Pepsi 300 - Derrike Cope Notes

DERRIKE COPE NOTES, QUOTES: Nashville 300
‘Off weekend for Cup but all-out weekend for Busch Series’

Derrike Cope and the #28 Jay Robinson Racing Ford team head to the fast 1.33-mile Nashville (Tenn.) Superspeedway this week for Saturday’s Pepsi 300 NASCAR Busch Series race.

NASCAR’s Nextel Cup Series is off this weekend, leaving the Busch Series as the only major motorsports series running in the country. That could mean additional Cup drivers entering Saturday’s race.

Cope, a native of Spanaway, Wash., is a former winner of the Daytona 500 and a two-time NASCAR Nextel Cup race winner. A top athlete whose professional baseball career was cut short by a knee injury in college, Cope has become one of the top athletes in NASCAR racing, and has become one of the top public spokesmen for the sport.

Jay Robinson Racing, in its fifth season of operation, is one of the fastest-growing teams in NASCAR. Robinson, a Charlotte, N.C., native who is a successful businessman, founded the team as a high-value endeavor that offers high-end equipment and efforts, while proving to be one of the most cost-efficient teams in the sport. Robinson fields two cars fulltime on the Busch Series.

The thoughts of #28 Jay Robinson Racing Ford driver Derrike Cope heading into Nashville:

“Weekends off are nice, I guess, but racing is everything to me. Spending a weekend racing somewhere is what I am all about. Everything I do as far as working with sponsors or working hard on the business end of things and everything else is because I want to race. Those are the kinds of things you do to make it possible to get into the race car each week, buckle in and get out there and compete.

“Having that chance to run this weekend at Nashville is great. It’s a tremendous facility and they’ve done a great job in building a good race track, and they’ve done a great job in promoting it. The people of Nashville have proven their love of racing, and that makes the races there even more fun.

“The Cup series doesn’t run Nashville so these Busch Series races, as well as the Trucks and ARCA, are the only time stock cars run a superspeedway in the area. From a sponsor’s standpoint, this is a tremendous opportunity to do some great things in front of the great fans from the Nashville area.

“As far as this particular race team is concerned, it’s another chance to compete. It’s another chance to take our car, get it as good as we can get it, run hard for the pole one day and run hard to win a race the next. To do that at a really nice facility like Nashville makes for a great weekend for all of us. Having some success with that makes it even better.

“The guys on this race team, from (owner) Jay Robinson to the driver to every guy on the crew, we’re in this sport to compete. We do this because we love racing and because we love to win. Every guy on this team works as hard as he can to make this team successful. Sure, we work hard to please our sponsors and to get them the exposure they deserve, and we want Jay to be happy with our effort but it takes a tremendous amount of self-motivation to do well in NASCAR racing. You aren’t successful because you love it. You are successful because you do whatever it takes, make whatever sacrifices are necessary, and make every effort you have to make.

“Jay is building a successful race team because he is willing to make the effort necessary to be successful. You can’t go into this sport halfway. He’s a racer, sure, but he is a businessman, too. He knows what it takes to make sponsorship programs successful and by utilizing that knowledge with his race teams, he has been able to make things work for everybody.

“This isn’t the highest-funded team out here by any means but Jay is one of the very few owners in NASCAR who can take a little and make a lot out of it. We aren’t as highly-funded as some of these teams out here but he makes sure we look like we are. We’ve run in front of a lot of multi-million dollar teams, and everything we bring to the track is top-notch. He’s pleased with the support he gets from sponsors but he knows how to make things first-class.

“Every single guy on this race team is here for one reason and one reason alone – to be part of the best race team he possibly can. We’ve worked to get a good car ready for Nashville, and we think it could be a pretty good week for us there. It might be an off week for the Cup cars but it’s an all-out all-the-time weekend for this #28 crew.

“We’re looking for a good weekend. We’re excited, and we’re going to work hard to make it a lot of fun.”