It’s tiring. It’s very rewarding. Makes you appreciate a lot of things.

Q. Talk about the competition in the Pro Stock class. You guys got off to a very hot start, but the competition caught on to some of the things you were doing. What do you think we can expect from the class next year?

JASON LINE: There’s no question we’re all going to be faster next year. It really comes down to the same things it comes down to every winter. Ours is different than the Fuel classes. We have much more latitude to work on certain things. I think there’s no question the field is absolutely going to be faster next year. How much, I don’t know. I still think it’s going to take us a couple years to get back to where we were with the no RPM rule and the carburetor rule, but really much closer next year.

THE MODERATOR: Good luck. Enjoy your championship reign. We’ll see you in Pomona in February.

JASON LINE: Thanks very much. Thanks for having me on.

THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by Jerry Savoie, the 2016 Pro Stock Motorcycle world champion and rider of the White Alligator Racing Suzuki. Jerry earned his first career world championship at the Auto Club NHRA Finals after he advanced to the semifinals while his nearest competitors were knocked out in the quarterfinals.

Jerry, do you feel like you’re dreaming a little bit?

JERRY SAVOIE: Well, reality is just setting in. I mean, everything happened so fast that it only takes a few days, but if you think about all the events, the way it turned out, there’s a lot of things to talk about. It’s just amazing, man, that this could possibly happen.

THE MODERATOR: You didn’t win in the regular season, but you got two in the Countdown. Surprisingly, you had a first-round loss and a second-round loss in the Countdown. Did you ever start to think, ‘Oh, man, this is getting out of reach now?’

JERRY SAVOIE: No. We knew going into Dallas we could run really well. We had some misfortune early on. Nobody really knew about it. We tried to keep everything a big secret. But we knew for sure that we had the bike to beat.

Here’s the thing. In the past years, the Harleys would run you down. They couldn’t 60 foot, but they could run you down. Now Vance & Hines has worked so hard to give us the power to be able to compete.

With Tim (Kulungian) tuning the bike, everything started clicking. We knew they couldn’t 60 foot with us. If they can’t 60 foot with you and they can’t run you out the backdoor, you’re going to win races.

THE MODERATOR: Jerry, how did you and Tim and the rest of your team really turn it on in the final three races with three No. 1’s and two runner-ups?

JERRY SAVOIE: Yeah, it’s an amazing thing. In Dallas we had some misfortune also. Anyway, it was an amazing thing. We knew going into Dallas what we could do. We had some misfortune in Dallas in the finals. If we would have won Dallas, we would have been way ahead in the points. We thought that would have been a good thing to go with.

We always do great at the end of the season. Tim is the best. These guys, I’m not a world champion, we are world champions, all of us, not just me. I wanted to say that the other night, but I was so scared, I didn’t know what to say.

THE MODERATOR: You never led the points this season until you secured the world title. Did you feel like an underdog all year long?

JERRY SAVOIE: No, not really. We felt really strong. I’ll reiterate this. In Atlanta we seized a piston against Eddie. That’s pretty much why we lost the race. We had him covered. Then the wind got us in Englishtown and had to get out of it against a hometown fellow racer, Angelle. Just little odds and ends of not good things – we call them gremlins in Louisiana. But it paid off, man. Look at where we’re at. It’s amazing.

THE MODERATOR: We’ll take questions for Jerry.

Q. Jerry, I have to ask you, you became such a great story not only this year but through the last five or six years when you came back. To come back after 30 years of a layoff to build your business, to raise your family, people just don’t do that. How satisfying is it for you to have such a long layoff and come back and win the ultimate prize as a champion?

JERRY SAVOIE: You know, as a young boy, a lot of people don’t know, they say I never pat myself on the back and say how good I could have been or was, but as a young boy, I did pretty good at drag racing on the streets of Louisiana. Set a couple of national records. It was all good.

But the fire always burns in you. Once a drag racer, always a drag racer. Even though you don’t continue racing, the fire continues burning in your body. I always wondered if I was ever good enough. It played a tole on me, ‘Was I as good as Angelle?’ Angelle was a young girl growing up, she baby-sat for me. When she came up, I was like, I would only dream of doing something like that.

32 years didn’t sit on a motorcycle. Later in age, worked really hard, was able financially to put together a team. A friend, Paul Miller, I went and talked to him and asked him if he thought I was any good.

He said, ‘Absolutely. It’s never too late.’

I went and called George Bryce, who I went to school with. Like I said at the banquet, George Bryce put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, ‘Brother, if you ride like that on race day, I promise you you’re going to win one of these races.’ My goal was only to win one. My dream never was ever, ever, even last year, to win a championship. It was just to come out here and compete, beat up on people, try to be the best.

God has blessed me in so many ways. It’s an amazing thing.

Q. Just to clarify, you say you never got on a bike for 30 years. Did you have a regular sports bike you would go out and ride?

JERRY SAVOIE: No. I had three Harley Davidsons. I still got them. One is a 1966, my father’s old sportster. I have a ’97 Bad Boy. I have a ’98 FXR with a turbocharger on it. I love Harley Davidsons. It’s not a cross for me to be racing against them, no vengeance, you know what I’m saying?

