Larry McReynolds Interview: Part 2

from Foxsports.com

Today we present you with part 2 of our interview with NASCAR broadcast personality and former winning crew cheif Larry McReynolds. Yesterday we talked about his past with Davey Allison and Ernie Irvan, as well as his thoughts on why the car of today was tougher to adapt to for drivers. Today, we talk about his thoughts on the 2011 Chase, his 2012 broadcast plans, and more! So let’s pick it up where we left off yesterday:

Greg: “Well, I think Mike had a few more questions before we let you go. Mike?”

Mike: “I got one more book related question for you, kind of near the end you talked about how Benny Parsons had some harsh criticism of yourself when you started out on Fox, were you ever able to, I don’t want to say whether it was a feud or something, but were you ever able to talk to him and maybe have a “bury the hatchet” type of thing before he passed?”

Larry: “I mean, it really wasn’t a feud or anything. Benny and I were good friends. I wouldn’t say we were close friends, but we talked a lot. My wife talks to his wife Terri, even a lot today. I just talked to Terri about a month ago. Benny just had a hard way, sometimes, of making his point. I am always open to constructive criticism, whether it’s from my bosses, my counter broadcast partners, my family, fans, I listen. I’m not a closed minded individual that says “I’ve got it all right and I can’t do it any better than I do it”. I do try to listen, and watch, and pay attention. Had Benny been a little more diplomatic about pointing it out to me that he felt like I needed work on my grammar and my use of the English language, I probably taken more kindly to it. And you know what? Probably what hurt more than anything, it was something I was working on. I privately hired an English teacher from where my kids went to school, who worked for me for a year and a half. I didn’t want to change the characteristics of Larry McReynolds, that’s why Larry Mac was Larry Mac. That’s why Fox, Speed, and Turner hired me. But were there some things I wanted to clean up a little bit? Absolutely. But I was working on it. That’s probably what hurt more than anything, sitting there knowing I was spending several hours a week on my own, without anyone telling me I needed to. I had to, they wanted me to. I did it on my own reconnaissance, and here a guy just calls me out in the garage area and says that I’m completely butchering and destroying the English language in my broadcast of NASCAR races. I’m like “wait a minute, you know, I’m working on that, give me a break here”. It’s not going to happen overnight, I’m trying to kill, at that point, 42 years of habit. But there never was really a feud. Benny was in our thoughts and our prayers so much when he was going through that sickness and illness and certainly my wife, and my family and I miss him tremendously. We certainly attended his memorial services, and everything that was paying tribute to Benny Parsons. He was a great individual, an ambassador of our sport as a driver, as a champion, and many years as a broadcaster.”

Michael: “Oh yeah, I miss, I used to love when he’d do the Buffet Benny, he’d go around the tracks and go to the local eats, that was always a fun part of the old telecasts. That kind of leads into which do you like better: Being on Fox as a commentator for the races, or on TNT being kind of the tech guy? You know, being able to go overall the things you know as a crew chief, being able to show that off?”

Larry: “I actually enjoy both, and I like the balance. The reason I left being a crew chief over 11 years ago was to be broadcast analyst with NASCAR on Fox, with Darrell Waltrip and Mike Joy. Is that have been what I wanted to have done when TNT hired me? Probably not, I wanted to do something different so I can’t sit here and tell you that I enjoy one more than the other, because I enjoy angles of both of them. But I enjoy the balance of what I do for both networks, and the amount of races I do it.”

Michael: “It’s kind of cool that you can kind of switch it up and do one thing for half the season, do another for a couple, then you’re working with Speed during this part of the season when ESPN has all the races?”

Larry: “Yeah, it’s like I tell people all the time: I work for everybody with the exception of ESPN. I feel really blessed and fortunate for the opportunity that I have with all the different networks, with Fox, Turner for those six races, and I work for Speed pretty much from February to Homestead in November. Our sport is so different from stick and ball sports, it’s one reason I feel very fortunate for the opportunities that I have because I’m at the race track every week. If you walk away from baseball, or football for half a season, as long as you pay attention a little bit you can keep up with the sport. Our sport is so different because it changes not from year to year, but almost from week to week and race to race. If you stay gone for long, you’ll come back and look at these things and these cars that have eight tires and wheels on them and you won’t even know when it happened or why it happened. It changes that rapidly. It’s one reason that I love being there each week, I miss my family no different than I did when I traveled for 34-36 weeks as a crew chief each year, but I love my work and I love what I do too.”

Michael: “Now with that, anything you can divulge on Fox’s coverage next year? Any new things we can see?”

Larry: “Well I know one thing there was a press release that came out a few weeks ago, Michael Waltrip is going to join our broadcast. Nobody is leaving us, the both is going to be the same, with Mike and Darrell and myself, hard to believe it’s going to be our twelfth year together. Pits will be the same with Krista Voda, Dick Berggren, Steve Byrnes, and Matt Yocum. The hotel, the prerace, the studio is gonna change a bit, it’ll be Michael and Chris Myers, Darrell will be in there during the prerace just as he had been with Chris Myers and Jeff Hammond the last 11 years. They’re going to create a new role with Jeff Hammond, which I think can be very cool. If you watch, not the number one Fox football with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, but if you watch the second group, they have Tony Siragusa that kind of is a sideline reporter but not really a sideline reporter. He kind of plays a host role down on the field and chimes in periodically. I think that’s what they’re going to create with Jeff Hammond. So I’m really glad Jeff is still going to be a part of it, he adds a lot to our broadcast from a pit standpoint. I think it’s going to be cool, Michael brings personality and uniqueness to our prerace and our studio set, and Jeff will add a lot in the role they’re going to put him in now.”

