COLIN BRAUN – No. 6 Con-way Freight True LTL Ford F-150 – YOU WON YOUR FIRST SERIES RACE LAST MONTH AT MICHIGAN. AFTER A DRIVER GETS THAT FIRST WIN, DOES ANYTHING CHANGE? WERE YOU TREATED ANY DIFFERENTLY, WHETHER BY YOUR TEAM OR COMPETITORS? “No, I don’t really think so. I think my guys have been a really great group of people to work with, and I think they believed in me from the start, and I certainly believed in them. And, I think once we won it was a big relief off of everybody’s shoulders, and then it was like, ‘All right, we’ve got that done. Let’s keep doing what we’ve been doing,’ and that’s what we tried to do during that whole month there after the win.”
BEFORE THAT RACE, YOU FINISHED THIRD AT TEXAS. HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT TO BACK UP THAT FINISH WITH THE WIN, AND THEN BACK UP THAT WIN WITH TWO MORE TOP-10S? “Absolutely. It was important for ourselves and the confidence that the team needed to build, but also from the fact that we needed to move up a lot in points – you know, we were 20th in points – and then made up a bunch of spots. So, that was the biggest thing for us – making up those positions in the points standings.”
YOU’VE PRODUCED FOUR STRAIGHT TOP-10S, BUT THE LAST RACE WAS JUNE 27. YOU PROBABLY COULDN’T WAIT TO GET BACK TO ANOTHER RACE. “Yeah, absolutely. We were certainly disappointed that we kind of had to stop our momentum for a little bit, but I feel like it kind of gave us a chance to go back into the shop and think about some things and massage our trucks a little bit more. And, myself, personally, just it gave me some time to think about what we did right and what I did wrong – what I need to work on, what I need to do better. And I think that really helps out – to have a good four or five or six races, and then let it all sink in, think about it a little bit, and then come back.”
THIS IS THE SAME CHASSIS THAT YOU DROVE TO A THIRD-PLACE FINISH AT TEXAS. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS WEEKEND’S RACE? “I think it’s going to be good. Our Con-way Freight True LTL Ford F-150 was fast, obviously, at Texas and it seems to be fast here right off the truck, and we’ve worked on it quite a bit since Texas, kind of brought to our normal, current truck specs, and I feel like that is going to help us here. This is obviously a track that a lot of Roush Fenway Racing trucks have run well at before in the past, and it seems like the last year or so we’ve struggled to get the result, but we’ve always been fast here and run up front and been strong. So, I’ll keep my fingers crossed for that same thing Saturday.”