Hailie Deegan Daytona Bound

Hailie Deegan's Path To Daytona

Okay Hailie, Daytona is now here. Where are you and what are you up to?
 I’m currently in my apartment in North Carolina watching the Busch Clash! I actually leave tomorrow morning at about 8 am. I have a segment with Fox Sports that I have to do on Thursday at mid-day, so I’ve got to be down there tomorrow morning.

 I’ve known you since your dad was still competing and winning X Games medals on motocross bikes. I’m going to make a wild assumption here and say you’re excited to get things, literally, rolling!
Yes, I’m very excited. It’s going to be good. I’m excited and I feel like I’ve gotten a lot of time on the Ford simulator. They’ve given me really good access to that, so I’ve been maximizing that. It’s also been really good being in the shop and around the crew guys and. I’m getting to know everyone within the race team and I feel like I have a good group of people around me this year and a really good inner circle.

Friday night’s 100-lap NextEra Energy 250 race will mark only your second NASCAR Camping World Truck Series start, correct?
Yes. Correct. I’ve been getting ready. Having the Ford simulators are a great tool, but getting that experience of a real-life Truck race at Kansas is definitely going to help me at Daytona this week. I have that knowledge and a solid base of understanding of, okay, what I’m kind of getting myself into. I think just being able to do that race at Kansas gave me a direction of where I need to go and what I need to work on. Going into Daytona this week, there is some stuff that we worked on with the simulator just by knowing what happened in that Truck race at Kansas Speedway. Trucks are very competitive and they’re very competitive right now. I just think that there are a lot of good drivers in that series. I feel like there are a lot of quality drivers and a lot of quality rides and equipment throughout the entire pack in the Truck Series. I think that’s what makes it so competitive and so tough. I know that going out there that it definitely might be a struggle at some times and we’re going to have our challenges and our ups-and-downs, but I think this year is really a learning year for me in getting some good experience under my belt.

To get out there, do laps and learn how the truck acts perform, and actually comes to you during these races will be a full-on educational process won’t it?
Yeah, it’s totally different. The Trucks handle a lot different than the ARCA cars, so I know it’s going to take some time to get used to all of that and to get in the groove of things this year. I also think my crew guys are great. I have a great crew and a great engineer and I also have David Ragan. He’s been helping me a lot. He’s been going with me to the simulators and helping me with pit stop practice and going over everything. I know that that is going to be very helpful and very useful to me and I think it’s helped me a lot on the track too. I already know it is going to be tough. I feel like I’m gaining a lot of information right now and it is all going to be a lot to keep track of, but I think it is just kind of doing what we can to make every situation as good as possible. Even if that means instead of being at 100-percent, we are at 95-percent so we can minimize our mistakes. Also, David Ragan has been helping me out a ton. I swear I have spent a lot of time with him the last couple of weeks. I’m just trying to get ready for Daytona and to get ready for the season because David has such valuable knowledge and I think Ford sees that and everyone at DGR sees that too. We really value him and value his opinions on everything. I mean I know it’s definitely going to be tough. Obviously, I have my goals and things that I want to accomplish. There are some things that we are not going to accomplish, but I think it’s just kind of making every situation the best as possible and taking those mistakes that we make and learning from them, and working on not making those mistakes again

Beginning with Daytona and ending with Phoenix the first week of November, the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series will race 22 times in 2021. A significant number of tracks, all of them with their own conditions, configurations, and nuances, are you looking forward to the radical diversity?
Yes, a lot of new tracks and a lot of these tracks are really cool that we’re going to be going to. We’ll be going to tracks the Truck Series has never been on. I mean we’re going to Bristol, but have you been on Bristol dirt before? No! Stuff like that is going to be really cool to do.

As far as the opening phase of the 2021 season, what type of performance will encourage you and, well, make you happy?
Looking at going into all of this, I think what will make me happy will be going, like, top 15s and maybe we’ll pop-off a couple of top 10s there in the first couple of races. Who knows? I think going in there with a mindset of a sponge trying to absorb all this information will just allow me to learn from every situation. I think the competition in the Truck Series is very, very good and that’s what makes it such a great series when it comes to watching the races. I think it is one of the very best NASCAR series to watch from an outside perspective, so I think that going in there I know it’s going to be tough. I know I’m going to struggle occasionally and probably a lot more than I want to say, but I think that going in there is just earning the respect of everyone: the drivers, the crew chiefs, and the crew guys. We’ll go from there! I think I’m putting in as much effort as I can for it to actually work. At least I know, “Hey, I’m giving 110-percent right now!” I think that anytime you get in those big top-three NASCAR series it is a big deal, so I think that hopefully this is just the beginning and we can say here for a while! As far as goals, I feel my beginning of the year goals is going to change a lot from my end of the year goals. More than anything, though, I just hope we improve quickly. I’m very ready to go!