Q. Speaking of the Harley Davidsons, were you surprised to see them knocked out in the quarterfinals?

JERRY SAVOIE: Man, let me tell you something. Them guys never get knocked out early. I’m not sure if the pressure got to them or God came down and put his hand on me and my crew and my family and said, ‘This is yours, you deserve it.’ It was really weird. We had a choice to lay low, which we’ve never done. Never laid low in my life. I tried to beat everyone every time. To have the ladder stacked in my favor the way it was. The two Harleys were on one side of the ladder in Q-three. Then we go to Q-four and make a decision to run it out the backdoor and try to be No. 1.

Then the second round end up being against Matt Smith and Angelle, both of them got beat. God is watching. He probably put His hand on us and said, ‘You guys are working really hard, we going to give it to you.’

Jokingly I went back out after the media deal at Ruth’s Chris on Thursday, I said, ‘Tim, we got them, we got them boys, man.’

He’s like, ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m over here eating salmon and salad. I lost four pounds this week so we could do well. They over there eating steak and potatoes and cheesecake.’ I said, ‘We got their ass so bad we don’t even know it yet.’

I said, ‘They can’t 60 foot with us.’

It was a joke, but honestly the bottom line is unless they 60 foot with us, they cannot beat us, if I’m on my game and my bike is tuned up. So it’s pretty good.

Q. Jerry, when you were at the Motorplex and qualified No. 1, you brought you’re entire crew into the press center, which I thought was pretty cool actually. If you were to compare budgets with Vance & Hines and Eddie and Andrew, would you guys be in the ballpark?

JERRY SAVOIE: Oh, no. I mean, those guys have a lot of money. But here’s the deal. It’s a matter of budget and resources, that’s okay. But they’re building our engines. For those guys, to build your engine, then you take that engine, you sprinkle a little pixie dust on it like Tim does, we do a few things that other people don’t do, and to go out there and to be able to compete with that package that they give you, actually win a championship, it’s amazing.

Got a little joke running around the shop at Vance & Hines. Andrew looks at the numbers on the dials, ‘Is this what we got to run against this weekend? Are you kidding me?’

It’s pretty cool they know what’s coming, they know what they have to run against. They know how fast we should be running. Man, look, it’s a first-class operation. A lot of people say, ‘You don’t give us the power you give Jerry, whatnot.’ Give me any one of your engines that’s fresh, not been beat up on, give us any one of your engines, and I promise you we’ll make it run.

I change the valve spring every weekend. Some of those guys are running valve springs 50 runs, okay? The difference is, if you maintain your stuff, you do everything proper, you can run with them boys. But it’s all got to come together.

I’m just a rider, man. Like I said before, I’ll say it over and over, Tim, Jeremy, Steve, those guys are the best. They family to me. When you click like that, you got a good thing going, man, nothing can stop you.

Q. Do you go back to your alligator farm for the next few months? What is your daily schedule like now when you’re not racing?

JERRY SAVOIE: Well, I come in and out of the farm pretty regular. Like I’m at the farm today. Got a little auction by the local hardware store. I’m up here buying some equipment.

Yeah, go to the farm, make sure everything’s okay, start doing our normal thing. Then hunting season is right around the corner. My boy swims in the state playoffs this weekend in swimming. Then Sunday we’ll leave and go to Mexico for a week.

I like to hunt and fish. I’m an outdoorsman. I’m a guy that loves Mother Nature and loves birds and everything, man. I love life. Put it that way. That’s the most important thing.

Q. Jerry, this is a question that’s been on my mind for the last couple of years. I know it’s going to sound funny, but bear with me. We know how farmers, they raise cows, pigs, chickens. How do you farm alligators? What is the process? What do you do there?

JERRY SAVOIE: Well, it’s a program we set up through the state of Louisiana where everything is permitted. You actually purchase the eggs from landowners with the oversight of Wildlife and Fisheries. You take those eggs and incubate them and hatch them. You got helicopters, airboats, the whole nine yards involved.

Pick up the eggs, hatch ’em, raise ’em, kind of like a chicken farm. They’re all in water. The water is actually filtrated 24 hours a day. As they get bigger, different size for different markets, you harvest the gators, sell the skin, meat, head, feet. Everything’s sold. 12 percent of what you hatch, 12 percent goes back to the wild at four feet. So you replenish the marsh, so that keeps everything going.

Q. About how large is your complex, compound, the farm? How big is it?

JERRY SAVOIE: Probably 20-acres. The water is heated to 90 degrees year-round. Never cold, so…

Q. You said you’re going to Mexico. Any other big plans for the off-season?

JERRY SAVOIE: We’re going to start testing. Probably going to make a hit in December with the new bike. It’s going to take a while to tune the chassis. In February, from there we’ll go to Bradenton, make a couple days in Bradenton. My bike should be okay. We’re not going to reinvent the bike like we did last winter. It took a while to get it dialed in, and it showed. It’s pretty stout now.

We’ll test, make a couple hits, everything is good. Then we’ll beat on LE’s bike, get it good. We’ll have a good 1-2 punch.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you for joining us and congratulations on a stellar season.

JERRY SAVOIE: Thank you, man. I appreciate all you guys, all the fans, my people in Louisiana. Don’t ever think that Jerry Savoie doesn’t take it to heart about the way people feel, what they say, the way he treats people. Drag racing is in my blood and it’s in my heart. We all one big family. I love everybody.

THE MODERATOR: It’s been a pleasure working with you, Jerry. We’ll see you next season in Gainesville.

JERRY SAVOIE: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports