Q: Can this car get you into the top 20 in Cup?
MA: No doubt. I believe I can, if I’m good enough and it’s going to be proved here in the next 12 months whether I can be a contender every week.
Q: When you were 18 years old you were racing around Symmons Plains here in your father Ross’ Nissan …
MA: I remember that – it was with the Jim Richards Racing School by the way.
Q: ... did you ever think back then that you would be where you are today? Is it surprising to you or are you on target for what you set out for?
MA: Look, I had no idea that this was going to happen. There was no master plan, there was no innate understanding that I was going to get to this point. I’ve just really fallen into it. Just with passion and commitment and enthusiasm, you know.
I don’t believe – and I still to this day don’t believe – that I’ve got any more talent than anyone else out there. It’s just that I love the sport, I love racing cars and I love the challenge of it and I commit myself to it and take every day as day-by-day and minute-by-minute.
I just really try to do the best I can and I pinch myself everyday that I’ve gotten this far. I feel like I’ve really achieved something, really by just surviving over there in the US and making it to the Cup level. It’s something that not everybody gets to do and gets to achieve in their lives so I feel like I’m really proud of what I’ve done and I had no idea that I was ever going to get this far. There was no vision of it. I just took it day by day.
Q: How long are you home for?
MA: Good question. Until they call me and they want me back.
At this stage I plan to be back in mid-January. If I’m away too long I might get forgotten about. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, that’s what my Dad always says. So I’ve got to be back across there sooner rather than later but I do need to spend some time with my family.
My Grandad’s not that well, my Dad’s not that well, I’ve had my family over there in the US away from their parents and grandparents for too long so I’m excited to be home so I’m trying to make the most of it and it will be great.
Q: So Christmas, and a few rounds of golf?
Maybe, probably not though. You know, I had to give up golf. I’ve got a three-year-old and a one-year-old, so golf’s really gone by the wayside. I really want to get myself back in shape mentally and physically so I’ll use that time to hopefully get refreshed.
Q: Marcos, congratulations on getting to the elite level. That’s a great achievement. For somebody that hadn’t turned left before going over there people don’t realise just how tough has it been.
MA: Me included. If I knew it was going to be that tough, I probably wouldn’t have gone over.
Q: You’re acceptance over there has just been incredible. When you won at Watkins Glen it was great and even the next day coming third it was huge, because there are just so many more people exposed to Cup level.
MA: Yeah, the Cup thing has really got me out there. Little Debbie, which is a snack food company – they sell over $1 billion of snack cakes a year, which is unbelievable – they did a really big marketing campaign this year around me and my … I call it my ‘Australiana’.
We did a national TV ad campaign with a koala on my shoulder, either sitting in the car with me talking smack about how bad I was driving, or sitting on my shoulder and chatting up some women walking down the supermarket aisle. So there’s been some really good stuff and we’ve used my point of difference, which is my Australian background and my accent, even though you guys will claim that I’ve got some US tweaks getting in.
I really am proud of who I am and what I am all about over there. I feel like I got a little tainted over here, where I’d won and maybe said the wrong thing a time or two and got painted with the wrong brush. So I had a chance to really restart and reload over there and do it the right way and I think just my approach to life and to NASCAR and the fans, they’ve enjoyed that, so I’ve got a lot of mileage out of that and it’s been really good.
The biggest concern I had when I went over there was ‘how was I going to be accepted?’ and I’m fortunate to say that it’s been the least of my problems. Success has been the biggest problem for me on the race track. Just actually getting it done.
You look at the guys that have come in that haven’t been oval racing all their lives – there’s something like 40 or 50 NASCAR series running around the country at any one time and when you first get there you don’t realise how many guys are competing on a weekly basis on short tracks, big tracks, all around the country.
So to get in there and mix it with guys from Formula 1 and IndyCar and all these other categories and make it stick compared to most of them – most of them have gone now. Dario Franchitti’s gone, AJ Allmendinger is out of a ride, Jacques Villeneuve lasted five minutes. These are pedigree drivers that didn’t last very long, so I feel proud of what I’ve done and the big part of that has been the leveraging of my Australian accent and being able to feel privileged to be there and I think that rubs off on how I look over there and how I’m accepted.
Q: Thinking back to your days in V8 Supercars, how well did that set you up to cope with the pressure, to drive a big, heavy car and to go into NASCAR?
MA: Really good. I mean, the level here is high. You don’t win a championship here unless you are really good at what you do with good people around you. It taught me a great lesson; that you are only as good as the (crew) guys around you and the equipment you get in.
So I was able to really adapt to driving on ovals pretty quick. The hard part has been getting that group, the team around you that I was able to build back here in Australia. So definitely, I learned a lot here and it set me up.
You know, without winning Supercar championships down here I wouldn’t have been able to go over there anyway and even when I got there I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes unless I knew what I was doing. There’s no doubt that what I learned here put me in good stead.
Q: What is the media situation like over in the US? The massive media attention on NASCAR must be a big deal?
MA: It’s just like it is here today. I mean, it’s no more formal and there’s no fanfare about it. A classic example is just a couple of months ago I went on a radio show and before we went on air I asked what radio show it was for, so that when they ring in you can do the best you can.
They said it was for a station in Florida, but we’re syndicated to 180 different stations and we have a reach of 84 million listeners. So all of a sudden a radio show that’s getting to over three times the population of Australia in one hit, makes it really hit home as to what it’s all about. It’s just a big country and there are just a lot of people there – a lot of people to buy Little Debbie snacks.
Q: You talked about how NASCAR wasn’t on the radar. When did NASCAR come onto your radar?
MA: I take that back, what I said a few years back, when I said that NASCAR wasn’t really on my radar until I went over there to see it.
I’m a big fan of racing and I’m a bit of a historian. I love the old stuff and it always intrigued me when I looked back. I used to read all the old Autosport magazines from the 1970s that my Dad used to keep in boxes at our house.
I’d look through these magazines and see the stories on Richard Petty winning and see the grandstands and there was hundreds of thousands of people watching and you see the numbers and they’re winning hundreds of thousands of dollars way back in the 1970s. As I grew older I thought ‘what is this sport?’ It was just massive, bigger than Formula 1 ever was and it’s just a localised series.
It just intrigued me, so I’ve always had an interest in it, didn’t really understand it and then as my career blossomed and grew I really looked at it as a place to go. And that’s why I went.
Is it really because of the money or the competitive deal? Yeah, it is, but what really got me going was that I remember that I was intrigued by it from a very early age, not really understanding what the sport was all about.
2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Driver’s Points – Final Standings after Race 36
1. Jimmie Johnson 6684
2. Carl Edwards 6615
3. Greg Biffle 6467
4. Kevin Harvick 6408
5. Clint Bowyer 6381
6. Jeff Burton 6335
7. Jeff Gordon 6316
8. Denny Hamlin 6214
9. Tony Stewart 6202
10. Kyle Busch 6186
45. Marcos Ambrose 844 (11 races)
2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Prizemoney after 11 races:
Marcos Ambrose: US$1,112,281
2008 NASCAR Nationwide Series Standings – Final Standings after Race 35
1. Clint Bowyer 5132
2. Carl Edwards 5111
3. Brad Keselowski 4794
4. David Ragan 4525
5. Mike Bliss 4518
6. Kyle Busch 4461
7. David Reutimann 4388
8. Mike Wallace 4128
9. Jason Leffler 4086
10. Marcos Ambrose 3991