Michael: “Are they going to know to have enough tape for Michael and Darrell?”

Larry: “Well that’s going to be an interesting part, it’s going to put a whole new meaning to All Waltrip.”

Greg: “Hey now, before we get too far ahead of ourselves and start talking about 2012, how about we finish off 2011 first? We’re coming up to the end of the year, the last couple races of the season, do you have any predictions or any thoughts on how it’s going to end, think Edwards will hold on and take the title?”

Chris Graythen/Getty Images

Larry: “Well we still have a lot of racing to go. There is a 500 miler at Texas this weekend. It’s the final 500 miler of the year, and it can take a toll on a lot of things, especially engines. It’s probably the one race in the Chase the engine guys are the most nervous about. Phoenix is a big wildcard because the only thing that’s the same about Phoenix from what we’ve run there the last 30 races is the location. It’s a new configuration, it’s a new surface, so you can’t sit here and say anybody has an upper hand. It’s almost like going to a new race track. Homestead they only go once a year and everything seems to change from year to year there. So to sit here and say Carl Edwards will have an upper hand since he’s won two of the last three races there, I don’t know if that’s safe. But I think just not being able to anticipate things we can’t predict, like engine issues or cut tires under green, or mistakes on pit road, or just heads up performance, I think Carl Edwards will win this championship. He’s got through his two biggest hurdles at Talladega and Martinsville, and I’m sure he feels very relieved to come out of there with a ninth and 11th place finish. I bet if you told him heading into those two races “this is what we’ll give you, and you don’t have to run them”, he’d have took them before you finished handing them out. But Stewart has definitely been a pleasant surprise of the Chase. Here’s a driver that we wasn’t even sure would make the Chase, that hadn’t even won a race in the first 26, had to fight and claw just to get there. Now he’s sitting here second in the points, eight points from Carl, and has won almost 50 percent of the Chase races, three of the seven. You can’t count out Harvick or Keselowski, though. Those two drivers are depending on two things, and that’s those two drivers having solid performances, and when I say solid I’m talking probably top fives these final three races. Then Edwards and Stewart are going to have to bobble somewhere along the line. We keep waiting for Edwards to have that really bad race, it’s just not happening. So, I think we have a four horse race but you know if Stewart and Edwards have issues next thing you know Matt Kenseth, Kyle Busch, Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch they can be right back in it. But the way it sits now, I think we have a four horse race.”

Michael: “For me, I’m not convinced until Homestead on the final lap that Jimmie Johnson won’t win a sixth.”

Larry: “I’m not either, the real problem he’s got is not only does he have to make up 43 points on the leader, he’s got to leap frog the other six best drivers in the business. That’s where the problem lies. He finished second at Martinsville and only made up seven points. Simply because Stewart wins the race, Harvick has a top five, and Edwards finishes ninth. That’s the vertical mountain he’s staring at.”

Michael: “I was just going to say that’s a tall order. For a NASCAR historian like myself, in NASCAR, the last couple Rookie of the Years have just basically been one guy in the running for them. Do you think it’s time we kind of stop that award, or do you have thoughts on that situation? Not that Andy Lally is undeserving, because he obviously has a good resume to him, it seems to, for lack of a better term, “cheapens” it than Jeff Gordon beating out a Kenny Wallace or Bobby Labonte, like back in the day.”

Chris Graythen/Getty Images

Larry: “Oh yeah, when you look back at some of the Rookie of the Year battles we had not that many years ago, go back to Matt Kenseth and Dale Earnhardt Jr. in 2000. Those guys were winning races and in the top ten in points. I think people forget that Ryan Newman actually beat out Jimmie Johnson in 2002 for Rookie of the Year. If you go way back in the day it wasn’t unusual you’d have four or five drivers battling it out, and battling at the front of the field to win the Rookie of the Year. I don’t know if the award needs to go away, because there’s still some significance about a younger driver, sometimes not younger, but inexperienced driver coming in here and surviving a full year of the toughest racing circuit in the world, but yeah, it’s certainly not carrying the clout that it one time carried. I think it’s because it’s sponsors not willing to spend the kind of money that you have to spend today to sponsor one of these things, and take a chance on an unknown commodity in a rookie driver.”

Michael: “That’s a very good point, especially when you have things like UPS dropping out, or at least dropping down I should say. It’s just tough, even Trevor Bayne couldn’t get sponsorship.”

Larry: “You know back when you could sponsor these things, and I mean be a top sponsorship, for $4 or $5 or $6 million you maybe were willing to roll the dice on a young, what seemed to be an up and coming promising driver. But now, with it taking $15, $16, $17 million, you want a proven commodity. You want someone that you know has a track record that might win some races for you. And it’s sad, it’s just the nature of the beast.”

Michael: “Yeah, I recently did about the UPS, I kind of, I know a lot of people were frustrated they dropped it down, obviously they’re going to lose a team at Roush over it, but I pointed out you’re paying a quarter of the price and you can still leverage Carl Edwards as your driver, just as much as if you were paying full time.”

Larry: “It’s, it’s unfortunately the way our sport is right now with the cost of doing business in it.”

We would just like to thank Larry for taking a few minutes out of his very busy schedule to take part in our interview. He was an absolute pleasure to talk to, and we really wish we could have put up the entirety of his statements (there was some light editing in the interest of relevancy and time) as he has probably the best stories we’ve ever heard. His insights and knowledge know no bounds. We appreciate the time he took the time to talk to us, and we sure hope you enjoyed reading. Stay tuned to StartNParkBlog.com for more upcoming interviews with NASCAR personalities, as we hope to continue to bring you extensive NASCAR coverage in the coming year.